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Steve Case: Well, one of the key things with the Startup
America Partnership was to try to get resources for the next
generation of entrepreneurs, whether it's folks just starting
companies or folks that are building companies kind of
more in the speed-up phase than the start-up phase,
and part of those resources is around mentorship,
how you really provide the expertise that you need to
kind of take the company to the next level.
So what we've tried to do is get companies and organizations that
have been doing this for a while,
have a lot of experience in mentoring companies,
as well as getting the entrepreneurs who've already
had success to help the next generation of entrepreneurs,
and that's really one of the core things the partnership's
focused on.
Karen Mills: Every company needs advice, counseling,
and mentorship.
And we have data that says when you have a long-term counselor,
you have better sales, you have better profits,
and you hire more people.
High-growth businesses need a special kind of mentors.
They need people who have had those same speed bumps in the
road and know how to navigate forward.
So we have in Startup America made a partnership that will
drive more mentors to be matched up with these
great entrepreneurs.
We're calling on successful entrepreneurs to mentor that
next generation because we know that will mean more successful,
growing companies.
Scott Case: There's two sides to it.
One is as a mentor, our role is to help entrepreneurs get to the
answer, not to give them the answer.
It's helping them understand and reflect on the problem,
and say ultimately they're the ones who have to make these
choices because they're the ones that are building the business.
So it's important for mentors to play the role,
it's also important for entrepreneurs to know,
this is your call, you know, you've got to set it,
you're going to get lots of advice and input and counsel,
you're going to have to process it and figure out how to advance
your business with it.
So what we're doing at the partnership is partnering
with a wide range of different types of mentoring organizations,
with a focus on a lot of accelerated programs from around
the country, companies like TechStars, for example,
or Y Combinator, who provide really intense amounts of
mentoring with really high-qualified mentors that help
entrepreneurs get to the answer and help the entrepreneurs
understand how to tap that.
Nina Vaca-Humrichouse: I think mentors are designed to guide you and to challenge you,
not to tell you what to do.
Because the truth of the matter is,
as the CEO the decisions that you make have great impact,
and it has to be your decision in order for you to feel good
about that decision.
And so in the mentor-mentee relationship it's important
to understand the role that the mentor has,
which is a role of an advisor, a counselor,
someone that challenges you, someone that pushes you,
someone that motivates you, or someone that inspires you.
I find a lot of my mentors have been people that I respect,
people that I admire, and people that, you know,
want to see me succeed.
Reid Hoffman: Well, I think there's several key reasons to
be a mentor.
I think one is kind of giving back to your society,
being a leader.
Like how do you think of yourself as -- do you think
of yourself as a leader?
Do you think of yourself as someone who's improving
the world?
In which case enabling other people to achieve greatness is
one of the really good ways of doing that.
I think the second thing is that you learn through mentoring.
So like actually in fact when you're --
like for example one of the things that I had never expected
personally, the first time that I actually joined a board that
wasn't my own, which was the PayPal board,
I was actually like, oh.
I'm now thinking about this board meeting in an entirely
different way, because formerly I'd been think of it as the
founder talking to my investors, and now I'm thinking about it as
an independent board member.
And those two perspectives made me think in all kinds
of interesting ways.
And so by participating, by being a mentor,
by helping solve other people's problems,
you're expanding your own skill set in a way that you can't do
by just running the race yourself in terms of how
you think about doing these.
So I think there's both a goodness for the world and
a goodness for you, and I think they're both very strong reasons
to be a mentor.