Entrepreneurs

What We Offer

• Detailed and constructive feedback on your business plan from a team of 10-15 individuals who have been carefully curated to provide a diversity of experience in addressing the challenges you are facing. 
• Connections to mentors where you choose each other. We carefully curate teams who provide written and video-call feedback on your ideas. Then you decide who you want to be your mentor, based on how useful you found their feedback.
• Opportunities to connect with leaders who are addressing the same challenges that you are.

Who Should Apply

• Entrepreneurs who have a significant role in building a for-profit company that has built your social and/or environmental values into how the business makes money. If you’re just diverting a portion to charity, that doesn’t count. We’re looking for companies that integrate their values into their operations.
• Entrepreneurs who are open to feedback on your business model.
• Entrepreneurs who can commit to the following actions if selected for our program:
  • 4 phone/video calls – 2 with MCN team, 2 with prospective mentors. (A partial list of our mentors is here.)
  • Submitting a business plan in English, Spanish, or French. (At least one member of your team must be able to exchange emails with the MCN team in English.)
  • Reviewing the 20-30 pages of feedback we provide on your plan
  • Following up with all of your reviewers — either with a simple thank you for their time, or to begin a mentoring relationship with those you found particularly helpful.
• Entrepreneurs who can, if accepted, pay a small processing fee. We have long found that charging a fee increases the quality of applicants. Applying is free. If you are invited into our program, we ask you to pay a small processing fee — US$250 if you are headquartered in an OECD country, $25 if you are in a LDC country, or $50 otherwise.
• Most of our applicants tend to be at the prototype / seeking their first professional investment stage, we can work with earlier and later stage companies as long as you are open to feedback on your business model.
• We do NOT offer grants or funding. While we advise some of our partners on how to direct their funding, those decisions are not ours.

Our Results (The 32% Difference)

Companies that we work with, as opposed to companies we almost worked with (that were qualified, and we would have worked with if not for space, timing, etc.) are 32% more likely to be in business when compared year-by-year. Read what our alumni have to say about the program.

MCN alumni are addressing some of the most important challenges in the world, such as:

• Increasing the amount of healthy food and healthy farmers in our world, like Ignitia & Elevated Honey.
• Bringing healthy food and drink to your table, like Kuli Kuli, Back to the Roots, Runa, & The Jackfruit Company.
• Providing access to financial services, like Tala, First Access, & Kopo Kopo.
• Improving the quality of, and access to, health care, like Access Afya, PACE MD, Sproxil, Maternova, & AYZH.
• Creating safer living and working conditions for women, like Wello Water, & Pinkcollar.
• Generating affordable, clean, and renewable energy, like Husk Power Systems, ARED, & Gham Power.
• Cleaning the water, air, and/or environment for those who need it most, like Folia Materials, Chakr Innovation, and Sanivation.
• Creating a path out of poverty for employees, like Wash Cycle Laundry,
• Training and educating people to make their way in the world, like GogyUp 
• Designing sustainable products, like Tonlé, WholeForest, & Yellow Leaf Hammocks.

How to Apply

• Let us know you intend to participate via this form.
• Submit your business plan via email to network@mentorcapitalnet.org by September 15th, 2021. This page covers what your plan should include.  We take about two weeks to make acceptance decisions.

What Happens If you are Accepted

• If accepted, plans are distributed to teams of reviewers who are carefully curated to have different perspectives from which they provide constructive comments. We specialize in reviewers who have or are addressing similar challenges, but are not competing for the same customers.
• During the review period, we schedule at least two clarification calls to give your reviewers a chance to engage with you directly.
• After the review period, you get the feedback (an average of 20-30 pages total), and we work with you to identify the mentors who are a best fit for you. The main goal of our program is to create situations where the entrepreneurs and the mentors chose each other.