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Comment by codewithcheese | Hacker News Reader

"Correlation does not imply causation". That these founders are mentored by very successful people is not proof alone of the value of mentoring. It seems like mentoring is very powerful, but the fact these founders have access to such successful mentors may say more about the environment these people are founding their company, rather than the quality of mentoring.

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I think it's more than just correlation. Mentors are usually well-connected people that can remove roadblocks and help in more ways than simple mentoring. The valley is incestuous and it's difficult to succeed as an outsider.

When I joined my current company, the CEO was mentored by an extremely well-connected individual. He'd previously been a CEO of a large Silicon Valley company and was on the board of at least one company that was considerably larger. While both our CEO and him would likely say that the arrangement was solely for mentoring, the end result was that we were acquired by the company that the mentor had formerly led. What started as partnership talks, facilitated by the mentor, quickly turned into M&A.

Much like a good VC will provide much more than money, a good mentor will provide much more than just simple coaching. Very few companies succeed in a vacuum, they need the right doors opened for them at the right times. Having the right connections opens those doors.

Stop misusing the phrase "correlation does not imply causation".

> While it is not the case that correlation is causation, simply stating their nonequivalence omits information about their relationship. Tufte suggests that the shortest true statement that can be made about causality and correlation is one of the following:

> "Empirically observed covariation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality."

> "Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint."

Well, unless you're in a extremely third world shithole, or you're some sort of ridiculous statistical anomaly in the first world, the true secret to success is (and was) always determination, hard work, and patience. Unfortunately, it's not much of a secret, it requires a lot from the individual, it stinks of republican ideology, and therefore isn't a very sensational topic to write a tech-crunch hype (redundant) article about. Plus, on some level, it offends people's idea of fairness and causality because there is some in-determinism involved such that 80 units of hard work on say Mark Zuckerberg = billion dollar public corporation, while 8000 units of hard work on you = only a humble small business.

What else is in the "environment" that could be helping? It's made of people.

Perhaps the successful entrepreneurs share another interesting trait. This trait is detected by good mentors, which leads to a correlation between entrepreneurs being successful and having good mentors.

the statistical term is sample selection bias. to test the importance of mentors you'd need to figure out some way to compare to groups of start-ups which are identical in every way except access to mentors... which i can't think of a good way to do... maybe if you could find start-ups that had been accepted by the same vcs.. so maybe one vc gives more money the other vc had more 'mentor's then you might be able to reasonable estimate the effect of vcs... but even this isn't great.

I was referring to more than just the mentor. Such as the ideas, practices and culture of their peers.

You are still describing a mentor.

I am also describing their competitors, teachers, parents and adversaries

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