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The tech world is notorious for its youth. With billion dollar companies led by 24-year-olds, it's hard to know who to seek advice from in a rapidly changing industry. We talked with three CEOs who shared their thoughts on the most effective ways to find a mentor — or mentors — that can help you develop your career and your business:
Clark Benson, CEO Ranker
Ranker is a list making platform headquartered on Miracle Mile in the heart of Los Angeles. Founded in 2008, the company has 35 local employees and has raised over $5 million in funding. Before founding Ranker, Clark spearheaded both a music marketing company and a social networking site.
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What advice would you give to someone trying to find a mentor in the tech world?
It’s hard. Things change so freakin’ fast that a mentor technically could be someone who has 18 months of experience versus 18 years. The problem is that a lot of the hot newer things simply don’t have experienced business people with knowledge to pass on because things that are new tend to be adapted by people who are really young.
In the tech world, where you gain information tends to be more from peers versus experienced older mentor types. There are two ways to spin the idea of a mentor: 1) I’m trying to work my way up in a company and looking for a mentor in the company. 2) I’m trying to build a startup and I just need to learn from other people who know this space.
What was your experience in the early stages of the LA tech scene?
It was different for me because in my early 20’s I worked in the music industry. When I came out of college there wasn’t really internet yet. I did find mentors in the music industry — it was not a difficult place to find mentors. During the first tech boom, I went off and did a startup and the reality was that everything was so new that it didn’t even dawn on me that there was anyone to draft off of.
What have been your experiences as a mentor?
As a mentor, the only people I have time to mentor are employees. And even with them I only have time to mentor five at any given time in any true deep way. I’m a member of many different incubator and accelerator programs in town so I have thrown my hat into the mentor ring, but I’ll only have time to take a quick meeting with people and help out with some email introductions. Beyond that I don’t have the bandwidth to reach the deepest level of mentorship. When you have a startup and a family, you just don’t have time. The people who know the most have the least amount of time.
If the most successful people are always busy, who would be the ideal mentor that could actually take the time to help?
The best people to find as mentors in the startup world are people who just sold their company or are part of a company that just sold because they are taking some time to figure out what they’re doing next and have gone from working 60 hours a week to having a lot of down time. I have found that most entrepreneurs truly do like to give back and mentor people so if you can find them at that stage, when they’re not under the gun, you can get a ton out of them.
Ariel Kaye, CEO Parachute
Parachute offers luxury bedding basics at an accessible price. Designed in Venice Beach and manufactured in Italy, they ship simple and elegant designs straight to your home. Before founding Parachute, Ariel spent her entire career in the digital marketing world.
[ibimage==38520==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-left]In such a young tech world, is it hard to find a mentor?
I haven’t had the experience that finding a mentor was hard. Just the opposite. There are so many people willing to help, so many gatherings, and networking events. I do think it took me sometime to understand how to frame these relationships to get the most out of it. That’s part of the learning experience.
Early on, I was very shy and a bit timid and I would assume people didn’t have time to help. I hadn’t thought through what the best relationship to build with a mentor would be. I hadn’t figured out how I could best leverage certain relationships. But Parachute was part of Launchpad and I think that really opened my eyes to how to manage mentors. I realized very quickly how open and willing people were to help. And how excited they were by people who were hungry and really wanting success and working hard. I only had experiences with people who were willing to go above and beyond, connect me to their networks, and were willing to discuss ideas. I try to do that and give back the same.
Have you had any experience being a mentor to others?
A new friend came by this morning who is launching a new business and she had a ton of questions. Although my company is still in the early stages, for someone who is a year and a half behind, I can bring a lot of insight so I feel kind of indebted. It is such an important part of the giving back cycle.
If mentorship in the tech community is more of a collaborative effort, how do you surround yourself with people who will help you and your company grow?
You have to find the right people. People who aren’t competitive and have similar experiences. There are certainly people who I might want to talk to that aren’t interested in talking with me, and that’s fine because there are a ton of people who are. I have reached out to people to schedule time and some people were honest and just said ‘I just joined a board or started a class so I don’t have time to give you the time I feel you deserve.’ Focus your efforts on finding the right match.
And it's important to have mentors at all different levels. People who have seen companies through, people who are just a year ahead of you, and even people you wouldn’t normally think have a lot of information to provide. It’s people who have gone through similar experiences that can guide you away from mistakes that they made.
There’s people I go to when I’m hiring and people I go to when I’m trying to optimize the supply chain. You can have mentors that are more generalists or mentors that fit to a certain part of your business. But having a ton of mentors and talking to everyone who is willing to talk is great and definitely not out of reach.
Does age play a factor when trying to find a mentor?
There is people that I talk to that have had multiple companies and had exits— they’re older and much more diversified, but I think in this tech industry where a lot of founders that are achieving great success are under 25, I don’t think people assume the oldest person in the room is the smartest. Obviously, with age comes experience and hopefully some wisdom, but I don’t think it's smart to be ageist in this type of scenario. there are people on my team that I learn a tremendous amount from and this is their first job— they bring so many great ideas to the table. You never know who is going to inspire a new thought or who will expand your network in a meaningful way. So for me I think it’s a big mistake to turn away from someone who you don’t think has good information to share. You could really miss great opportunities.
Scott Kriz, CEO Bitium
Bitium is a Santa Monica-based provider of cloud-based identity and access management solutions. Founded in 2012, the company aims to give cloud-forward companies the ability to manage access to all of their web-based applications in one place.
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What were your early experiences like in the tech world?
I first got into the industry in the late '90s and it never occurred to me to look for a mentor. I was just out of school and a little to arrogant and thought that if you were smart you could just figure things out. I was fortunate enough to have the company go well but it could have definitely gone better a lot faster with mentorship.
How can people effectively find or be a mentor in the industry?
I think of it like coaching. Every professional golfer has a swing coach and for some reason that seems normal in athletics, but in the tech industry people think it’s strange to have a mentor. The right mentors will help you by teaching you about mistakes of the past. They won’t tell you what to do but guide you to the right decision.
My strategy when figuring out who I can leverage to help my company was actually not looking for one person. My first mentor in this business was my boss at my last two companies. He’s an investor in 37 startups in Los Angeles and has a good understanding of the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs, and is very operationally oriented. He crosses the friend slash mentor line.
How do you surround yourself with people that will help both you and your company grow?
I always tried to get people around the table that knew things that I didn’t know and who were better than me in the specific department they worked in. So I have a cluster of mentors. It is hard to find the right people and it’s a matter of networking and hustling.
For example, I heard the CMO from Microsoft had retired and moved to LA and I thought ‘this is great because were selling b2b software and we have the same approach that Microsoft did in the 80s and it would be great to leverage diverse experience’ so I sought her out and she ended up investing and being on the board of our company. She’s now a guiding factor for our marketing team.
For me, mentorship is not about finding one person you can depend on and lean on, it’s about accumulating a group of people that can be leveraged for different reasons. The most important part for me was getting people who were very well aligned with the way I see the world even though I might not see the world the right way. I don’t think I have learned faster in my life than the last 3 years when I started this company and that’s entirely because of the people we got involved.
All of this advice, whether its age bound or bound by the department of the company, its advice and it's important to have that but recognize that it's not an instruction on what to do or a map on how to get somewhere, it's simply relative experiences that you have to factor in to your decision making.
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