What makes startups successful?

What makes startups successful?

What is it that makes startups successful? The secret formula or the one thing that turns failure into success?

Let me save you the suspense: I don’t know the answer. It doesn’t seem like anyone else has the answer, either. It’s very probable the answer doesn’t exist. Maybe you should stop wasting your time looking for this buried treasure: no one can give you the treasure map.

Too many startups are looking for the secret that will make their startup successful. One very common (and also seems to be very satisfying) way for a startup is to meet with mentors; there is a short-term feeling of achievement when you do it, and a good mentor always makes you feel as though you found a clue to that hidden treasure: a 30 minute discussion with a mentor will uncover how to make your startup successful. 5 good meetings with mentors will multiply your chances exponentially, right? How about 10? 50?

Wrong. Since the secret doesn’t exist, a short meeting won’t reveal it to you; at best, the feeling of achievement will gradually decrease over the next few days. At worst, you will be chasing this false treasure until you meet the next mentor, which will take you in a different direction, yet again trying to find a secret that doesn’t exist. Mentor meetings are too often like eating empty calories. You feel full and happy for a while, but then get hungry again, while not contributing much to your body’s health.

That’s not to say mentors are never helpful: the reverse it true. Every successful person will tell you about their experience with mentors who helped this success. But you need to know how to use mentors; especially in Korea, there’s a tendency to use mentors as teachers: as if they can tell you how to solve mathematic equations or teach you about shila-dynasty history.

But the fact is, good business mentors are not teachers equipped with facts: we already established nobody knows the secret road to success. Mentors should be used more like advisors, used to solve very specific problems; mentors can help you find shortcuts based on their experience; mentors can do work that would have taken you much longer to accomplish on your own. But mentors cannot point the guaranteed way for success.

How to know that you’re getting a benefit from a mentor? The first thing is to define your expectations; what are you hoping to gain by meeting with them? Every action you take while you’re running your startup should be measured in terms of expected results, or ROI – a meeting with a mentor is not different. Now that you have clearly defined your expected results from the meeting, see if you wrote something like “receive motivation”, “understand the right direction” or “spread the word about my startup to influential people”. These are not good goals for a meeting with a mentor and are so unclear they can’t be measured anyway.

However, if your goals are to be introduced to certain people or get answers to specific problems you are facing, make sure you clearly define it during the meeting with the mentor. Ask for what you want in an unambiguous way and see what the response is: sometimes the answer will be negative; you need to understand why that is. Perhaps the mentor cannot help you with what you’re asking: that’s ok, at least you saved your time (and the mentor’s). Other times the mentor does not want to help you (this will often be conveyed in a soft and indirect way as to not hurt your feeling): try to think why that is; are you giving the mentor a good enough reason to spend their time and energy (and reputation) on your startup?

Perhaps you haven’t done a good job convincing them? Finally, some mentors will be willing to help you, but will think that you are asking for the wrong thing. I often have startups asking me to introduce investors and partners to them at a stage when they are clearly not ready for it. This is where listening to the mentor is vital: you need to decide if the mentor is making a good case (which may mean you need to change direction ASAP) or if you disagree with the mentor and decide to stay the course; thank the mentor and move on: you now have a chance to prove the mentor was wrong about you – if I am that mentor, showing me that I was wrong about my prediction for a startup will make me an avid supporter of this startup founder. Prove me wrong and you’ll see me fighting in your corner as hard as I can.