> > Join it on Freenode. Â Hopefully there'll always be a few people lurking in > there ready to just have a good conversation. >
This generalises tobest an interesting (technically and practically) meta-problem. One-on-One mentoring is one of the value added services that experienced angel investors offer to startup founders. I refer you to http://www.dr-smith.info/6-tips-on-finding-the-right-mentor/ However, survivorship bias means that the ratio of non-burnt-out serial entrepreneurs to aspiring founders is very lop-sided, and it turns into a mob around the superangels or equivalents like Y- combinator. There is also the problem with the rapidly changing technology scene that experience might be out of date (half life of knowledge). Read http://venturehacks.com/archives esp http://venturehacks.com/articles/vertical-markets Peers are good for social support and perhaps even tapping for technical assist but the risk is that you end up in an echo chamber. It also doesn't help when so many talented Australians have gone overseas so unless you're awake at 3am, probably not likely to get the best expert advice. Actually if you are coding at 3am they'd be so impressed they'd probably help you anyway but the point I'm trying to make is that the supply and demand is badly matched. This meta-problem has actually been studied, Nash looked at equilibriums such as marriage partners. But a more recent example looked at the marketing design which is the engineering side of game theory http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6502.html Roth has determined that successful marketplaces require three key elements. "They must be thick, uncongested, and safe," The practical problem at hand was matching kidney doners with recipients, thus whilst you might have 2 willing parties, because of incompatbility it wouldn't occur. However, Roth found that you could thicken the market by identifying double coincident of wants (read the Harvard Business blog). This would occur when say a coder might have a hacker mentor and a entrepreneur might know investment banker. So an exchange could be done with "trade" of services with coder getting finance advice and entrepreneur getting some web design. I aluded to congestion above where stellar reputations mean that certain advisors are more in demand than others. This will always be the case, even in open source projects where whilst there may be plenty of testers or coders, professional lawyers are in short supply (EFF aside). Examples of safety is internship though I like the CompSci term reversible. Roth blog notes In order to beat the competition, firms are offering jobs to students before they even begin their second year of law school—and demanding that the students decide immediately. This leads to a safety issue, in which both a student and a firm are committing to a decision before either has a real inkling of what kind of lawyer the student will become in two years. This may be the case where students are persuaded to work for a company at trade fairs without realising their character is more suited to independent creation, making both sides unhappy. So far, I haven't seen any useable structured software artifact to solve the meta-problem of matching entrepreneurs with mentors. As such, it is an opportunity for an aspiring startup to tackle. Lawrence http://goo.gl/maps/GsN1 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
