My Mentoring services

In my post last week, I mentioned I offered mentoring for founders, and today, I’d like to talk a little bit about the sorts of things I cover in these sessions.

Most of the mentoring work I do is with non- (or less-) technical founders where the conversations fall into a few categories:

• Is my idea feasible?

• How do I build my idea if it is feasible?

• What will it cost?

• How long will it take?

Other questions that aren’t often asked but are equally crucial for founders building tech products:

• Should I build my idea?

• Should I build my idea right now?

• How much of my idea should I build?

Even though you might not ask them, these are so important that I’ll almost certainly cover them in our sessions - even if it’s just to ensure you’ve got a good handle on the answers!

Software is expensive to build, and you really don’t want to build out your whole app and then find out you’ve built the wrong thing. This is where mentoring comes in - a mentor like myself can provide constructive feedback and challenge to ensure a better chance of getting value for your money and time when you take the plunge and invest in building your idea.

In future posts, I’ll cover some of the more general advice I give in my sessions (follow me to get notifications). As is often the case, though, the answer is usually specific to your situation and start-up idea. However, there are some general tips that I’ll share that you can put to use as you see fit 🙂

When I work with start-up founders, I look to get a deep understanding of what they’re trying to achieve with their ideas to find the best path forward. I’ve been around in tech long enough to know what’s likely feasible and, more importantly, what is cost-effective for different budgets. Rather than dictating a ‘one true approach’, I help founders figure out what works best for them across a range of different technologies and approaches.

If you’re a start-up founder, you may be able to access the services of mentors like me for free through Techscalers (Scotland-based Tech Startups) or Barclays Eagle Labs (UK-wide Startups, not tech-specific). I also offer paid mentoring services, MVP ideation workshops and fractional CTO services.