This week we are joined by Brian Tan of FutureLab, which is a mentorship platform connecting Mentors to Mentees to guide career paths, gain skills, and develop professionally from university through to Enterprise.
This was a great conversation about an impactful business aiming to enable access to mentorship for university students and recent graduates to guide them along their career paths. Incredible the story of the coffee shop days spent validating the product directly with meetups. A number of other great insights emerged, such as the need to humanize the product and localizing to language. A great example of social impact in a scalable business.
I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Brian Tan. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone that you’d like to hear me speak to, drop me a message.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and YouTube.
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Where to find Brian Tan:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-tan-boon-yong-0b277554/
• FutureLab: https://futurelab.my/
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Where to hear more from The Indelible VC:
• Newsletter: https://insights.indelible.vc
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/IndelibleVc
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kbrockland/
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In this episode, we cover:
[01:18] Origins in his own journey seeking direction after graduation while looking for his own career path and transitioning into the professional world.
[7:25] Getting out into the world and testing the idea directly with the target market even if it is a meet-up in a coffee shop.
[11:22] Iterating the product over time using design thinking principles, from MVP to grown product.
[17:45] Balancing the growth of available mentors along with mentees and how focus enabled them to scale
[21:45] Managing talent through the growth of the team size and the company
[25:17] Defining success for the organization
[29:16] Tracking the impact of mentorship on the mentees using the platform
[33:10] The need for focus and the Founder’s role changes over time
[38:23] Closing questions
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