Be Positive, Asshole.
It seems every couple of years, I write this post. Right, Startup Yoda?
At last count, in the past 10 years, I have spoken to just under 2,000 founders.
At last count, in the past 10 years, I have spoken to 2 BILLION people that call themselves startup mentors. Or investors. Or something else that makes them feel good.
Assholes every one of them.
The worst mentors believe that their job is to be critical, and define critical feedback as criticism, basically articulating what’s wrong.
Such an asshole move.
The worst mentors look at their ability to break down a founder as a positive. They tear apart all the work done; all the effort expended; all the passion imbued, and then walk away only to struggle to pat themselves on the back.
“I am a DAF (dope as fuck) mentor. That founder is so thankful for all the advice I gave!”
But they aren’t, asshole. Instead the founder is confused and unsure. They looked to you to help them succeed, and instead you just told them they sucked. Hard.
I learned this the hard way. I used to believe that brutal truth, while difficult, was the best way to help.
Inject truth, and the lies will dissipate I told myself.
God, I was such an asshole.
I made founders cry (more than once). Techstars actually asked me to be nicer. But, my pride motored on.
Then years ago, I was speaking at Big Omaha (still an awesome time!) with Gary Vaynerchuk (still just GaryVee), Jason Fried (still just 37signals), and Jeffrey Kalmikoff (still just amazing). We hung out the night before the conference until like 4am talking about everything and nothing.
When the topic of mentoring circled around, Jason said “have you ever tried just being positive for the first 5 minutes?” Gary said, “if you aren’t mentoring from a place of love, you are an asshole.” Jeffrey said, “dude you are a founder, treat them as you would like to be treated.”
As the clouds broke and the sun shined down (or perhaps it was just pur exhaustion after 8 hours of thinking and talking), I realized that they were all correct.
Mentoring isn’t about being right.
Mentoring isn’t about solving problems.
Mentoring isn’t about you, asshole.
Mentoring is atomic. Your job, as a mentor, is to do two things:
Reinforce. Reaffirm. Refocus.
Provide a single piece of data that helps the founder understand larger issues.
That’s it. 1 thing. 1 small thing. Atomic.
I no longer do mentoring sessions that are longer than 25 minutes. 18 minutes listening. 5 minutes of positivity. 2 minutes providing atomic advice.
No demos. Just a conversation.
No promises. Just support.
No expectations. Just value.
No time spent on me. Just you.
The tech community understands two things better than any industry:
Collaboration drives innovation;
We are following someone; and someone is following me.
If we aren’t building, we are helping others build. We get so caught up in the mismatch between perception and reality of value that we push ourselves to provide REAL VALUE, often forgetting that real value is singular, not plural and is based in positivity, not brutality.
So start there. Be positive, asshole, and watch highly talented people change the world in awesome ways.
Or just shut up and go away, Startup Yoda.