Last October Hatch graduate Jane Visram won six months of mentoring with a Pizza Hut senior leader as part of our pitching competition for Black History Month. This mentoring relationship was made possible thanks to Hatch’s partnership with Pizza Hut.
Pizza Hut provides funding and support to facilitate Hatch’s New Founder Programme, a multi-level package of support programmes for budding entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds to grow and thrive. Pizza Hut believes that everyone deserves a place at the table and their support for this programme aims to create an equal slice of opportunity for everyone.
The Power of a Good Mentor
At Hatch we know the positive impact that a good mentor can have on a new founder, or in fact a founder at any stage of their entrepreneurship journey. Mentors can provide a new perspective, can make fruitful introductions, and can offer strategic oversight drawing on their own experience and expertise.
Mentorship is something that underrepresented founders across the UK can struggle to access due to lack of existing networks with the ability to make strong, relevant introductions. This creates a barrier to growth, and widens the inequality gap between founders from marginalised communities and their peers from groups that are overrepresented in the start up sphere: typically white men with pre-existing wealth and connections.
Jane Visram and Sam Dalgleish
Jane Visram is the founder of Mama Dolce, a luxury free-from ice cream brand inspired by wholesome, high-quality ingredients. She completed a Hatch Incubator programme in 2020 to scale the business.
Sam Dalgleish is Development Director at Pizza Hut, part of Yum! Brands, and has over ten years of experience in the strategic corporate space.
Jane and Sam met frequently over the course of the six-month mentorship, occasionally in person but mostly online for convenience. Jane explained that they would sometimes meet multiple times in a week if she had a big pitch coming up that she needed to be prepped for, and that this flexibility allowed her to feel completely supported and prepared.
The external strategic perspective that Sam brought enabled Jane to see certain areas of the business in a different light, and his expertise in cash flow and forecasting meant that he was able to suggest and support with the implementation of beneficial new practices in this area.
The impact of the mentoring will last well past the initial six months thanks in part to these strategic insights as well as the further connections he was able to introduce Jane to.
More from Hatch on Mentoring
Hatch founders have access to mentoring through the programme they are on, and we also have a 1:1 Consultation service which will match you with a mentor from one of our corporate partners to go through a specific business challenge you are facing.
Our CEO and founder Dirk Bischof has written a number of articles on this theme, including advice on how to get the most from a mentoring relationship, and in this video talks through his own experiences of mentorship.
Over on the Hatch blog you can check out this piece on the value of mentoring for the mentor, as well as the mentee, and this article about the experience of a peer mentor at Hatch who signed up to support others after completing an Accelerator programme.
Learn more about Mama Dolce
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