#004: Helping people help each other
Part III: Reflections and What's Next
Today’s edition is about a 8-minute read. If you’re in a hurry, here are the takeaways:
This is the last of three posts about RISC’s mentorship project, where we want to make it easier to start mentee-driven mentorship programs. In this post, I’ll share some reflections and tell you where the project is heading next.
Reflecting on this journey so far, I wish I had done some things differently. If I ever lead another software development project, I plan to (1) put a working product into people’s hands as soon as possible, (2) keep the initial product simple and focused, and (3) create commitment devices.
We are excited to continue building our tool, and the path ahead is full of opportunities. Our upcoming pilots span multiple universities and serve populations from economics students to Latino students. There are also new use cases for our tool, including mentorship that revolves around events rather than ongoing programs.
To say our idea another way, we’re making it easy for communities to build directories that help people seek advice from people with more experience. If everything goes right, my dream would be that a directory exists for every community, and anyone going through a hard experience would be able to find a relevant directory and talk with someone. I want to help build a world where people everywhere are helping each other by sharing their lived experience.
If you are interested in building this world with us, I would love to chat.
This is the last of three posts about RISC’s mentorship project. Here’s a recap of the story so far.
We came up with an idea: build a web tool that makes it easy to start mentorship programs that empower mentees to find mentors for themselves. The matching process in current mentorship programs creates a suboptimal experience for mentees for three main reasons: (1) matches sometimes don’t work out, (2) mentors have limited lived experience, and (3) it’s hard to switch mentors or find additional ones. By flipping the matching process on its head and letting mentees pick their own mentors, mentorship programs can alleviate some of these challenges. There aren’t great tools for building mentee-driven mentorship programs, so we thought we could build a tool ourselves. Read more about the idea here.
We built a working product in partnership with an amazing group of student developers and piloted our tool in multiple communities. Nova worked with us to talk with potential users, create mockups, respond to feedback, and deliver something that people could actually use. Three different programs serving three different populations saw value in what we were building and tried it out. While the pilot results varied, we showed that our tool can work, and we did social good! Read the full story of building and piloting the tool here.
In this final post, I’ll share some reflections on the journey so far and tell you where the project is heading next.
Learning things the hard way
Looking back, I made a lot of mistakes. If I ever lead another software development project, here’s what I will do differently.
I will put a working product into people’s hands as soon as possible. It took about 8 months from our first conversation with a potential user to the day we finished developing the tool. During that time, we were showing people what the tool could look like, and people were telling us how great it looked. When it came down to using the tool, just three of those programs acted on their words. If I could go back in time, I would have picked a handful of our earliest potential users and asked to build them a new website. Some would have probably said “no” right way, but that would have been great. That would have been a clear signal about who actually wants our tool. For those that agreed, we would have gotten them using something within weeks instead of months. Their feedback would have been based on real use, not perceived use; people aren’t good at imagining themselves in hypothetical situations. With feedback from building websites for a handful of programs, we could have done a bunch of learning now, rather than 8 months from now. And we could have finished our initial product with some confidence that people would use it and with a better sense of who our core users would be.
I will keep the initial product simple and focused. It’s super easy to get swept up in the excitement of developing new features, but you’ll build a product that strays from your initial vision. In our case, we talked to a lot of mentorship program leaders who were excited about how our tool could potentially alleviate the challenges of running a mentorship program. They suggested that our software could help with other program functions, like announcements, events, and matching surveys. We had a gigantic list of product features on our roadmap, and we ended up with features on our tool that nobody uses. We didn’t need features for applying to programs or making fancy home pages; people can do those things with other software tools easily. There weren’t tools for creating community-specific directories, and that’s where we should have focused our product. The extra features made it harder to start using our tool and scared away potential users.
I will create commitment devices. RISC doesn’t care about making a profit, but I fear that not charging people may have devalued our tool. At the very least, it’s easy to back out of using a free tool. I’m a trusting person, so I figured that people would act on their words when they said that they would test our tool. In a world where people have limited time and energy, it was easy to get pushed aside, and we ended up with a lot less pilot data than we’d hoped. Although we still don’t charge for our tool, we try to have people sign a non-binding “agreement” saying that they will test our tool and provide feedback. We hope this will help internalize the commitment and generate more follow-through. In the future, I would not be opposed to taking a “social good deposit” or doing other things to get people to stick to their word.
What’s next for the project
We are excited to continue building, and the path ahead is full of opportunities. Since our three initial pilots, we have partnered with many new communities. In the coming months, our tool will be used in:
A nonprofit connecting Latino professionals with Latino college students
An alumni mentorship program for veteran college students
Two organizations connecting panelists with college students
Two business fraternities facilitating coffee chats for new members
A mentorship program for diversity in STEM
And hopefully many more communities!
As we talk to more communities, I am surprised by the new ways that people imagine using our tool. Several of our upcoming pilots aren’t mentorship programs at all, at least not in the typical sense. One organization is holding a panel related to careers in financial technology. After the panel, panelists will create profiles on the tool and hold coffee chats with interested students. This is classic networking in a lot of ways, but hopefully our tool levels the playing field for students who wouldn’t typically feel comfortable networking. And the mentorship is happening around one event, rather than an ongoing mentorship program.
As more people use our tool, we’ll be able to make improvements and clearly identify our target use cases, whatever they may be. At the end of the day, we are trying to enable mentee-driven mentorship, and we may find some interesting ways to do that beyond where we started.
Help us build a more helpful world
To say our idea another way, we’re making it easy for communities to build directories that help people seek advice from people with more experience.
My dream would be that a directory exists for every community. Imagine walking into a college campus and finding easily accessible directories of people ready to help you with your questions about your major or your identity. And they wouldn’t just exist on college campuses, anyone going through a hard experience would be able to find a relevant directory and talk with someone. I want to help build a world where people everywhere are helping each other by sharing their lived experience.
If you are interested in building this world with us, I would love to chat.
Until next week,
Noah