Ask HN: Can you ask someone to be your mentor? How do/did you find one?

[arthurquerou]

I read a lot about how a great asset it can be to have a mentor when you want to be an entrepreneur. Today as a young entrepreneur (20yo), I'm asking myself if I should have a mentor. I know a lot of people in the business and I would love to have someone especially as a mentor, I often talk to him, he gives me some advices but it's not mentoring though. So I'm asking HN the question, should I ask him to be my mentor or just see if it comes up some day, how do people do usually ? Is it different whether it's in the US or in Europe ? Also if you have a mentor, how did you find yours ?

[orangethirty]

The best mentor is having a daring attitude. Dare to do things and learn from them. No one can teach you what you get from that. If you want to learn a bit more about business (real stuff, not book fluff), I have a project on github that is focused on me sharing knowledge gained from more than 15 years of doing business and software/startups. Check out my profile for the link.

[Nikolas0]

Having people helping you with their ideas (or challenging yours) is mandatory in entrepreneurship. That being said I think the best way to have your mentors is to actually ask them to be advisors in your startup.

You will have to pass them some equity on your startup but you're going to gain knowledge and maybe prevent a few mistakes.