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Ask HN: How to find a mentor/advisor?
Hey guys,
Me and my co-founder are in the process of writing our MVP, but as we're both students without serious connections in the tech world, particularly the entrepreneurial/valley world, I feel like we should have a mentor or advisor to give a little guidance. Not somebody to really help with the code or anything but rather grant some wisdom on the other parts of startup life. Would it be wierd/rude to have an open-call of sorts, of people that might be interested? Should we, perhaps, aim and cold call somebody we admire and respect and see if perhaps they would take us under their wing?
- sgoraya 17y agoMy 2 cents: Attend and participate in local technology and business meetings/events. Even if you are not in the immediate 'Valley', you will still meet some local business folks who might be willing to serve as a mentor and open up additional contacts for you. You also mentioned that the both of you are students...possibly approach a professor for advisement?
- metajack 17y agoYou'd be surprised what you'd get just by asking politely. Find people you think can help you and that would be good teachers and just ask.
- jhancock 17y agoHN'er DanielBMarkham has done this. A few months ago he posted a request for HN'ers to be his "advisors". I've participated (a little). Daniel has made fantastic progress on his new product and I've greatly enjoyed the reports he sends.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoI can't emphasize how awesome it is to have advisers. Here are a couple of tips I've learned in the last two months: 1) Have a bunch of advisers. With ten or more advisers, if they only email you a couple of times a month you can get a huge amount of feedback. Whereas if you only have one or two advisers the bandwidth just doesn't work out. 2) Good advisers are not just boosters. I'm really lucky to have some HN'ers helping out and they have been terrific about giving me negative feedback when it's warranted. Lots of folks can cheer you up or pat you on the back. Good advisers give you a good reality check. 3) Never use an email distribution list. I did this the first time I sent an email to my adviser list and it was a big mistake. People are taking the time to personally help you, the least they deserve is a personal email and conversation. Yes, it's easy to send things to lots of people at once, but it's really counterproductive. You're not trying to spam people, you're trying to engage them. 4) People will usually over-promise and under-deliver. This is just human nature. It's easy to say you'd like to actively help out with something but lots of times lots of other things have higher priority. This is another reason for having a larger list of advisors. As this latest startup nears beta status, getting and using advisers was the best decision I've made so far.
- dzlobin 17y agoAwesome, thanks a lot for the info. I think we'll be following in your footsteps.