Your interpretation, I think, is off. The mentors I met ranged from intellectually superior, experientially superior (billion dollar companies under their belt, > 1 company), financially superior, operationally superior (in ability to speak or lead or execute), etc...
Some were my age, a few were younger, some were old, and others in their 30's.
Some "mentors" were more like peers - current founders that had grown beyond the "we are trying to make it" phase. Others were aloof. Some only cared about "being a mentor for Techstars" and not actually helping the companies. Others had little to provide except for enormous enthusiasm for what everyone was doing and hung out all the time.
I learned a select few things from our mentors that was really important (mostly about leadership and fundraising) and most of the other mentors were more of a sounding board that allowed me to hone in on a consistent, concise, and powerful story about my company and our product (which we really didn't have prior).
In one meeting you'll get lots of support for direction X and then the next meeting you could be met with a lot of skepticism for that same direction X. I learned quickly that absorbing the mentor's personal experience and then training a better story by telling it and observing how much of it they understand or don't understand or is picked apart by them.
What is being said here is that founding a company is hard. Having a sounding board is extremely important as an indirect heuristic and there are some things you can directly learn from some of the mentors.