🔗 How to Get a Startup Mentor...

5 effective strategies for finding a mentor to enhance your career or startup journey: Leverage your current workplace, utilize your network, attend industry events, explore online mentorship platforms, and adopt a distance-mentor approach to gain valuable insights and guidance.

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OK, so you want to build not only the next best thing but also a company that’s really worth something. And that’s where a great mentor would really make a difference – someone who knows the ropes and can just help nudge things in the right direction.

Just one problem: It’s a bit weird walking up to total strangers like…

Thing is, we really need mentors. In one survey, 75% of company executives said that mentorship was critical to their career development. One CNBC survey even found that 9 out of 10 mentees (people with a mentor) were happier in their work.

So it’s no surprise that we want mentors. In September, Adobe released survey results showing that 83% of Gen Z really want a mentor, yet only 52% say they have one. So, how do you actually find a mentor?

5 Ideas to get you going

1. Ask inside a company

If you’re still employed, or connected to a company in some way, look there first. Companies know they should have mentorship programmes (the most successful ones do), so, even if a company doesn’t have an official one, chances are that any slightly more senior person will relish the chance to “give something back”.

2. Fire up your network

You can try and make it less cringy by just reaching out to people and saying: “Hey, I’m building this new thing, know anyone in the space that could give me some pointers?”, as a start.

You could even do a bit of research first, see if there are any specific people you’d like to learn from, and then see if anyone knows them. LinkedIn is great for this because it shows you how many connections you’re away from a person, so you can ask for an intro.

3. Attend some startup events

Not all events are great learning experiences, but if you’re just there for the networking, you can actually make some valuable connections.

4. Online services

Although it’s a bit dubious because you’re actually paying for people’s time, some places like internationals GrowthMentor and Techstars promise to connect you with real pros. South African options include Startup Mentors and Start Wise.

Note: We don’t have any experience with any of these paid-for mentorship programmes, so we can’t tell you if they’re any good or not.

5. The distance-mentor method

We have to mention this option because it’s how most of us at The Open Letter like to operate – don’t even ask, just learn from whoever you want. Seriously. With the net there’s so much info about people online, you can literally appoint Elon Musk as your mentor without him even knowing it – just follow him on every channel, read everything about him and you’ll eventually develop a feel for how he thinks and operates.

So many founders publish playbooks and host podcasts and have their own blogs etc. You can easily distance-mentor yourself just by making them your focus of study.