Journal
Honest reflections on mentoring founders, running cohorts, designing programs, and the lessons that only come from doing the work. Written by Rohan Shah.
New entries published when there is something worth saying. No schedule. No filler. Just honest writing.
Latest Entry
Nine founders walked into a room in Ahmedabad today. Five startups. Eighteen months ahead of us. The F+ Assessment starts tomorrow. I have done this informally for years — but today, for the first time, it felt like something was truly beginning. Not a program. A commitment. To them. And theirs to each other.
Read the full entry →Everyone asked: why not charge? It would be easier. More predictable. But easier for whom? The fee model protects the mentor. The equity model protects the relationship. When my income depends on your success, I cannot hide behind advice that sounds good but does not work.
Read more →I have learned to start every engagement the same way — by not talking about the startup at all. The first conversation is about the founder. What they are carrying. What they are afraid of. What they think they know but have never tested. The business reveals itself once the founder does.
Read more →120 questions did not start as 120 questions. They started as 300. Then 200. Then I threw them all out and started again. Every question had to pass one test: does the answer reveal something the founder cannot see on their own? If it does not, it does not belong in the diagnostic.
Read more →Every program in the ecosystem is scaling the number of startups in each batch. Fifty. A hundred. Two hundred. We chose five. Not because we cannot do more. Because depth requires constraint. You cannot mentor a hundred founders and call it personal. You can mentor five and mean it.
Read more →We ran the full F+ Assessment on all five startups in the first week. The patterns were immediate. Every single one scored lowest on the same two dimensions. I am not going to name them here — but I will say this: the gap founders think they have is almost never the gap the diagnostic reveals.
Read more →Most mentorship creates dependency. The founder keeps coming back because they need the mentor. That is a failure, not a success. The goal of Founders+ is to build founders who do not need Founders+. Every session should move the founder closer to independence, not further from it.
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