We are in our fourth week of Hack the Crisis Online program and wanted to give some public thumbs up to a 50+ mentor gang that volunteered to help these teams on their post-hackathon journey. All of them are doing this pro-bono and some have even spent consecutive Fridays mentoring all day long. We (and for sure the startup teams) are so grateful for this support!

Normally, when we run the online pre-accelerator programs, we rely on our close network of SWG mentors and our team-mates, but this time – working with teams that are not our usual “B2B SaaS suspects” dealing with advanced MedTech solutions or targeting governmental institutions and similar, we opened up a public call for mentors. We were so happy to see people from all over the World joining in for this good deed.

Mentors are working in two formats – the famous “nanny gang” aka mentors dedicated to a particular team and having weekly calls with it, and another gang of “on-demand mentors”, who are available for teams every Friday for 45 min mentoring sessions sharing their subject expertise.

The nanny gang mentors

Our nanny gang is 21 mentors strong (and more interestingly – 17 nationalities). Mentors were the ones selecting team/-s they wanted to work with throughout the program, based on preference, relatable experience and the value they could bring. Some of the nannies were quite generous and committed to mentor more than one startup team. Soon after initial intro calls, we received news of two nannies sync-ing up their schedule and doing the mentoring for the team together. In the coming three weeks the nannies will be responsible for guiding the teams to the best of their ability, using their expertise & network and building on the team’s weekly learned topics on the pre-accelerator platform.

The setup of the nanny gang is not only nationally diverse, but we also have a broad spectrum of expertise represented: from business development, marketing, legal, pitching experts, to technical, B2G sector, gamification, blockchain experts and even “subliminal behaviour specialist” amongst us.

I am surprised with the diversity of projects submitted to the program. We see there both software and hardware startups solving diverse problems connected with social isolation or remoteness in general. The organising team took great care for us (mentors) providing efficient onboarding and supporting our relationships with participants. I am looking forward to the results of the program with excitement

Agata Kukwa, Communications Director at DAC.digital

❤️Here’s the full list of nanny gang mentors:

Ana Wolsztajn, Amandeep Midha, Eli Zheleva, Roberto Williams Batista, Matt Parlak, Betty Yucel, Rostislav Roznoshchik, Armin Konjalic, Donnie SC Lygonis, Tabatha Soltay, Alex Bricov, Beril Sirmacek, Indrek Hirvlaan, Agata Kukwa, Beidos Ali, Marina Shutova, Arjan van Eersel, Mikk Mihkel Vaabel, Juan Carlos Martinez Barrio, Dario Zoric, lis palm, Erik-Wilhelm Graef Behm

On-demand mentors

Now let’s look at the on-demand mentor gang – apart from SWG team members, we onboarded 26 additional mentors, majority of them are actively offering their time slots and each team so far has had at least 5 mentoring sessions. Also on-demand mentors come from all over the World and we have 18 nationalities represented. Apart from business development, sales, fundraising, marketing, pitching expertise, we also have mentors from medical, charity, CSR, molecular biology, transportation, psychology and many other sectors.

As a mentor, my experience has been great so far. I am really happy to see soo many teams continuing working on their ideas and guiding them in the accelerator-program. And also help them address their concerns and needs about cloud computing, business development, and pitching. I am lucky to work among other very talented mentors in different areas of expertise at Startup Wise Guys and have learned a lot from them also

Sidorela Suli

❤️Here’s a list of our active on-demand mentors:

Mihaela Tapu, Petra Szeszula, Elena Mazhuha, Neil Edge, James York, Kay Nag, Timo Kullerkupp, Ina Engelbrektson, Gleb Maltsev, Ginny Radmall, Raphael Fassoni, Anders Thingholm, Sven Rosenberg, Calum Cameron, Sidorela Suli, Erik-Wilhelm Graef Behm, John C. Sullivan, Juan Carlos Martinez Barrio, Mayank Gupta, Renats Lokomets, Rostislav Roznoshchik

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Hack the Crisis Online Pre-accelerator program is an impact-driven program by Europe’s most experienced B2B accelerator and aimed at teams coming out of #HacktheCrisis hackathons all over Europe and beyond to ensure the continuity and maximum impact. It is inspired by Garage48, Accelerate Estonia, and Guaana, supported by the EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy and Slovakian philanthropist Boris Zeleny providing the program with a cash prize pool of 17K EUR. Program will be concluded with a public Demo Day at the end of May – stay tuned for announcements!