Jason M. Lemkin emphasizes the importance of finding one or two great mentors to avoid costly mistakes. He recounts a personal anecdote where lacking the right mentor led to poor decisions during a transition—specifically a damaging shift in a partnership with Salesforce that affected 10–20% of their customer base and may have influenced a decision to sell.
But whatever it does, be a heat seeking missile and find one or two great mentors that you can work on. The couple Tough decisions a year I have made three or four terrible mistakes, often in transition moments. I've talked to multiple people but I haven't. I've lacked the right mentor and come to the wrong conclusions. The mistakes I made. If I just had that one great mentor to provide me that magical insight. Jason, here's why you should do this or shouldn't do this. The upside could have been insane folks, but that's not really the point. The point was it was it was a tough blow. We had 10 or 20% of our customer base came from Salesforce. And to think all of a sudden the the game was no longer going to be equal. That we were. That we were going to be competing with our partner, that they were going to recommend Docusign over us was a huge body blow that maybe in some ways led to us deciding to sell. But you know what? And it was a real blow.
