MENTORING AT NET PROPHET SPARKUP!

Personal & Lifestyle
piece written on the 10th May 2015 by  

Yesterday I had the privilege of being invest to be a mentor at the Net Prophet Sparkup! event. As a mentor, startup founders had 20 minutes each to talk to us about their business models and ideas, and in return we were to advise them on various matters and act as a sound board.

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The event was incredibly exciting and hugely inspiring, and I what really put the cherry on the top was when the co-ordinator (Permjot Valia) asked the startups if the mentoring was useful and of the startups who answered, my name was raised a few times as being someone they learnt a great deal from and were inspired by. For me this was a massive deal, it’s the first time I’ve been invited to an event like this and truth be told, I was rather nervous. But hearing my name come up validated my knowledge and made me realise that I really do have a good amount of experience and am capable of educating and inspiring.. two incredible things to do!

I spoke directly with 4 different startups and I feel it’s only fair to give each of them a bit of a punt here. They’re looking for investment and connections, please reach out to them if you wish. I’m not going to go into too much detail about them as I want to keep what was said during the sessions as private.

  • Ksenia Mardina – Gummie (Hand-picked travel experiences)
  • Neo Hutiri & Vinu Nair – GenBox (Evolving the courier industry)
  • Rewald Drinkwater – TyreNet (Disrupting the tyre industry)
  • Julie Anderson – Erato (Trend delivering fashion experience)

Once the mentor sessions were over, each of the startups pitched their businesses to the other startups and some of the mentors. This was really exciting and it was a very open session in the sense that after a pitch, the pitch was discussed and advice was given. The whole idea here is to get the founders to a position where they can pitch tonight and then several of them are selected to pitch live on Monday evening to actually stand a chance to getting investment!

I had such an incredible time and I really hope that I’m given the opportunity to do it again soon.