No mentor. There was an awful lot of trial and error, learning on the job, reading a lot of books and just being as self aware as possible to be honest. If you’re in a similar position, we would say it’s important to not underestimate yourself (whilst having a really level headed view of your own abilities etc) if you’re really obsessed with what you do and you really love it we think. It’s also important to not over complicate things (usually by overthinking and not getting enough done).
If you are obsessed, then you are likely to have a very good gut instinct too, you can learn to trust it to a very good extent whilst understanding you’ve obviously got a lot to learn. Confidence and humility in a start-up is really intriguing and there is definitely a balance somewhere!
By the way, speaking to the RIGHT people (or, seriously even reading / listening to good podcasts) with experience of doing similar things before can definitely be so helpful in terms of knowledge, experience etc and you’d be a fool to think otherwise. It can make you realise things potentially years earlier or just give a really good sense of perspective. The skill is finding and believing who the right people are.
We will always give bits of advice or perspective if it’s asked, based on our extremely small amount of experience, but we have much more to learn before officially mentoring. We can also imagine the best mentorship’s happening quite naturally though to be honest…
The amount of information available online is also unbelievable, what a time we live in…