The art and science of picking the best mentor for your startup: a case study

Image credit: Tech in Asia’s Andre Gunawan.

Mentor is a word that gets thrown about a lot in the startup world. A lot of people use it very loosely – some claiming that so-and-so big name is their mentor, some assuming mentorship themselves when they aren’t really leaving anyone any wiser.

A mentor, in the real sense of the word, is an individual committed to helping others become fuller versions of who they are. But finding them involves a lot of hard work. This article will take you through how a young startup with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product went about finding the right mentor for it.

Abstract:

Noticeboard – founded by three highly trained engineers with top management degrees – built a work communication tool for large teams on the ground, like construction workers and service staff. In January 2017, the first iteration of the product was out, and it bagged a client within a month. Soon, the startup raised US$1.2 million in venture capital funding.

Noticeboard went on to rope in more enterprises in the logistics, retail, and hospitality sectors in India as clients, but faced challenges like most young companies. Should they continue to focus on India as the market for their software or should they go after the more lucrative US market? There are several strong competitors out there – Crew, Red e App, Beekeeper, Connecteam, Staffbase, Microsoft’s Teams, and even Slack. Noticeboard’s founders could do with some expert help to march on or even surge ahead.

See: 2 billion non-desk workers are strangers to email. These founders built a Slack for them.

The learning objective of this case study is to give a frame of reference other young startups can use to find the right mentors.

The premise

Noticeboard’s founders Vishal Gahlaut, Vishesh Dahinwal, and Sarath Chandran used to work with Myntra, India’s leading fashion ecommerce company. Flipkart acquired Myntra in 2014 and has been running it as an independent product under the Flipkart umbrella.

At Myntra, Gahlaut, Dahinwal, and Chandran found that the customer’s happiness rested heavily on how well trained its frontline staff were. To ensure that, the top management of the company had to communicate clearly and constantly with the ground fleet of about 5,000 workers. They were mostly people whose first brush with technology was through their smartphones. They needed a communication tool much simpler than Slack but efficient enough. That’s how Noticeboard was born.

Noticeboard co-founders [from left to right] Vishal Gahlaut, Sarath Chandran, and Vishesh Dahinwal. Photo credit: Noticeboard.

The stint at Myntra had exposed Gahlaut, Dahinwal, and Chandran to the challenges of scaling up a company as well as how some of the brightest minds in the Indian startup space tackled those. So when the trio decided to start Noticeboard, they had a circle of experts to discuss the idea with, including the founder of Myntra, Mukesh Bansal, and its chief technology and product officer, Shamik Sharma.

Noticeboard tasted early success, bagging several enterprises in India, including Myntra, as customers. Around six months ago, the founders decided to find mentors who would help them in the next phase of their startup’s growth.

Steps that led to the right mentor

Finding the man

Aces up the mentor’s sleeve

Things to remember