Mentors, Startups and Incubators

Incubators and Accelerators are ubiquitous terms in every Entrepreneur’s daily life.  While liquidity is critical to most entrepreneurs and raising money is high on the agenda for sustainability and scalability, decision making involves much more than a fundraiser and this is where mentorship, network access and having a champion for your company also become essential choices to make. Incubators, as well as Accelerators, provide a safe ecosystem for startups, are network connectors and provide capital access.  Often times, however, the terms ‘Incubators’ and ‘Accelerators’ are used interchangeably and sometimes are viewed as competing with each other without any real reflection on what strength each can bring to the table for the entrepreneur. Mentoring platforms Granted, there’s more than one area where an overlap exists between the two and it’s hard to draw a defined line that separates the two, but there is merit in knowing the difference. It is important for ...

A startup incubator is a collaborative program designed to help new startups succeed. Incubators help entrepreneurs solve some of the problems commonly associated with running a startup by providing workspace, seed funding, mentoring and training. The sole purpose of a startup incubator is to help entrepreneurs grow their business. More than 1,200 startups came up in 2018, including eight unicorns, taking the total number to 7,200 startups, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM)  But another report has suggested that 90% of the startups are finding it hard to survive even one year. The report suggested that the number of IT startups in the country has slumped to 800 in the first nine months of 2017 from over 6,000 in all of 2016. The main reason for these startups failing is: Lack of uniqueness The study, titled ‘Entrepreneurial India’, states that while the market evaluation of Indian startups has grown in the past four years...

There are broadly four things that you need to look for while choosing a mentor for yourself. It’s not as simple as ABCD instead it is as easy as: CDEF-Compatibility, Diversity, Expertise, Faith. Compatibility Your mentor is somebody with whom you’ll be operating closely with. you have got to be compatible with this person otherwise the link will feel strained or forced. It will take a touch of your time to urge to grasp somebody, therefore don’t discount a relationship too quickly, however, concentrate on any cues that would indicate long-run conflict. Don’t be afraid to voice your issues or finish the link. the likelihood is you and your mentor ar each feeding an equivalent approach. Online Mentoring Platform If you’ve been appointed a mentor through your company or a program, you’ll want you have got to stay there with the person. Most of the time that’s not the case, and if you confirm to the corporate why you don’t want the mentor-mentee relationship are going ...

No, Business mentors are not at all useless. And here are 10 reasons to change your thought: Online Business Mentors 1. Mentors provide information and knowledge. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” When I was starting out, I had no idea what was involved in running a business, including making a business plan, budgeting, handling daily operations, making strategic decisions or running a marketing campaign. With a mentor there from the start, I tapped into a wealth of knowledge that got me up to speed faster and shortened that learning curve. 2. Mentors can see where we need to improve where we often cannot. Moviemaker George Lucas noted, “Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults that we would like. It’s the only way we grow.” They will always be brutally honest with you and tell you exactly how it is rather than downplay any weaknesses they see in you. This constructive criticism that my mentor...

FORTIMATES It's time to secure our identities! The days of worrying about annoying spam are behind us. People are getting emails that look official, from a realistic company email address, requesting some form of action; the trouble is, they are not real and they can lead to loss of data, loss of money, or both. E-mail is widely deployed, well understood, and used to communicate with untrusted, external organizations, it is frequently the target of attacks. Having a vigorous, operative email security solution has been a requirement for most organizations and Individual’s today. It is the concern of every single individual to protect themselves and for the organizations their clients’ and their employees’ sensitive personal identifying information. Not doing so can amount to a costly breach that can wreak chaos on an organization, resulting in lost money, damaged reputation and a series of layoffs. Security breaches continue to happen each year, d...

Let’s name this person Mr.X Mr. X can follow these 6 pointers to start his own business. A. Scribble down a 1-page business plan. To get started, Mr. X should create his own simple, one-page business plan that is a high-level overview of the small business you’re about to start. Define your vision. What will be the end result of Mr.X’s business? Define your mission. Different to a vision, your mission should explain the reason Mr.X’s company exists. Define your objectives. What are you going to do — what are Mr.X’s goals — that will lead to the accomplishment of his mission and his vision? Outline your basic strategies. How is Mr.X going to achieve the objectives he just bulleted? Write a simple action plan. Bullet out the smaller task-oriented actions required to achieve the stated objectives. www.mentorbox.net.in B. Fix a budget. We highly recommend Mr.X keep his costs as low as possible, he’ll still need to determine a budget and how much he’ll...