[runelohrhauge]

Hey HN community! We are Ben and Rune, founders of Mentorcam (https://mentor.cam/), a marketplace where people can access public figures and high-profile individuals for personalized 1:1 advice. These types of individuals tend to be difficult to access and usually don’t make themselves available for advice to people they don’t know, but often get bombarded with inbound requests. By letting them set their own price to answer questions privately via short, asynchronous video messages on our app, we make it feasible to offer individually tailored advice without having to schedule anything.

For example, one of our mentors is Chris Yeh, a VC and the co-author of Blitzscaling. He uses Mentorcam to give fundraising advice, feedback on pitches, input on GTM strategy, etc. to people that wouldn't have access to him otherwise.

Users have told us that they’ve had the most impactful "conversation" of the their life on Mentorcam and that they’ve found the inspiration to fight through difficult phases of their life through their interaction with their mentor. Our customers have used Mentorcam to do things like get fundraising advice, decide on where to go to college, transition careers, and find a girlfriend. The latter surprised us, but demand for dating advice has turned out to be high, even though it's not the main thing we're focused on.

Happy to answer questions and read comments!

[danpalmer]

What's the expectation about the depth of question and response?

Given the example of the feedback on a pitch, would the mentor be expected to watch a 10 minute pitch in full?

If I were looking for feedback on a 10 minute pitch, I think the most valuable feedback would be in the form of a 15-30 minute discussion with the person so that you can clarify, dig, and get to the necessary depth.

What sort of reply length are you considering? For the prices I'm guessing this is closer to a 30s-5min Cameo video?

[runelohrhauge]

These are great questions. In the fundraising example, the mentor wouldn't watch the pitch in full, but instead answer specific questions around a pitch, for example what valuation cap to set, KPIs to highlight, when to raise and from whom etc. The typical interaction goes beyond just one question and answer. The duration of each response is capped at 3 minutes but a mentor can respond with multiple recorded messages. The biggest reason we haven't started offering live calls yet is because of scheduling challenges; that said the asynchronous format is just a start and we are thinking about other formats and features for future releases.

[danpalmer]

Glad you’re thinking about all of this. I personally can’t imagine getting a useful response in 3 minutes to a one sentence question. I suspect it’s either going to be generic advice not tailored to me, or an answer that I could have just looked up.

That said, connecting these sorts of mentors for longer form feedback/input, or perhaps customised talks for companies, that could be really impactful and you’ll have a good platform on which to build those.

[runelohrhauge]

The duration of the responses will be increased to 9 minutes on the next release. We have received feedback from some of the mentors on this and have observed some mentors sending more than one response to 1 question. That said, the experience is meant convert into as a dialogue, which it often does.

Customized talks for cohorts os users is an excellent idea. What type of talks would you like to see, just out of curiosity? Pre-recorded, customized sessions, and live videos with groups that can send in questions have been discussed.

[danpalmer]

We've had a few guest speakers in to do talks at my workplace (~50 people) – it's usually something fairly informal and off-the-record/private, so they have been extremely high value as you get the sort of detail that doesn't tend to make it into generic talks on YouTube. Often these have taken the format of a "fireside chat" with one of our senior people, plus audience questions, for a total time of about an hour. Now that Zoom/et al are so commonplace I could see us doing this over video conferencing as well even though they've historically been in person.

To my knowledge we've never paid for these sessions – they're mostly "friends of the company", investors, CEOs from other companies in our investors' portfolios, etc, but assuming the price wasn't extortionate or the topic area was an important one, I could see us paying for this sort of thing. Again, to my knowledge, the speakers haven't prepped for these explicitly in the past so the time commitment would have likely been small, apart from travel.

[runelohrhauge]

The fireside chat concept could work well. Especially if the folks in the audience don't have access to these opportunities otherwise and can sigh up individually. Thanks for sharing these ideas Dan!

[yunusabd]

Congrats on the launch! I haven't tried it, but a few questions come to mind:

1. Isn't mentoring more of a long-term thing, where you interact regularly and the mentor is invested in some way in your success? To me it looks more like one-off advice, maybe this could be called "micro-consulting".

2. How do you ensure the quality of the replies? For example, I can imagine mentors giving canned responses without going into the specifics of your individual case.

3. Kind of in the same vein, do you provide pointers for asking a good question? Asking good questions is an art in itself, I can imagine it's difficult for a lot of people and greatly influences the quality of the reply.

[runelohrhauge]

Thanks! These are all great questions. My responses below:

1. A large portion of the purchases are repeat and some of our mentees are more than 50 questions (100+ messages) in with their mentors. It does raise the question of offering bundles vs a subscription bases model for repeat use, which is something we are experimenting with at the moment.

2. The mentees get to rate their mentors after they receive a response and we spend time with each mentor during onboarding to make sure they understand the importance of a personalized experience.

3. This is an extremely good point. We do provide question prompts and bullet point the types of questions each mentor can answer. We are still experimenting with this to find the optimal solution. We track this by looking at the conversion rates and the types of questions that result in actual transactions (users are prompted to type in or record a question in advance).

[yunusabd]

Just seeing this now, great response! This basically answers all my questions. The only thing I'm left wondering is if somebody has been cheeky enough to list their mentor as an advisor or some kind of endorsement on their website.

Come to think of it, this could be another source of revenue down the road: After x sessions you can request an endorsement, at the mentor's discretion, which you can then use e.g. for marketing or fundraising purposes. Just an idea, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities once you really get the ball rolling. Good luck!

[runelohrhauge]

Very cool idea. There is a fine balance between maintaining the authenticity of these types of endorsements and making them available for anyone to request. I do like the thinking behind this though. Thank you!

[reilly3000]

Great idea! I think it would be a neat UX if mentors could have a drop-in (iframe) widget they could put in their contact page, link tree, or other common contact points. "Looking for advice?" That would make it easy to funnel those types of requests into paying customers, but perhaps more importantly cut down on their volume of inbound requests. I see you already have a decent stable of mentors- how have you recruited them so far and how do you plan to expand the network?

[runelohrhauge]

Thank you! The widget definitely makes sense--right now, we give each mentor a unique link that directs to their profile page on a browser, which we encourage them to share in social media profile bios etc. The early mentors all came in through our own outreach. Now we are getting about 50% from referrals and inbound requests.

[legutierr]

Congrats. Can you explain what the confidentiality rules are for participants in your platform? Will everything that is shared be held in confidence? Is there an agreement that you ask people to sign?

[runelohrhauge]

The conversations/exchange of messages are private between the mentor and mentee. The identity of the mentees and their questions are never shared without prior consent. Mentors and mentees agree to terms that protect their privacy. We ask that mentors accept the terms before onboarding.

[wizwit999]

You mentioned interest in dating advice is high but I would be wary on how to approach that, it could 'cheapen' the feel of your platform (it was a slight turnoff for me).

Good luck.

[runelohrhauge]

Thanks for the feedback. Our observation has been that people primarily seek out mentorship to help them make decisions and offer guidance on topics that affect them on a personal level. We have kept the categories where we see users coming back frequently and dating seems to do that because the advice tends to be personal by nature. I hear you that it is very different that career type of advice, though. Appreciate the input.

[djsamseng]

This is awesome. I’m telling everyone about this.

[runelohrhauge]

Thanks so much! If you want to learn more hit me up and if you know of anyone that would be a fit as a mentor we do have referral program.

[hizxy]

Cameo for mentors.

[runelohrhauge]

We get that comparison quite often because of the asynchronous format. One big difference is that most mentorship experiences are repeat and evolve over time.

[dvdsgl]

Congrats on the HN launch, Rune!

[runelohrhauge]

Thanks Dave! :)