Becoming a Mentor
Becoming a mentor takes three steps that must happen in order: add the role, create the profile, then wait to be verified. Skipping ahead is the most common reason people think the portal is broken.
What you will learn
- How to add the Mentor role to your existing account
- What the profile form actually asks for
- Why the portal sends you to Roles instead of the portal
- What to do while you wait for verification
One account, several roles#
You do not create a separate mentor account. Mentoring is a role added to the account you already have, alongside founder, investor or anything else you hold. If you have ever signed in to the platform, you already have what you need.
Good to know
If an incubator or a fund invited you, accept the invitation from your Invitations page - the mentor role is added for you and you can skip straight to the profile.
Step one - add the Mentor role#
Opening the mentor portal without the role does not show you an error page; it sends you to Role Management, which is where the role is added. That redirect is the system telling you which step you have missed.
- 1
Open Settings, then Roles
You can also just try to open the mentor portal - you will be redirected here automatically.
- 2
Choose Mentor
Pick ‘Mentor - Provide mentorship’. If this is the first role you have ever set, it also becomes your primary role, which is how you appear by default in search.
Mentor sits in the middle column. Adding it does not remove any role you already hold. - 3
Proceed
The role is added immediately and the mentor portal becomes reachable.
A username prompt may appear first
If you have never set a username, the platform asks for one before it lets you do anything else. It is a one-time prompt and any available handle will do - it is how mentees find and mention you.
Step two - create your profile#
The profile is the review submission. An administrator reads it to decide whether to verify you, and mentees read it to decide whether to book you, so it is doing two jobs at once.
| Field | Required | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Languages | Yes | Which languages you can hold a session in |
| Mentoring since | Yes | How long you have been doing this |
| Expertise | Recommended | The specific things you advise on - these become the tags on your card |
| Industries | Recommended | Sectors you know well; drives marketplace filtering |
| Focus areas | Recommended | The problems you take on, e.g. ‘first ten customers’ |
| Startup stages | Recommended | Which stages you are useful to |
| Headline | Recommended | One line under your name in the marketplace |
| Mentoring approach | Recommended | How you actually work - the part founders read closely |
| Background summary | Optional | Where you have operated |
Thin profiles get rejected
Verification is a human reading your claims. A profile with no expertise, no approach and no background gives them nothing to verify, and rejection asks you to resubmit with more detail.
Step three - wait, but keep working#
Your profile now sits at Pending. You cannot be found or booked, but the rest of the portal is fully open to you, and everything you set up now takes effect the moment verification clears.
- Create your session types - without one, nobody can book you even after verification
- Set your weekly availability - an empty week shows a mentee no slots at all
- Add a package if you want to sell blocks of sessions
- Add a payout account so money has somewhere to go later
Important
Mentors who wait for verification before configuring anything appear in the marketplace with nothing bookable, get no enquiries, and conclude the platform does not work. Set everything up while you wait.
It is a manual review, so it depends on the administrators rather than on a timer. There is no automatic approval - a profile left alone stays Pending indefinitely.
Yes. Editing is open at every stage. If you were rejected, improving the profile is exactly what you are meant to do before it is looked at again.
That usually means the role was added but your session is still carrying the old state. Reload the page. If it persists, sign out and back in.
