How Team Mentoring Works 

Team mentoring brings multiple mentors together to support each founder—like having your own advisory board. This collaborative approach gives you:

• Multiple perspectives on your toughest challenges
• Coordinated expertise that adapts as you grow
• Mentors who build shared context over time, not fragmented advice from separate conversations

Who is it for? 

Team mentoring works best for founders who have:

• Talked to 10+ prospective customers
• Committed to working on their venture 15+ hours/week for the next 6 months
• Some early traction or market validation
• Still exploring your idea or in earlier stages? VMN’s one-on-one mentoring is a great fit for founders validating their concept and finding their direction.

The Pilot Program 

We’re piloting team mentoring from November 2025 through April 2026, starting with a small cohort of ventures. Each founder gets a dedicated mentor team of 2-4 mentors selected for their specific needs. This pilot helps us build a sustainable model for the Northeastern entrepreneurial community.

We’re partnering with VMN Visiting Innovator, Igor Gorlatov, to launch this pilot. Igor founded Traction5, a SaaS platform that helps universities and entrepreneurial organizations run team mentorship programs globally. Previously, as Venture Mentoring Program Director at Innovate Charlotte, he built Charlotte’s premier startup mentorship program, managing 100+ active mentors and supporting 50+ startups.