“During these difficult times of the Corona Virus pandemic, we sensed extreme devotion from mentors who strongly believe in the importance of supporting entrepreneurs and their startups”, stated Krystel Khalil, Berytech Program Director.

In the framework of Berytech’s Impact Rise program, 28 business experts were introduced to IM Capital’s methodology of its Confideo Venture Mentoring program through MIT Venture Mentoring Services through a 2-day Mentor Training in February 2020. After the training, 28 mentors were matched with 16 start-ups (each startup matched with 2-3 mentors).

While the mentoring sessions were scheduled to take place in March 2020, the COVID-19 was declared as pandemic, therefore all the sessions had to be conducted digitally for the safety of the entrepreneurs and mentors.

During the lockdown period, the Impact Rise team along with the mentors are enormously supporting startups by encouraging them to manage their time effectively by conducting researches to build and amend their business strategies, to validate their products and to interact with potential customers and experts.

The startups are affirming how effective the group approach is when different opinions and ideas are put on table, how supportive the mentors are on both the technical and the moral level and how the use of digital tools is helping them become more resilient during this period.

Now more than ever, IM Capital and Berytech will continue empowering social entrepreneurship in Lebanon by motivating youth to initiate actions in the educational, environmental, medical field and others to bring positive social change in the society.