Know your worth

It’s one of my favourite weeks on this startup accelerator programme I run for Shell – Mentor Meets Startup.

A couple of days with fifty or so mentors meeting our 2024 cohort speed-dating style. They get to know each other for five minutes then move on. Then they select who they want to work with.

The startup founders are blown away by these corporate people.  Last year was the best quote from one founder faced with selecting just a handful: “I was like a kid in a candy store”. This year I asked one of our more well-seasoned founders who said “I want to work with every single one”.

And yet some of these mentors doubt themselves.  They cling to their current job titles and descriptions like that’s all they can do.  I encourage the founders to probe deep with the mentors: previous experience, interests, purpose, what energises them.  And in five minutes they can unlock treasure.

I also put on these exec fireside chats where we get someone pretty senior on a call to share their experience and advice for our founders.  This week it was the head of strategic partnerships.  I remember last year I had to persuade her – “will they really want to hear from me?”, she asked.  They were captivated. Just like this year.

The knowledge we corporate people have is so incredibly valuable and we don’t even realise it.

Partly because we go for internal jobs that aren’t worthy of us (“You’re too intuitive”) or only get as far as recruitment consultants who’ve never done our job and never could. Partly it’s because we assume everyone knows what we know.

But startups don’t. Smaller businesses don’t. Medium sized businesses don’t. You know, the other 99% of businesses….in the UK 8,000 private sector businesses have more than 250 employees – of 5.5M total businesses (just 0.14%). And how many of those are what we’d think of as ‘corporate’? A few hundred at best.

And you know what? They’re a lot easier to work with – you might get paid within a fortnight like I do from one client. You might work directly with the CEO as I do for another. You might – sit down for this – have impact.

And, even better – they are actually grateful for what you can do, what you know, your effort.

I love corporate people I really do – I slotted right into Shell because I feel at home there.  But I also recognise their humility, their naivety and the way they under-value themselves – and it makes me a bit sad.

Because one day they will leave – or they’ll be forced to leave. And I hope by then they’ll have read my book and they’ll leave knowing their value – and have created options to unlock it to serve them even better.

It’s one of the reasons I put so much effort into this startup accelerator. It’s partly because I want to give these startups some unfair advantage because I failed to do that at bp. It’s partly because I believe that together corporates and startups can save the world. And it’s partly because I want those incredible mentors to see and practice the value they create for others – and to know their worth.

That gives me real purpose.

And because it’s a corporate gig, it pays the bills too!