This is something I would love to tell to a younger Stefano. I recently (finally) met a great mentor who reminded me how important it is to surround yourself with the right people while building your company.
While you build your company you should ignore 3 types of advisors/mentors:
- Corporate guys: they are top manager in a BigCo, never been entrepreneurs and never will be. Almost always useless for entrepreneurs as mentors/advisors unless they want to buy your product or invest in your seed round but even then it should be it, don’t give them control/board seats etc. They don’t understand what you deal with but they will pretend to and give you more issues than benefits.
- “The wannabe“: I met many in my journey. This is a tough one. They might present themselves as entrepreneurs but once you dive deep they will likely be involved in 34 different things at the same time, they are advisors, mentors, CEOs and talk like they have seen it all. They are always looking at a conference to attend and ideally speak at. They are building their brand and trying everything to see what works but they are usually clueless. The first rule for an entrepreneur is to focus on one and one only thing. They will waste your time and sometimes do also damages, mostly due to their inexperience, like saying things they shouldn’t about you to other people or give you (really) bad advices on how to manage your company.
- People that are doing it for the money: the best advisors and entrepreneurs help other people because they enjoy it and love it. It’s a great way for them to give back and something that they naturally feel the need to do. Yes, they absolutely need to be compensated (don’t commit a mistake here, always pay them, mix of cash/stocks with clear expectations) but they are genuinely involved because they like you, believe in you and have really something to say. They probably don’t need your money but paying them (stocks, with vesting, is the best thing), even something small, makes a difference in your relationship. The best people in this category do something amazing for entrepreneurs: they will be there for you when you need them but they are humble enough to step back when they don’t know/understand something and they will be transparent about it.
Why a mentor is so important is something for another post 🙂