Mentors typically share tacit knowledge in accelerators, which is the wisdom they’ve built up over years, mistakes they’ve made, or expertise they have accumulated. The unstructured approach of mentoring, as compared to workshops, training, or classes, leaves the way open for this more serendipitous opportunity for founders to benefit from the mentors.
Mentor networks are also weak tie networks, being made up of a diverse group of people not all connected with each other, not connected with the founders, and often only distantly connected to the accelerator. Weak ties are people you do not know well, and because you do not share many contacts, they are more likely to know information or people you don’t already know.
During the lockdown, mentoring looked like it would be more challenging. Typically, accelerators invite mentors in to meet the founders in person, often to spend a day doing mentoring sessions with each startup, or the cohort as a group. As the AWRC accelerator has been launched virtually, we could not all meet like that.
However, we have found that doing video sessions has freed up the program from the constraints of location and travel. Mentors and startups can meet as and when suits them, regardless of where they are. We have also been experimenting with a mid-week coffee meeting with our founders and a few mentors.
Consequently, only 12 weeks into the program, we are pleased already to have organised 208 mentor interactions. An interaction is an engagement between a founder and a mentor. Getting a lot of engagement is key to creating value through the program, and whilst it is aimed to support the startups, it benefits the mentors and partners too, as they learn about new innovations in this sector.
We now have 69 mentors, and 13 startups on the programme. We have slowed down our acceptance of startups so that they will now join in groups of 5 per month. This is in order to allow the AWRC engineers to have time to review each startup and define a program within the AWRC. However, we have the next 5 applicants lined up to join soon, and plenty more in the pipeline. It is exciting that we have received such interest from startups, and that promises to lead to a strong cohort of around 25 startups by the end of the programme in March next year.
About the author
Dr Tobias Stone, advisor to the AWRC program and expert on the social networks of accelerators has written about our mentor network. You can read more of his writing about accelerators here.
About the AWRC Wellbeing Accelerator
The AWRC Wellbeing Accelerator is a rolling programme running from April 2020–March 2021. It will support startups, academics and businesses working in wellbeing with mentoring, sector expertise and specialist facilities.
To apply, and for more information, please visit: www.shu.ac.uk/wellbeingaccelerator
