Sign Up to Meet With The VMT

Congratulations on being selected to participate in the global Startup Showcase at eMerge Americas on April 18-19, 2024!

eMerge Americas and the Hemispheric University Consortium (HUC) has arranged an exclusive opportunity for you and your team to work with The Venture Mentoring Team (VMT) to fine-tune your presentation and ensure its maximum impact. The Venture Mentoring Team (thevmt.org) is the premier mentoring organization for startups with over 250 experienced and certified mentors and the startup mentoring partner of eMerge Americas. Your preparation sessions are provided to you at no cost, and we highly recommend that you leverage this opportunity for your benefit. Further, select startups will be invited to apply to The Venture Mentoring Team’s startup accelerator program, where accepted applicants receive ongoing startup mentoring to help your organization achieve your objectives.

The VMT is offering 1-hour Zoom pitch preparation sessions starting January 22 and continuing until eMerge Americas 2024 commences. This will allow you to have one weekly session for each of the twelve weeks before the Startup Showcase. In these sessions, you will practice presenting your 4-minute pitch and work with the mentors to refine your visual aids and pitch script.

Pro-Tip: During these sessions, the mentors will provide the judging criteria for the Showcase presentations and help ensure you hit all the essential points. Also, many of these mentors will be your judges at the Showcase, so this is a chance for you to start making impressions with them now.

A new signup calendar will be posted here every week.  Sessions are first-come-first-serve, and you may only book one session per week. Mentors are offering these times from their very full schedules, and it is imperative that you show up to your session on time and fully prepared.

Signups for Week 5: February 26 – March 1!

Click Here to Sign Up

Signups for Week 5 will close on Thursday, February 22nd at 11:59 PM

* All times posted are Miami, Eastern Standard Time.

Florida Atlantic University

The path taken by entrepreneurs is never a straight line and is full of twists and turns that often require expertise and guidance from professionals outside of the organization. We at 2nd Vault could not be more grateful and appreciative of the time and knowledge provided to us by the Venture Mentoring Team. Every minute spent with our mentoring team is time well spent and invested. The VMT mentoring team is a perfectly crafted group of professionals that all have meaningful direction and insights to provide. The VMT mentors keep us focused on what is in front of us systematically, helping to lead our company to scale. We feel so fortunate to have been selected as mentees of the VMT and hope to pay it forward in the future.  Thank you for all you do and the impact you have on start-up founders, as there is no price one could ever assign to the value we have received.

Kevin C. Cox, phD, MSE

Senior Instructor and Assistant Director

Office Depot initiated the Elevate Together program in 2021 partnering with The Venture Mentoring Team, the National Urban League and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to deliver impactful, measurable and scalable support services that foster business creation and growth opportunities for Black and Hispanic businesses.

It has been an honor to partner with the Venture Mentoring Team during Elevate Together’s launch and early stages. Their mentoring methodology and training set a high bar, and their mentors have been invaluable to our Elevate Together grant recipients.

We look forward to the VMT’s continued work with Urban League affiliates, Hispanic Chambers and other community partners to provide mentoring services to minority-owned small businesses as they grow and expand their mentoring services.

Sharu Goodwyn

National Manager, Community Investment, Elevate Together

Alex Price

National Director, Community Investment / Co-Leader, Diversity Council