The biggest challenge for a startup founder is knowing where to focus. You’ve got to pitch investors, target the right customer, hone your business model and raise critical funding just in time. Your team is lean, the margin of error narrow. Yes, you can screw up some things, but there’s one task you can’t get wrong: you’ve got to pick the right, critical advisors or coaches, the ones who will keep you on track to accelerate toward your dream.

The commitment to coaching is serious business. Though startup coaching has boomed during the pandemic, many founders are turned off by high-pressure sales tactics, a lack of widely accepted industry standards, and as many amateurs as experts. To provide a flight plan for entrepreneurs, we interviewed coaches, founders and VCs to give you a sense of what to expect. As a founder, it’s your job to listen, adapt and act. (Read more.)

(This article was originally published in the February 14, 2021 edition of StartupNation.)