It takes a village to raise a child.
Research into healthy adolescent development shows that one of the most important indicators for how we as humans develop is how much time we spend with caring supportive adults who are not our parents or teachers.
The same is true for startups, and enterprises of all sizes.
In fact, people of all ages and enterprises need mentorship and support as well, and at every stage of enterprise development from idea-stage to Fortune 500.
Similar to mentorship and adolescent development, we think there’s a strong direct correlation between the amount of time experienced entrepreneurs and professionals volunteer with founders, teams, and enterprises, and the success of those startups, growing enterprises, innovation ecosystems, and our whole economies.
Lucky for us and this whole process, the best mentors know that the benefits for mentoring startups goes both ways. Of course the startups benefit from getting nuggets of wisdom, positive guidance, helpful introductions, and much more from the best mentors.
Mentors also benefit a great deal. Mentors in our various programs have told us how they’ve:
- Learned and refined their own startup and enterprise methods
- Learned about new trends and technologies
- Found out about critical and emerging trends in their own sectors
- Enjoyed meeting and getting inspired by great emerging entrepreneurs
- And of course, enjoyed the intrinsic benefit of giving back to others, and “paying it forward”
Mentoring can also be quite challenging.
While it sometimes feels easy to provide support to entrepreneurs who are young or less experienced than you, it’s also easy to make mistakes, lead them astray, and possibly even cause more harm than good. Some mentor mistakes include:
- Discouraging aspiring entrepreneurs, sometimes because they’re working on something that the mentor has limited experience in.
- Giving the answers, rather than guiding the entrepreneurs in their exploration.
- Giving the wrong answers, rather than admitting that you don’t know or aren’t sure of something.
- Thinking that because they have great experience in one area, that they can provide advice to startups in other areas that they are less proficient in.
- Doing the work for the entrepreneurs, instead of helping them learn how to do something better themselves.
- And more.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to make mistakes while mentoring, but it’s also not so difficult being a great mentor.
If you’re interested in being a great mentor, please check out our post on “Tips and Tricks to Being a World-Class Mentor”.
If you feel like you’re ready for the Mentorship Opportunity, please apply today!
While we appreciate everybody’s positive energy and support, people have to meet a set of guidelines before they can become Pitchworthy Mentors. They need to have:
- At least 5 years of direct work experience (even more is better, and teaching/training in it doesn’t count) in whatever field they’re mentoring in, preferably with at least some level of startup experience in that field.
- Demonstration of proficiency in the field (a portfolio is preferred, though isn’t always possible; otherwise, a clear CV is also helpful).
- Completion of our Mentor Questionnaire.
- Once accepted, mentors-to-be have to complete a 30-minute Mentor Onboarding.
- Once onboarded, Mentors join as Junior Mentors for their first 3 Startup-Mentor sessions, where a member of the Pitchworthy team or a Senior Mentor will also be part of the Startup-Mentor meeting, to give feedback on the process and interaction.
If you don’t meet those guidelines, and you still want to help out … then great! We have a “Peer Mentor” category as well, for people who want to be helpful, while they themselves are developing their own skills.
Thanks again for your interest, and we look forward to working together with you to build stronger entrepreneurs, innovation communities, ecosystems, and economies!
As always, please let us know if you have any questions.