Good Match

This chapter focuses on the role of serial entrepreneurs, business angels and investment analysts, policymakers, lawyers, business school professors, and top executives acting as mentors. While they share their experience and invest considerable time in advising entrepreneurs, their interactions do not always lead to resource exchange. This, I propose, requires the construction of a “good match” emerging from a shared understanding of the situation and the media of exchange, as well as overcoming how Seal, as a third party, frames the interaction and redefines initial roles. I develop this argument by uncovering Seal’s relational infrastructure cemented by expertise, reputation, and behaviors of “giving back.” Mentors are presented as resource holders and redefine entrepreneurial needs according to their subjective experience. Entrepreneurs, by contrast, are resource seekers, but negotiate this role by presenting themselves as resource holders. For the exchange to unfold, entrepreneurs and mentors interpret and accommodate their roles to match the relationship, transaction, and media and negotiate the initial power asymmetry.