Meet a Sampling of Our Mentors
These are just a few of the venture mechanics that are available to assist the startups in our Incubator/Accelerator. We have brilliant mentors on tap in just about every industry sector and discipline that a startup could hope for.
Interested in joining our mentor program? Scroll to that section below.
Interested in Joining the Mentor Program?
We are always adding new mentors to the program, and especially welcome those who have previously served at Techstars, AI2, and other incubators in the Seattle area.
There are basically three ways to play...
#1) As described on the Incubator/Accelerator page, the new program begins and ends with a Mentor Conclave, in which the founder team is at the podium and 4-15 mentors are at the desks. Additional mentors with specific industry experience may remote in, as well.
Having all the mentors in the room together results in some amazing dynamics, especially when there might be multiple views on a single subject (SAFE note versus conventional convertible note, e.g.). We found the mentors to be extremely empathetic with the founders in this kind of group setting, which was generally inspiring, a ton of fun, and highly productive.
The sign-up process for founders participating in mentor conclaves is simple. We conduct a deep interview with each new startup to determine where the weak spots are in their business plan. We let them know upfront that the intake threshold is much higher than it would be for a Techstars or YC program. At Venture Mechanics, we're not going for a numbers game; we only want to take in startups that already have enough on the ball that we can assure our mentors their time will be well spent. We're aiming for 100% success, not a low statistical success rate times a unicorn valuation.
From that initial interview with the founder(s) we will define specific mentorship areas for them to focus on, and send out a SignupGenius email soliciting mentor participation in a conclave. In addition to the specialist mentorship roles (e.g. customer discovery, patent, financial modeling) there will always be three seats reserved for general knowledge mentors.
When you receive that sign-up email please choose one of the open slots that you feel you can best fulfill, one of the three general slots, or simply delete the invite if you're too busy. The slots are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. For those of you who are fractional-somethings, participating in a conclave is a terrific way to get to know whether you could work well with the startup as a potential client. Of course we're always trying to pick coachable founders, but the proof is always in the pudding.
#2) We offer a rotating series of Founder Workshops, which repeat quarterly. As new workshops are scheduled we'll be using Sign-up Genius to notify mentors with applicable background to present or co-present at any given workshop.
While these designated workshops are free to incubator members, they are openly marketed to the general public as a ticketed event. These workshops are conducted in the Airbus training classroom (15 max) or in the main Leonardo room (100 max) depending on the number of attendees. They can span from 90 minutes to 4 hrs, at the presenters' discretion. Like the conclaves, signing up to present at a workshop is on a first-come, first-served basis.
#3) Direct mentoring with the startups in the incubator is of course the primary opportunity. Each startup is assigned a Quarterback when they enter the program. This concept is akin to the primary physician that handles a patient at the Mayo Clinic. The quarterback will monitor each of their startups' progress on a regular basis, and advise them to either take specific workshops or reach out to specific mentors to help them move the ball down the field every week. Unlike other incubator/accelerator programs, the selection of mentors is not left entirely up to the founder(s); we provide the guidance to make sure they're getting fully trained up to run their startups successfully, even the "boring stuff" like accounting, legal and HR.
The more we know about your specific mentoring interests, the better we can match you up with startups. There is a project underway to database the mentor profiles and startups and apply AI to do an even more amazing job of matching them up. So that's the reason for the extremely long form ahead...