A couple weeks ago, I interviewed MentorMob's Vince Leung in my own startup, TigerStartups, a social blog for entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts with a focus on the growing and influential Asian American community. I have been getting great responses from the interview and I would like to share this conversation between Vince and I with the greater Chicago tech and business community.
From TigerStartups:
Recently TigerStartups profiled MentorMob and in our time researching MentorMob, we couldn’t help but want to learn more about the people behind this bold startup, whose goal is to completely change the way we research and learn on the web. Since we can’t really interview everyone that works at MentorMob, we asked MentorMob if one of their co-founders, either Kris Chinosorn or Vince Leung would be brave enough to be in our Hot Seat. Happily they said yes to our interview request and it was decided that Vince would be the hero by saving Kris from the Hot Seat.
If you haven’t heard or read our previous article about MentorMob, here is a short summary. MentorMob is a Chicago based startup that allows users to curate online content into step-by-step lessons on any topic, called playlists. Playlists could be anything from how to make apple pie, martial arts self training tips, to math lessons. In short anything can be made into a playlist. Again to learn more about MentorMob, go to our article or their website.
Okay now that you have a better idea about MentorMob, lets go straight to the Hot Seat with Vince Leung!
Can you tell me how you and Kris Chinosorn started MentorMob? Was it a light bulb moment or something more gradual in your conception?
MentorMob is the brainchild of Kris Chinosorn and myself. We started down at University of Illinois where Kris maintained his hobby collector, gaming creativity, and I was an engineer. We worked on several startups together, leading to MentorMob.
The light bulb moment was after my experiences with CouchSurfing.com, an online community where travelers connect with local volunteers who are willing to offer free accommodations. Inspiration hit when Chinosorn asked, “If there are people willing to let a ‘stranger’ stay in their home for free, why wouldn’t more experienced people be willing to teach less experienced people how to do something they love to do for free?”
When you guys decided to ‘just do it’, how scary was it? Did you guys go all the way in, i.e. quitting your jobs, dipping into your savings or did you go in more slowly? Looking back was that the right thing to do?
When I took “Step Zero” by quitting my cushy corporate job last year to work full time on a tech startup, I was certain about only one thing: with careful planning and support, the rewards of this venture would far outweigh the risks. It was definitely the right thing to jump at the time we did.
I know Kris is the CEO and you are the COO but tell me more about the division of labor between you and Kris. How did you guys choose your positions?
With Kris being more of the hobbyist and collector along with his extensive background with the PayPal Mafia we knew that it was right for him to lead the creative business development end. While I am an engineer with several patents from my time at HP and Motorola we knew that leading the development and operations was the correct fit.
How many people are working for MentorMob right now? How do you guys find your talent? How do you keep your talent?
10 are working with MentorMob right now. We believe in a very strong company culture leading us to find each of our employees through our network of peers or universities. Due to the high selection process we ensure that each person working with the MentorMob team is just as passionate as the founders for the main mission of making Learning Free and Accessible to the Entire World.
MentorMob has a bold statement “MentorMob is an internet startup whose vision is to make education free for the entire world within the next 4 years.” How are you going to do that? More importantly why do you want to do that?
Education is a right not a privilege! This is our motto. And with that we know that most people learn online now due to the accessibility, cost, and variety of content. Typically, whenever someone wants to learn how to do something, from how to play the guitar to how to learn social media for their business, they turn to Google. The problem is you're presented with millions of results and have no idea where to start and the order to go through the results. MentorMob provides a platform for the community to curate the best online content to learn any topic, to go through in an organized step-by-step format. The community is able to organize any online content from any article, video, PDF, other format with a link found on the Internet or personal content that can now be uploaded. These playlists can then be shared via social media, email or embedding into current websites/intranet systems.
I personally think the idea of playlists is a great idea, especially for educational purposes and even for simple consumption for everyday use. However there are always great ideas that do not go far and failed. What are all the things that made you believe that this is it - “This is why I wake up every morning and get going-- to make MentorMob a GREAT company!” ?
The team makes me wake up every morning and get going. I know that we have an idea, but it is the team who is the creativity, development and marketing behind MentorMob fueling the successes. We succeed together and we fail together!
What is the MentorMob culture like? Give us an example of a day in the office for your team?
I am most excited about the culture that we’ve built. We work hard to play hard. A typical day is starting around 9 with a French Vanilla pot of coffee brewing while each team member loudly enters! We group together to go through all of the weeks successes and opportunities and then brainstorm on how to keep driving successes. After a long morning of heads down working and a few nerf darfs flying around, we take a break in the afternoon for a muscle competition... pushups, squats, all goes here. We like to have fun to keep the creativity, energy and passion flowing!
Tell me what your number one passion outside of business is.
Traveling
If you could do something else besides running MentorMob, what would it be?
Mentoring young entrepreneurs
If you had to choose between Jeremy Lin asking you to be on his entourage or running MentorMob, what would you do?
For sure running MentorMob.. this is a lifetime opportunity to change the way people learn and eventually I’m sure the opportunity to hang with Jeremy Lin would come in time!
