Our offering to mentees
The IEEE FN Entrepreneurs’ Mentorship program works with technically sound and passionate about finding technological solutions for under-served communities. The Mentorship program supports technological entrepreneurs in their journey from idea to ready-to-go-market in acquiring seed funding or their first and/or next investment. For this purpose, the IEEE FN Entrepreneurs’ Mentorship program offers:
- Technical guidance and knowledge: Provide technical insights and expertise, validation of technological ideas and helping innovators navigate technical challenges and make informed decisions.
- Mentorship and knowledge services: Providing mentorship and expert advisory services across functions. Mentees will get exclusive knowledge, which include theme based sessions by Mentors on different topics such as finance, compliance, ethics, go-to-market strategy, communication and pitching skills, negotiation skills, and any other topics.
- Standards & Ethics support: Enable ‘technological entrepreneurs’ to think about new standards that can be derived from their technological products/solutions. Providing knowledge on matters related to technology ethics, while also helping ‘technological entrepreneurs’ earn professional development credits.
- Product-Market Fit and go-to-market (GTM) strategy: Enabling technological entrepreneurs to make their product ‘go-to-market’ from the inception of their idea or initiation of the product. Providing guidance to validate their business models to build scalable solutions
- Design and Manufacturing Support: Hands on operational support for commercial grade product development; assistance with designing, rapid prototyping and design for manufacturing. Providing expertise in translating working prototypes into impactful and marketable solutions.
- Networking and Investment opportunities: Providing network opportunities with investors and pitching their businesses, and product growth. Giving opportunity to participate in global events and meet with like-minded people, groups and organizations. Integrating them with the larger investor community that can now multiply the value proposition of these ideas.
Program uniqueness
- Offering ‘mentorship with mission alignment’ -which enables Mentees’ to access to a curated pool of mentors who understand not only deep technology but also impact-driven entrepreneurship, enabling sustainable and inclusive innovation.
- Opens a universe for ‘technological entrepreneurs’ to leverage its technical guidance and knowledge, explore to create new technical standards associated with their products/solutions, and provide connections with like-minded technologists, associations, engineers, investors and others.
- Able to connect 200+ IEEE member-led initiatives with financing and technological expertise and philanthropic guidance.
- Dedicated mentoring and practice, capacity building, network development that enabling pathway for providing financial support and angel investment.
- Enabling technological entrepreneurs with Accelerator programs to provide them funding/investments and for bringing long-term sustainability
The uniqueness of the IEEE FNEM program lies in its program strategic and delivery approach and its alignment with IEEE OUs, Programs, and Societies.
- Focus on multiple areas of entrepreneur needs catering to its Business, Technical, Community and Local and Global market
- Engaging diverse group of startups and entrepreneurs specifically from small and peri urban cities
- Creating pathways for first-time entrepreneurs and innovators to engage with mentors who mirror under-represented individuals, in order to make them feel more comfortable and engaged.
- First-time entrepreneurs and innovators to engage with 100+ mentors
- Tailored content applicable to address the needs and interests of first-time entrepreneurs and innovators
- Global exchange of learning and experiences to encourage local technological entrepreneurs to share their learnings, challenges and growth journey so that other entrepreneurs can learn from their journey
- Trace the learning path of Mentees and Mentors through our customized Theory of Change (ToC)
- One-to-one mentorship along with support from Lead Mentor Coordinator who is appointed to each mentee for providing support at each step in their mentorship journey and Secondary Mentors who will be guiding Mentees on technical insights along with business, communication and community insights
- Access to the program resources, including curriculum and assessment documents, research papers, standard documents, Dataport, etc.
- Opportunity to use IEEE tests lab https://testbed.ieee.org and others
- Encouraging mentees to develop new standards for their technological innovations with support from IEEE SA
- Providing long-term guidance and infrastructure to support technology roadmap activities through IEEE’s IRC and INGR
- Synergistic networking events (both virtual and in person) giving an opportunity to technological entrepreneurs to learn from each other as well as other mentors, and encourage a community approach that to keep all participants engaged.
