During the Techstars program, each company meets up to ten mentors every day over a period of three weeks, meeting with around a hundred mentors in total. It’s all incredibly intense, but there’s a method to the madness, so listen to your program team as they will be orchestrating the entire process.
Founders will spend 20 minutes with each mentor, and should use this time to either
- get to know the mentor on a deeper/personal level, in order to set the stage to engage with them in the future, or
- ask them a very specific question, giving them all the information they need to answer your question in the first 3-4 minutes of the meeting (including spending a minute or so outlining your product) and then allowing them to probe and dig deeper for 5-10 minutes.
It’s safest to assume that the mentor will have a limited set of knowledge about you and your startup.
At the end of the first month, we pair the best fitting mentors with the right teams. Each team will have five to six lead mentors, who will then work with them on a weekly-basis for remainder of the program.
Read about one of our alumni, Eversend, and their experience of mentor madness here: https://medium.com/eversendapp/our-startup-life-at-techstars-berlin-mentor-madness-43e08400761f
