With its core social network for students reaching a critical mass, Equals6 launched a new product this week that helps universities co-ordinate their mentoring networks.
The Halifax startup has just introduced Students2Mentors, a cloud-based platform that streamlines the creation and management of mentorship programs.
The company has set up students2mentors.com, and universities and colleges can develop their own branded sites to use the technology.
The idea behind the product is to help universities with easier administration of their programs that link students with mentors throughout all faculties. It is also a tool that can help alumni organizations find and aid graduates who want to help active students.
“Students2Mentors came out of work we’ve been doing with Dalhousie, and we had some ongoing discussions with their alumni,” said Equals6 CEO Andy Osburn.
“They have a mentorship program that’s way ahead of the curve, but it’s across several different faculties throughout the university. The problem was that they couldn’t find a tool that would allow them to administer and manage all those programs in a manageable way.”
Osburn started Equals6 in 2011 with the goal of providing an online environment in which students could interact with one another and potential employers to discuss career opportunities. While Facebook was social and fun, and LinkedIn was for people with careers, Osburn wanted a site that could help students transitioning from school to the workplace.
For a few years, Equals6 has had the goal of having 100,000 students subscribing to the site, and they reached that in October.
There are now about 110,000 users, rising by about 40,000 to 50,000 per year, and the company is profitable.
The site includes scholarship programs and crowdfunding for students, and now Students2Mentors offers a new feature.
Mentorship, in which people working in a certain field help to train students preparing for that field, is growing at universities and colleges. It exposes students to people with actual experience in their chosen career, and it allows alumni and others to contribute to a younger generation.
Osburn said that most universities have tools for co-ordinating mentorship that are “pretty clunky and ineffective.” These platforms have trouble matching students and mentors, tracking how regularly they meet and measuring other components of the program. Students2Mentors aims to provide such functions.
About 18 months ago, Equals6 introduced a mentoring platform into its own site but realized it was a separate field.
So the company set up its own platform for the new product.
“It’s easier to market and sell this way, and it reduces some of the clutter around the messaging around Equals6,” said Osburn.
“Now we can communicate to alumni associations across North America.”
Equals6 charges $950 to a university or alumni association to set up a branded Students2Mentors site, and then charges a monthly subscription fee.
The Dalhousie site is live, and Equals6 is beginning to market it to other institutions. Osburn figures there is a total market of about 500 schools that could use the product, though there may also be applications for non-academic bodies.
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