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Mentor Advisory Council
Become a mentor or mentor team leader
Mentors are the cornerstone to the success of business incubators. A collection of the dedicated, knowledgeable businesses people acting as mentors to your startup and emerging businesses, providing guidance and assistance as well as overall support translates into successful startups that leave an incubator program and grow on their own. INC.spire needs business mentors; those with startup operations experiences or solid business experiences ready to support those just starting out on their own.
Become a part of a mentor team
Critical to the success of each incubated company are the mentors that are made available to them to guide and assist their early business development. Historically, as has been the case with the INC.spire program, a primary single mentor is assigned to each incubated company and additional resources are drawn from a bank of mentors as needed for special disciplines and requirements as they come up in the operations of the incubated company. This has proved to be a heavy drain on each primary lead mentor and often posed needs from the incubated company that went beyond the mentor’s individual area of expertise or comfort. The requirement to find additional appropriate resources proved problematic.
Put your own mentor team together from your own circle of contacts
In the new model, mentor teams will be pulled from the contacts of the lead mentor team member or from the bank of mentors available to create a small team mentors with a broader set of skills and experiences than found with only a single mentor. This team will work together with the incubated company using the resources within their team as seen fit. It is anticipated that each mentor team will be made up of four professionals each having a primary expertise and focus in legal, finance, sales and marketing to include web management, information technology and human resource/operational fields. Where possible each team will have an industry focus (i.e. government, commercial, finance, manufacturing, etc.)
Become part of the Mentor Advisory Council
Mentors will come from the ranks of the Greater Reston Chamber membership and will be asked to complete a mentor profile that will help categorize their expertise and make team assignment easier. Mentors that choose to be lead mentors may if they choose bring their own team into the program drawn from their own network of business associates. For larger firms that choose to be involved in the mentor program more than one lead mentor or a single mentor may be assembled from the company’s professional staff. This allows a company to get involved with more of their staff and to have a greater impact on the INC.spire program. In essence each mentor team would manage their own schedules with the incubated company, reporting once every quarter, on the progress of the company to the INC.spire board of directors by way of a formal report and twice a year in the form of a board presentation and review.