Mentors Collective - Hello World!

[eladmin]

Dear all,

Thank you for your insightful questions and comments during Celo Governance call today (the recording should be available soon here). We greatly appreciate your engagement and are eager to address your concerns.

Budget Transparency: We are committed to transparency, and in line with that commitment, we are pleased to share our detailed budget timeline spreadsheet. This resource provides a comprehensive breakdown of our financial plan and allocation.

Duration of the Program: Regarding the 6-month duration of our program, we want to clarify a few key points:

1. Quality and Impact: Our primary focus is on the quality and impact of our mentorship. We have designed our operations and budget to ensure that we can maintain and extend our program if necessary. This means that if our impact metrics and community demand dictate, we are fully prepared to continue beyond the initially planned 6 months.
2. Collaboration with Celo Ecosystem Organizations: As outlined in our proposal, we are actively engaging with other Celo ecosystem organizations such as Prezenti, Credit Collective, Climate Collective, ReFi DAO, and regional DAOs. This collaborative approach allows us to provide support to their community founders seamlessly. We do not require lengthy setup time before we can begin operating within these partnerships, which further justifies the 6-month timeline.
3. Gradual Scaling: Our operational plan includes an initial phase where we will support 10 founders during the first month. We will then gradually scale up our operations. This phased approach aligns with our commitment to maintaining the quality of mentorship throughout our program.

Benefits of the 6-Month Duration: The 6-month duration offers several advantages:

1. POM Success Metric: It provides us with sufficient time to conduct a meaningful number of mentorship sessions, allowing us to gather data and prove the success of our Proof-of-Mentorship (POM) metric. This data will enable us to approach the community for follow-up funding confidently.
2. Founder Progress: Founders often need time to implement the insights gained from mentorship and make substantial progress. The 6-month duration ensures that we can support them effectively through this crucial phase.
3. Post-Mentorship Support: It allows us to create post-mentorship takeoff delegations and demo days. These initiatives are vital for continuing support after founders have received mentorship, contributing to their long-term success.

We invite all community members to join us for a meeting next Tuesday at 16:30 CET. During this session, we will provide further insights into our proposal, answer your questions, and engage in meaningful discussions. Your feedback and participation are invaluable to us.

Thank you once again for your thoughtful feedback and support

[ericnakagawa]

Hi folks, jumping into this proposal today but speaking personally:

About me - In the past, I previously founded and built 6 companies and successfully sold 2. I have mentored, coached, and advised 300 startup founders, 40,000 new and seasoned developers, and 350 young and aspiring founders since 2007 (500 Startups, Blue Startups, Facebook’s FbStart, Facebook’s Developer Circles, Nalukai Future Founder Program, Purple Mai’a, DevLeague, and MissionBit). I am a firm believer in the power of mentorship and giving back to the community.

Of the mentorship programs I have participated in, I have never been paid to do this work. I do not think paying people to be mentors is the right approach for the Celo Community or any healthy startup community. This proposal describes something more akin to Paid Business Consulting and Matchmaking dressed in altruism than traditional mentorship. Examples of more normal free mentorship programs include programs like SCORE.org, a US service that offers free matchmaking and mentorship.

The most common desired outcome as a mentor is the good feeling coming from using your expertise and experience to help young teams navigate tricky technical or business challenges. In some cases mentorship can lead to formal advisory roles. There can also be opportunities for angel investing. These outcomes vary with the mentor, the team, the stage of the company, and their needs. These outcomes will still happen, and can provide considerable upside, so paying mentors seems wasteful if the mentor’s ultimately goal is an advisory or investor role.

I suggest the community reconsider the use of these Community funds at this time and also consider the timing of this proposal. With the ongoing Governance Sprint effort underway by the Community members like Luuk to provide clearer accountability for proposals of this exact nature, this proposal feels rushed to get it through before the timer runs out.

Ultimately, I think the Celo Community should be cautious to commit the requested funds until better accountability measures are in place.

[eladmin]

Dear Celo Community,

We have some exciting updates and invitations to share with you!

We are thrilled to announce the addition of two new members to our Advisory Board, who bring valuable trust to our initiative:
Nadiem Sissouno, Head of Economics at Mento Labs and Felix Marchart, Investment Partner at Greenfield.

Holiday Founder Circle
As we embrace the holiday spirit, we invite you to join us for a special Founder Circle event next week. The topic is “Predicting the Unpredictable - L2, Blockchain & Growth.”

It promises to be an insightful and engaging discussion, and we look forward to your participation.

Date: Wednesday, December 20th
Time: 15:30 CET
Join Here

Proposal for Voting
We have published our proposal for funding, and your support is crucial to our mission. You can find the proposal here. We kindly request your consideration and vote in support of our initiative to empower Celo founders and drive the growth of the Celo ecosystem.

Thank you for your continued support and partnership. We’re excited about the journey ahead and look forward to working together to make the Celo ecosystem thrive.

Happy holidays!

[mbarbosa]

Had the opportunity to sit with Elad few weeks ago in Berlin, at the Celo offices, share some thoughts about my perspective/experience doing/receiving mentorship, and how I think it can be improved. I shared at the time that I’m mostly supportive of this proposal and would be interested in being a mentor.

But, there are a few things I would like to share:

• Frequently, the best potential mentors would be the more experienced or successful individuals, where time/availability is a significant constrain. Which does not mean the mentor would not be interested if there is an opportunity.

• Everyone has opinions. A lot of “mentorship programs” are based on a few hours sharing feedback or advices about the project or entrepreneur. If there is no strong alignment between the mentor experience/passion and the entrepreneur product idea/vision, it can become a kind of “trap” to create more uncertainty and damage focus.

• Mentors vs Advisors: Both mentors and advisors provide valuable guidance. Mentors tend to focus on overall personal and professional development, whereas advisors offer specific, often specialized advice within a more formal and goal-oriented framework.

• Unlike advisors, mentors usually are not paid or exposed to the mid/long terms results for their time/support (which sometimes can influence their commitment or willingness to be available). In this proposal, not sure exactly how mentor will be compensated and under which conditions, but having it conditional to time, the entrepreneurs feedback, and perhaps some specific achievements, could make sense.

I understand some of the concerns raised by @ericnakagawa where trying to monetize this kind of “special” relationships between mentors and entrepreneurs can “blur” its “karma” or the honesty about why it is done. A positive side of the traditional mentorship is the fact it can be a great “filter” of mentors for the entrepreneurs, where the mentors that really liked or believe in the entrepreneur’s potential would care and commit to support its development, which can lead to a potential advisory role, strategic partnership, or opportunity to get exposure to the business at a much early stage.

But, at the same time, I believe there is a lot that can be improved. Overall, I think that POM approach can be a good starting point to iterate on a mentorship framework and experiment some creatives mechanisms to drive efficiency, build a stronger individual & collective commitment, while aligning incentives.

[eladmin]

Thank you all for your valuable comments and insights regarding our mentorship proposal. We appreciate the thoughtful discussion and are committed to addressing your concerns.

Firstly, we understand and respect the sentiment expressed by @ericnakagawa regarding the traditional nature of mentorship being driven by the desire to give back to the community and help young teams navigate challenges. We wholeheartedly agree that mentorship should primarily be about sharing knowledge and expertise for the greater good.

However, we’d like to emphasize that our proposal aims to bridge the gap between early-stage projects and experienced mentors within the Celo ecosystem and Web3. Our focus is on building trust and fostering a deeper understanding between mentors and founders. Recurring personal meetings are at the core of our approach, allowing mentors to become intimately acquainted with the project and its unique challenges.

We believe that for mentorship to be effective, it needs to be structured and recurring and some form of compensation is necessary. This compensation helps align the mentor’s commitment and time with the needs of the project, especially when there’s an ongoing, substantial commitment required.

Additionally, there are many unique challenges specific to running a Web3 project on Celo that require industry knowledge and expertise. These challenges go beyond what generic or cheaper advisors platforms can provide. We also recognize that not all Celo founders come from the leading tech hubs of the world. Many are from regions where access to experienced mentors may be limited. Our approach seeks to address these specific challenges by connecting founders with mentors who possess the industry-specific knowledge necessary for success in the Celo ecosystem.

In a bear market, many experienced professionals have moved away from the Celo ecosystem. We aim to incentivize their return and encourage them to contribute their knowledge and experience to the community, while also bringing new experts into the Celo ecosystem and supporting them. By valuing our mentors’ time commitment, we hope to retain their expertise within our ecosystem.

The terms “mentorship” and “advisory” are indeed interchangeable in many cases. Our main objective is to support founders through 1-on-1 recurring meetings, regardless of the terminology used. We appreciate the feedback provided by @mbarbosa as well. Your perspective on the availability of experienced mentors and the need for aligning incentives is valid.

We value your feedback and concerns, and we remain committed to creating a mentorship program that empowers Celo founders, supports the growth of the ecosystem, and fosters meaningful relationships between mentors and entrepreneurs.

[ericnakagawa]

Can you share more about how much people will be paid as part of the Mentor Packages and for the Speed events? I still find the budget request quite dubious.

And again, though I am firmly against paid mentorship I do think the general intention of the program is good.

My second more pressing issue is with your timing of this proposal being so close to clearer accountability.

Can the Mentors Collective wait until January? Why the rush now versus 30-45d from now?

[eladmin]

Mentors’ compensation varies between €150-200 per hour for the mentorship packages. Each speed mentorship event aims to include 10 mentors who receive €150 for their valuable time and expertise. It’s important to note that within the mentorship packages, we have included an overhead margin to cover the necessary support and preparation required by both mentors and our team for each package.

Regarding the timing of our proposal, we made a commitment to our mentors to commence working with founders at the beginning of the year. Delaying the proposal by 45 days until the governance process concludes would mean that, in the best-case scenario, we might secure funding in March. As of now, the initial outline of the Celo Governance Proposal does not specifically address improving accountability measures. Nevertheless, we want to assure the community that we are fully committed to enhancing our accountability.

To further demonstrate our commitment, we have introduced milestone-pending funding through Hex Trust and have involved trusted figures from the Celo ecosystem in our advisory board and as mentors. These steps are aimed at ensuring transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of community funds.

[bowd]

Hi @eladmin, thanks for the proposal! As part of the Celo Governance approvers, I checked the proposal’s on-chain part. I noticed that the Safe provided only has two owners instead of the three mentioned in the proposal.
From an approver’s perspective, it’s important that the intent of the proposal matches the technical side and what’s on-chain. I recommend adding the third person to the Safe.

[eladmin]

Thank you for flagging that. It was an honest mistake and we just added Reuven to the multisig.