About
The CREATE-X Mentorship Program gives industry veterans, experienced entrepreneurs, and successful alumni, like you, the opportunity to serve as a mentor to Georgia Tech students participating in CREATE-X Startup Launch. Startup Launch is a 12-week summer program for students and alumni who want to launch their projects from idea stage (or beyond) into fully functioning and viable startups.
Mentorship enables you to give back to students, who will greatly benefit from your business expertise. With your guidance, aspiring entrepreneurs can shape their business idea and bring it to market. After your 12 weeks of mentorship concludes, you have the opportunity to continue serving as an ad hoc advisor to your teams, should your schedule allow.
In addition, by becoming a mentor, you are instantly embedded into the Atlanta startup ecosystem at the ground floor. If you are looking to fund a fledgling company, CREATE-X gives you the opportunity to observe the student-founded startups from the beginning, allowing you to tap into the innovation occurring on Georgia Tech’s campus.
Expectations
Mentors are expected to respond to their teams’ requests for meetings and make themselves available for two hours per week. Meetings can be in-person or over Skype, FaceTime, phone, etc. Mentors will be interacting with young entrepreneurs and should make a clear effort to be positive and direct in their feedback. Separating opinion from fact will also be very useful to the startups. Mentors will also have the opportunity to attend events such as weekly speaker series, Product Day, Demo Day and other social events to interact with their mentees.
Mentor Matching
After Startup Launch teams are finalized, a list of available mentors will be shared with all teams. Information on the mentors such as where they work, areas of interest, and contact information will be available to students. Similarly, a list of startups in the program, with a brief description of what the startup does, will be shared with mentors. Teams and mentors then rank who they want to work with, and a matching system will pair them. The teams will reach out to the mentors as soon as they are matched to initiate a regular-touch point schedule.
"CREATE-X’s Startup Launch program is an amazing experience for entrepreneurs to pursue a balance of rigor and creativity to solve meaningful problems. The breadth of coaches, subject matter experts, and resources provided to the entrepreneurial teams via this program are extensive. As a result, we have seen many teams move on to become successful businesses that are reshaping the way products and services drive value throughout the world."
Michael Buchanan
Senior Lecturer, Scheller College of Business