Mentors: Building and Paying Your Network
Mentors are what most founders say they valued most, and what most centres track worst. This covers inviting mentors, how sessions get booked and recorded, and the five payment models that decide who actually pays for an hour of someone's time.
What you will learn
- How to find and invite mentors to your network
- The five association statuses a mentor moves through
- The five payment models and which to choose
- How subsidies, free sessions and budget limits work
- How to keep session records that prove your program delivered
Your mentor network#
The Mentors screen shows everyone attached to your centre, with four figures across the top: how many mentors you have, how many are active, sessions this month and what you have spent this month. Three buttons underneath take you to Sessions, Analytics and Settings.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Invited | You have asked them; they have not responded yet. |
| Pending | They have applied to you and are awaiting your decision. |
| Active | Working with your startups. |
| Rejected | An application you declined. |
| Ended | The relationship has finished. The history stays. |
Good to know
'Spending This Month' shows in dollars on this screen, while most of the portal uses rupees. Read it as a figure, and check the currency before quoting it to anyone.
Finding mentors#
Discover Mentors browses mentors across the wider EcoSync ecosystem - people who have built a mentor profile but are not yet attached to your centre. You can search by name or expertise and filter, then invite the ones you want.
- Mentors can also come to you - applications appear with a Pending status and an application message.
- Avg Hourly Rate is worth looking at before you decide your payment model and monthly budget.
- Top Rated counts mentors rated 4.5 and above.
Sessions#
A session is one mentoring meeting between a mentor and a startup. Sessions appear here once startups book them - you do not create them by hand.
| Session status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Scheduled | Booked and upcoming. |
| In Progress | Happening now. |
| Completed | Took place. This is what you count and what gets paid. |
| Cancelled | Called off before it happened. |
| No Show | Someone did not turn up. Recorded separately from a cancellation for a reason. |
Tip
No Show is worth using honestly rather than marking things Cancelled. A mentor with repeated no-shows is a problem you want visible; so is a startup that keeps missing sessions you are paying for.
Who pays for a session#
This is the decision that shapes everything else about your mentor program. Five models are available and you set a default for your centre.
| Payment model | What happens | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Payment | Startups pay the mentor directly. Your centre is not involved in the money. | Mature cohorts who can afford it, or where you are only making introductions. |
| Incubator Pays | Your centre covers 100% of session costs. | Grant-funded programs where mentoring is a stated deliverable. |
| Subsidized | Your centre pays a set percentage, the startup pays the rest. | The middle ground. Startups have skin in the game, so they turn up. |
| Retainer | A fixed monthly fee to the mentor regardless of session count. | Mentors-in-residence who are around continuously. |
| Free | No charge at all. | Volunteer mentors, alumni giving back. |
Tip
Subsidized is the model most centres settle on. Fully free mentoring gets booked and not attended; fully paid gets under-used by exactly the early-stage founders who need it most. A startup paying even 20% turns up.
The settings that control your spend#
Mentor Settings is where the defaults live. Alongside the payment model there are controls that stop a mentoring budget quietly disappearing.
- Notification toggles cover New Applications, Session Booked, Session Completed, Session Cancelled, Budget Alerts and a Weekly Digest.
- Budget Alerts are the one to leave on - they tell you before you hit the monthly limit rather than after.
- The screen warns you if you have unsaved changes.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Default Payment Model | Which of the five models applies unless you override it. |
| Default Subsidy Percentage | How much your centre covers when the model is Subsidized. |
| Default Free Sessions per Startup | A number of sessions each startup gets at no cost before charging begins. |
| Monthly Budget Limit | A ceiling on what your centre spends on mentoring per month. |
| Max Mentors per Startup | Stops one startup monopolising your network. |
| Allow Direct Booking | Whether startups can book mentors themselves or must go through you. |
| Require Admin Approval | Whether bookings need your sign-off before they are confirmed. |
This screen is currently unavailable
Mentor Settings does not load at present - it shows 'Failed to load settings' with a Retry button. This is a fault on our side rather than anything you have done, and retrying will not help. The settings described above are what the screen offers once it is fixed; until then, mentoring runs on system defaults. It has been reported.
Keeping records that prove the program worked#
'We provided mentoring' is a claim. 'Forty-two completed sessions across eleven startups, averaging 3.8 per startup' is evidence. Funders increasingly ask for the second.
Only Completed counts
Scheduled sessions are intentions. When reporting, count completed ones and be ready to explain your no-show rate.
Watch sessions per startup
An average hides the startup that had eleven and the one that had none. The second is the one to act on.
Track spend against budget monthly
Spending This Month against your monthly limit tells you whether the model is affordable before the year end does.
Use No Show honestly
It is data about engagement. Recording no-shows as cancellations hides a real problem in your cohort.
End relationships properly
Set a mentor to Ended rather than deleting them. Their session history stays attached to your startups.
Check the concentration
If three mentors are doing eighty per cent of sessions, your network is thinner than the headline number suggests.
Common questions#
This is a known fault on our side, not something you have done, and the Retry button will not help. Mentoring continues to work on system defaults in the meantime, and it has been reported.
Two ways. You invite them from Discover Mentors, or they apply to you and appear as Pending for you to accept or decline.
Subsidized suits most centres - your budget goes further and startups attend because they are contributing. Incubator Pays if your grant explicitly funds mentoring. Free only if your mentors are genuinely volunteering.
The mentor spending figure displays in dollars while most of the portal uses rupees. Check the currency before quoting the number in a report.
Yes - Allow Direct Booking and Require Admin Approval both control this, in Mentor Settings. Note that screen is currently not loading.
No. Set the association to Ended. Their past sessions stay attached to the startups they mentored, which you will want when reporting on those cohorts.
Sessions only appear once startups book them through the portal. Mentoring arranged over WhatsApp will never show up here - which is the argument for getting your cohort to book in the portal.
