Staying the Course: How Mass Innovation Network Mentors Startups to Success

Five years seems like a long time, but that’s not necessarily true with startups. Often, it’s at this mark when the lives of entrepreneurs, founders, and others get dicey trying to shift their business to the next stage. And that’s when a slew of questions surrounding funding, product market fit, and survival strategy can come up.   

Mentoring plays a key role to help founders, entrepreneurs, and others keep their startups going. And the Mass Innovation Network provides just that. The non-profit organization supports businesses gearing up to move past incubation to the next stage of their journey. Some of their past success stories include Ben & Jerry’s, Staples, iRobot, and HubSpot.

Startup Boston chatted with the Mass Innovation Network’s Sophia Kambanis, Executive Director, about how the non-profit supports entrepreneurs, what its mentorship services look like, what development programs it offers, and more.   

Startup Boston (SB): Please tell me about the work the Mass Innovation Network does.

Sophia Kambanis (SK): We support startups usually post incubated and many times, post accelerated. We help the founders navigate over the ‘Valley of Death.’ It usually comes within the first five years of existence, and eliminates 90% of startups. 

Our objective is to hold their hands until they no longer need it. Although we do have a start time with them, we really don't have an end time. We have some founders that have been with our mentoring services for three and four years now.

SB: Can mentorships last a while? 

SK: Sometimes, especially if the founder does not have a business background. They need more support trying to shift their thought pattern as a business owner, rather than somebody that has been trained in business administration. On the other hand, we have those that have very serious hardware components; usually hardtech takes a longer time to deploy because of the costs involved, whether it is an MRI interface or a robotic — that we currently have — that deploys solar panels.

SB: Tell me about the work that’s involved in the mentorship program.

SK: We have a tailor-made mentoring service that is based on an intake questionnaire, where the founder puts down the top three objectives they have and the top three challenges. We tailor the programs to meet those needs as specified by them.

We initiate useful connections too, but we need to understand first where they're at right now and see what it is they've been doing that might not necessarily yield results. Then we proceed to work with them, guide them to understand alternatives, and take the next step. 

It is very labor intensive. We have about 39 mentors, several of which have exited more than one startup so they know the process, several others that present big corporate collaborations, and anything in between.

SB: How many startups are you working with?

SK: Right now, we are at 74 startups.

SB: The Mass Innovation Network also has The Eddies and The Global Eddies. Can you elaborate on what these programs are? What do you look for in particular?

SK: The Eddies are a hybrid between a competition and a founder development program. It was established in 1986 by a gentleman called Bob Crowley, who was chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum and MTDC (now MassVentures). The idea was that innovation is the future of the Commonwealth, and we should nurture it without a cost to the founders. And when the Eddies first started, it was as a one-night exhibition where people would come and vote on what they thought would be the most innovative startup. It kept on growing, and adapting to the ever-changing needs of the startup community.

What we look for in founders is to solve a real problem. Do your customer discovery, so you know that what you want to bring to the market is actually solving a sizable problem. 

The Global Eddies is a much smaller program. It is for international startups that are spinning out of countries and coming to set up a base in Boston. It came out as a direct outcome of the pandemic — the very first year we launched. Because people could not come, see, and visit here, we were asked to offer a virtual integration program. 

We take a small number of cohorts. In the last one, we had somebody from Taiwan, somebody from India and three or four from the Netherlands. They each had very different backgrounds and had varied ways of doing things. To assimilate them into the local ecosystem, it's a lot more complex than talking to all American founders, because the ecosystem and the way we conduct business are entirely new to them.

We teach them the same kind of things we teach our local startups, including how to present yourself and how to talk to different types of investors. We talk about alternative corporate entities and how they affect their personnel and tax costs. Then we provide them an opportunity to present their technologies and talk to ecosystem members by Zoom.

SB: Switching gears a bit, what is your role at the Mass Innovation Network?

SK: I mean, I do whatever needs to be done. I spend a lot of time with startups, a lot of personal one-to-one hours. For example, we had two people that are both in the cohort who wanted to talk to me. One was invited to the Robotics Invest in Boston and it was the first big event they were invited to. We needed to brainstorm and develop a strategy of what they wanted to share with the general public and what not to.  

And the other one, who has two different applications for microplastics and to lower CO2 emissions, is going to a plastics fair in Germany that attracts over 170,000 visitors. They have a little booth within the USA pavilion, so it was brainstorming how to set up their exhibit, where to show what, and other matters. If you're a first-time exhibitor, you have a very little footprint, and part of the discussion was how to maximize their presence abroad. 

I always try to find people who can support us because we only have a grant and we need sponsorships. But we don't want to look at it from a monetary perspective only. We are looking at win-win partnerships, so we only have one sponsor for each category. For example, if we have a law firm, we're not going to take another one. We will concentrate on having a valuable relationship with that firm and provide them with the opportunity to connect with and help our founders. 

This is a wonderful ecosystem, and everybody's very welcoming. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without our volunteers. Our judges are important in going through the initial applications and saying, you know, this has the best chance. And we very much depend on that. The mentors give their souls and a good five months of their time every year talking to these guys. If there is anything I can do to support the mentors, founders and their organizations, I do that. 

SB: Lastly, what's some advice you would provide someone thinking of launching a startup now? 

SK: Ask yourself about those that could benefit with your invention, with your innovation technology, or whatever your solution is. And you need to believe in yourself more than anybody else. You stick with it.

Recently, Jeff Bezos of Amazon said something similar about the beginnings of Amazon… “grinding for four years with no results, and in the fifth year, becoming the biggest thing on the planet.” Passion is going to be really important. Make sure you do something for a group of people and follow through. Do not take no for an answer. 

The Mass Innovation Network is part of The Startup Directory: Networking Groups. This ever-expanding list of New England networking groups helps find a specific community where you can grow, learn and be supported.

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About the author: Kathleen Ohlson is a Boston-based content writer with a background as a high-tech reporter and storyteller. With a passion for creating content that resonates with audiences, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.

(This interview was edited for length and clarity.)