Mentoring is a critical part of a startup founder’s journey. With the help expert mentors, new founders can access years of experience to help them effectively navigate their early startup challenges.
Ilab UQ’s Mentor Blaze is an event that speeds up that mentor effect by coordinating around 200 mentor sessions, all in one two-hour event. It allows new founders to quickly get multiple perspectives at once. Mentor Blaze is an incredibly intense sharing of ideas. It is high energy and fast paced as founders and mentors strive to convey as much information and feedback as possible.
Ilab UQ’s Mentor Blaze is a unique event on the startup calendar; this year we made it even more special by pairing up with the Myriad festival of startups in Brisbane to bring a new wealth of mentors and expand our ability to serve the largest audience possible.
With a pool of 40 mentors, the latter including founders who have exited, founders of growth stage startups, investors, experienced entrepreneurs, senior executives from global technology companies and more, the stage was set for an extraordinary event.
ilab’s Mentor Blaze attracts students, general public, aspiring entrepreneurs, industry, investment and the media. With a sold-out crowd of mentees passing the 80+ mark, aspiring founders were matched mentors for rotating 20 minute mentor sessions.
It is a pretty frantic and energising session, and attendees and mentors are guaranteed to have a challenging and stimulating time.
How do you know you are solving a real problem? What makes a good co-founder? Should you be looking for investment yet? How can you bootstrap your new business? Should you protect your idea? How can you prioritise all of the competing challenges? How can I get better market traction? These are all types of questions relevant to Mentor Blaze.
Overall, the Mentor Blaze 10 event brought together its largest audience so far with 120+ people crowding the Tivoli theatre, location of the event and a satellite to the Myriad festival.
As one of the mentees put it, “it has been an exhausting 2 hours but so worth it with so much valuable feedback received from people I would not have dreamed of being able to talk to”.
Mentor Blaze 11 is due to happen in August/September. Want to take part in making it even bigger and even more valuable? Stay tuned, raise your hand, get in touch!
