What Do Startup Mentors Do? Founders’ Perspective on Entrepreneurial Mentoring Functions

Although formal mentoring relationships become increasingly popular and are crucial to new venture performance, the composition and configurations of mentoring functions received by the founding teams are relatively unexplored. In this study, we introduce an inventory of mentoring roles that goes beyond their traditional understanding, and clarify their importance for the new venture founders. Building on fieldwork in 37 new venture teams seeking to establish formal mentoring relationships in an acceleration program, we uncover a function of new venture support that is prioritized by the founders over psychosocial support and role modelling. Surprisingly, we uncover that founders expect their mentors to assume the investor role in the long-term, therefore, we also discuss the implications of mentor-investor role duality for developing and sustaining formal mentoring relations. Overall, we add insights to the mentoring and entrepreneurship literatures on what team-level mentoring functions, especially in the context of uncertainty and complexity, shape subsequent entrepreneurial mentoring relations.