Mento

There is a version of executive coaching that most people have quietly filed under "nice to have." A standing calendar invite, a warm conversation, a few notes you never look at again, and a line item that finance eventually questions. Mento, a Los Angeles company founded in 2019 by Jamie Albers and Alex Marcus, is built on the premise that this version is a waste of a good idea - and that the good idea is worth rescuing.

The rescue attempt has two moving parts. The first is who does the coaching. Mento staffs its network with people who used to hold the job the client is currently struggling with - former C-suite executives, VPs, and directors from fast-growing companies. The pitch is uncomplicated: someone who has already shipped the product, managed the reorg, or missed the number can shorten the distance between a problem and a decent answer. Mento says it accepts roughly 0.5% of coaching applicants, which is either a marketing number or a genuine supply constraint, and probably both.

The second part is what happens in the room. Mento calls its approach the 80/20 methodology, and the ratio is the whole point. Roughly 80% of a session is coaching in the strict sense - asking questions, creating space to reflect, handing the client ownership of the answer. The remaining 20% is mentorship, where the coach breaks the fourth wall and says, in effect, here is what I would do. Pure coaching can leave people circling; pure advice can make them dependent. Mento's bet is that the mix is more useful than either extreme, and that the mix is a product you can standardize.

What separates Mento from the softer end of the category is a refusal to let the conversation drift. Sessions are meant to attach to real business outcomes rather than open-ended feelings, which is a polite way of saying the coaching is supposed to show up in someone's actual work. That is a harder sell to a coach and an easier sell to a CFO, which tells you who Mento is ultimately talking to.

If you're a leader or manager, Mento is the neutral room your own org chart can't give you. You get a 1:1 coach who has already navigated the reorg, the hard conversation, or the promotion you're reaching for, plus a structure that turns vague ambition into something you can actually work on between Tuesdays.

If you run a team or a company, Mento is a way to scale the thing everyone says they want more of - real development - without hoping each manager figures out coaching on their own. The company frames healthy career development as one of the strongest predictors of performance and retention, which reframes coaching from a perk into a retention line.

If you're in L&D or People Ops, Mento is a vendor that publishes numbers: 98% of participants call the coaching worth the investment, 93% report stronger performance afterward, and coaches average 4.94 out of 5. Whether those numbers survive contact with your own cohort is exactly the experiment the platform invites you to run.