Building up entrepreneurs is an uphill battle no matter when you start, but the success of budding entrepreneurs increases significantly when they can gain insights and guidance from a team of experienced and dedicated mentors.
In StartupTree’s August Webinar, we were thrilled to host Louis Goldish, Senior Advisor at the MIT Venture Mentoring Service (MIT VMS). As a leader in the MIT VMS ecosystem, Louis is uniquely positioned to share a model for mentorship programming that is highly effective and sustainable. To date, almost 120 colleges and economic development organizations in 26 countries, have been trained to use the model we will be describing today to enhance their entrepreneurial initiatives.
In describing the MIT VMS model, he addressed these key elements:
- Be very, very practical. Focus less on where a venture is going to be five years from now and more on where it is going to be five WEEKS from now.
- Mentor with a team of mentors.* Multiple mentors meeting with a venture all at the same time provide multiple perspectives and multiple types of advice.
- Let mentors volunteer to work with a venture rather than assigning them.* Most of mentors’ knowledge, and experience, and ability to help a venture is not reflected in just a resume or interview.
- There should be no time limit for mentoring a venture. The need for advice changes as a venture matures, but the need for good advice rarely ends.
- Have a formal, written set of rules and guiding principles that the mentors must subscribe to. Be a “safe haven” in which mentors are there to give the best advice they can. It should not be influenced by conflicts of interest or personal agenda.
- Work hard to make mentoring meetings valuable to for the mentees. This value is only aspect of your mentoring program that you actually can control.
* = At StartupTree, we have seen many programs succeed with both solo and ad-hoc mentoring! Our platform is designed to support ad-hoc mentoring where users can browse through mentors and book with them directly. Visibility into mentor-mentee interactions is key to how admins can stay on top of managing their program.
💡 StartupTree Tip: Engaging mentees with ad-hoc mentoring is all about successful program marketing! Make sure to highlight mentor expertise and open availability in your newsletter. Try to integrate your mentorship program with other intiatives when possible (i.e. as a component of your pitch competitions).
StartupTree Mentorship platform feature highlights:
- Schedule meetings directly on the platform
- View mentorship metrics at a glance
- Grant custom permission levels
- Send confirmation/reminder emails
- Centralize mentor/mentee communication in the platform
- Add goals and notes to meetings
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The following guide incorporates elements from the MIT VMS model, as well as StartupTree's best practices, to help you build a mentorship program for your community's entrepreneurs; one that will not only impact their current objectives, but last through the test of time.
How to Build a Sustainable Mentorship Program
How to Build a Sustainable Mentorship Program
- Make sure it's practical, long-term, and unbiased.
- Engage the right mentors.
- Consider your impact.
- Build entrepreneurs, not ventures.
- Start small and keep it organized.
- Mentor best practices
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1. Make sure it's practical, long-term, and unbiased.
1. Make sure it's practical, long-term, and unbiased.
There are a few key concepts to incorporate into your mentorship program.
- Have your mentors provide extremely practical feedback that will be helpful for the entrepreneur to succeed in the immediate 5 weeks rather than the coming 5 years. Roadmaps should keep the bigger picture in mind, but always stay currently relevant.
- Focus on building long-term relationships. As Louis Goldish put it:
Mentoring entrepreneurs is like raising children. They may need a lot more hand-holding when they are young, but even while they grow up, they will still benefit from their mentor’s wisdom and guidance. It’s also worthwhile to note that many of the entrepreneurs that you are helping to develop end up staying within your community.
- Provide unbiased advice to entrepreneurs. Mentors should have rules and regulations that they abide by. You should ensure that there are no conflicts of interest at any cost. This means that mentors cannot be looking for their next job or investment. Mentors also cannot be selling something to their mentees or others in the program.
- In general, mentors should be at arm's length from their mentees and their venture. If a mentee were to want their mentor to be more involved in their company, then they can be the ones to reach out and spark that relationship (but never vice versa).
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2. Engage the right mentors.
2. Engage the right mentors.
Selecting Mentors
Selecting Mentors
Selecting the right mentors is essential to making sure your program is providing real impact. You may want to go through a more rigorous interview process to select the right ones, ensuring that mentors:
- want to give back to entrepreneurs or their community
- have the time to commit to this program
- are willing to learn about new ways to approach a mentor/mentee relationship
- are not scouting for their next investment (particularly in the case of VCs wanting to be mentors)
Louis noted that:
💡 A mentor is a combination of a consultant and a parent.
They should be able to provide great advice, but they should also come to care deeply about the entrepreneurs they are mentoring. Once mentors are selected to participate in the program, they should be able to make a solid time commitment and agree to adhere to an agreed-upon set of rules.
Mentor Time Commitment
Mentor Time Commitment
A suggested time commitment for mentors can include regular meetings with their mentees, attending scheduled meetings with your program's mentors, and participating in training sessions on effective mentorship strategies, the importance of listening before advising, etc.
Unengaged Mentors
Unengaged Mentors
If you ever encounter an issue related to unengaged mentors, consider the fact that there may be improvements to be made either
- within your selection process or
- within your mentor training process
💡 A good general recommendation is to find the majority of your new mentors through referrals from other current or past mentors. This method proved to be most effective at MIT VMS.
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3. Consider your impact.
3. Consider your impact.
The impact that mentorship programs can have on entrepreneurs is life-altering and is something that mentors and team members should always keep at the front of their minds.
Louis pointed out:
💡The only aspect of your mentoring program that you actually can control is the meetings. A helpful team of mentors, formal meeting protocols, and paying close attention to the mentees’ needs and comments contribute to a meeting that is valuable to the mentees.
Well-served mentees will help spread the reputation of your program and attract entrepreneurs to your program.
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4. Build Entrepreneurs, Not Ventures.
4. Build Entrepreneurs, Not Ventures.
Mentoring is a people business
Mentoring is a people business
Though they may not know it, inexperienced entrepreneurs building a venture for the first time likely have a lot to learn about themselves before they can really succeed with their business.
Things such as their values, long-term goals, motivations, problems they truly care about, and so on all become much clear once you try to devote your time and effort to a single idea.
In fact, as Louis mentioned, “your mission should be to help build entrepreneurs, not to help build ventures.”
💡 Building a venture is the project that helps build the entrepreneur. Always keep that in mind.
Know how to bring value
Know how to bring value
Because these programs are built around self-development, it is only right that their success is gauged by the value being had by the entrepreneurs, not by the success of the ventures being developed.
Bottom line: if mentees are loving your program, you know you have done something right. Likewise, if you encounter an issue with mentees dropping out of your program after a short period of time, there could be several causes.
Common reason for disengaged mentees
Common reason for disengaged mentees
The number one cause for disengaged mentees is they are not gaining value from these meetings, which may be corrected by fixing your mentor selection process as described above or by improving your training sessions for mentors to help them advise effectively.
One KPI to base your program’s success on
One KPI to base your program’s success on
The one key metric you base the success of your program on is the quality of mentor-mentee meetings. For example, this can be based on a five-star rating submitted by mentees at the end of each meeting.
The entrepreneurs looking to benefit from your program should be able to dictate how helpful it has been for them in terms of personal and professional development.
💡 Make any and all adjustments to your program in order to get this rating as high as possible and you will be setting your community up for long-term success.
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5. Start small and keep it organized.
5. Start small and keep it organized.
Let the program’s value speak for itself
Let the program’s value speak for itself
The best way to start weaving mentorship into the rest of your entrepreneurial programming is to interview and take on a handful of dedicated mentors that will set you up for success. You don’t need that many ventures or mentors to get started. If you give good service, you won’t even need to advertise your program because the entrepreneurs that are gaining value from it will spread the word for you.
Start tracking early
Start tracking early
In order for things to run smoothly from day one, you should ensure that information is being tracked about:
- who your current and past mentors and mentees are
- what ventures mentees are working on
- who is meeting with whom
- when mentors and mentees are meeting
- how much value are mentees gaining from mentorship
You can gather some additional data from mentors and mentees directly, by asking mentees before they can schedule a meeting. Requiring questions an agenda and "What problems are you looking to meet about?" can help you get both more quantitative and qualitative data to track your impact.
An all-in-one software platform like StartupTree can help you better manage and track your organization's mentorship program. Check out the full list of our platform's features page here.
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6. Mentor Best Practices
6. Mentor Best Practices
If you are a current StartupTree customer, or you're thinking of adopting the platform to meet your mentorship programming needs, here are additional best practices recommended by us:
- Quality over quantity: build a small mentor base to make sure you have good mentors who are responsive and will work well with you. This also allows program managers to care for fewer mentors better.
- Clear and concise onboarding: feel free to repurpose this free mentor onboarding packet we've created for StartupTree customers to help keep get your mentors all set up
- Understand your mentors: know your mentors' interests/preferences (e.g. how many mentees they are willing to have, do they prefer specific venture types/stages)
- Take care of your mentors: get feedback on how mentors feel about the program, if the platform settings working for them, if they feel overwhelmed or they want more meetings, etc. If you are able, regularly scheduled meetings with all your mentors could be useful.
- Advertise mentorship sessions: highlight limited availability to create a sense of urgency. If you have too many mentors, rotate the highlighted mentors to give everyone visibility.
- Enable new connections: Have all mentors be an open resource to any of the entrepreneurs should they have a question specific to another's area of expertise. To do this within the StartupTree platform, add mentor request custom questions to know more about the student and analyze if the connection is appropriate (resume, background info, goals, etc.) before approving them.
- Keep things organized:
- Track mentors' current meeting preferences in case anything needs to be changed.
- Tag mentors with “Mentor” tag for ease of filtering/sending announcements.
- Leave your doors open: host an application on StartupTree for potential mentors to express interest.
- Trial run advice: if testing the StartupTree mentorship module for the first time, create fake accounts and contact our team to remove them. This will help keep your data accurate.
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About StartupTree
StartupTree is the leading platform used by top universities and organizations, to unlock the potential of ecosystems through data and the development of more robust networks. We power mentorship, competitions, events, and networking for participants to join, launch, or scale the next big ideas, while developing skills for their careers.
StartupTree is on a mission to democratize access to resources, including for underrepresented students and entrepreneurs.