A platform to connect startup entrepreneurs in Leicester and Leicestershire with a wide range of experts has reached a milestone.
The Leicester Startups ‘Help Engine’ now has 100 helpers featured on it.
The site was born out of a need to offer valuable mentors to the very first Leicester Startups Accelerator in 2020. 40 experienced founders who had previously given talks at Leicester Startups events were approached and each one agreed to be featured.
Leicester Startups founder Ben Ravilious’ web development company Ultimate Web first created a “minimum viable product”, which was a simple Pinterest-style board of mentors with a “request intro” form.
This proved so useful that his team spun it out as a platform which today can be adapted by other community groups. Ben said:
“We’re absolutely delighted that the original Leicester Startups one has exceeded 100 mentors/experts and we’re looking to commercialise the platform with some optional premium features later this year.
“We now have Help Engine in use by Trinity College Cambridge, Unrest Accelerator, De Montfort University, VentureVersity, Alesta Business Club and others.
If anyone is running a mentoring, experts or other type of community group where making great connections is important we’d welcome further beta uses of our free platform: https://www.helpengine.co/