VC4A is excited to introduce the new and improved Mentorship Marketplace – The upgrade you need to supercharge your business growth.
This update comes kitted with tools that improve speed, control and effective matchmaking between mentors and mentees. The VC4A Mentorship Marketplace allows startup founders access guidance from experienced business leaders, and creates the opportunity for mentors to inspire the next successful startup founder.
Why is mentorship important?
VC4A believes entrepreneurship is a key driver for development in emerging markets. Entrepreneurship drives economic growth. In particular, high-growth high-impact ventures working to develop important innovations, products and services introduce disruptive new models that are needed to transform and modernize traditional industries.
To ensure that these startups realize their potential, it is imperative that founders have access to quality mentorship. This is where VC4A (and our Latin American focused ES2 Latam initiative) leverage digital technology to crowdsource and connect a global network of experts to support these ventures.
Through mentoring, business professionals offer more than just access to business opportunities and capital. They create value for startups by sharing the knowledge, experience, and network they’ve gained over the course of a career. Effective mentorship can help;
- Develop the capacity of founders and startup teams.;
- Improve ability to execute and to achieve business and impact objectives;
- Share network and expertise for the growth of the company;
- Borrow from experience to help the company navigate the market and to avoid pitfalls;
- Improve the company’s chances of success!
Every mentor is driven by their own incentives and motivations. Tap into their own interest to maximize value and improve the chances of a successful outcome.
The big changes
As part of our mission to connect transformational entrepreneurs to resources they need to succeed, the need to develop access to soft capital for these startup founders in emerging markets seeking guidance to navigate the tough business climate became the missing link on the road to raising capital.
The Mentorship Marketplace Version 1 was built to demystify mentorship for early stage startups, helping them understand what kind of guidance they need for what stage of their business, and finding suitable mentors with verifiable compatible skills. Our first attempt at this saw a successful match of three thousand mentees to 500+ experienced business leaders within our network with proven value that contributes to the success of both mentor and mentee. Today, we’re proud to introduce the new and improved VC4A Mentorship Marketplace.
What’s in this update?
- Engage exciting founders, learn about new markets and models,
- Build your own skills as a mentor by mentoring ventures suitable to your skillset,
- Possibility to charge for your time if desired,
- Maintain control. Ability to set schedule preferences for mentorship requests
How to apply to become a VC4A mentor
- Go to mentors.vc4a.com/onboarding/ and fill in your personal information on the bio-data page;
- Fill in your professional experience which will help suitable mentees better find you;
- Finally set your mentor preferences, submit for review. Once approved, you can start to enjoy your VC4A mentor privileges.
How to connect with a VC4A mentor
- Visit mentors.vc4a.com/profiles/ to check out all available mentors
- Use the search filters to find a preferred mentor who fits your needs
- Await approval of your request from the VC4A team and your mentor
- When accepted: Enjoy your mentoring relationship!
Ready to take the next step? Visit mentors.vc4a.com to get started.