Your importance of mentorship
This article speaks of the significance of receiving guidance early on, when building upon ideas and creating products and services that empower our ecosystem. This applies to startups of varying stages across all industries, especially those in their earliest phases.
I am personally a big fan of reading books and listening to audiobooks because it allows me to “Stand on the shoulders of giants,” as many of you may have heard before. I find mentorship to be of similar privilege, the only caveat being that it would have to be from the right person.
Your Journey
From our kindergarten days, all the way into our college years, our mentors usually tend to be our parents and our teachers. They help us nail down the basics of being good humans, Some of us grow up to be more obedient than others. The key takeaway from our pre-teen years is to understand how the world works and how we best adapt to it.
As we flow into our teen years and start engaging with our University peers, we earn a window of perspective into the different ways our colleagues adapt(ed) to the environment around us. Some more rowdy than others. And then some of us stumble into the dire need to create - something exciting, something special, something tremendously useful for our friends. Those “some” of us become founders.
Your Calling
When I first started learning about entrepreneurship, I was in a classroom of 49 bright individuals. Some more excited than others. I didn’t know the first thing about “business” or the importance of creation. I just knew I was fascinated about being in a classroom under the shiny business school roof. I felt special.
But as time passed and I got to know more and more founders, I realized that although there were lots of material for me to cover and read about in Ivey’s papers and Harvard’s open research papers, I didn’t have direction. I badly needed my North Star to drive my ambition into the right direction. Otherwise, all that energy would have gone to waste - and it did. Sadly, I downloaded more papers and printed more books than I actually read while being in University. Looking back, I realize that I wasted an entire year looking up random articles on startup topics and business advice, which ultimately led to nothing but a brush of my own ego.
Whenever I attended the startup networking events at the business school, I would try and fit into the “founders groups” although I truly never felt a part of them. I felt left out because at that time, I wasn’t technically a founder and being in a crowd of to-be MBAs and BBA champions made me feel nothing short of an imposter. It was a lot of pretentious sweet-talking for me, but it made me realize something.
“Everyone was looking for guidance.”
Every time, at every networking event or classroom, there were two kinds of people: (a) Those who wanted advice and (b) Those who could give them. And it drove me crazy because I would see line-ups of students / founders, waiting to talk to the guest speakers who were mostly founders / C-suite executives of large companies or very successful startups that were founded 8-10 years prior. And so I asked myself - How can I make this advisory system more accessible for everyone? And thus came Sparrow.
Our Platform
When I started building Sparrow, I often struggled to find the “right” Advisor for our platform. I was convinced that there’s a specific DNA for effective Advisors, who’ll provide the “right” kind of playbook for 80% of problems. But I learned that it doesn’t honestly always pan out like that.
The two main things that determine an Advisor's efficacy is (a) their professional and academic track record and (b) their empathetic personality to contribute to something bigger than themselves. This applies to mentors / advisors for startups but also in our personal lives (families, friendships, etc.) It is difficult coming individuals who encompass both these characteristics, but given my work so far, I find this to be a good indication of a person who is willing to hear you out and lend you their honest opinion.
Our Why
I started this piece with a brief timeline of how we grow up because I wanted to show you that from the earliest point of our lives, we’ve always had mentors in some shape or form. They come as elderly family members, divine religious figures and even shiny public figures. We consciously (and sometimes unconsciously) absorb their lessons and adapt our thinking, which helps us get closer to what we truly want to become.
When innovating and designing products that serve our communities, we owe it to ourselves to build things that leverage the best of what we know and what our mentors know. This will save us time, and set us up in the correct trajectory early on in our startup journeys so we can articulate the most practical ideas, hire the most capable and culturally fit team members and execute on our goals from the tried and tested approaches from those who’ve “been there, done that” - and that’s where your Sparrow Advisors strive to make the difference.