By Larry Chiang
Getting a mentor is at the heart of succeeding after college. Approaching mentorship is boiled down into a listicle of “7 Street Smart Ways to Get a Mentor”.
A lot of these are going to be massively counterintuitive. But to me, Paul Graham, Serena Williams and Keith Rabois, they’re second nature
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Paul Graham (@paulg) |
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founders lose by making unforced errors.
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I will attack “7 Street Smart Ways to Get a Mentor” by listing out the normal loser way and then the counterintuitive method. Afterwards, I’ll try to reveal the justification for why the street smart way works.
Normal, loser way: “Toss a Hail Mary asking a potential mentor for a coffee.”
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
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*How to close (the “deal”) for a mentor, over a real world coffee* #ch5 twitter.com/highalpha/stat…
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counterintuitive, street smart way: Ask for a telephone conversation. In the phone conversation, have a specific agenda that you email.
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
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Trust. Be Public about how you thank a mentor. #ch5 twitter.com/asse9/status/9… pic.twitter.com/qQdqnu2V3n
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Think about thanking your mentor like it’s a Venmo payment to your cohorts. You’re letting the world know you pay your friends. “Pay” your mentor by thanking your mentor.
-2- Priming the mentor pump by getting a faux mentor.
Yes, fake getting a mentor by thanking a mentor. This charlattan maneuver is socially engineered to become real by going through these steps.
– Read a book.
– Apply the book’s knowledge.
– Thank the mentor.
– Rethank the mentor. Because they did mentor you via their book or their CS183b Lec 5 video that’s free on YouTube.
Your next mentor wants to see that you were a faithful and loyal mentee.
Speaking of Peter Thiel…, here is his cofounder
-3- Be the mentee to a common mentor.
Getting Tom Brady to mentor you about being a QB is going to be hard. Getting #TomHouse to mentor you is going to be hard too.
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
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Top 20. It’s tough to crack. Let’s roll the dice and keep on being #TomHouse mentees
#Ch5 twitter.com/legendarycraig… |
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
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Me & Mark share the same mentor! DJ in Geoffrey Moore, Eric Ries, S Blank & @tjkosnik = “Cross the Chasm, FromTheRight” #ctcFTR
#ch5; #ch6 twitter.com/markgee/status… |
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-4- A great mentee brings deal flow to their mentor.
-5-
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
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Wanna mentor?
1/See a tweet. (Like it 2/Do that tweet 3/Tweet. Yo @jowyang/@Britopian/@bjfogg/#larryCHIANG, I did that thing u tweet’d #ch5 pic.twitter.com/7BR0Ig4Ujt |
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Download the
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xCEO of Duck9, Larry (@6502838008) |
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I can tell in 2-seconds whether someone under 25 is getting coached cc @LarryChiang‘s mentor’s #ch5 [#WTDTYAHBS chapter on mentorship] twitter.com/unofficialatx/…
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
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Counter intuitive = Your mentor will learn from you too (maybe more bc mentors learn fast). See @KDTrey5 in the HBO doc film from 2012. #ch5 pic.twitter.com/80ijGVphSD
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Paul Graham (@paulg) |
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Startups lose by making unforced errors.
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