Doing business in Bulgaria
Mentoring
While your own great ideas are essential to your business, through mentorship entrepreneurs can have a powerful asset to get them through rough times when their self-confidence may be waning.
Good mentorship will show you new perspectives and pathways to success and can help a fledgling entrepreneur think through strategies, crunch numbers, and create a business or marketing plan.
When looking for mentoring, you can try local business and start-up networking groups, as well as non-profit organizations. Business incubators are also great places where you could go if you want to establish connections with entrepreneurs at all levels of experience. Also try Chamber of Commerce meetings, local business roundtables, social media communities, and industry conferences.
Here are a few ideas at a local level
- Bulgarian Innovation Hub: Bulgaria Innovation Hub empowers high potential technology startups from Bulgaria to successfully expand into the U.S. market. Their 'soft-landing' services include a world-class go-to-market education curriculum, network access to advisors, mentors, and investors, and a benefits package worth over $90,000. They design their offerings around the needs of the companies to accelerate growth and enable a successful scale in the US. We provide curated introductions customized to each company’s requirements and objectives.
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- Sofia Startup Resource List: 300+ Accelerators, Incubators, Investors, and more: Sofia is becoming one of the best places to build a startup, but most of the early-stage entrepreneurs aren't aware of the local tech resources that are available to help them. With applications for the Sofia Founder Institute now open, the first ever Sofia Startup Resource Guide is released.
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- Youth Business Club: Youth Business Club (YBC) is entrepreneurial and business skill development organization based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Through the years they have organized more than a 120 public events to serve the development of business skills in youngsters, university students as well as young business professionals. Their startup pre-accelerator training course – UniStart was among the 2 finalists for the best startup course in the country by the jury at the Central European Startup Awards. They are one of the founding members of the Bulgarian Entrepreneurship and Startup Community of Organizations (BESCO) and together with other leading Bulgarian NGO’s they are suggesting affective changes in government policy. Together with all of the Entrepreneurial associations they are actively influencing positive change in some of the most significant governmental projects designed to support entrepreneurship in Bulgaria.
Click Here - Mentors.bg: Mentors BG aims to show that the future does not always mean uncertainty. The pursuit of perfection pushes us a step forward and is enough to bring predictability, courage and hope that tomorrow will be brighter than today. With enthusiasm and expressed confidence, in response to the growing need for action in the youth sector in Bulgaria, the project brings together students, young professionals and adults in a one-year mentoring program in the fields of politics, finance, business, law, IT and others. The aim is for young people to build friendly and business relationships with leading experts in the areas they are excited about. In this way, the programme contributes to their development, offering mentors the opportunity to demonstrate commitment to the challenges facing the younger generation.
Click Here - ABLE Mentor: ABLE Mentor is one of the Association of the Bulgarian Leaders and Entrepreneurs (ABLE)’s projects. The primary purpose of the project is to connect students and professionals with students from the upper secondary school classes and create a network where they can share knowledge and experience. Students and mentors are assigned into teams of one mentor and one student based on common interests. Within three months they will have to develop their own case or project that can be related to entrepreneurship, personal development or social causes. The concept of individual mentoring and building a sustainable relationship of trust between the players in each team is in the essence of ABLE Mentor, while the main goal is to increase the knowledge and skills of the students.
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