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How to Find Great Startup Mentors
The startup ecosystem is overrun with people willing to give advice. From successful entrepreneurs to unsuccessful entrepreneurs to — for reasons I’ve yet to understand — people who’ve never built companies in their lives, if you need mentorship for your startup, plenty of people are willing to give it. But just because lots of people give advice to startups, it doesn’t mean they’re all giving good advice. Do you know how to tell good startup mentors from bad startup mentors?
Why it’s hard to find good startup mentors
Whenever someone gives you advice about your startup, always remind yourself that there’s no universally accepted credentialing system for startup mentors. In order to give you advice, people don’t have to attend any classes, pass any tests, or reach a specific success milestone with their previous company. They can just write “startup mentor” in their Twitter bios and begin telling people how to build businesses.
And by the way, I’m no different. Yes, I have a fancy-pants credential… a PhD. But my PhD is in freaking English Literature. My dissertation focused on the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. That hardly qualifies me to give great startup advice. If anything, you should be more skeptical of what I tell you because, while I might not have any formal education in…
