The importance of having a Mentor!

A mentor can prove to be a very useful resource for a startup. A mentor can loosely be defined as a person who advises and hand-holds a startup team. Typically mentors are people who have successfully started up themselves in the past or may also be someone having expertise in particular domains like marketing, technology etc. Hence mentors can help startups in a variety of ways such as:


- making and refining the business plan and revenue plan

- assisting in hiring the right guys

- forming a mission, vision and culture

- advising in particular focus areas like technology, marketing etc.


Let's take an example of a new born baby. The parents are the ones who take care of the baby. They look after the baby's comfort, growth and all other aspects. They face challenges as it's new for them. They try to overcome them and also tend to make mistakes along the way. To mitigate these mistakes, you have the grand parents. The role of the grand parents is to share their experience and expertise so as to lower the chances of mistakes. They share the best practices which they have read about and experienced earlier.

The same analogy can be applied to a startup. The role of the mentors is to share best practices and expertise to ensure that the founding team can grow their startup in a more efficient manner. Founding teams bring in the idea, the energy, the time and the persistence. Mentors add the expertise and experience. So for a better more complete startup team, mentors are a must have.

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