One-to-one coaching and mentoring from startup experts
We provide our members and programme participants with access to a range of mentoring and coaching options. Whether you want to talk about your product, have a question about expanding your business or just need to talk to someone who’s been in your shoes, our mentors will share their knowledge and insights to support you.
Our Partners
CodeBase is the UK’s largest startup incubator, home to more than 100 of the country’s best technology companies. We champion businesses tackling big challenges with technology, and work tirelessly to support the development of a more diverse and competitive European digital industry.
Capital Enterprise are startup experts; connecting and energising a world-class entrepreneurship ecosystem. They are a body of connectors, influencers, investors and policymakers, collaborating to serve and super-charge the UK’s startup scene.
Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS) has extensive experience of working with and supporting Innovators, Entrepreneurs, Early Stage Start-Ups, Scale Ups and SMEs. The Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School has supported innovators from the earliest stages of exploring an idea through to established Scale-ups and SMEs with ambitious growth plans.
Mentorship opportunities with AccelerateHER
As part of Barclays commitment to support the creation and growth of female tech founders, both Rise and Eagle Labs have partnered with AccelerateHER, a network that believes in female founders and helps to support female founders on their entrepreneurial journey.
Along with their partners at Investing Women Angels, Scotland’s first women only angel group, AccelerateHER delivers a variety of events and workshops to support and inspire female founders to scale their business. Female founders in the Rise and Eagle Labs ecosystem now have the opportunity to access mentoring from angel investors, with a wealth of experience across a variety of sectors. In addition, we're delighted to have become the official banking sponsor for the AccelerateHER Scotland Awards 2021.
To find out more and apply for mentorship, follow this link.
Meet the Mentors
Steven Drost
CodeBase
Steven is a two-time entrepreneur, once successful, once failed. He has extensive experience of hiring, building revenues, selling companies, fund raising, and more. He has the scars and war stories to prove it. He is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at CodeBase and sees many startups per year. He loves to help business grow and network founders with peers, customers and investors. He has recently been appointed Trustee at David Hume Institute, Scottish policy think-tank based in Edinburgh.
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Jamie Coleman
CodeBase
Jamie began his career in drug discovery within diabetes and cardiovascular disease before becoming a software entrepreneur. He founded CodeBase, the UK's largest tech incubator, which is focused on growing and scaling software companies. Incubated companies include FanDuel, RightScale, Outplay, Administrate, Cloudsoft, Float, Caresourcer and more. Tenant companies have raised over half a billion dollars of investment, with 700 net new jobs and CodeBase is currently expanding across UK.
James Newbery
CodeBase
James is a web product development consultant and coach from Edinburgh. He was an early employee and Director of Engineering at FanDuel, scaling the gaming product to millions of users across multiple channels and helping to grow the company to a $1b 'unicorn' valuation. He has over 20 years’ experience building websites and apps for startups, big consumer brands and government organisations. These days he helps SaaS companies get the most out of the web and their development teams as they grow.
Michael Boniface
CodeBase
Michael held a number of senior positions in financial services before making the move into creative industries. He has worked with teams across Europe, the US, Russia and Brazil to create gaming products focussed around localised customer profiles and purchasing trends. Most recently Michael raised investment in China to build Skymoons Edinburgh, a mobile games studio focussed on building products that bridged both Asian and Western markets. Skymoons Edinburgh was sold to an American publisher in June 2018. Michael is currently Head of ONE Codebase in Aberdeen, a partnership between Opportunity North East (ONE) and CodeBase to deliver tech company growth and transformation in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
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Danae Shell
CodeBase
Danae is a developer-turned-marketer from Tennessee who has 15+ years working in the tech industry. She has worked as a developer and designer in financial services and e-government before spending five years at FreeAgent during their scale-up period as a content marketer. She served as CMO for Care Sourcer during their initial scale up and is most recently MD for #ENTRYLEVELBOSS, the career centre of the future. Danae is also co-founder and CEO of Valla, who build data-driven legal tools. She loves helping startups with marketing, hiring, strategy, and building motivated, happy teams.
Alan Gardner
CodeBase
Alan is an experienced software developer and consultant based in Aberdeen. Through his work with Cultivate, an Edinburgh-based software consultancy firm specialising in agile development and lean product delivery, he worked with many companies across sectors as diverse as early stage startups, government NPOs and Fortune 50 companies. When Cultivate was acquired by Deliveroo in 2019 he worked as a staff engineer on their payments team, as they built and scaled their payments and accounts system. He has over 20 years of experience of helping clients find the right thing to build and then to deliver their products in the right way. Alan currently consults through his company Narrativium, where he helps his clients to build user-facing, data-driven products in areas such as pharmaceutical development and telemedicine.
Babita Devi
CJBS
Babita Devi is a coach and entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience from a broad range of industries where she has helped with marketing and business development. Her marketing company bStrategic helps individuals get clear on how to make strategy part of every day, with a direct impact on the bottom line. She is founder of mySircles – an app that is designed to build stronger communities in a digital world and she has lectured Entrepreneurial Marketing at Lord Ashcroft Business School and Lincoln University. Babita also heads up marketing for coworking company CambridgeSpace and is a coach at the Judge Business School, where she works on the Accelerate Program helping entrepreneurs nurture venture creation and turn ideas into commercially viable companies.
Emmanuel Carraud
CJBS
Emmanuel Carraud is an entrepreneur and investor in Mobile Application, Digital Marketing and Property industry. He is the co-founder and CEO of AppChocolate Ltd, the festive mobile apps publisher.
As a serial entrepreneur, Emmanuel co-founded MagicSolver.com, the apps discovery specialists, in 2009 and reached over 50 million downloads, ranking #1 on the iTunes App Store in over 40 countries.
As a property investor, he manages Maison Invest Ltd, which run a portfolio of residential properties, single lets, HMOs and serviced accommodations across the UK.
Marco Donzelli
CJBS
Marco is a senior business leader with international experience in business development, entrepreneurship, business transformation and change management. His main industries of expertise are professional services, online marketplaces and consumer finance. Marco is the Global CEO at HLB, a leading mid-tier advisory and accounting network with combined turnover of US$ 2.93bn, presence in 158 countries and 30,000 people. He joined HLB in February 2012 as the Head of Strategic Network Development and then moved to the position of Chief Operating Officer in August 2015. As a result, Marco has over 8 years of senior leadership experience in the professional services industry, at a global level. He started his career in Italy, where after a brief period with Deloitte, he moved to Deutsche Bank, where he spent over six years in both commercial and internal consultancy roles within retail and consumer finance, before moving to the UK.
Rafik Jallad
CJBS
Rafik is an international entrepreneur with Telecom & High-tech and Internet of Things (IOT) experience. Rafik has the skills required to transform innovative IP into successful and profitable businesses. Rafik latest experience was founder and CEO of BlueCreation, a company focusing on the Internet of Things (IOT). Rafik grew BlueCreation with an international customer base and sold it to NASDAQ listed Sierra Wireless in November 2016.
Previously Rafik was Vice President at CSR (now part of Qualcomm) responsible for its Automotive division and part of the team elaborating strategy and managing post-merger. Rafik other experiences include Business Development Manager at Ubinetics (Telco company acquired in 2005 by CSR). Rafik has also previously worked at McKinsey on various mainly Internet strategy and operational projects worldwide.
Each Eagle Lab also has a series of local mentors who volunteer their time to help our members grow.
For more information on local mentors please get in touch with your Eagle Lab Ecosystem Manager.
Content
7 benefits of mentoring for startup founders
Tips on the benefits of mentoring from experienced mentors and mentees in the startup community.
How mentoring has helped my startup grow
James Powell is technical founder at Sellar, a digital solution that is looking to change the way that breweries sell to trade customers.
What to look for in a mentor
Danae Shell, founder and CEO of Valla and a mentor with CodeBase, explains what founders should look for in a mentor and the ways they could help.
How to find a mentor through Eagle Labs
Providing access to mentors is an essential part of what we do, says David Morris, Proposition Delivery Manager at Eagle Labs.
Making the most of your mentor
Ilana Fass, FinTech platform lead at Rise New York, discusses mentoring programmes and how to best work with a mentor.
How to best work with a mentor
Entrepreneur Kerry Ritz mentors many early-stage startups across the globe, sharing his experience with those making their first steps into business.
Pay it forward: An investor’s experience to mentoring startups
Muhammad Altalib talks about how investors can bring unique experience to a startup and why those in the startup ecosystem should look to pay it forward.
The key to finding mentors
If you want to find the right mentor you need the right attitude, says Moshe Teitelbaum, founder of fintech startup SHTAR.
Finding a mentor to help your startup thrive
Experienced mentors can make the difference between startup success and failure. We look at the role they play and how to find the right mentor.
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