Enterprise Estonia to Launch Mentor Clubs for Startups
The national support agency for entrepreneurship, Enterprise Estonia, has announced that it will establish eight regional mentor clubs this spring to help make it easier for rookie entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground.
The project, supported by the European Social Fund, is designed to boost participants' business know-how, promote interaction and cooperation among the group members and help build up their contact networks, Enterprise Estonia said in release.
Each group will be made up of 15 to 20 beginning-level entrepreneurs aided by at least three of their more experienced counterparts.
"The mentor club is part of the Estonian mentoring culture and network and helps to promote this approach in the society. Today there are already plenty of examples of how yesterday's novice entprepreneurs, who got help from mentors, are now starting to become mentors themselves," said Dmitri Burnashev, director of the agency's Business Startups Division.
EAS said that since beginning its mentoring programs in 2004, it has helped more than 500 startups with the help of 200 mentors.
Steve Roman