Founders are desperate. Not occasionally, not during the rough patches, but pretty much all the time. They're short on cash, short on customers, and short on anyone who will tell them whether the thing they're building is a good idea. So when someone says "I'd love to help," they grab that hand like it's the last lifeboat on the Titanic.

That's the part of mentorship nobody talks about. We spend a lot of energy getting mentors into the room and very little asking who is actually in there. In a mature startup community, a founder who latches onto the wrong mentor has a dozen other voices to balance it out. In a less mature community, that mentor might be the only voice. If the only advice you get is bad advice, you won't know it's bad. You'll just follow it right off the cliff, politely and with a notebook. READ MORE