How Mentors Track Founder Actions Between Sessions
Mentors track founder progress by ending every session with one to three specific actions, each with an owner, a date and the evidence that will show it happened, then opening the next session by reviewing that evidence before giving new advice.
By Javier Alonso, Founder (CEO & CTO). Updated .
Why advice gets lost between sessions
Most mentoring sessions end with good ideas and no record of who will do what. Two weeks later both sides remember the conversation differently, the founder has done something else, and the next session starts from scratch. The advice was not wrong; nothing connected it to action.
Tracking actions does not mean managing the founder. The founder decides what to do. The mentor's job is to make the commitment specific enough that both can tell, next time, whether it happened and what it taught.
End each session with agreed actions
In the last five minutes, agree one to three actions and write them down where both can see them:
- The action: specific and small enough for the time available, for example "hold five conversations with clinic owners", not "do more customer research".
- The date: usually the next session.
- The evidence: what the founder will bring back, such as interview notes, a landing page with numbers or a decision.
Ask the founder to state the actions in their own words. If they cannot, the session was not clear enough.
Between sessions: a short check-in, not supervision
A brief message halfway between sessions, asking what is done and what is blocked, catches problems early. Keep it to two questions. If a founder is stuck on something the mentor can unblock with an introduction or a quick answer, that is the moment to help.
Avoid daily follow-ups. Founders have many priorities, and a mentor who chases every task quickly becomes a manager the founder did not ask for.
Start the next session with the evidence
Open by reviewing each action: done, partly done or not done, and what the evidence showed. An action that was not done is useful information too; it may mean the founder disagreed, lacked time or hit a blocker. Ask which, without judgement.
Over several sessions, the record shows whether the founder is moving: more qualified customer conversations, clearer decisions, a narrower customer. Programs that collect the same record for every team can use it in their cohort reports.
Example
A mentor meets a founder every two weeks. At the end of the first session they agree two actions: interview five owners of independent gyms and draft a one-page offer. At the midpoint check-in the founder has held two interviews and asks for an introduction, which the mentor makes. The next session opens with four interviews held, a recurring complaint about failed membership payments and a revised offer focused on that. The mentor's advice now builds on evidence rather than on the founder's first idea.
For your role
- Founders
- Write the actions down yourself and bring the evidence, even when an action failed. It makes every session more useful.
- Mentors
- One to three actions, each with a date and evidence, is enough. Review them at the start of every session before giving new advice.
- Accelerators & incubators
- Ask mentors to record agreed actions in one shared place. It shows which teams are moving between sessions, not only in them.
Primary sources
- The Techstars Mentor Manifesto — Techstars
- The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick
Common questions
- How many action items should come out of a mentoring session?
- One to three. More than that and most will not get done before the next session, which teaches both sides to ignore the list.
- Should mentors follow up with founders between sessions?
- A short check-in halfway between sessions is useful: what is done and what is blocked. More frequent follow-ups tend to feel like supervision.
- What if the founder did not do the agreed actions?
- Ask why before moving on. The answer is often more useful than the action would have been: the founder may disagree with the direction, be short of time or be blocked by something the mentor can help with.
Put it into practice
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