[HN Gopher] Donating My Time to Grow a VC-Funded Company: Why I ...
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Donating My Time to Grow a VC-Funded Company: Why I Quit Mentoring
at Plato
Author : yarapavan
Score : 120 points
Date : 2021-05-31 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
| kkotak wrote:
| Silence on this post is deafening and perhaps a sign of fear.
| geobmx540 wrote:
| Fear of?
| seibelj wrote:
| I have never heard of this until now, it sounds like some sort
| of scam
| vmception wrote:
| Equally perhaps a sign that nobody cares
|
| What do you want, a tongue in cheek disclaimer that says "all
| proceeds to go us"
| antonvs wrote:
| Or perhaps people just roll their eyes at yet another Silicon
| Valley quasi-scam, and move on.
|
| I mean, what's there to say about this? Giving time away for
| free to funded for-profit companies can make sense in some
| contexts, and I suppose for people in that situation, Plato
| might be helpful. But most of the time, it's going to be a
| questionable move at best, in which case you just shouldn't use
| a service like this.
| culpable wrote:
| fear of not enjoying the holiday weekend? the outside is an
| okay time.
| lbarrow wrote:
| What is there to be afraid of? I really don't know what you
| mean.
| vmception wrote:
| Not that absurd, its like getting into Soho House and enjoying a
| performance of people that wanted exposure and performing for
| free
| laurex wrote:
| I also mentored for Plato and quit for very similar reasons. When
| I started, I thought I'd be helping people who are
| underrepresented in tech, or even just people who had interesting
| goals that my experience or coaching might help them achieve.
| Instead, I found people whose companies were paying Plato to give
| them a service, weren't particularly self-motivated, and were
| highly traditional in their backgrounds. Worse still, they would
| schedule my calendar then cancel at the last minute, and Plato
| didn't seem to discourage this, even though they required me to
| block my calendar. Then they wanted me to spend my time writing a
| business case study that they could use to promote themselves. I
| actually think mentorship could be a great place for innovation,
| and I could even see "volunteering" or doing 'pro bono' work, but
| not when it has almost zero return even from a feel-good
| standpoint.
| CrazyCatDog wrote:
| I would check with your Alma Mater--we just stood this up 18
| months ago at my business college, and the alumni jumped all
| over it. The system (peoplegrove platform) let's you indicate
| how often you're willing to connect with students, what your
| open to mentoring on (eg careers, industry, what courses world
| you take if you could roll back the clock (ps it's always
| Analtics and scripting!), etc.)
|
| It has been thrilling to watch both mentoring alumni and
| growing students each benefit from these interactions, and
| there's $0 involved for participants---both sides have an
| incentive to play by the rules (it world be pretty embarrassing
| to have your former school ban you from talking to students for
| failure to follow protocol). And, the system connects to career
| services, so repeated abuse by students jeopardizes the
| services available to them (which in my college is HUGE).
| defaultname wrote:
| "I thought I'd be helping people who are underrepresented in
| tech"
|
| What made you believe this? The service doesn't seem to pitch
| that angle whatsoever. Indeed, being $300 USD per month (for
| what it is) puts it on a pretty pricey level and largely
| guarantees the opposite.
| kazinator wrote:
| From a purely logical angle, people willing to fork out $300
| a month for this could well be underrepresented in tech, not
| just those who cannot afford it.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| This seems to be the general way these mentor companies work.
| I've noticed the same on growthmentor but they're much more up
| front about the fact mentors are donating their time.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I modelled a similar idea with actual celebrities (think pop
| stars, not fang execs) and the main problem is getting successful
| people's time.
|
| Money is obviously not a good motivator, so preying on their
| emotion and will to do good is the only thing left.
|
| It's sad that these people even started mentoring for a for
| profit company. Yet it's not too far from contributing to big
| corps open source projects
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| >However, Plato has a problem: and this is that they're venture
| funded and need to grow both in users, as well as in revenue.
|
| Agreed, seems like a tough business model for VC scale.
|
| But, this is actually a really fantastic product to build career
| momentum.
|
| I have to imagine Plato's founders are spending a _lot_ of time
| getting 1:1 mentorship from their platforms top mentors.
|
| I have definitely spent my time creating less productive
| companies in the last 13 years of my startup journey.
|
| This should set them up well for their next thing.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| You're assuming that they're hiring high quality mentors. Most
| of the people who have the most valuable insights to spread
| (i.e. civic leaders, CEOs, leaders of fields, professors) would
| never bother giving their time to this platform because it gets
| them nothing, and just extracts time and energy from them. So
| they'll probably just learn from people who don't value their
| own time and life
| Layke1123 wrote:
| No one here really cares about VCs. It's hacker news, not, faker
| news.
| andrefuchs wrote:
| I'm wondering how they got the initial mentors from the well
| known companies on board. Is it good connections or some "quid
| pro quo" deal?
| the_local_host wrote:
| This was the same author that wrote about the Uber iOS YOLO
| recently [0], without cursing Travis Kalanick.
|
| I somehow missed the second half of the title (with the word
| "quit") and I was worried he was again getting into a situation
| where he was doing a lot of heavy lifting for a company that was
| ultimately taking advantage of its contributors.
|
| Glad to see he dumped Plato.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27267368
| motohagiography wrote:
| Can see why this is valauble and why people would do it.
| Mentoring is _the_ hard problem to both generalize and scale. A
| world in which that problem is solved would have a means to take
| in arbitrary people and return successful ones who can do well by
| themselves and teach others.
|
| It doesn't scale well because a mentor requires support
| infrastructure to be present and available with opportunity, and
| it is only as successful as the mentees openness to change. I was
| made a member of a private mentoring organization some years ago,
| and it's hard to stop indexing on mentoring as making others more
| like you. First it's having the relevant experience to share, and
| then being present to share it, and even then, just at the right
| moment on someones path. That makes mentoring a rare confluence
| of factors. Even if you sign up for skill lessons of some sort
| with someone, the mentoring that happens is a higher order effect
| of the practice and time together, and not just the tangible work
| in the lessons, that can be arbitrary. It's not therapy either,
| as that's a very specific kind of relationship that is separate
| from mentoring as well.
|
| I would be surprised to see how it works on a transactional basis
| at all. There's a lot I don't know about it (most of it really)
| but what a difficult and important problem!
| democracy wrote:
| It does seem shady. As someone who volunteered a lot in the past
| I would not feel well about someone making profit off my efforts
| - it's just feels wrong.
| defaultname wrote:
| It's a bizarre business model, but the aspect that is most
| baffling about this article is that _he knew it before he signed
| up_.
|
| There was no bait and switch. They never said he'd be paid. He
| knew users of the service paid for it. They never said they'd
| donate his "take" to charities. These were things he knew before
| he signed up.
|
| But he signed up thinking it would bring credibility/"exposure".
| Apparently it didn't bring enough of that, so instead he's using
| the feigned outrage to try to achieve the same. The charity bit
| is particularly weak.
|
| Eh. There's a reason there is a lot of eye rolling. Many of the
| other "mentors" probably have a stake and duped guys like this
| into "volunteering" their time to sniff at their aura.
| qhoang09 wrote:
| Hey everyone! I'm Quang, co-founder, and CEO of Plato. I'd like
| to chime in as we had several discussions with Gergely and Plato
| definitely doesn't fit his vision. Happy to have this debate with
| you in a public setting.
|
| This discussion is a good reminder that we probably need to
| update a bit the message and be even more transparent on the
| dynamic in play and the incentives for mentors, here are they:
|
| (1) Giving back to the community: - People just feel really good
| about helping, seeing someone grow- In addition, to being a
| mentor in Plato, I'm helping every week people (for free) to
| prepare for YC interviews and I really feel good about helping as
| I've received so much help from others in the past
|
| (2) Learning - I'm mentoring in Plato myself every week, 1h-2h
| every week, 1 call over two, I feel I'm saying the same thing,
| but 1 call over 2, I'm learning myself a lot. For example, I had
| a call with the head of engineering of a 50 Engineers Company
| from a startup in France last week, and their company had a
| really interesting way of functioning to do a performance review,
| it's not done by a manager, it's done by peers who are assigned
| to you every quarter. I learned a ton thanks to all my mentees -
| It helps me to synthesize my thoughts and deliver my learnings
| with a simple and clear message - It's also very intellectually
| stimulating to be challenged every week with a different
| challenge it's helping me sharpen my skills
|
| (3) Networking with other mentors: - Mentors get free access to
| Plato (it was in an experimental phase and we're deploying it to
| the broader community next month) - we're organizing regular
| happy hours between mentors and some are joining every week - and
| plenty of other events we're organizing for mentors for free
|
| (4) Brand (we offer speaking opportunities to mentors who've been
| here for a while - Many Mentors are proud to be a Plato mentor,
| and many of them are sharing their plate public profile and put
| that they're a Plato mentor on Linkedin - Also, the best mentors
| and those who have been in Plato for a while are regularly
| proposed to be speakers at our conference, for example,
| http://elevate.platohq.com/ and https://www.platohq.com/webinars
|
| (5) Charity We have no problem adding a 5th point about donating
| to a charity. But those 4 are already strong and that's why we
| have 1000+ mentors and some of them are here for 3 years+. This
| is one of the initiatives we'd like to do in the next 6-12
| months.
|
| Finally, I doubt that paying the mentors will move the needle.
| When we started to do that, we started to attract worse mentors
| who are doing that for the money. But giving away XX% of revenue
| to a charity of your choice (that is aligned with our mission to
| improve Eng Leadership) is a good idea (that we are already
| working on)
|
| If you think that is a completely new business model and dynamic,
| it's actually not. Plato's model is no different than the
| business model of a conference: Companies paying for attendees to
| learn from speakers. Speakers unpaid (most of the time)
| Incentives for speakers?
|
| (1) Giving back to the community, when you're a speaker at a
| conference, you're actually happy to help a community that you
| care about
|
| (2) Learn as synthesizing your thoughts and delivering a message
| (through a keynote or something) is helpful
|
| (3) Networking with other speakers
|
| (4) Brand (being a speaker is helping for your own brand or your
| company's brand)
|
| (5) Sometimes a speaker can choose a charity to donate
|
| Although I agree that we could be better organized and
| transparent with those 4 (or 5) incentives for mentors (maybe add
| a system of points or whatever), those are highly appreciated
| incentives for mentors and I do think it will scale.
|
| Also, our monthly subscription fees include:
|
| - Cost of customer success: we help our customers build programs
| around TAlents Development
|
| - Cost of Engineers: we pay our engineers who are building the
| platform that helps mentees and mentors schedule and reschedule
| their time, be matched, take notes, write action plan etc.
|
| - Cost of Talent Coaches: a talent coach (someone who is a
| professional, paid by us, who is uncovering your challenges and
| needs and matching you with the right mentor and keep you
| accountable on your progress). More about it here:
| https://www.platohq.com/how-it-works-for-team
|
| - Cost of Mentors Community Managers: A team that are running all
| the initiatives above
|
| Again, Happy to have this debate with y'all!
| rahimiali wrote:
| It looks like some of the investors have volunteered to become
| mentors. I suppose they have an incentive to curate eliteness
| on the mentor list to support their portfolio company. I'm
| curious how many hours/week of mentoring these investor
| regularly clock in on the platform (for example, Luc Vincent,
| Andrew Niklas, Jeff Queisser, Tido Carriero, or Seth Sakamoto).
|
| (In your place, I'd either ignore my prodding or answer with a
| bland "I'm sorry we don't disclose these numbers to protect the
| privacy of the mentors", so I wouldn't blame you for dodging my
| prodding.)
|
| Either way, I think the real issue is that you've done a gone
| job of explaining the benefits of your service to both mentees
| and mentors, but the mentees are misled into thinking some of
| their fee goes somewhere other than your pocket. If you make
| that clearer to the mentees, I suspect your service would be
| looked on more kindly, and it would avoid the unflattering
| comparison to Elsevier elsewhere in the comments.
| marmaduke wrote:
| Sounds a lot like peer review for commercial publishers like
| Elsevier!
| lbarrow wrote:
| Yea this Plato thing seems pretty bizarre and I completely agree
| that it's silly for the mentors to use it. Maybe there's a small
| value of just meeting people through it, but I think existing
| meetup groups can solve that problem pretty well.
|
| The quibble I have with the author: if this was a for-profit
| company that _hadn't_ taken VC funding, would he be more OK with
| donating his time to them? I think his objection makes sense
| regardless of company taking funding and I don't think he needs
| to keep emphasizing them taking funding to get his point across.
| burnished wrote:
| you're not uncomfortable with the practice of relying on
| customers notion that the company is paying mentors, but taking
| 100% of the fee?
| duckfang wrote:
| It's not just VC finding.
|
| It's YCombinator funding.
|
| From https://tracxn.com/d/companies/platohq.com
|
| Jun 01, 2016 : $120K : Seed : Y Combinator
|
| How many predatory and scammy companies does YC have to fund,
| before we directly question YC itself?
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Wait, do people assume YCombinator has any standard to their
| funding? I thought we all knew that it was just a hype
| machine wrapped around a bog standard VC group. Of course
| they'll fund them, it has a sick name and an idea you can
| state in 60 seconds, so Plato will probably get sold to a
| textbook manufacturer or something for 70 billion dollars
| because it's 2021 and nothing makes sense
| paulcole wrote:
| > do people assume YCombinator has any standard to their
| funding
|
| _Some_ people for sure assume this and it's a testament to
| the work YC has put into marketing and PR. Just look at HN
| -- a mammoth content marketing project -- for a VC fund.
| Just enough YC propaganda mixed in to where people still
| believe it's impartial Hacker News.
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(page generated 2021-05-31 23:01 UTC)