Our first virtual mentoring experience!

Mentor visits: The contactless experience

A crucial component of our mentoring programs is mentors visiting their mentees in their home countries; getting to see their headquarters, teamwork on the ground, and explore the ecosystem on the ground as they guide their mentee towards growing their companies, and expanding their own network along the way.

Due to travel restrictions, we transformed the on-the-ground visits component to a virtual mentoring bootcamp, where mentors and mentees set aside a few hours a day for a week to step back from their day-to-day operations and focus on problem-solving and strategic growth.

The bootcamp took place from the 23rd to the 27th of November, and was streamed from our studio in Egypt at Startup Haus Cairo.

We had three mentors tuning in from Ghana, three from Germany and one from France. Their experience ranges from policy drafting for organizations like the UN and World Bank, leading multi-million dollar investment roads and leading growing international startups.

Despite the circumstances keeping us apart, streaming the bootcamp from our studio in Cairo allowed the Egyptian-based entrepreneurs the opportunity to work and join from Startup Haus Cairo throughout the duration of the bootcamp. We may not have been able to all get together and retreat somewhere far away from the daily operations, but a celebratory moment after the bootcamp was done was still made possible – and if there’s one thing we learned this year, it’s the value of the little moments. 

Still, we are keeping a close eye on the situation to see whether it will be possible to conduct our closing bootcamp on the ground, allowing the entrepreneurs, mentors and experts to meet, wrap up their experience over the past 6 months, and work towards the next phase of their growth.