We’re pretty sure you have seen carpool karaoke videos circulating the internet. This year at STEP2018, VW changed up the game with a carpool mentoring activation called Meet The Mentors. With VW, we invited A-lister entrepreneurs to give advice and tips to growing startup founders that showcased at STEP2018. Now you can also get a glimpse into these exclusive carpooling sessions!

Here are the top 5 things we learned from Meet the Mentors:

Connections and Community

In order to engage your audience, you need to create a tribe- is what Mompreneurs Founder, Mona Tavassoli, was preaching. Tavassoli was mentoring Justina Eitzinger, Founder of Traveling, who was trying to find new ways to engage her community with Travelini.

The Art of Negotiation

Glowork’s founder, Khalid Al Khudair, was teaching us about the art of negotiation. He encourages entrepreneurs to know who their partner’s competitors and not just stop at knowing their very own competitors. Julie Barbier-Leblan, CEO of Mylist, was being mentored by Khudair.

Understanding your audience

Differentiating between your user and your customer is a key to success advised Lamsa’s co-founder, Badr Ward. He had to differentiate between the kids that were Lamsa World’s users and the parents that were Lamsa World’s customers. 

Constructive Partnerships

When asked about constructive relationships, Bassel Nahlaoui, the Managing Director at Careem, said that a good way to create positive relations with governments is through local investors. Nahlaoui was mentoring Gaurav Biswas the CEO of Trukker.

Building Effective Brands

Noon’s Senior Brand Director, Christian Eid, and Nxtwish’s founder Alper Atakul got to discuss branding, and the best ways to utilize capital for branding. Eid finds that the biggest misconception entrepreneurs have is that branding and performance are mutually exclusive, but in reality, they are not. 

Looking forward to having these Mentors and Mentees again at STEP2019!