The top 6 hacks to get the biggest value from mentors

From my experience both as a startup founder working with mentors, as well as a mentor working with startups, I learned certain hacks that enable entrepreneurs to get the maximum value of mentors.

Before talking about these hacks I quickly want to go into the values of mentors to startups and the value of mentoring to mentors.

1 Value of Mentor to Startup

Most entrepreneurs think that mentors contribute value to the startup by advice. But while advice can be helpful, there are other benefits. We can list the benefits as follows:

• Advice & Coaching
• Accountability
• Contacts
• Stamp of approval

1.1 Advice & Coaching

Advice is often the least helpful part of mentoring, because the right answers to questions do depend less on the experience of the mentor and more on the exact circumstance of the startup. For example, think of the following questions:

• Should we focus our marketing on small companies or large companies?
• Should we raise the price or lower the price?
• Should we go global or stay local?

For all of these strategic decisions there are good arguments to be made on either side. So what the startup should do, depends on the specific situation at hand and in order to make the right decision you need to have all of the information. This information is with the entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurs can communicate some of the information to the mentors, a lot of the information is held in their subconscious brain and they only use it when making decisions intuitively.

Therefore, a mentor should ensure that the entrepreneur has thought of all of the factors to be taken into account but in the end should leave the decision to the entrepreneur herself.

Due to the fact that most of the time the right decision depends on the exact circumstances, different mentors will give different advice. I put this to the test, when I asked 6 of our mentors to give us their opinion on the best strategy to pursue. One of the mentors, the highest quality mentor, asked for more information and then gave us his decision criteria but refrained from giving advice. All the other 5 gave 5 completely different answers that were contradictory to each other.

Therefore, in my own opinion, the best mentors refrain from advising. Instead they try to put the right questions to the startup to get the startup to think in the right way. This approach would be better described as coaching.

1.2 Accountability

You can benefit from mentors by having them follow what you do and hold you accountable to your progress.

While this is valuable, you do not necessarily need a person with a lot of experience to be your mentor. Rather you can look for a friend or founder in a similar situation as you to be your accountability partner.

1.3 Contacts

Mentors are a great source for contacts. Contact could be to various parties:

• Investors
• Customers
• Employees

Mentors are often in the same industry and have been successful in the past. Therefore, they will often know investors and might be a valuable way to approach these investors. Also, if they have been in the industry they might know customers, employees or other potential partners.

There are two ways to benefit from the contacts of the mentor. One is to just ask the mentor for introductions. The second and often more valuable but neglected way, is to be constantly on the mind of the mentor, so that when the mentor comes across valuable contacts he introduces them without you having to ask for it.

1.4 Stamp of approval

Mentors will often have a lot of name recognition in the industry. So when a mentor lists your startup as one of the startups he is mentoring, be it on his LinkedIn profile or his Angel list profile, this gives a lot of credibility to your startups.

Also, being able to list your mentor in your deck can immediately give credibility to your startup.

2 Value of Mentoring to Mentor

We quickly need to explore why mentors are mentoring, in order to understand the mind of the mentor, which can help us get the most benefit from the mentors.

Reasons mentors are mentoring startup founders:

• Contribution to the Ecosystem
• Status
• Interest in the product or service
• Interest to invest
• Equity or cash

In most of the cases it is a combination of the above.

2.1 Contribution to the Ecosystem

Mentors see mentoring as a way to give back to the startup ecosystem and to support entrepreneurs that remind them of the time when they were young and struggling to get their business off the ground.

2.2 Status

Being a mentor has a certain status associated with it, as mentors are generally those that have already been successful. Therefore, a person might want to get listed as a mentor on a website of an accelerator or put being a mentor on his LinkedIn profile.

2.3 Interest in the product or service

Some mentors are genuinely interested in your service or product and therefore interested in mentoring you, and helping you make a better product or service.

2.4 Interest to invest

Others see you as a potential investment, and therefore want to first be a mentor and in the future potentially become an angel investor.

2.5 Equity or cash

Other mentors need to be incentivised by cash or equity. Paying cash to a mentor is something I would never do, since a mentor should be a successful individual, who does not need cash. So when a potential mentor asks for cash, I would always say ¨No¨.

However, if you want a power mentor, a mentor that you can talk to on a regular basis, it is only fair that this mentor earns equity in your startup.

3 Hacks to get maximum benefit from mentoring

Here I am presenting the top hacks to entrepreneurs on how to get maximum benefit from mentors.

• Know what objective you have for each mentor
• Contact potential mentors
• Go through mentor list of accelerators that you are not part of

3.1 Know what objective you have for each mentor

First, you need to have a specific idea of what benefit you want to get out of each mentor. According to the benefit we want to get from a certain mentor we can classify mentors as follows:

• Entrepreneur mentor
• Specific skill mentor
• Contact mentor
• Customer mentor
• Investor mentor
• VIP mentor
• Loose supporter

3.1.1 Entrepreneur mentor

An entrepreneur mentor is a mentor who has been a successful entrepreneur herself. This kind of mentor can help you because she knows how hard it is to grow a company, and can tell you from her personal experience.

3.1.2 Specific skill mentor

A specific skill mentor did not have a successful business but has specific knowledge in an area that is valuable for your business. You want to use that mentor to get feedback and ideas in that specific area.

For example, I was building an investment platform for sustainable investment and an important part of this business was the evaluation of companies according to sustainability. This was an area for which I got mentors that did not have business success but had experience in this specific area, sustainability evaluation.

3.1.3 Contact mentor

Contact mentors have the main purpose of providing you contacts in the industry, so you want to make sure that they have a big network.

3.1.4 Customer mentor

A customer mentor is a mentor that could become your customer. This type of mentor is relevant for startups selling to businesses. It is a great mentor, as he himself is in your target market and thus can tell you what he needs.

3.1.5 VIP mentor

A VIP mentor is a mentor who has very little time to engage in mentoring but he has a big name recognition. A person like Richard Branson, or Elon Musk are good examples. That kind of mentor will not be able to give you much advice but just by putting his name on your company presentation he can help a lot.

3.1.6 Loose supporter

A loose supporter could be all of the above, but is someone who has little involvement, and no big brand name. In my experience it makes sense to have only 2–4 true mentors but to have a large group of supporters. These supporters can provide ideas, contacts, become clients or help in another way and they should not cost anything. Basically, anybody who seems to have valuable experience or contacts and who is interested in your startup, you should try to stay in touch with and send updates on your startup. Doing this you are creating a pool of supporters. Though these supporters are less engaged than mentors, as you have a lot of them, many of the contacts and ideas will in fact come from the pool of supporters.

3.2 Contact potential mentors that are part of accelerators

This seems easy: in order to gain mentors you need to contact them. However, this is often not done by startup entrepreneurs.

For example, I participated in an accelerator that had a list of 100 mentors but most of the participating startups did not take advantage of any of them. This gave us a competitive advantage, as the mentors were waiting for startups to contact them. So we went through the list of mentors and contacted all of the top mentors and got overwhelmed with offers to support us.

Most entrepreneurs will not even go through the mentor list of their own accelerator. What I am suggesting here, is to not only contact the list of your accelerator but of other accelerators as well!

You see, if a person is listed as a mentor for an accelerator, you already know that he is open to mentoring startup founders. Also, generally there is no formal arrangement between mentor and accelerator; the mentor only declares that he is potentially willing to help out startups. That means while startups of that accelerator can contact the mentors, you yourself also can contact the mentors even if you are not part of the startup!

3.3 Know who would be a good mentor

You need to select the best people to be your mentors and take into account the following:

• Understand the trade off between VIP status and availability
• Do not go for consultants
• Go for retired executives
• Get potential clients as mentor

3.3.1 Understand the trade-off between VIP status and availability

When contacting mentors you need to know that there are some that are VIP with a great name but little availability. Mentors with less of a VIP status are generally more available and therefore more helpful.

So if you are only looking for a stamp of approval or for contacts to investors a VIP mentor can bring value without contributing much time. However, if you want someone who shows dedication to your startup, go for people with enthusiasm rather than for people with very high status.

3.3.2 Do not go for consultants

Consultants give advice as a way of earning money. Therefore, you might think that they are great mentors, as they are already doing in their day job, what you want them to do for you. However, the opposite is true. If someone is a professional consultant, he is basically already charging for mentoring, and thus not interested in giving you his service for free.

3.3.3 Go for retired executives

Retired executives can be great mentors. For one, they have a lot of experience, like VIP advisors, but also often have a lot of availability. In fact, some retired executives might appreciate the mental challenge and the appreciation that comes from being a mentor.

For example, I contacted a retired executive, whom I saw as a potential mentor, with a simple question. I did not only get an answer but he did not stop talking and writing to me, wanting to give me more of his advice.

3.3.4 Get potential clients as mentor

This is a great hack for customer development as well as for sales. When you are building a product for businesses, contact a person that might in the future be your client and ask for his feedback. Then show a lot of appreciation and try to get the person to give you more feedback, and thereby become your mentor on the product.

3.4 Do not ask for too much in the first contact

In the first contact you want to ask for very little commitment.

3.4.1 Ask for sharing experience only

When contacting potential mentors for the first time, never ask for the following first:

• Contacts
• How to get investment
• Help on a specific task

This is because a mentor does not want to feel used by the startup. He wants to feel that he is sharing his rich experience with appreciative entrepreneurs, and he hates feeling that he is a cheap source of consulting or just being used to get money or intro to contacts.

3.4.2 Start small

When you first contact a potential mentor you want to keep the ask small and only later after you know each other ask for a bigger commitment.

For example, you can first ask to just talk to explore potential ways of collaboration or ask for some quick feedback on your product or business model.

After that conversation, you want to thank the mentor and express how much you have benefited from the conversation. Then you can ask to have another short conversation.

And after that, if you liked that conversation, you can finally ask for a mentor relationship.

3.5 Constant updates

You want to ensure that the mentor stays in the loop on what is going on in your startup. If you forget to do that, the mentor will forget about you and not keep you in mind when coming across contacts or ideas that could potentially help you. Even worse, the mentor might get upset.

For example, I once had a tough situation in the company, so I stopped sending updates till that situation was over. One of our mentors complained: ¨Ÿou forget about me for all this time and now when you need me you remember me again?¨This showed me how important it is to keep the mentors in the loop.

To do so it is important to send regular updates. The best way to ensure they are regular, is to make them monthly. So every month, independ on if there is special news or not, you write a short update and send it to all employees, contractors, investors, supporters, and mentors!

3.6 Respect mentor authority and show appreciation

3.6.1 Respect authority

You should never argue with anybody, not only with mentors. But with mentors it is particular important to:

• Never argue
• Never say they are wrong
• Never criticise them
• Always appreciate their contribution
• Always show them how you have used their input

This is because most mentors are mentors in order to get the feeling of helping and also of being an expert. So if you destroy this feeling, you are destroying the whole value for the mentor.

3.6.2 Show appreciation

You need to show maximum appreciation and kindness to the mentor, so that the mentor feels that his contribution is valued. These are some hints:

• Ask for their birthday and send them birthday wishes
• When you get to their town Invite them for lunch
• Show how you have benefit from mentoring