There is a wide gap between what obtains in the real world and what you are taught in school. As a youngster, you have pristine ideas, incredible dreams, and gargantuan goals. However, when the reality of life hit you, you are most likely to renege from or scale back your set goals and dreams. Why? Because you do not have a mentor to give guide you or give you the heads up! Nigeria’s education system has not made provision for mentors. Regardless, Emmanuel Uduebholo has taken the initiative to establish a platform that connects young Nigerians with vetted industry professionals in different industries. In this exclusive interview, Uduebholo; who is the founder of Mentorships.ng tells Innovation-village about how he funded his mentorship idea, his motivation and much more. Excerpts
Can you share your startup concept with us?
Mentorships.ng is an online paid career mentorship platform, that connects students, young graduates, and professionals with vetted industry professionals in tech and business for 1-on-1 mentorship, to help them break into their desired industry with certificates and recommendation notes to show for it. Mentorship is usually weekly. So we have the mentors and mentees. An industry professional signs up as a mentor and a young grad or student sign up as a mentee in order to apply to mentors based on his/her desired category. The mentor reviews the mentee’s application and approves.
This then leads the mentee to make payment for the mentorship after which the mentor will be rated and the mentee is given a certificate of completion and job recommendation note. Also, mentors are able to communicate with mentees with awesome features that enhance the mentorship experience like chats, to-dos tasks, Coding support, Coding challenges, emailing and physical meet ups depending on the mentor.
What prompted you to establish a Mentorship platform?
My motivation for building mentorships.ng was from a personal pain as a student of Covenant University. When I was trying to break into the field of Machine Learning, I needed a mentor to guide me on what to do and how to go about it. I really didn’t know where to start. So I started reaching out to industry professionals on Linkedin, but it was really awkward. I didn’t really get anyone who would be committed to mentoring me because some had busy schedules but most ignored my request. So I thought about building a personal platform where I get to book skype interviews with them at different dates and times. This seemed to work for me because I presented myself as a tech blogger, promising to transcribe interviews and publish contents to help student and young grads out there. It was, later on, I thought of making students have a 1-on-1 engagement with these experts and professionals in the industry and this led to Mentorships.ng, an online career platform for students and professionals.
Tell us about the beginning of your business. How will you describe the reception?
Well, it was tough. I thought I would just build the platform today and launch in a week. But it wasn’t so. It took me approximately 3 months to build and in the process of building it, I was building my user base alongside. I shared the concept with my course mates and some liked the idea and really wanted it badly. I took it to Linkedin and shared with some industry professionals and all their responses were ‘Sounds interesting’, ‘Wow’, ‘This is what we really need’, ‘I’m in already’, ‘I love the idea!’
My purpose for doing this was to validate the idea first because this isn’t my first startup. I launched an online magazine in-app for young entrepreneurs in May 2017 but failed because I didn’t carry my users along and the concept wasn’t clear to users. Well, it was my first business and I only made $12 from it. I enjoyed the process, but one major lesson I learned was to build what people want and to always carry users along even through the validation process.
So I later built a simple landing page to get email leads and grow my customer base ahead of the product launch. This gave me confidence throughout, knowing I had people waiting for the product launch. To cut the long story short, I ended up having a list of 150 + hot leads (50 mentors and 100 mentees) in just one month in my mailing list, April and these were the people who made the process worthwhile for me.
Capital and funds are key to starting a business? How did you go about funding Mentorship.ng?
I funded mentorships.ng from my personal savings. There were some features that were beyond my skillset like the Chat, Task feature, and Payment gateway integration, so I outsourced a part of the project and that cost me a lot. I thought of getting equity funds, but I was advised not to do that yet at that early stage. I really didn’t have much, but I was ready to work that money out. So I first broke my Piggybank, from my Piggyvest savings and withdrew all my savings. I was that daring because I could see high returns ahead later in the future. Then, I got some funds from family as well after convincing them about the potential of my startup. So, I invested all I gathered into mentorships.ng. I believe if you really want something good, so bad that you want to get it done, you would be ready to go all the way to get it legally and responsibly. And this takes a lot of sacrifice on one’s part.
Why do you think young Nigerians and Africans need mentors? How many mentors do you have currently on your platform? What are the indexes or yardsticks for selecting a mentor?
Good question. We all know how Nigeria’s education curriculum needs a lot of improvements. And we also know that there is a wide gap between the academic and professional/job environment. Students graduate from Universities with so many principles they can’t apply to the real world and at the same time lacking the skills and experiences needed in the professional environment.
This is where a Mentor comes in. Someone who has been in the Industry and experienced enough to coach a novice, student or younger professional on real-world applications and ethics. That’s why I built Mentorships.ng because every student and young graduate needs an industry mentor to give them that confidence, mentor them, guide them in building required skillsets so that they can break into any desired Industry they want. The pricing is for the Mentee’s benefit. This will make the Mentor committed to mentoring while sacrificing time and energy because it’s a serious business and problem that needs to be addressed properly with seriously. Also, to add to what I said before, the school will not teach you everything. The school will not teach you how to sell, make money, invest in real estates, or start a business. These are things you will learn yourself in personal education and you need someone experienced in that field.
We launched on the 22nd, July and as at this time of the Interview, we have 25 Registered Mentors out of over 50 of them and more are still on the queue undergoing review. And before a mentor’s profile can be listed on our page, we get to review the application and approve. Mentors get to answer some compulsory interview question in the course of their registration.
This forms our criteria for approving mentors. We also look at the Mentor’s company, Linkedin profile and Job title based on information provided, to better understand and evaluate the Mentor.
What is your money-making model like? Who do you think are your competitors?
It’s simple. Mentees apply to mentors and make payment for the mentorship duration. 80% goes to the mentor, while 20% goes to the platform as a processing fee. So we get 20% off every payment made. As for competitors in this field, you can see Micromentor, GrowthMentor, and Codementor. So Mentorships.ng is an online ‘career’ mentorships platform. A career in quote as it is an independent education platform that connects you with the mentor you deserve while choosing a vetted mentor from the marketplace for a longterm career or skill is driven mentorship.
What are the challenges of running your startup? Where do you see Mentorships.ng in the next five years?
Well, the truth is there are always some challenges. New ones every day. I always have to ensure Mentorship is worth the while for Mentees so they can always come back. I get questions from Mentors, and I have to respond within at least 15 minutes. So I am always on the watch. Fixing some things and marketing the platform through different media . Sometimes this causes me sleepless nights while having to go to work (Industrial Training) very early the next day.
This is normal for every startup founder who’s into something he cares about. And he will try his best to do everything he can to make his business survive, not just for himself, but for the people and users who have trusted him.
I see Mentorships.ng at the top. Our goal is to serve thousands of students/mentees and hit 10,000+ weeks of paid Mentorships in 5 years. We are ready to stretch.
What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs?
Listen, listen, listen! Listen to your users. They are the ones who will use your product. Listen to constructive criticisms, perhaps that’s why my first startup failed. Solve a real problem.
When you get an idea, don’t just rush into building a platform and end up launching it for only yourself to use. Validate that idea. Know your customer. Be very clear about your business model. Keep it simple. Know your market and go to them, ask questions.
You can signup as a Mentor or mentee here and if you need support, you can reach us here info@mentorships.ng.
