mentors can change your life. they certainly changed mine.
* i've had many mentors i'm grateful to: my mom, dad, paul graham, my yc batchmates, nur (eurasian hub ventures), ankit gupta, and more. but james and i met again after almost a year, so i decided to write about him.
this essay is about one of my earliest mentors and friends, james he, co-founder of artificial societies (yc w25). i've wanted to write it for a while, but we met again today, and it left me unusually happy. i've been turning the same questions over and over in my head lately, especially due to the amount of stress right now, and talking to him made them feel smaller.
i met james in 11th grade, on february 11. i was hungry asf for advice from people who were even slightly ahead of me, so that night i cold-dmed more than 50 founders. james was one of the few who replied. he gave me thoughtful advice, and then agreed to talk on a call. my questions were practical and slightly embarrassing in hindsight: what hosting should i use for the first version of the product, and how do i get early feedback without fooling myself?
we called the next day. within 15 minutes, it felt like we were speaking the same language. james also had the kind of background that sounds fictional when you say it out loud: he left china as a kid, moved to new zealand at 14, rejected $500k while building an edtech startup at 17, and later studied behavioral science at cambridge, where he was a top student. we clicked fast, and he offered a $5k angel check on the spot.
that offer didn't just help financially, but more like an opening of a new dungeon in a video game. it made the whole thing feel more real, and it pushed me to take what i was building more seriously. i doubled down, built harder, and applied to every accelerator i could find. over the next months, james kept helping in the quiet way good mentors do: quick reality checks, a few pointed suggestions, and a couple intros at exactly the right moments.
a few months later i quit school and moved to london. around the same time, he had just finished yc and moved back to london too. we met at a pub and talked for hours. i remember exactly how it felt: like stepping into a larger world, fully lost yet crazy excited. he was only a few years ahead, but those years mattered. i was intimidated and happy at the same time, mostly because i could tell he understood the parts of the journey i hadn't reached yet.
we kept meeting on and off. the last time we met in london was when i raised my pre-seed and finally got to buy him dinner, at a korean place in soho. he was the first person i celebrated it with.
today, more than eight months later, we met again. we got dinner with his co-founder, like before, and i felt a sudden kind of relief. halfway through the meal, james looked at me for a second and said: "Look at you, you now sound like you've gone through so much fucking pain and experience that you're generally a different person now, yet you're only beginning because it's been less than a year."
that line stuck with me, partly because it was flattering, but mostly because it was true in a way i didn't want to admit. a year is not that long, but it can hold a ridiculous amount of pressure if you compress enough learning into it. there's something stabilizing about talking to someone who has already made the mistakes you're about to make. it doesn't remove the stress, but it compresses the learning. it can change how you think about hiring, building, and what to worry about, especially when everything feels urgent.
founders often don't listen to advice because startups are so counterintuitive. when you tell someone something counterintuitive, "what it sounds to them is wrong." founders only believe the advice after experience teaches them.
a mentor who's been through it can save you from expensive mistakes, even if you don't fully believe them until reality forces the lesson. as one yc partner told our batch: "They come back a year later and say 'We wish we'd listened to you.'" that's what makes a great mentor: someone who has felt the pain firsthand, and can warn you without pretending they can live the experience for you. there's a difference between someone who has scars and someone who just has opinions.
i've also learned that "mentor" doesn't have to mean someone who ran a public company for 30 years. in practice, the best mentors are often only a few levels ahead. it can be someone who graduated college recently and spent a year building and failing aggressively. if they're just far enough ahead to see what you can't yet see, they can help a lot, and they'll still remember what your stage feels like. that's the framework i try to use when choosing who to learn from.
to end, i want to quote something james told me today over dinner:
"You don't finish a huge burger by thinking about how big it is. You finish it by taking one bite at a time. Don't obsess over how hard the problem is. Just keep taking bites, and eventually it's done."
it sounded silly at first, but it's really advice about endurance. you don't need to feel brave every day. you just need to keep taking bites long enough for progress to compound. in paul graham's words: "A formidable founder is one who seems like they'll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way."
thank you to everyone who keeps supporting and believing in me. and thank you, james, for being one of the first open gates into the funniest and most stressful world of startups.