International mentorship program boosting startups

The mentorship program was initially supposed to be a resource consisting of ten to fifteen mentors. But the interest of being a part of the DigitalWell Ventures team has proved even greater than expected. More than 30 mentors have offered their services so far – and been embraced by the management of the accelerator.

– We're excited that such high-profile professionals from all over the world would like to give back and join our accelerator mentorship program. Their expertise and networks complement our existing core team, further boosting the support system to our HealthTech startups, says David Holm, Investment Manager of DigitalWell Ventures.

Adding key competence to the program

The mentors are going to be sorted by their key competence and connected to the different modules of the accelerator program, based on the six phases of the KTH Innovation Readiness model. The set up will give the startups possibilities to gain key knowledge throughout the program.

– First, we've given the mentors the opportunity to choose the level of involvement they are comfortable with. Expert mentors typically provide sharp ad-hoc style expertise within a certain field, while a group mentor will follow the startup more hands-on through all the phases in the accelerator program in a more general way. A key driver to enable startups to be born-global, is access to international markets and growth capital. That's why we include the international mix of mentors, says David Holm.

The expertise spreads from software architecture and health tech to marketing, venture capital and team building. So far nine countries are represented by the mentors – which of course give the accelerator companies great chances building networks and entering new markets.

Worldwide reputation

Among them mentors there are internationally famous names in their competence areas like Chelsea Ranger (life science), Nicolas Babin (venture capital, investor relations) and Antonio Grasso, thought leader for digital transformation who works with worldwide companies, like Intel and Siemens, and followed by half a million people on social media.

Elaborating on the core areas served by the accelerator, Antonio Grasso, CEO and founder of Digital Business Innovation Srl, adds:

– The DigitalWell Ventures vertical HealthTech accelerator play the role of an aggregator and bring all the components together to provide support to the startups to grow at an accelerated pace and increase their overall chances of successful scaling with access to outstanding public testbeds, markets, competence and investments. The power of the mentorship program and its mentors will be adding yet another value-layer to the set-up and I'm personally excited to get started working with my new Swedish, Nordic and Baltic friends.