How Important Is A Mentor For A Startup Founder?
You don’t need a certificate or any particular qualification to launch a startup. All you need is a good idea, and the determination to get it off the ground. Sounds easy, right?
Well, did you know that 60 % of startups in the UK will go-under within three years, and 20% will not even make it past 12 months? (Telegraph, 2019).
A good reason for this may be that startup founders often don’t know a whole lot about running a business to begin with.
Startup founders make excellent candidates for mentoring because their needs are never one-size-fits-all. Often, this early stage of launching a business calls for tailored support.
A startup mentor is invaluable at this point. Here are just a few reasons why every startup founder needs a mentor…
Information Overload
Keeping your startup afloat goes way beyond having a great idea or innovative new product. Almost overnight, you need to develop an understand of marketing, sales, finance, legal, and IT, to name but a few. These are areas that for some startup founders will be completely new territory.
In haste to get things moving, new business owners will often try to absorb excessive amounts of information as quickly as possible. This might be through blogs, books, YouTube, webinars, magazines, or podcasts (the list goes on).
We are living in an age of information, and ironically, that can make it remarkably difficult to find what we actually need. A startup mentor can be a breath of fresh air at this time, providing opportunities for you to have your specific questions answered.
What's more, your questions are being answered by someone who has taken the time to get to know you and your startup. This way, you can cut through the jargon and get straight to the point.
Tunnel Vision
While sometimes the issue can be having too much to concentrate on, a startup founder might also benefit from having a mentor to to pull them out of a narrowed perspective.
Entrepreneurs are often determined, and this is what makes them great business owners. However, this is also what often leads them to become fixated on certain areas of their business, and blind to others.
When launching a startup, you are constantly tied up with a to-do list as long as your arm. This can cause you to go on autopilot and sometimes overlook or completely miss new avenues for business growth.
For a startup founder, having a mentor is like having an extra pair of eyes on the business; someone on your shoulder to tell you when you need to step back and look at the bigger picture.
Networking Is Everything
In the early stages, your business is as malleable as it will ever be. For this reason, contacts are key for a startup founder.
Every new introduction is a doorway to opportunities that could completely change the shape of your business. Having access to quality industry contacts can therefore be make or break.
A startup mentor has likely spent years building up a network of valuable industry contacts that they can pass on to you. The connections that you make through your startup mentor could ultimately revolutionise the direction of your business.
