Mentor Matching, How Does That Work?
Posted by Sean Lindsay on Mon, Jan 03, 2011
It's clear from the initial response to Founder Mentors that there is a large unmet need for mentorship in the Boston startup community and we're excited that you're giving us the opportunity to help address that need. Unfortunately the initial demand was greater than we anticipated and I suspect we're not going to be able to help everyone right away, so I figure we owe you some visibility into the process.
A few weeks ago we emailed all of our entrepreneurs asking them to complete an information survey (if you didn't receive yours, check your email, including your spam folder, it's not too late to submit) and now the matching process begins.
Based on the information provided by entrepreneurs in their information surveys, we're identifying potential matches and sending each mentor a personal list of potential matches. The mentors will then read through the submissions and select one or more entrepreneurs to match.
Once a match is identified someone from our team will make an email introduction between the mentor and entrepreneur and your mentor cycle will begin. Stay tuned for another post soon about the mentor cycle and how to make the most of it.
In the event that you're not matched with a mentor during this initial wave that doesn't mean we won't be able to help you. We're adding new mentors all the time and we will keep your application open to those mentors. And of course, as the first mentor cycles wrap up, your application will remain active for mentors as they free up. The best thing you can do is continue to work to move your startup forward and feel free to resubmit your application should your status change in a way that might improve your match-ability.
Just like our entrepreneurs' startups, we're in the early stages of our efforts and expect to learn a lot from our customers. So, consider this a "beta" release of our process and please don't hesitate to contact us with feedback.
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