As a Mentor for the Milwaukee I-Corps program, you will have an opportunity to share your experiences as a business leader, participate in growing entrepreneurial ecosystem in Milwaukee, experience, first hand, the Lean LaunchPad process, and hopefully learn some new and useful skills in customer discovery. In addition, you’ll have the opportunity to work with a bright group of people in your team and with other teams who are making new discoveries and bringing them to the market. Mentors participate on a voluntary basis and do not receive compensation from the teams for their support during this program.
Guidelines:
Be a Coach, Not a Consultant. As a business leader, investor and/or entrepreneur, you bring great experience to this process. In other settings, you may act as a consultant and share your experience and valuable opinions on what will and will not work. But we’re asking you to step out of that role for this program. Instead, we want you to encourage teams to find the answers on their own. So, instead of saying “I tried that before, it won’t work,” you might say “you should talk to these people…” and let the team discovery from the market what will or won’t work.
Support the Customer Discovery Process. We’re asking the mentors to work with the teaching team to support the customer discovery process. If a team offers an observation, the Mentor should help challenge them on whether this is something they think or something they learned from talking to five (or more customers). In addition, we’ll be working on techniques and tactics for customer discovery – including good ways to ask questions. As a Mentor, your role is to understand that process and help the team develop skills and good habits for their customer discovery work.
Help Open Doors. Team will be challenged to meet with 40 customers, and they’re going to need help. The Mentors should help them think about who to meet with and provide introductions if possible. Obviously, your contacts are valuable to you. In making an introduction, you’re risking your reputation, and the teams will be asked to respect that important investment that you are making in them.
Respect Confidentiality. Mentors will not be asked to sign a formal non-disclosure agreement. This process should focus on the customer more than the team’s technology, so teams should be able to avoid detailed discussion about the technology that could potentially compromise intellectual property rights. Even in the absence of a formal non-disclosure agreement, the teams will be more effective if they can work amongst themselves with an expectation of confidentiality.