An entrepreneur’s journey can be a very lonely one,” says Nazrin Hassan, CEO of Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd. A former entrepreneur himself, Nazrin fully understands the hardship that budding entrepreneurs have to endure on their own.

This is why Cradle recently signed a three-year partnership with MentorSquare Inc — to ensure entrepreneurs under Cradle have mentors to look up to on their perilous journey. India-based MentorSquare offers a mentoring programme conducted over the Web 2.0 platform. Through it, Cradle grant recipients will get one-year access to 80 international mentors from countries such as India, the US, Spain, Germany, Singapore and Australia.

MentorSquare will run concurrently with an in-house mentoring programme that is already available to grant recipients.
The membership cost — on which Cradle has obtained a discount through the partnership, says Nazrin — will be taken out of the recipient’s grant. Normal subscription is about RM1,100 a year. Future grant recipients will be automatically signed on for the MentorSquare programme while existing recipients who have not graduated from Cradle can choose to participate. The mentoring programme is available under both of Cradle’s funds — the CIP Catalyst and U-CIP Catalyst.

Nazrin believes the mentoring facilities provided will empower the entrepreneurs and help change their mindset of relying on government contracts. The MentorSquare platform provides access to a global network of entrepreneurs, a wealth of information and access to foreign markets.
“Malaysian entrepreneurs have come to a stage where they keep asking what the government can do for them next. We’re giving them access to international mentors that can help them empower themselves to get to the next level. This is the line of thought we want to inculcate in them — the culture of independence and empowerment,” says Nazrin.

This is what he saw when he attended the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit in Bangalore last year. It was there that Nazrin met Ravi Narayan, CEO of MentorSquare, through a mutual friend. According to Ravi, MentorSquare’s vision came from the idea of communal advices prevalent in small communities.

“Even today, if you go out to the rural areas, in villages and small towns, there are normal community gatherings. People of the town will converse and consult not only the elders, but also among themselves. MentorSquare has found a way of using technology to bring this community back again,” says Ravi, who was in Kuala Lumpur for the signing ceremony.

For an entrepreneur, getting advice usually means going to those in his social or business circle who may not necessarily be the best people to talk to. “The people you want to get to are in some other part of the world. If they are good, they must be either busy or retired,” says Ravi.
He believes the entrepreneurial journey is riddled with many questions. If the right questions are asked at the right junctures of the journey, then business will take an easy route and potentially be well off. “I’ve been an entrepreneur myself; you know what the solution is, which is what your business is all about, but you aren’t quite sure what is the problem you are trying to solve,” says Ravi.

The MentorSquare platform is driven by its members through public and private conversations. The members are the ones who spark the conversation while the mentors are there to understand the problems. “Don’t expect instant and nice answers to your questions. Mentoring is a thought process of opening a person’s mind to see a problem or an issue in the right light. It helps people with their own learning, clarifying their issues and pointing out new possibilities,” says Ravi.

A conversation could take place over a few days or a few months, depending on the complexity of the problem. Members are allowed to ask any kind of question, from basic ones on how to set up a company to complex ones such as market viability and changes in business models.
Mentors are not allowed to take equity from the members or share their profits. However, if a mentor decides to partner or become a customer of the member’s company, negotiations can be done privately with Cradle as adviser to the members. Now, communication is not done in real time. The real-time features will be launched by the next quarter.

However, Ravi believes the value is not in the features, but in the mentors themselves. Face-to-face mentoring will take place soon, with an additional five Malaysian mentors by the end of the year. Identified mentors will be rigorously assessed by a Mentor Council in MentorSquare. There are three verticals that mentors can fit into: experience-based, expertise-based and network-based. The first approved mentor is Dr Sivapalan Vivekarajah, a well regarded mentor and founding president of Technopreneurs Association Malaysia.

As a rule of thumb, mentors become shareholders of MentorSquare, where a significant portion is given out to them. “The company grows if they grow. We take mentoring very seriously,” says Ravi.
Last year, Cradle funded 96 ideas and is looking at RM30 million in drawdowns from the Ministry of Finance this year. With a collective 343 ideas funded so far and 45% commercialisation success, Cradle hopes to offer more support and guidance to the entrepreneurs under it.
If Alexander the Great had Aristotle and Warren Buffett had Benjamin Graham, only time will tell if any great mentor and protégé pairing will arise out of this programme.

 This article appeared in netv@lue2.0, the technology section of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 755, May 17-23 2009