Yea this Plato thing seems pretty bizarre and I completely agree that it's silly for the mentors to use it. Maybe there's a small value of just meeting people through it, but I think existing meetup groups can solve that problem pretty well.

The quibble I have with the author: if this was a for-profit company that _hadn't_ taken VC funding, would he be more OK with donating his time to them? I think his objection makes sense regardless of company taking funding and I don't think he needs to keep emphasizing them taking funding to get his point across.