Chapter 24
How to Find and Engage Mentors

David Cohen
 

David is a cofounder and the co-CEO of Techstars.

Most first-time entrepreneurs I know seek out mentors for their companies only when they decide they want funding. They do it then because they have to, as part of the process of attempting to raise money. To further the process, they begin to listen to and react to the thoughts of investors as a way of gaining favor. This is the wrong way to think about mentorship and is unlikely to lead to mentorship.

Great mentors need to be woven into the fabric of any startup from the beginning. To be most effective, mentors need to understand more than the numbers, the technology, and the markets you'll serve. Effective mentors know how you react to adversity, they know how you've structured your business, and why. They know what your strengths and weaknesses are and can help you overcome obstacles based on those strengths and weaknesses. By the time you get to the point that you need money, you will have gone through adversity, you will have persevered, you will have refined your technology, and the mentors who have been with you from the beginning will be part of your growth. In many cases, they will be able to help you more than the investors who show up at the funding stage.

How do you find a mentor to be with you during the very early stages of your startup, when things are messy and unclear? Who will spend the time and effort to mentor you? Well, most people already have one or two mentors in their lives. Many people don't even know who their mentors are or have been until they reflect upon this for a moment. Often, I think that's a good sign and indicates that you already have a positive mentoring relationship with someone, even though you haven't thought about them as a mentor. For a lot of people, the mentors in their lives are one of their parents, their best friend, a past boss, or perhaps a college professor. If you stop for a moment and ponder the impact that these people have had on your life so far, you'll probably realize that a lot of them have been mentors to you in one way or another

A lot of the mentors you have had will not be helpful to you as a startup entrepreneur. It should be obvious that you need to find mentors who will have that same kind of impact on your business as the other mentors have had on your life.

How Do You Find Potentially Great Mentors?

First, you have to make it a priority. Finding a mentor is not a part-time activity or something that you can be casual about. It has to be something that you desperately want and that you pursue strategically. A first step is to think about your own network. Who has vastly more life or startup experience than you do? Start there before you decide to look elsewhere because people in your own network are easy to approach and, since they know you, they'll think of good people for you to connect with if they are unable to help you.

If you have maxed out your own network, the next step is to expand that network. Start learning about local companies you respect and consider seeking out their founders or key executives. Approach them by explaining that you admire the business they started and would love to hear the story of how it was built in hopes of making your own startup successful. Do some research first! You should know the basics of their story and prepare some questions in advance. Often founders of successful companies are actively engaged in the startup community anyway, and they love thinking about other startups and meeting energetic founders who remind them of a younger version of themselves. Don't pick a mentor just because of how they look on paper. Read their blog if they have one and study the things they've done in their lives and in their careers. A great mentor for you is not necessarily a great mentor for everyone. Some legwork on your part will help identify the mentors who can be helpful to you.

What Makes a Great Mentor?

Ultimately, great mentors see something in you and want to help you reach your potential. They don't always do this with direct advice. Often, they do it with introductions, resources, or through the process of thinking out loud with you. Your best mentors will become friends and permanent fixtures in your life.

Approaching Potential Mentors

People make the natural but routinely incorrect assumption that great mentors would simply be too busy to help them. Ask anyone who has sought meetings with successful entrepreneurs in Colorado-I think you'll find that when you approach people in our community (or any community, for that matter) you'll find an amazing number of open doors. Most people just never knock on the doors of potential mentors out of fear of rejection. This is silly. Imagine how good it must feel to be asked for advice from a smart, dedicated, and motivated founder like you. Keep in mind that you have something to give back, too.

Engaging Potential Mentors

A final tactic to getting the most from relationships with mentors is to engage them. By definition, they're not a mentor until they're actively engaged with you.

This sounds simple, but almost everyone screws it up. Engagement is not accomplished by sending an occasional email updating the person on what you're doing or the major news every once in a while. It's not built by offering to take someone to lunch. It's built over a long period of time with small, regular, interesting, and thought-provoking communication. In my opinion, the best way to do this early on is by email, as it maximally respects the time of the mentor you are engaging.

A Great Example

I want to give you a great example of how someone engaged me. Their names are David and Heather Duey and they understand how to engage with someone whom they didn't know-at first. David and Heather emailed me dozens of times asking questions about their startup, Georneys. I'm connected to them in only two ways, and neither of those ways involved actual contact. First, they're from Tallahassee, Florida, and I grew up in Florida and am a big Seminoles fan (yes, let the mockery begin). Heather and David knew I was from Florida from reading my personal blog. Second, they're doing a startup, and they reached out to me because they knew that I love startups. That's it-I had never even met them until after a remote mentoring relationship had developed.

David and Heather first contacted me after applying for Techstars. When they didn't get into the accelerator, they continued the dialog with me. They frequently emailed me with well-thought-out questions that only required me to spend just a few minutes to get them some feedback on their business. Over time, they began to email me more complex or deep questions about their business. Then they came to the Defrag Conference and decided to move to Boulder. I know them personally now and I like speaking to them about their business. They probably don't know it, but there's two-way learning going on. For example, I'm a regular reader of both of their blogs and through them I've come to better understand some of the trials and tribulations of cofounding a company with a spouse (not that I plan to try that!).

Building the Relationship

Once you have established a relationship, regular engagement becomes the key to making it work the best that it can. While it's important to keep the early relationship low-impact and largely nonintrusive for the person you are getting guidance from, you can certainly step it up over time. The ideal scenario is to involve them directly in the strategy associated with the development of your business, your product, or you as a person. For example, you can engage a mentor by soliciting direct feedback on an early prototype of your product. Even if you get a trickle of feedback from them, you have the key ingredients of engagement. Think about their points, make at least one change or improvement that you agree with (there must be one!), and reply with an email succinctly detailing what you've done about each point.1 It's okay (probably even good) to disagree with some of the points when appropriate-just efficiently explain why. In your response email, it's important to ask them to give you more feedback now that you have made those changes.

Keep the loop going in this way and you'll develop a positive conversation with the mentor, improve your product, and build a stronger relationship with them. My long-distance conversations with David and Heather have grown and changed over time and I now associate them with the qualities of strong follow-up, willingness to be coached, logic, critical thinking, and, most of all, forward motion. What I'm describing as a sought-out mentor is a process that you can replicate with potential mentors who are unknown to you. It allows you to build a remote mentoring relationship that is low impact for the mentor, but that ultimately leads you (if you're good) to a point where asking for a meeting will likely result in success. From there, you can really get to know the person and continue this positive feedback loop.

Mentorship Evolved

Brad Feld (who is certainly one of my mentors) wrote a terrific blog post about mentorship some time ago that has a special spot in the...