IU Ventures portfolio companies guide customers through pandemic effects: Mentor Collective

By Samantha Ginther, senior associate, IU Ventures

IU Ventures is committed to helping high-potential IU-affiliated startups achieve success. Between the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, Innovate Indiana Fund and IU Angel Network, we have invested in over 30 companies that remain active today. We’ve seen the pandemic affect each of them in different ways, and several have successfully flipped the challenge into an opportunity.

Mentor Collective helps higher ed conquer distance learning, student melt

Mentor Collective was founded in 2014 to help college students forge the long-lasting professional relationships that can shape a career. IU alumnus Jackson Boyar and co-founder James Lu Morrissey built a business that today partners with over 50 institutions, including IU, to serve a diverse array of students through digital mentorship and community.

Did you know that anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of those who say they intend to enroll as first-year students never show up on campus, even after paying a deposit? This phenomenon, known as “student melt” or “summer melt,” is expected to significantly increase because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This might even be true for existing students, unless institutions can create a distance-learning experience that is an engaging and relevant alternative to crowded classrooms.

“One can only imagine the experience of college freshmen taking their first-ever college course from their parents’ basement,” Boyar said. “With so much at stake, we have seen many universities double down on supporting their students through online peer mentorship.”

Mentor Collective’s model of digital relationship-building helps students set and achieve goals. The model of remote student engagement uniquely positions the company to speak to these concerns. Mentor Collective is providing free on-demand webinars covering topics like COVID’s implications for college enrollment and taking student support online.

“The Mentor Collective platform is proving to be an immediate value to institutions by providing an additional level of comfort to displaced students across the country to help ease the burden of remote learning,” said IU Ventures Associate Vice President Jason Whitney.

The Indiana University Philanthropic Venture Fund invested in Mentor Collective in 2019. We are excited and gratified to see it continue to thrive as a standout in its industry and help pay its success forward to its industry peers and customers.