
Show HN: Find a mentor, Become a mentor - nitinpande
https://mentii.com
======
buro9
I've been a mentee, and I now mentor.

What I want when I see web sites like this is to see an understanding that
mentoring isn't Q&A, and it's not "a chat over coffee".

The most successful mentoring arrangements I've seen have always had a clear
agreement between mentor and mentee, a mentorship contract with specific goals
and hopes outlined over a specified period of time, and a clear commitment to
meet and stay on topic, discussing what needs to be discussed.

Training for mentors is therefore critical, giving a clear guide to them as to
what they should and should not do (knowing when _not_ to give advice is
important, a mentor shouldn't feel they need to fix someone's life).

For mentees, who generally enter into this from the cold and with little
experience... having a good mentor matters. And that is far more about having
a person who is able to shape and manage the mentorship process rather than
just a specialist in a field.

I would suggest going beyond just match-making, and helping to give online
training, advice, and a mentor's forum so that they have a support network...
such that you can really offer a strong benefit to mentors, and as a result
have such high quality mentors that this becomes a key selling point to the
mentees.

It is much harder to find mentors than mentees after all, so building an
attractive proposition to those wanting to give time is critical.

PS: As an example of what mentors go through, I've uploaded the notes that
were the outcome of the last training session I attended:
[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a9c832pvsz2tn4j/zAEgACdZ8_/Mentor...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a9c832pvsz2tn4j/zAEgACdZ8_/Mentoring%20Tips%20and%20Notes.pdf)
. I think online training for mentors, education for them, would enhance the
offering... it becomes clearer to them that they can do it, and will be shown
how and have support to do so.

~~~
shanelja
I couldn't agree more, and to expand: what I've found so far on the path to
finding a mentor is that initial contact is simply awkward and too much
pressure is put on you in the first five minutes.

Finding someone who you think "yeah, I could totally put my faith in this
person to give me advice and not me a jack ass" is pretty hard from a two
paragraph introduction and a list of all the jobs they've ever had.

It's a great idea from a site but it could fail under the insurmountable
challenge of making people feel comfortable around each other for that initial
encounter.

------
Total_Meltdown
1) How it looks on my monitor: <http://i.imgur.com/iSjP8ae.png> \- might not
want to repeat that title image like that.

2) I would really like to see if there are any mentors relevant to my
interests before I have to make yet another account on yet another website.

3) I really think mentorship is the best way to really become good at a skill.
Hope it goes well for you.

~~~
meetforeal
come on, 1) is not a big issue... Not big enough to put it first anyway!

~~~
Sonicrida
It might be because it was the first thing he noticed, not the most important
thing.

------
GreyZephyr
I love the idea. Yours is the first social network style site that I have
joined. I do however, have a couple of comments and thoughts about the site.

Firstly, when I sign up and am filling out the form, I didn't see any warning
that my profile and request were immediately going to be published on the
front page with no apparent way to edit the request. I spent some time
clicking around trying to find out how to edit my advice request with no luck.
In my case this was not an issue (except for those who were subject to my
whimsical filler posting), but I can imagine that it could come as a nasty
shock to some. The distinction I am trying to make here is the fine line
between making available and broadcasting to all. There may be no practical
difference, but there is a world of emotional difference between the two.

This leads me to my second point; I note that the stream of requests is
awfully repetitive. I would think you either need to encourage people to put
more thought into there requests for help, or have awfully good analytics for
those who are looking to be mentors, otherwise you are going to quickly run
into the bane of dating sites everywhere. The race to the funniest/quirkiest
profile as the myriads of potential proteges compete for the few mentors,
leading to a situation where the only way to win is to already know the
person, or to be highly manipulative and socially astute, which sort of
defeats the purpose of the site to my mind.

Lastly, the site was very slow to load, worse it had appeared to load but the
bar with advice requests, browse people etc. had not loaded, making navigation
initially very confusing. Once this bar loaded things became much clearer,
though why this element failed to load is not clear to me as other assets from
the same source seemed to load? Mysteries.

Lastly congratulations on building and shipping such a cool idea and getting
so many awesome people to sign up. Best of luck.

~~~
goatcurious
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! A bit of oversight on our part about the
advice requests. We'll fix the flow for posting it.

We will clean up and categorize the advice requests. You are absolutely on
point on discoverability. We are experimenting with the concept of affinities,
where based on your affiliations, you get more or less access to mentors.
Trick is in defining these affiliations correctly.

Thanks so much for the encouragement! Look forward to interacting more. (p.s.
drop me a message at Mentii so I know who you are --
<https://mentii.com/mentor/sumit.suman>)

------
jaysonelliot
Within a couple hours of creating my profile, I've received three emails from
recruiters, all for positions unrelated to my actual field.

I love the idea behind mentii, but this kind of thing could tank it early if
it gets out of control.

~~~
goatcurious
Jayson - thanks for the feedback. We will have to tackle the spam / irrelevant
messaging problem soon.

We would love to reach out to the recruiters who messaged you, and understand
their need better -- could you send us more details at support @ mentii.com

~~~
colinhowe
I'd love to sign up... but recruiters should be hellbanned from this.

~~~
shanelja
I think the most effective _short term_ way would to to provide a tertiary
recruiter type account and have users be able to opt in or out of messages.
Some people who are actively seeking work would be able to get the content
they were after on your site and the recruiters would be able to pick from
applicants who _most importantly wanted to receive their messages._

For recruiters who take the method of making a normal account and using it to
recruit to people who have opted out you could have a report ticket based
system, even algorithmic-ally limiting the account abilities of people who
repeatedly break the rules should they have a certain comment/report ratio.

~~~
goatcurious
Thanks Shane -- quite a neat idea!

In the very immediate term, we are also tracking the recruiter's activity and
engaging them 1-1 on community rules.

~~~
shanelja
Don't mention it - your application seems pretty great, I wouldn't want to see
it's grand opening on HN marred by recruiters and spammers.

Also, make sure you plan for longer term - 1:1 engagement rarely scales with
explosive growth. :)

------
thetabyte
As part of the team behind the now-defunct <http://mentor.im> AngelHack
project, I wish you luck, and would love to hear how it goes! I love the
concept.

~~~
goatcurious
Jordan, thanks! This is Sumit, another founder of Mentii. We had heard about
you guys! Would love to catch up and get your thoughts -- emailing you.

------
d0m
Congrats for sticking with your startup idea even though lots of people
probably told you "Another social network?!" : )

Here's a feature I'd love to see.. A way to ask a question and let people
answer it. Results could be ranked in term of "top mentor", or other people
could vote on it.

The idea is that it's hard to filter through lots of mentors.. trying to find
one that match your needs, then go after him/her, etc. Something way more
organic would be me asking a question and people interested in my problems
could help me solve it. And, as you help others, you get a better karma too..
which put your questions in front of mentor with good karma..

Personally, I'd love to see a feed with lots of various startup questions from
all kind of entrepreneurs.. be able to see what famous founders are asking.
Could be anything really. From "Which is the best landing page?" to "Anyone
knowing a good UX in <city>".

Anyhow, congrats again on the launch, hit me up if you want to chat about it.

~~~
goatcurious
> _A way to ask a question and let people answer it. Results could be ranked
> in term of "top mentor", or other people could vote on it._

Right now, we are using the advice requests to encourage 1-1 interaction. A
public discourse, with voting could be interesting but we erred on the side of
assuming that many won't be comfortable with having their career questions
publicly discussed. We will revisit this assumption.

 _Re: karma_

Mentor karma is coming soon. Interesting possibilities there.

Thanks for the wonderful feedback, emailing you for more 1-1 time.

~~~
nitinpande
And to add to this .. We have some karma already in place and its called
"Respect". Users can go to profile of others and give them Respect (by
clicking on the Respect button) which helps in bubbling up engaged mentors in
the community.

------
abcd_f
Not to nitpick, but if your tag line says "Get career guidance from your
future self", it shouldn't probably sit on top of an image of an older man
talking to younger woman :)

~~~
krichman
If I were an old man I would be delighted to find that my future self was a
young woman.

------
whynotbalu
Awesome work! This could be huge in terms of overcoming the gender/race
barriers to finding great mentors within traditional corporate structures (and
even within the super meritocratic startup world).

------
shanelja
Just putting it out there that my account on mentii is
<https://mentii.com/mentor/shane.armstrong> and I'm seeking a mentor.

------
pavlov
On seeing the name Mentii, my first association was with lying rather than
mentoring because "menti" in French means "lied" (as in _"j'ai menti" -- "I
lied"_ ).

That aside, great service!

~~~
rjtavares
Same for Portuguese.

~~~
nitinpande
Oh wow .. never knew that. Thanks for letting us know.

------
aswath87
Fantastic. I really like startups like these that help people become better
and build meaningful connections.

~~~
nitinpande
Thanks a lot for the encouraging words. Would love to see more of you on
Mentii! :)

------
larkarvin
congrats, this would help me on finding a mentor. it seems its harder to find
one on a developing country.

~~~
nitinpande
Thanks! Cross border mentoring is a great usecase for Mentii! Hope we can be
of some good help to you.

------
cupcake-unicorn
Wow, I couldn't even send you a message through the site to ask you to delete
my account due to a bug :(

~~~
nitinpande
Sorry about that. Drop a mail at support @ mentii.com and we'll remove the
account right away. Do tell us briefly as to what exactly happened.

Best, Nitin

------
pyvek
Great platform. I already got someone to guide me. :)

Is there any difference between the normal messages and the "Request Meeting"
feature?

~~~
nitinpande
The request meeting sends 3 specific times for the other person to accept one,
thus making it easier to setup a meeting with them.

------
csmatt
I like this. I've wanted this. If you guys need help bringing this to DC
please let me know.

~~~
nitinpande
Thanks a lot! Sumit (my cofounder) is sending you a mail. Lets connect.

------
amalakar
It is an excellent idea. Congratulations Nitin/Sumit and all the best!

~~~
nitinpande
Thanks a lot ! :)

------
andrewthornton
Is there no way to delete your account?

~~~
goatcurious
Andrew -- email us at support@mentii.com and we will delete it right away.

------
fss
That's very cool! Congratulations :-)

~~~
nitinpande
Thanks a lot! :)

------
lowglow
Why can't I delete my account?

~~~
goatcurious
Dan - drop us a line at support @ mentii.com and we will delete your account.

~~~
lowglow
You should let your users delete their accounts through the service. I'd also
like you to delete all of my data.

------
idealform01
Nice work Nitin!

-kris

~~~
nitinpande
Thanks Kris! :)

