Founder Institute Mentors provide the support, feedback, and guidance that helped our early-stage founders launch over 800 businesses since the Institute was founded in 2009. When a founder is in need they come to the rescue... sort of like Startup Superheroes.
While all of our 2500+ Mentors help our companies, among these great individuals, there are some that stand out. Earlier this year, we announced the nominees for the 2012 Mentor Awards, which will take place at the 14th Founder Showcase event, on Wednesday, July 17th in Silicon Valley.
Today, we are excited to announce the winner of the "Highest Rated Mentor in Asia" Award:
Vinnie Lauria co-founded Lefora.com, a forum hosting service for communities on the web. In less than 3 years, Lefora grew to over 100,000 communities and was acquired by CrowdGather, Inc. in the summer of 2010. Vinnie also started the Silicon Valley NewTech meetup and grew it to over 7,000 members, with hundreds of startups demoing and launching their product at the monthly events. Prior to Lefora, Vinnie was part of the Meetro.com team building a location-aware IM client. Earlier in his career, Vinnie helped shape how IBM was approaching social software as an emerging and disruptive technology.
Congratulations Vinne!
The 2012 Startup Mentor Awards will be handed out at the Founder Showcase event, on Wednesday, July 17th, 2013. In addition to the award ceremony, the event will feature a series of early-stage startup workshops, led by Phil Libin (CEO of Evernote), Nir Eyal (Acclaimed Author and Speaker), and Joe Abraham (CEO & Founder, BOSI Global), as well as a pitch competition between six promising companies. We hope you will join us!
