STARTUP: Feeling Lost While Building Your Start-up? Consider Taking A Mentor’s Help
There is a popular saying: A ship without a rudder drifts at the mercy of the winds. Young entrepreneurs often find themselves going adrift while on the journey to create a successful start-up. A mentor can act as a rudder for them to give a proper direction to their efforts
It is no secret that building a company from scratch is an uphill task. Budding entrepreneurs spend sleepless nights filled with anxiety and experience adrenaline rush when they have ideas that can take them nearer to their goals. But if there is a shortfall of insights, their vision can easily muddle up, which may not only sidetrack them from their goal but also risk utter failure.
The initial years of a start-up are extremely crucial. It is more so in the electronics industry, where competition is immense, but opportunities are equally high. In such an industry, start-ups often find themselves adrift without any guidance like a child lost in the supermarket. This is when a mentor could help.
But what exactly does a mentor do? Why do you need a mentor and, most importantly, how do you identify a mentor who could be good for you? If these are some of the questions coming up in your mind, we have got you covered.
Why mentorship
A mentor is someone who guides an individual, also known as the mentee, with insights that help the mentee cruise through difficult choices and develop skills necessary for his/ her professional as well as personal growth.
“The best mentors teach their mentees insights that are drawn from their own experiences and provide once-in-a-lifetime education, which is beyond any formal academic education system that we may have,” explains N. Kishor Narang, Founder, Narnix Technolabs.
A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, expanding one’s network, and
identifying other sources. But how is it different from coaching?
Coaching takes a more performance based approach to improve one’s on-the-job performance. Mentorship is more development driven. It looks not only at the current job, but beyond that, taking a more holistic approach towards career development and as a person.
“It is important to remember that we are individuals before we are professionals. Our performance in our professional life is a reflection of our personal traits and shows the kind of person that we have evolved into in the last couple of decades,” says Narang.
“Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in an order that may maximise their potential to become the person that they want to be,” he adds.
Narang believes a good mentormentee relationship can help transform lives. Every business, whether big or small, has a responsibility to the society it is functioning in, and a good mentor helps his mentee understand the need of advocating for the wellbeing of the society.
“The power of mentoring is transformative for individuals and communities. Mentoring is a powerful tool of awareness and understanding diversity and inclusivity, helping us recognise the importance of advocacy and being advocates for ourselves and others. Advocates can proactively localise and mobilise for change-induced role modelling in a certain yet very profound way.”
A good mentor
A good mentor will focus on character rather than competence, says Narang. It is important to build the character of the individuals so that they are capable of tackling any difficulty, whether professional or personal, rather than developing competency in only one particular domain that they function in.
Another key characteristic of a good mentor is that he/she helps the mentees achieve their dreams, says Narang. He says, “A good mentor avoids overriding the dreams of the mentees. The mentor’s job is not to give them new dreams; the mentor’s job is to help the young mentees realise their dreams.”
As entrepreneurs, especially budding ones, you are constantly reminded of the things you cannot achieve, of the dreams that are too good to be true, of goals that are too big to be achieved. A mentor’s role is to help you realise those very goals, instead of downplaying it like everyone else.
The mentor observes the deficiency that a mentee has and helps understand how to overcome this deficiency, and how to build strength as a person and professional.
Now, you may be wondering what is in it for the mentor? In a world where you get nothing for free, what exactly drives the mentor to work so diligently towards improving someone else’s life?
Narang elaborates on this, ”When I started electronics design as my profession, I did not find anybody to mentor me and help me in the struggle. But when I started mentoring people, my personal credibility in the past 15-20 years has grown a lot. Because when they go out in the field and do something exceptional and say that they are from Narnix, that automatically adds another feather in my cap and helps build my credentials without my knowledge... is that not a good enough payback?”
Mentors for electronics start-ups
To scale up an organisation, you need to have a holistic understanding of the business that you are getting into, the domain in which the product functions, and of course the basic product too.
If your goal is to create a start-up based on the most lucrative business opportunity, scale up quickly within 3-4 years and then swiftly exit the scene with lots of money in your bank, your start-up is destined to fail.
“If you set up a company with a clear mind to exit, it will never ever reach a level where you can exit. You may exit, but after failure and not by monetising it. You need to set up a company with a strong foundation that you can nurture today and also in the future. If you build a company with that thought process and get the right kind of mentorship, there is a strong possibility that you will get the support you need from the ecosystem,” notes Narang.
The core of an electronics start-up is the technology it works with and, as with anything technical, it invariably demands certain indispensable skills from the people working on it. A talented and skilled team will work diligently towards building a good product that is in the market to last.
But humans are not perfect and, as such, expecting a person to possess all the skills necessary to grow a start-up is very far-fetched. However, with good mentorship, it is possible to nurture a few, if not all, essential qualities that are a requisite for a successful company.
“The mentor will make sure that your team becomes a self-sufficient,