Article · 8 min read

Founder advice for Techstars Mentor Madness

Landon Howell · landonhowell.com Free Intermediate

Written by a Techstars Mentor in Residence who has sat across from 350+ startups, so it is the advice from the other side of the table. Its sharpest rule maps straight onto our answer: never open a mentor meeting asking for money, open with your specific 3-month priority (a customer-acquisition metric or a product milestone) and pull the mentor toward that one number.

  • Lead every session with your concrete 3-month metric, not a funding ask, so mentors help you move the number instead of pitching you their network.
  • Actively recruit the 3 to 5 mentors you click with and tell your program lead immediately, because lead-mentor slots are limited and go fast.
  • If 38 of 40 mentors do not understand your vision, the problem is your storytelling, not their judgement; treat the meetings as pitch stress-testing.
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The question it answers

  1. What actually happens during an accelerator, week by week, and how do I not waste it?

Read with it

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  2. The failure mode our answer warns about has a name: mentor whiplash, where smart people give you opposite advice until you no... jag.eu Article · 6 min read Mentor whiplash, and working through it Jag Singh
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