What Is Financial Mentorship? When & Why Do You Need It?

by Blog Editor / Monday, 22 May 2023 / Published in Startups, Business and Finance

Like any business, building a startup is hard. But the way a startup works and grows–think fast-paced growth while mitigating tons of risks–makes it even harder.

That’s why, to succeed, many startup founders turn to mentors and other successful founders for help.

With startup mentoring, there’s much to consider:

Does this mentor specialize in growth strategies? Are they a financial mentor? Can they provide financial mentoring for my startup?

Building and growing your startup isn’t just about finding investors and getting funding. While money plays a major role in startup growth, there’s much to consider first.

But first, what is financial mentorship? How can financial mentors help startups? And when do you need a financial mentor? We’ll be answering all these questions and more in this blog post. And if you have more, leave them in the comments.

What is a startup mentor program?

In a startup mentoring program, startup founders sign up to get non-financial support to build their development strategy and grow their business.

Often provided by incubators and accelerators, startup mentoring programs aim to iron out issues preventing startups from realizing their true potential.

These kinds of programs guide founders, and sometimes their teams, on what they need but are missing. Many of these mentoring programs cover marketing, finance, and sales.

Those who teach these mentoring programs can range from experienced investors, to experienced current and former founders to experts in marketing, finance, and business development.

Since finance makes up a major part of any business looking to grow, you can find financial advisors like Stride supporting founders in these programs.

Financial mentoring by Stride at Plug & Play November 2022

Nada & Dalia from Stride during a Plug & Play session in November 2022

Essential startup mentoring keywords

Whether you’re looking for startup mentoring programs or are curious about how mentoring works, there are some mentoring-related terms you need to know. Here are the top ones:

Mentor

A mentor is the person or persons who helps you develop your business in a certain area. There are marketing mentors, business development mentors, financial mentors, among others.

Mentee

The mentee is the person who is receiving the mentorship program. If you think of mentorship as a kind of course, the mentor is the instructor, while the mentee is the learner or student.

Mentor matching

Part of ensuring your mentoring program or experience is successful is to work with a mentor you get along with. Mentor-matching involves identifying experiences and traits for mentors and mentees to ensure a successful relationship.

Mentoring goals

The mentoring goals are the experiences, skills, or knowledge that mentees seek to learn and develop from the mentoring experience.

Often, after a first meeting between the mentor and mentee, the mentor will identify the mentoring goals needed.

The mentee can stress the areas where they need help the most so that the mentor can focus on them.

Mentoring program cycle

The mentoring program cycle is the duration of the mentoring program. Often used with structured mentorship programs, cycles often range from 3-month to 6-month to 12-month cycles.

These cycles depend on the startup mentoring program and the mentor.

For example, Stride provides financial mentoring for programs provided by accelerators and incubators like Falak Startups and Plug and Play.

Stride also provides financial mentorship services independently for founders and business owners.

What is a financial mentor?

A financial mentor is a mentor that specializes in all-things financial. These can include how to create financial forecasts, how to create and forecast budgets, cash flow and so on.

The Harold Financial Dictionary defines a financial mentor as “a trusted guide or counselor that helps a person in the arena of business, personal finance and investments.”

Mentors are “loyal advisers who have the person’s best interests at heart,” the dictionary adds.

It’s worth mentioning that there is financial mentoring and financial coaching and there are differences between them.

According to Capital One, financial mentoring is a long-term relationship. One that could last months or even years. On the other hand, financial coaching is more of a short-term option.

As a financial mentor and financial service provider, Stride helps founders with financial forecasts, budgeting,

The Stride team even takes it a step further by acting as an outsourced CFO for startups that need a CFO but can’t hire one full-time. Think of it as a CFO-as-a-service offering.

Stride at Plug & Play Morocco, giving financial mentorship to Moroccan startups

Nada Sameh from Stride during a financial mentorship session at Plug & Play Morocco, May 2023

Why mentorship is important in business

Deciding that you want to start a business is an important first step. But…if your plan is to build a startup and ensure its growth, then you have more needs to consider.

Mentoring can help you decide if your idea is the right idea to begin with. Working with mentors means you get their experience and expertise, which means they can help you:

improve and flesh out your business idea better
create a business plan
avoid making expensive mistakes
decide who you need to hire first
learn how to grow your business
connect with and start discussions with investors
benefit from their network and contacts
identify your business needs and accordingly your business strategy
get other advice you might need

Depending on the type of mentor you work with, you can get additional benefits. For example, working with a financial mentor, you can get a better understanding of

what you need to focus on in the first months and first year
the expenses you need to consider at the beginning
what numbers to showcase in your pitch deck
how to evaluate investors so you’re compatible with each other
financial modeling and forecasting
providing economic and macroeconomic views for business
Your needs will help you determine your next steps.

Important questions about startup coaching and mentoring

When it comes to startup mentoring, there are a few frequently asked questions (FAQs) that every founder asks at some point.

We’ll dive into these FAQs here in brief. If you have a question but don’t find it here, let us know in the comments and we’ll add it to this list.

How often should mentors and mentees meet?

This is one of those ‘it depends’ questions. Mentors and mentees should meet as often as they need to.

That said, there should be enough time between mentorship sessions so that mentees can apply what they have learnt or perform any tasks given to them by their mentor.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all with financial mentorship – or any type of mentorship for that matter. The exception is if financial mentoring is part of a startup mentoring program that determines the number of sessions beforehand.

– Who qualifies as a mentor?

This is a tricky question. Mentorship relies on experience. Your mentor should be someone who has extensive experience in a certain area.

For example, the Stride team offers financial mentoring services. Our background, expertise, and experiences are in the finance field. Specifically, in creating financial forecasts, budgets, cash flow plans,…etc.

We won’t give you marketing tips. You’ll need to refer to a marketing expert, specifically a startup marketing or growth expert, for that.

Startup financial mentoring with Stride

As financial advisors, the Stride team has been active in the startup scene in Egypt and the broader MENA region.

We’ve helped over 60 clients across various industries. These include e-commerce, transport, engineering, logistics, ed-tech, software, among other industries.