If you’re a bold entrepreneur, your dream mentors may be Elon Musk, Richard Branson or Larry Page. While they may be amazing mentors, are they the right ones for you at this point in time?
“I talked to many people and entrepreneurs and met an owner of a Singapore public-listed company whose revenues have reached over S$400 million, and got him as my mentor. After several mentoring sessions, I realized that my business was too small for him to offer advice that I can immediately apply. Metaphorically speaking, ‘I needed advice from [a] helicopter’s point of view. What he gave was advice from God’s point of view.’ I’m thinking about how to grow my business beyond $3 million to a $10 million company sustainably without stress, while he is thinking about how to structure and sell my business for $100 million,” says Moonshi Mohsenruddin, founder of CommGate and director at Echelon Minds.
Despite his humble beginnings – dropping out of school and starting out as a toilet cleaner to support his family – Moonshi became a celebrity entrepreneur in Asia in 2010, and has since received countless requests from young entrepreneurs for mentorship. Of the 26 companies he took under his wing over a period of four years, most have achieved up to 700 percent revenue growth and broken their first million-dollar revenue mark.
Moonshi shares his advice on the best mentors for entrepreneurs:
“If you are a startup, your mentor should at least have a business that had achieved $1 million revenues, is profitable, and have at least hired 10 to 20 people in their business. We need to get a mentor who is three to five times the size of our business and someone who has ‘been there, done that’ – preferably in the same industry, or someone who is in business and can ask you high-value and thought-provoking questions. If your mentor runs a growing and large business, the mentor may not have much time to meet you regularly or his advice may not be immediately relevant.”
So, if you are an entrepreneur seeking mentorship, here’s what you should start doing instead:
Make a list of 50 people who have started companies in your industry that are three to five times the size of your business.
When your list is complete, reach out to them asking for 10 to 60 minutes of their time to ask for advice.
When asking for advice, be specific, concise and realistic.
As an entrepreneur, you may be tempted to get mentors who are successful on paper, but whose values may not fit with yours. Melody Ward, a serial entrepreneur who started her first company at the age of 18, shares her experience with getting successful mentors:
“My best mentors are not all rich or famous. I’ve been lucky enough to sit at tables with well-known and influential people who have taught me a lot, but I’m selective when I choose someone in a position of authority over my life.
“You are not looking for someone who is going to give you a handout or a magic trick. You are looking for someone who recognizes where you are in your career and is able to give you advice. A really good mentor works to know who you are and will easily give you advice that fits.
“It’s easy to mistake someone who seems to have what you are looking for as an automatic mentor. When you see someone on CNN or with a million followers online, you know they’re ambitious and have probably worked hard to get where they are, but that doesn’t tell you anything about their personality or social tactics behind the projection, and that’s really important if you are going to work with someone to mold a life you’ll feel comfortable and proud of living.
“My aim is not to inherit status-by-association. I look for someone who has a track record of success and adversity, and especially someone who has attained their notoriety through direct practice of their expertise.
“My best mentors never needed my money because they were more interested in similar goals, and that typically evolves into friendship, which is what you keep.”
Take a look at this list of values and pick the most important ones for you.
You can now make yourself a checklist to assess if the potential mentors you contacted are the right fit:
Do they have a company that is two to three times the size of yours?
Do they have the direct practice and experience that you’re looking for?
Do their values match with yours?
Do they understand what you need?
If you want to learn more about how to find the mentors you’re looking for, check out www.seektokeep.com for more articles.
Noam Kostucki and Lujie Chen are co-authors of Seek to Keep: How to Find the Best Mentors and Keep Them, which comes out in May. Chen is also a graduate student in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering.
“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets good planning.” This is how entrepreneur Thomas Edison viewed the role of luck in one’s life and work. But no two people see luck in quite the same way. Each person’s life experiences, beliefs and expectations mingle together to create a willingness, or refusal, to place much stock in the idea of luck. For example, it’s hard to image ol’ Thomas Alva religiously playing the lottery each week — he was probably too busy getting things done.
In a recent essay for the New York Times, Jim Collins and Morten T. Hanson discuss what luck is really about in successful entrepreneurial enterprises. Having completed a nine-year research study on such organizations, Collins and Hanson do not see luck as abstract occurrences, but as identifiable events. Give the article a read to see how companies like Microsoft and Progressive Insurance handled these luck events, and eventually leveraged them to create ROL — return on luck.
Here are some technology business leaders, who recently visited the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar at Stanford, sharing their opinions on the role they hold for luck and the unknown in startups and product development.
Getting Rid of Luck
“Your pursuit should always be to remove the unknown from the equation,” says The Climate Corporation CEO David Friedberg. In this clip, Friedberg shares why this is a fundamental premise in building a successful venture. He also teases apart the different roles that risk and uncertainty play in fully understanding a business.
Luck is Committing to Big Bets
Evernote CEO Phil Libin explains how Evernote creates a great deal of luck by making big bets on which platforms to support. In this amusing and insightful anecdote, Libin tells how Evernote developed their application to work on Apple’s iPad by using cardboard cutouts of the device.
Doing What’s Right Creates Luck
According to Trip Adler, the founder of Scribd, luck is not what made the launch of his company successful. “It wasn’t luck, we were just doing things right,” says Adler. Rather than waiting for good fortune, Adler definitely aligns with the Edison approach to creating your own good fortune. Enjoy this video on eCorner to watch Adler explain how luck comes to any entrepreneur who works hard and remains persistent in trying to reach his or her goal.
Comparisons are frequently drawn between CEOs and the head coaches of sports teams. Maybe this explains all the management books written by championship winners. In this comparison, CEOs are leaders who create game plans and find the players they need to win. Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and CEO of mobile payment company Square, sees his job as being much closer to the role of Chief Editorial Officer.
Young companies are constantly flooded with input from customers, engineers, and support teams. However, startups need to choose the one or two ideas that are truly worth focusing on to sustain the product and service for the long-term, says Dorsey. As the Chief Editorial Officer of a startup, he targets three areas in which to apply his editorial guidance.
Editing Team Dynamics
Dorsey believes that if you’re trying to build a group of people to focus on building one great thing, it’s important to aim for the optimal team dynamic. “Edit the best people in, so [you] have a good cast of characters, and edit away any negative elements,” says Dorsey. Moreover, “editing away negative elements” may not mean you have bad employees, but that these employees may just not be the right fit at this time.
Editing Communications
All competent CEOs appreciate the need to communicate vision to internal teams, but what about external audiences? Dorsey believes that a company needs to communicate everything they are through the product or service. Customers and the general public should not be thinking about a person (like a CEO?) when they think about your company. According to Dorsey, the CEO needs to offer editorial guidance to ensure that, “The product is the story we are telling the world.”
Editing the Money in the Bank
For Dorsey, the CEO also fulfills an editorial need when choosing from financing options for a startup. Do you take money from angels or venture capital investors? Or do develop a business model that allows you to build revenue from the start? Dorsey says Square has been fortunate enough to take in revenue since day one, which allows his firm to better balance these issues. However, as every startup is different, a CEO must constantly be editorially selective in choosing the right blend of revenue generation and outside investment to power future growth.
We’re a big believer in the idea that entrepreneurial skills can be taught. It may take a tremendous amount of effort for an individual to develop their entrepreneurial mindset, but it can be achieved. However, what about inherent personal qualities of entrepreneurs? Are there common character traits or behaviors found in these risk takers? Based on experiences throughout her career, UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann can identify two such traits.
Tenacious “Like a Dog on a Bone”
The first trait she acknowledges is a relentless tenacity mixed with optimism. Desmond-Hellmann says that a successful entrepreneur will refuse to quit in the face of setbacks, and stays locked on their goal, “like a dog on a bone.” Great entrepreneurs never accept that a problem is unsolvable. Moreover, this never-say-die tenacity is often mixed with optimism, according to Desmond-Hellmann. Entrepreneurs constantly face criticism from naysayers and non-believers, so the ability to persevere with your chin up is a critical ability. Of course this is a valuable life skill for everyone, not just entrepreneurs.
No Fear of Embarrassment
“Don’t think of what others think of you, think about the purpose or the outcomes you want.”
Entrepreneurs must also be willing to overcome the fear of embarrassment. During Desmond-Hellmann’s tenure as president of product development for Genentech, she recalls colleagues literally rolling their eyes at her suggestion of an innovative new treatment for cancer. It’s hard to think you might be making a fool of yourself in front of peers, but entrepreneurs must remain so committed to the value of their idea that they can withstand such attitudes. According to Desmond-Hellmann, if you’re the type that has the courage to take risks “don’t think of what others think of you, think about the purpose or the outcomes you want.”
Marc Andreessen is no stranger to the challenges of achieving startup success, possessing in-the-trenches entrepreneurship experience as a co-founder of Netscape and Ning. And as co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, he uses his experience and insight when evaluating projects to discover the next big thing.
During his visit to our DFJ ETL seminar series earlier this year, Andreessen described the three criteria needed for high-tech startup success.
Is there a big market?
Does your company plan to disrupt established companies in an existing market, or do you believe your offering will do something amazing in a new market?
Will your company or product provide a fundamental change?
Andreessen believes that a new company must bring a product to market that can “punch through the status quo.” As an rough indicator, consider if your product will cause a “10x” type improvement in technology or a significant economic change.
How outstanding is the founding team?
Do you have a great technologist on the team? Or how about more than one? Also, does the founding team have members with complementary skill sets, including someone with a deeper understanding of markets and sales?
In the following clip, Andreessen expands on the criteria for market, product, and team, and even explains which of three areas a wise investor might be willing to compromise on.
While CEOs may be able to pick-up early on market trends, they cannot see the future with certainty. They approach each day, as we all do, knowing they will be presented with new information and unexpected changes in their business, their particular market sector, or the general economy. If everything is constantly changing, what is the most rational management mindset to have in the face of this environment? Get comfortable with ambiguity.
In the clip below, NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang describes his ability to “see around the fuzzy edges” and be comfortable with ambiguity. In the current economic and financial environment, this ability may be more critical than ever before. According to Huang, CEOs my have varying characteristics and attitudes when it comes to communication and management styles. However, he sees the ability to be comfortable with ambiguity as a much more common trait among successful CEOs.
Are you comfortable with ambiguity? Watch the video below.
STVP‘s Executive Director, Tina Seelig, empowers her students to embrace all their experiences by creating a failure résumé.
Yes… a failure résumé.
This is a great way to appreciate the lessons you learn through experience. So while you’re busy polishing up a standard résumé, framing your most attractive qualities and accomplishments for others, you might want to take time out to build your failure résumé.
Here is Tina’s explanation of this powerful tool:
I require my students to write a failure résumé. That is, to craft a résumé that summarizes all their biggest screw ups — personal, professional, and academic. For every failure, each student must describe what he or she learned from that experience. Just imagine the looks of surprise this assignment inspires in students who are so used to showcasing their successes.
However, after they finish their résumé, they realize that viewing their experiences through the lens of failure forced them to come to terms with the mistakes they have made along the way and to extract important lessons from them. In fact, as the years go by, many former students continue to keep their failure résumé up-to-date, in parallel with their traditional résumé of successes.
A failure resume is a quick way to demonstrate that failure is an important part of our learning process, especially when you’re stretching your abilities, doing things the first time, or taking risks. We hire people who have experience not just because of their successes but also because of their failures.
Failures increase the chance that you won’t make the same mistake again. Failures are also a sign that you have taken on challenges that expand your skills. In fact, many successful people believe that if you aren’t failing sometimes then you aren’t taking enough risks. Additionally, it is pretty clear that the ratio of our successes and failure is pretty constant. So, if you want more successes, you are going to have to tolerate more failure along the way.
You deserve to take credit for all that you have learned in life, so use this tool to do it. What are you waiting for? It’s a job each of us is perfectly qualified for.
