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What mentors expect of mentees

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After last week’s post on “How to Be a Good Mentor“, I received a mail from the wonderful and talented Andrea Li (she’s part of the AWS Startup BD team) asking how to be a good mentee.  She asked:

  • Do you have any tips on what good mentors look for in mentees?
  • How does a mentee make it easier for a time-strapped mentor?
  • Mechanisms? Ways of communicating? Topics? Agenda?

You can tell Andrea’s a star, in that she even thought to ask this question.  To show respect for the mentor’s time investment, she immediately thought about more than just her own goals.  That consideration, and her ensuing preparation, will go a long way toward creating a mutually rewarding mentor/mentee relationship.  And the recommendations below apply very similarly to boss/employee interactions as well, so consider them as a way to improve your one-on-ones/relationship with your boss.

How to Be a Good Mentee

  • Communicate an Agenda/Topic – it helps if you have a specific topic you’d like to discuss.  For instance, maybe you’d like help developing a Career Development Plan.  Or, maybe you have questions about how to improve your interviewing skills.  If you can explain the meeting goals in advance, and send any documents you’d like the mentor to review (time permitting), that will show a respect for their time.  And if they don’t feel qualified on the topic, the mentor can politely decline and save you both some time.  I much prefer specific topic-driven meetings vs. open-ended coffees.
  • Drive the Scheduling & Stick to the Time Request – if you ask for 30 minutes, make sure you show up early and be ready to go.  And end on time.  You don’t want to be the reason their day got derailed.  And, of course, make the meeting location convenient for them (near their home, office, etc).
  • Don’t Request Too Much – Build the relationship slowly.  Make it easy for them to opt for either a fixed (i.e. monthly) schedule, or one that is more intermittent, driven by when you have specific topics you’d like to discuss.  Don’t make bigger asks until you’ve developed trust.
  • Don’t Assume the Mentors are Right – my friend @Micah suggested this one, and it’s really important to remember.  While the mentor may have a little more/different experience, it’s entirely possible that their advice is wrong.  So, take all of the advice with a grain of salt, and figure out what works for you.  This is a little easier when you have many people giving you varied opinions.
  • Follow Up on the Meeting – If you asked for their assistance with your career development plan, let them know how it went over with your boss.  Call out some specific suggestions that really made a difference.  The mentor will be happy that their time investment is paying off for you in positive ways.  Of course, remember to thank them for their time.
  • Find a Way to Help Them – you may feel like there’s little you could do to help your mentor, but if you think creatively, there’s probably a way.  Maybe they have questions about some new websites that the youngsters are flocking to.  Or, possibly they’d like some unbiased feedback about a new product their proposing.  Of course, you can always thank them publicly with a LinkedIn Recommendation, calling them out as a helpful mentor (that reflects well on them from a career perspective).
  • Pay It Forward – this mentoring thing only works if you continue the tradition.  I often tell startup founders that the best way they can help me is to help the next batch of founders.  Not only does it take those coffee meetings off my plate 🙂 but it makes the overall network stronger.  And, soon enough, they’ll recognize the questions coming their way as identical to their current challenges. Then, they can pass on that hard-earned wisdom!

As ever, what did I miss?

How do engineers know if they’re being screwed on compensation and equity?

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Compensation - Get paid what you are worthI recently met with an engineer who’s taken on CTO responsibilities for a very early-stage startup. Because the startup has been around for a while and initially tried to build the v1 product with an outsourced dev shop, she’s not a ‘founder’ and thus doesn’t have significant compensation (neither salary or equity). She had a number of questions, but one that I’ve heard repeatedly went something like this — “How do I know if I’m being screwed by the founder in terms of compensation and equity?”

There’s no perfect answer to this.  Obviously you’d want to check with your peers, but people often aren’t comfortable disclosing their own income for fear of finding out they’re out of whack, in either direction.  And their salary and equity can be significantly different than yours for valid reasons (i.e. if they founded the company, they may be taking little to no cash compensation since they own 50% or more of the company).  And you’d definitely start by checking industry comps at sites like GlassDoor, Payscale and new LA-based startup Comparably.

That information will help get you in the ballpark, but honestly, as is usual, the answer is “it depends”. There are many reasons that you may be justifiably underpaid.  Just because your CEO may seem to be underpaying you doesn’t make them evil; they’re balancing the needs of many shareholders, and trying to anticipate unknown risks.  My goal is to pay people (and issue equity) at levels that keep them both happy and motivated.  Ultimately, you need to decide if you feel like the pay/equity/experience/risk/reward tradeoff works for you, and you need to build your network to give you options.

These are a few of the payroll/equity factors that make it an ‘it depends’ situation:

  • The startup is not well funded.  If they still haven’t raised much/any money, they may not be able to compensate you at market rates.  In that situation, you could work with the founder to make sure that cash shortfall is offset with either deferred salary (payable after funds are raised) or extra equity to compensate for the imbalance.
  • You may be inexperienced.  If you’re in a situation where you’re drinking from a firehose and being given a chance to grow in many dimensions, part of your total compensation could be the value of that added experience and the opportunity to rapidly advance in a fast-growing company.  There are many stories about early employees at places like Uber where they came on board, took on myriad responsibilities, and are now senior managers (and future billionaires).  And I saw this firsthand during my early product management years at Amazon when I was given immediate opportunities to lead products/projects that future product managers would have to pursue for many years before given the same opportunities.
  • If you’re fairly paid, but under-equity’d, it may just be a timing issue.  Extremely early employees deserve more equity because they took a lot more risk.  Whereas if you’re coming in a year later (after a Series A fundraise has occurred), there’s a lot less risk and thus you likely aren’t going to get the same equity as employees who are doing similar jobs.  It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
  • Your geographic situation matters.  This should be obvious, but employees in San Francisco, New York and London get paid a lot more than those in Portland, Pittsburgh and Berlin.  So, try to compare apples to apples.

How can you improve your compensation situation?

  • Do your research and have the honest/open discussions with your boss.  Then, either get comfortable with your situation as quickly as possible, or move on (assuming you have other opportunities).  Obviously, you need to be able to walk away.  Don’t stay in a bad work marriage.  It’s unlikely to fix itself with time.
  • If you’re evaluating a position similar to the one the CTO got herself into, sign on as a contractor for 3 to 6 months.  That gives you time to demonstrate your ‘founder-ness’ to the CEO before you talk specifics on equity.  This way the CEO will know what they’re giving up if you leave because they aren’t willing to pony up for founder-level equity.  Of course, it also gives you a lower-investment opportunity to evaluate the CEO and company as well.
  • This particular person was also a recent London transplant, so her network wasn’t very established.  I recommended that she connect with a few of the active and respected local seed-stage VCs (LocalGlobe, Notion Capital) and accelerators (Seedcamp, Techstars, Entrepreneur First).  They ALWAYS have teams that are in need of technical leadership.  But don’t go looking for a job.  Rather, volunteer to assist their teams with technical issues/questions and get to know a host of companies.  Then, when the light bulb goes off for the startup/investor and they want to make you a CTO/founder offer, they’ll be much more willing to pony up market-rate equity and salary.  That’s both because they have the funding to do it, and also because they already KNOW you’re a good fit.  Plus, you may land yourself with a higher-likely-success situation because they’re backed by savvy investors with strong support structures.

What obvious scenarios or complicating factors did I miss?

How hundreds of coffee meetings have paid off for TeachStreet

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Even though I keep my list of blog subscriptions pretty small, I’ve been weeks behind in my blog reading. Partially, that’s because I feel like I see most of them in Summify (yes, I LOVE Summify!) and my tweet stream, but I sometimes miss the really good posts.

In that vein, I just read Mark Suster’s post about the Importance of Doing 50 Coffee Meetings, as a way of expanding your network.  After reading it, while walking the dog, I thought about how many of the successes in my last 4+ years with TeachStreet have been the result of non-agenda coffee meetings and the like.  Many people look at these types of meetings as “the wasted-time-stuff-that-biz-people-do”, and I admit that I sometimes feel that way about them too.  But, another way of looking at them is as the types of things that ‘create luck’ for those who are willing to put in the effort.  They’re not activities with fairly-certain-outcomes, like writing code (where there’s a definite output) or testing a paid-search-campaign, and that’s what makes them so exhausting, at times.

If it helps, I thought I’d share some of the outputs of those types of random meetings — I bet that none of these wouldn’t have happened without the hundreds of meetings:

  • Our first $100k angel investor came from a friend’s intro; the investor met me one time, and called me a few days later with the news of his investment. Upon hanging up the phone, I actually screamed out loud.
  • Almost all of my angel investors were originally soft-pitched over coffee, as were many non-investors; more often than not, the non-investors helped with other introductions, ideas or questions
  • I originally met Daryn (our CTO, and the person I consider my TeachStreet partner) via a random networking meeting, where I met he and David Geller, as they were working on EyeJot. And, I’d bet that more than 75% of our employees were introduced, or met, over coffee and/or network introductions.
  • I met Joe Heitzeberg, over coffee at Macrina, to discuss a role he had open at Snapvine; by the time of the meeting, I had already decided on TeachStreet, but it’s a relationship that’s grown since 2007.  Oh, and he introduced me to our accountant, who’s just awesome.
  • The idea for TeachStreet crystallized over a coffee discussion with Jason Kilar, while we were discussing a pre-Hulu startup-idea that he was starting to accelerate toward
  • While not a coffee meeting, we ended up licensing our software to a company in Australia; they found us because of a video presentation I gave at a Seattle Tech Startups event — they caught the piece of the video where I said that “we’d be open to licensing our software”, and reached out (note — I also fielded ~30 of these international outreaches from others, that all went nowhere…)
  • I met Dave McClure years before any startup notions — he was on the Board of Unitus (a microfinance organization, where I was the guy responsible for marketing); as fast as he could spew ideas, I was sitting on the fringes of the meetings implementing/testing them.  That relationship took off quickly 🙂  Dave turned into a great friend, one of my earliest investors, and biggest advocates (and out of that grew uncountable press/blogger introductions for me, and referrals of Seattle-initiated-startups, by me, to 500Startups)
  • Out of a coffee-request overload, we created Hops and Chops, as a way to consolidate many of these conversations, and enable even greater early-entrepreneur interactions.  Entire startups have been assembled there, and numerous friendships have deepened.
  • We recently got one of our first exclusive-lead bus-dev deals done, in days (after multiple attempts with the company), after a coffee meeting where I helped them with some candidate sourcing
  • Finally, one of my very first startup inspirations/enablers was Andy Sacks’ Open Coffee, that he’s been running, at Louisa’s on Eastlake for 4-5 years, without fail.  And, as I look back, that’s where I met Tony Wright for the first time!
This is just a sample.  As I sit here thinking about this, I feel like I could keep rattling off examples for hours. You just can’t know where these meetings will lead you.  It’s important that you try to be selective (because the meetings will multiply, as people find you helpful/accessible), and do your best to limit them (maybe one per day?), but you absolutely need to put in the time.
Quite simply, TeachStreet wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t.

Paying It Forward

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to Pay It Forward.  What’s funny, though, is that I’ve never seen the movie itself, so I went and added it to my Netflix queue — I expect that it’ll be a sappy two hours, but sometimes that’s just what I need.  But I digress…

Anyway, for the last several years, I’ve been trying to spend a little bit of time each week helping younger (or less experienced) entrepreneurs avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, or at least be aware of the avalanche heading their way, as they start their own business.  Last week, I gave a talk at Seattle’s TechStars For a Day that became pretty emotional for me — the topic was “What a Business Person Does in a Startup“, but it turned into a bit of a heartfelt talk about why it’s so fantastic working in a startup, or in your own business. Yes, tears were involved.  I’m not sure why, really — yes, the emotions got cranked up, but it could also have been impacted by several days of non-stop cross-country travel!

In the end, it’s about giving it your all to create something new and wonderful.  And surrounding yourself with a great team, and participating in their growth as well.  And making mistakes.  And, hopefully, being able to participate in the success of the next wave of explorers.  I’ve found it very meaningful and enjoyable to give back, where I can, and I can’t wait to have more time, someday, to do even more.

For now, I’m just trying to encourage experienced entrepreneurs to take a little bit of time each week to try to help somebody out — it could be a quick conversation over coffee, an on-campus speech, or just attending an extra event every few weeks, to make yourself available to someone who has an eager question. And, reminding those I’m helping now (when they say thank you, and make me feel so great), that in a few months, or years, that I expect them to do the same.

Of course, I’m just Paying It Forward from folks who helped me along the way when my ideas were in nascent stages (and took my coffee, lunch and other brain-picking requests); folks like Andy Sack, Bill Bryant, David Geller, Daryn Nakhuda, Todd Sawicki, Dave McClure, and many, many more (not to mention all the crazy angels who ponied up cash… those people are the TRUE psychos of the Pay It Forward Universe 🙂 )

Paying it Forward — it really does feel good to help your friends and community.

Want Entrepreneur Advice over coffee? That’ll be $1,000

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I’ve been wrestling with this one for a while, and I think many entrepreneurs have as well. See, as soon as you start a company, raise some money, and launch your business, suddenly people want to ‘buy you coffee/lunch’ to ‘pick your brain’ and ‘get networking introductions’.

I can appreciate that. I did it too. But, when you’re accommodating (as I, Andy Sack, Marcelo Calbucci, Joe Heitzeberg, and many others try to be), you tend to get overwhelmed with the requests. And, then, my days disappear on me, I end up working nights to catch up, and sit here on the weekend with 5-10 favors in my inbox which take 1-2+ hours to complete (I met with a woman last week, who I really liked… I told her I’d be happy to make some intros… she wrote back with 9 companies in the list… acck!)

So, here’s my offer:

  1. I’ll meet with you for free, at Hops and Chops (I helped organize it for exactly this purpose… sort of a lightweight office hours… I think Andy Sack created Seattle Open Coffee for the same reason) or another Seattle startup event that I happen to attend. I’ll be happy to talk with you, give you advice, and make any in-person intros, assuming the other folks are there in person. But, that’s it. Don’t ask for more, because it comes at the expense of my family, loved ones, and personal sanity.
  2. You pay me $1,000 for up to 3 hours of my time talking with you about entrepreneurship. That will likely be spread over two 1-hour meetings, and another hour of my time making introductions, if I think they’re warranted. If I don’t, I’ll be honest with you, and we’ll spend that last hour working on your plans, or whatever. Then, when you’ve started your company and booked your first $1,000 in revenues, I’ll give you $700 back. That’s it. I want you to get off your ass and build whatever it is your dreaming up. But, if you don’t, I keep your money, because you took up 3 hours that I could have been spending on other tasks. Sound fair? Do I think my advice is worth $100-333/hour? No! But, you seem to think I’ll help you somehow, and I likely will — and, if you don’t want to pay, there are tons of other folks around who will surely help you.

I look forward to any feedback about this setup. I’m sure it will upset some, but I’m not sure why — I’m still out there, and incredibly available. But, there’s now a market rate on my “premium services”, and it comes with a 70% refund, assuming you deliver the goods!