Hey HN community! We are Ben and Rune, founders of Mentorcam (https://mentor.cam/), a marketplace where people can access public figures and high-profile individuals for personalized 1:1 advice. These types of individuals tend to be difficult to access and usually don’t make themselves available for advice to people they don’t know, but often get bombarded with inbound requests. By letting them set their own price to answer questions privately via short, asynchronous video messages on our app, we make it feasible to offer individually tailored advice without having to schedule anything.

For example, one of our mentors is Chris Yeh, a VC and the co-author of Blitzscaling. He uses Mentorcam to give fundraising advice, feedback on pitches, input on GTM strategy, etc. to people that wouldn't have access to him otherwise.

Users have told us that they’ve had the most impactful "conversation" of the their life on Mentorcam and that they’ve found the inspiration to fight through difficult phases of their life through their interaction with their mentor. Our customers have used Mentorcam to do things like get fundraising advice, decide on where to go to college, transition careers, and find a girlfriend. The latter surprised us, but demand for dating advice has turned out to be high, even though it's not the main thing we're focused on.

Happy to answer questions and read comments!

> From the "never give up" point of view, I've changed my mind, thanks to books like The Lean Startup, Blitzscaling, and my own experience.

It depends on whether you're giving up on the process or the goal. Startups "give up" or pivot on their original and subsequent ideas so often that's it's considered a best practice. This is different from founders giving up on starting a business.

Like you mentioned, the habit is what matters.

I used to think like this. At it's core, it's a variation of "never give up", mixed with "the power of habit".

I agree with "the power of habit" part.

From the "never give up" point of view, I've changed my mind, thanks to books like The Lean Startup, Blitzscaling, and my own experience.

The bottom line message seems to be "keep insisting and you'll be successful". I spent 3+ years working in a game that never took off as a side project. In hindsight, I should have taken the hint of the lack of traction early on and dropped the whole thing. Instead I sank countless hours into a project that never worked out. How many prototypes could I have produced in the same time?

Bottom line, habits are good, so long as we don't mix it up with the concept of "don't give up and you'll be successful".