Why every early-stage founder should have a mentor

Last month, I put myself forward to mentor three startup founders, with the aim of helping them reach the next stage of their journeys.

Today, I’m the Co-Founder and CEO of PayFit – a payroll and HR solutions provider serving 20,000 companies and entrepreneurs. But little over a decade ago, I was 22, and had just left my studies to set up a business with no professional experience or degree.

My goal was simple: break the monopoly that had long existed in payroll, where software was built for accountants rather than for the entrepreneurs and people leaders actually running small businesses. Like most early-stage founders, I figured a lot out as I went, and learned plenty the hard way.

What I did have, though, was people I could turn to. And more specifically, mentors. A chairman with experience scaling a company to hundreds of thousands of employees helped me with board management and international growth, while a seasoned European tech leader gave me deep knowledge of the tech ecosystem.

Their guidance was irreplaceable, and that hasn’t changed throughout my career, and I firmly believe every early-stage founder should have one.

One piece of advice, in particular, changed the trajectory of the business. After months of building the product, someone told me directly: “Now is the time to go to market. Take what you’ve been working on, and go and sell to real clients.”

Without that simple nudge, I could easily have spent many more months, or even years, refining a solution that nobody was actually using.

That, for me, is one of the most underrated benefits of mentorship. They’re an external voice that provide genuinely valuable insights to challenge and improve your own decision-making.

Addressing the issue of isolation

A real part of building a company that isn’t always discussed is how lonely it can feel.

From funding to innovating to market entry, individual entrepreneurs regularly find themselves left making high-impact decisions on their own – decisions that can have a huge bearing on the long-term trajectory and success of their companies.

Research shows how common this feeling is. 76% of founders feel lonely, and that isolation directly impairs decision-making.

It’s no coincidence, then, that startups with a mentor are three times more likely to succeed. Not only can mentors help in addressing the isolation that founders feel, but their objective perspectives can help to challenge thinking and clarify ideas.

Either way, their presence and support tends to lead to better decisions. By not being in the weeds of day-to-day pressures, they’re able to surface trade-offs and reframe problems so they become easier to tackle.

The value, in other words, isn’t just in what they say. It’s in how they help you think.

What you need from mentors will change

Of course, what a business needs from a mentor will change over time. Early on, it might simply be having someone in your corner to act as a sounding board, helping to validate ideas. Later, however, it might be more helpful to have someone to turn to who’s skilled at structuring teams or making growth decisions.

One individual might be well-placed to help take your business from a concept to a startup with 10 employees, while another might be better suited to helping you to grow from £10 million to £100 million in revenue.

See Also

How I turned a market gap into a scalable SaaS product

The key is to be intentional. Every mentor will bring something different to the table, and so it’s important to find the right people who are most suited to your ambitions as they evolve. Consider your current position, challenges, and future objectives, and find partners that can bring genuine experience and knowledge to the table at those specific stages.

Don’t wait to find a mentor

Having personally found mentorship invaluable, I want to pass the benefits onto others.

Entrepreneurs have so much positive energy, it’s contagious. They have the belief that anything is possible and are deeply convinced that their idea works. I’ve seen this firsthand on countless occasions, with the three startup founders I recently mentored and the 60+ former PayFit employees who have gone on to create their own businesses.

Watching them bring their ideas to life has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career. But starting a business is no easy feat Indeed, it’s often said that half of startups fail in their first five years.

Where founders need help with hiring, funding, go-to-market strategy, or building the right product, a good mentor can help you sidestep the mistakes that so many others have made before you.

So if I could share one piece of advice, it would be this: don’t wait to find a mentor. Look around you, speak to people, and be honest about where you need help. Come to them with your biggest challenges, share enough context for them to truly understand your situation, and be clear about what you want to get out of the conversation. The right discussion at the right moment can save you months, or even years, of moving in the wrong direction. In the early stages, that kind of clarity can change everything.