Mentors, Startups and Incubators

1. Mentoring is simply for folks and businesses in  hassle Using a mentor is not a weakness, but a form of professional development. If you were employed in a corporate environment the company would give you continuous development, but business owners don’t have anyone to give them feedback, which is where a mentor comes in. Mentoring is essential for every stage of business development from thinking about an idea, starting-up, through to expansion. This can be anything from mentoring young people in schools to working on the ground with charities.  “A good mentor will show someone how to take the right steps to where they want to be.” 2. You need to be very old to be a mentor Age is irrelevant, but in business mentoring you need a substantial experience which you need to prove, to join Get Mentoring (archive), a project that aimed to train people to become business mentors. “Experience and the ability to listen to matters most. People set up the co...

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...

ONLINE MENTORSHIP A business incubator is a company that helps startups and new businesses accelerate their growth and success. Incubators do this by providing support in a variety of areas including management training, office space, capital, mentorship, and networking connections. The main purpose of an incubator is to help startups at a very early stage to grow. They are collaborative programs which help people solve problems associated with launching a startup by providing a space to work, seed funding, mentoring, training, and other benefits. Many business incubators support small businesses or startups. So, if you’re looking for a “small business incubator,” you’re likely simply looking for a “business incubator” that provides support for business infrastructure, training, and capital. Note that business incubators are different than business accelerators. While incubators exist to nurture the growth of a new business, accelerators are generally geared towards helping...

Redefining mentorship online Whenever a person starts a new avenue, a new business or anything new, then the experience they have is relatively less and there is a need for someone to be by their side who is experienced and has a gist of know-how of the business. Someone like a mentor that can guide them through their journey. Online mentoring platform “The traditional definition of a mentor — someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person — needs to be both updated and broadened for today’s workplace.” — Susan R. Meisinger, former president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management But in this fast-paced digital world, it is very hard for a mentor and mentee to meet regularly and discuss the strategies to be used in future business aspects. So the need for an online mentorship form where the mentoring process can be done at ease is the need of the hour. There should be tools available in the online mentoring platform li...

There is no award-winning way to start a startup. But here are some tips that can prove to be successful. 1. Document all your ideas You might wonder how to capture what you have learned in your college day. The notes prepared in the process of education many a time are the most important reference documents in your life. They form the stepping stone for your career and a basis for your career guidance further. Advancement in your career needs to store and use these notes as and when required. The contents of the notes prepared to come from various sources like the professors’ lectures, presentations, course materials, reference books and for that matter even snippets from articles, journals, and papers. NOTES DOCUMENTATION 2. Find a mentor for yourself Early on, graduate students learn that advanced study differs vastly from their undergraduate experience. As undergraduates, the goal was to obtain knowledge, while in graduate school the goal is to contribute knowledg...