Mentors gave STARTER teams new motivation to develop their ideas

The Mentor Feedback Carousel is one of the most valued events in the STARTERtartu programme, which took place at Spark HUB on March 23rd this year. Teams met with experienced mentors from various fields to receive valuable feedback on their ideas.

STARTER programme mentors are professionals with extensive experience in their respective fields. Most of the mentors had participated in previous Mentor Feedback Carousels, but there were also some for whom this year's event was their first. All mentors were invited according to the needs of our teams. The event had 11 teams and an equal number of mentors.

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Mentor Mari-Liis Kärsten with the Transful team. Photo: Hannah Kaarma

Ann-Margit Järvekülg, Soulie's marketing manager and co-founder, said she had a great time mentoring our teams and hopes to be invited back, as it was inspiring to see young founders in the early stages of their ventures. According to Marti Soosaar, FitQ Studio and Stebby founder, it was rewarding to see young and naive people, but he also added that there is still a lot of work to be done.

This year, one team decided to bring their prototype - high protein content ravioli - to the Mentor Feedback Carousel. With that, they generated a lot of interest and received the most attention from the mentors.

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PastaPro team leader Mihkel Tammaru. Photo: Hannah Kaarma

PastaPro team members said they arrived at the Mentor Feedback Carousel with no idea of what to expect. "The feedback we received was very helpful and gave us the motivation to move forward. Mentors saw our solvable problem from different angles and gave advice that we hadn't even thought of," they added.

Team Transful leader Kai-Melli Kapten is participating in the STARTER programme for the second time with her team. According to Kai-Melli, it can be difficult to get mentorship as a student, but at the Mentor Feedback Carousel, they were able to receive direct advice from almost 10 different mentors. Since each mentor's background was different, the feedback they received was cross-disciplinary (marketing, design, customer relations, etc.). "I would say that our future direction became much clearer and we can now set more specific steps for moving forward," she said.

Mentors who participated in the event: Ann-Margit Järvekülg, Ants-Oskar Mäesalu, Liina Joller-Vahter, Liina Laul, Mari-Liis Kärsten, Marti Soosaar, Martti Saarme, Seren Rumjancevs, Taavi Tamm, Triinu Hansen, Juta Kuhlberg. Thank you for your time and excellent mentorship!

The Starter programme is supported by the European Social Fund.
 

Further information: 

Hannah Kaarma, Communications and Marketing Specialist, UT Startup Lab, +372 5400 5242, hannah.kaarma@ut.ee