With a mix of gratitude and sadness, we are announcing that Mentorange will be closing its doors. This journey has been nothing short of incredible, and we owe it all to you—our mentors, mentees, and supporters who believed in our vision.

From the very beginning, our goal was to build a platform that made mentorship seamless, accessible, and impactful. Along the way, we connected with inspiring individuals, facilitated countless mentorship sessions, and saw incredible growth in personal and professional journeys. While we’re proud of what we built together, we’ve reached a point where it’s time to move on to new opportunities and challenges.

What This Means for You

🔹 Platform Access: The Mentorange platform will remain active until end of April, after which it will be discontinued.
🔹 Data & Downloads: If you’d like to save any notes or session history, please do so before April 31st.
🔹 Support: Our team will be available at support@mentorange.com for any questions or concerns during thi…

Read more

Hello Subscribers,

As we continue our commitment to providing you with the best tools and features for effective mentorship, we're thrilled to announce some exciting updates to our app.

Subscribe now

New Features Introduced:

1. Community Group Chats: Each mentoring program now comes with its own private community, complete with group chat capabilities. Connect, collaborate, and engage with your program members effortlessly.

2. 1-on-1 Chats: Enhance your mentoring relationships with private, one-on-one chat capabilities. Communicate directly with your mentors or mentees for personalized guidance and support.

3. Forums: We're introducing forums as a new way to keep the community engaged. Share insights, ask questions, and participate in discussions to enhance your mentoring experience.

Updates to Existing Features:

1. Improved Menu Navigation: We've streamlined the menu navigation to make finding what you need quicker and easier than ever before.

2. Enhanced Mobile-Friendly Pages: Enjoy a seamless experience on your smartp…

Read more

Tuesday Tunes remains a source of thought leadership, offering insights into mentoring, coaching, growth, community, and leadership.

Today, let's dive into the art of being a better mentor—because the impact you make goes far beyond the guidance you provide.

Subscribe now

Embrace Empathy

Understanding your mentee's journey is the first step toward effective mentorship. Empathy creates a safe space for open communication and fosters a mentorship dynamic built on trust.

Set Clear Expectations

Clarity is key. Clearly define your mentee's goals and expectations from the mentorship journey. This sets the stage for a focused and purposeful collaboration, ensuring both parties are aligned.

Active Listening Matters

Listening is more than hearing words; it's understanding the emotions and nuances behind them. Actively listen to your mentee, ask clarifying questions, and make them feel heard.

Guide, Don't Dictate

A great mentor doesn't provide all the answers but guides their mentee to discover solutions independently. Encourage critical thinking, and watch your mentee blossom into a confident decision-maker.

Embrace Diversity

Mentorship is a two-way street of learning. Embrace diversity of thought, backgrounds, and experiences. It's in this diversity that innovation and creativity thrive.

Continuous Learning

The mentor-mentee relationship is a constant learning experience. Stay updated on industry trends, share your knowledge, and foster an environment of continuous learning.

Foster Networking Opportunities

Connect your mentee with your network. Networking opens doors, providing valuable opportunities for growth and collaboration. A mentor's network can be a powerful resource for a mentee's success.

Inspire, Motivate, Celebrate

Be a source of inspiration. Motivate your mentee to reach for the stars, and celebrate their victories—big and small. Your encouragement is a catalyst for their success.

Elevate Your Mentorship Journey!

Ready to take your mentorship to new heights? Mentorange is here to support you on this transformative journey.

Cheers to becoming better mentors and creating a ripple effect of growth and success!

Sign up for Mentorange

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

Check out our blogs for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Share Mentorange Newsletter

Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash
  

Exciting news — we've just launched on Product Hunt, and we can't wait to share the Mentorange magic with the world! 🚀

Sign up here!

Join the Buzz: Mentorange on Product Hunt! We're thrilled to announce that Mentorange is now live on Product Hunt. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase the power of mentorship and connect with a wider audience.

How You Can Help: We value your feedback immensely! Head over to our Product Hunt page, check out Mentorange, and let us know what you think. Your insights are crucial as we continue to refine and enhance the Mentorange experience.

🚀 Upvote and Spread the Word! If Mentorange has added value to your mentorship journey, help us climb the Product Hunt ranks! Click the "upvote" button on our Product Hunt page and share the news with your network. Your support means the world to us!

Join the Conversation: Have questions, suggestions, or just want to share your Mentorange story? Hop onto the Product Hunt comments section to engage with our team and fellow Mentorange enthusiasts.

🌟 Call to Action: Your Feedback Shapes Mentorange's Future! Visit our Product Hunt page, upvote, and share your thoughts. Your feedback is not just welcomed; it's integral to making Mentorange the best it can be. Let's make waves together!

Upvote on Product Hunt

Thank you for being a crucial part of the Mentorange community. Together, let's make mentorship an even more enriching experience!

Cheers to Growth and Collaboration!

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Dear Mentorange Users,

Exciting news on the horizon! 🌟 We've been hard at work enhancing your Mentorange experience, and we're thrilled to unveil some game-changing updates:

Read more

Tuesday Tunes remains a source of thought leadership, offering insights into mentoring, coaching, growth, community, and leadership.

We will explore the transformative power of mentorship in personal growth, let's dive into the enriching melodies that have been carefully composed for your benefit.

Subscribe now

Read more

Subscribe now

Now that we have released our MVP we are now focusing on other important stuff within the company. Let’s check it out.

Funding

We want to grow our team in different departments and to do that we are opening up for Seed round with Angel Investors and if needed Venture Capitalists.

If you are looking to invest in the future of Mentorange then reach out by clicking the below button that will generate a prefilled email that you can send us.

Get more details for funding

Marketing, Sales & Support

The MVP phase was focused on building the product with a development team. Now, we want to focus on getting our marketing, sales, and support ready. Initially, we will be outsourcing this to keep the cost low. But all will depend on the funding as well.

Phase 2

As I have said in the past we have a strong backlog of great ideas to improve the app that will provide a truly all-in-one app for mentoring. In order to make that possible, we will still need our development team and start focusing on phase two.

But for now, we have paused our development for phase 2 as we are focused on prioritizing the backlog and incorporating customer feedback.

Offers

Currently, we are providing $100 + an additional $50 credits for signups. Early adopters received $100 extra. We will also be providing $50 credits for all our current newsletter subscribers; just reach out to support@mentorange.com.

We are also providing a free onboarding session where you can ask any questions about the product, process, or the company itself. If you haven’t signed up yet then use the below button to signup.

Sign up

Mentorange is an application that provides a comprehensive set of tools to help mentors & coaches around the world to conduct their programs and manage their mentees with ease. It helps them build a strong and trusted community.

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Sign up here!

At Mentorange, we've poured our hearts and souls into creating a platform that simplifies and enhances the mentoring experience. We're excited to introduce you to a range of remarkable features that will take your mentorship game to the next level:

1. Group Mentoring: Mentorange recognizes the power of collective wisdom. With our group mentoring feature, mentors can lead and engage with multiple mentees simultaneously, fostering a supportive community of learning and growth.

2. 1:1 Mentoring: Mentorange empowers mentors and coaches to engage in impactful 1-on-1 mentoring relationships. Seamlessly connect with your mentees using our integrated Zoom feature, facilitating face-to-face interactions regardless of geographical distance. Take advantage of the built-in goal-tracking and note-taking system.

3. Auto-Session Enablement: Say goodbye to manual session scheduling! Mentorange's intelligent system automatically enables session availability based on your preferred time slots and availability. It's a game-changer that saves you time and streamlines the mentoring process.

4. Private Community for Each Program: Mentorange understands the importance of creating a secure and supportive environment for mentorship programs. That's why we've integrated a private community feature within each program. Mentors and mentees can engage in discussions, share resources, and build meaningful connections within a safe and exclusive space.

5. Affordable and Accessible: We believe that impactful mentorship should be accessible to all. That's why we've made Mentorange an affordable option without compromising on quality. We want to break down barriers and empower mentors and coaches worldwide.

Mentorange is not just a platform; it's a catalyst for positive change. We're here to enable you to unlock your full potential as mentors and coaches, guiding others towards success. With our user-friendly interface, you'll be amazed at how seamlessly you can manage your programs, mentees, and content.

But wait, there's more! As we celebrate our launch, we're offering an exclusive limited-time offer to our early adopters. The first 20 signups will receive an extra $50 credit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to experience the magic of Mentorange.

Join us on this exciting journey of transformation and impact. Visit our website, create your Mentorange account, and let the mentoring adventure begin!

We are immensely grateful for your support and trust in us. Stay connected with us through our newsletter, social media channels, and community forums. We can't wait to see the incredible mentorship stories that unfold with Mentorange.

Together, let's shape a brighter future through the power of mentoring!

Subscribe now

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Subscribe now

We've been working our tails off to create a platform that will knock your socks off, making mentorship and coaching a breeze. However, we have a small hiccup to share with you, and we believe in keeping it real.

Oops!

Just when we were ready to release Mentorange to all of you, our testing phase unveiled a few pesky bugs that need our attention. We'll admit, it caught us off guard, but we quickly rallied our troops and decided to press the pause button temporarily. Why? Because we're sticklers for perfection, we want to ensure you have the smoothest, most mind-blowing user experience possible.

Now, we know this might throw a wrench in your plans, and we totally get it. But hey, better a small delay than launch something that isn't up to snuff, right? We're working day and night to fix those bugs and put things right, so you can have the Mentorange experience you've been dreaming of.

Impressive Features

While going through the testing scenarios this past weekend; I was impressed by how easy we have made program management. Organizing your mentoring sessions, tracking progress, sharing content, and connecting with your mentees has never been easier. Seriously, it's a game-changer.

We know you're itching to get your hands on Mentorange, and we genuinely appreciate your patience as we put the final touches on this beauty. Trust us, it'll be worth the wait! We're hustling around the clock to squash those bugs, and we're confident that when we release Mentorange, it'll blow your mind.

Soon…

In the meantime, we'd love for you to stay connected with us as part of the Mentorange family here, and we'll keep you in the loop with regular updates on our progress, sneak peeks of exciting features, and the revised release date.

We're so grateful for your support and enthusiasm throughout this journey. Mentorange is more than just a platform to us; it's a chance to empower mentors and coaches worldwide, helping them unleash their full potential and guide others toward success.

Mentorange is an application that provides a comprehensive set of tools to help mentors & coaches around the world to conduct their programs and manage their mentees with ease. It helps them build a strong and trusted community.

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Subscribe now

This week we are providing just a general update on where things are and how soon can we release our first MVP.

Recap of the week since the last update

For a couple of weeks, we have been squashing bugs and making a few more adjustments either to the UI, middleware, backend or all 3 areas. While we know the software cannot be perfect; we do intend to produce a quality application so that our users will have the best experience. One thing I have learnt over the course of my career that do not strive for perfection or else it will never get released. Many big projects have failed for the same reasons. Our goal is to release and iterate.

In this MVP release, we have a few “WOW” factors (but not all) and with each major release, we intend to add more, as we have a lot of “WOW” features in the backlog. We will be releasing our roadmap soon.

Demos for prospects

We have started creating demos for our prospects where they can see the product first-hand. If you are one of them then make sure to signup on our website (click the button below). We will soon be taking down our website to start the production release - tentatively will start this on June 18th. So hurry up and sign up for the first round to get a $200 credit.

Right now the thought is to have a bunch of small videos in a video gallery but will let you know more in our upcoming newsletter post where more details will be shared.

Mentorange is an application that provides a comprehensive set of tools to help mentors & coaches around the world to conduct their programs and manage their mentees with ease. It helps them build a strong and trusted community.

Make sure to sign up early to get extra credits that can be used when we launch. This is a limited-time opportunity.

Sign up for Mentorange

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Subscribe now

Developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application can be a complex process. With so many moving parts involved, it can be challenging to ensure that the final product is of high quality. One crucial aspect of creating a quality SaaS application is testing. In this post, we’ll discuss why testing is so important and how it can help you create a better SaaS application.

Importance of Testing

Testing is essential for creating a quality SaaS application. By testing your application, you can identify and fix bugs and other issues before they reach your customers. This not only improves the user experience but also helps to prevent costly downtime and frustrated customers.

There are several types of testing that you should consider when developing a SaaS application. We have included the following testing strategies in our application: unit testing, integration testing, and acceptance testing. Each of these testing types plays a unique role in ensuring that your application is of high quality.

Unit testing involves testing individual components of your application to ensure that they are working as expected. Each developer is tasked to test their own modules and showcase them working in a staging environment that gets created when a PR (pull request) gets created. We also focus a lot on the UI design testing and making sure it is pixel-perfect.

Integration testing involves testing how these components work together as a whole. When a feature is complete we perform integration testing that consists of the path that merges from the existing features into the newly built features.

Acceptance testing involves testing the application from the end user's perspective to ensure that it meets their needs and expectations. In our world, either Minal or I am the end-users and perform those testing. This testing is our end-to-end testing as well.

Role of Testing in CI/CD

Testing plays a crucial role in continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). We have been heavily using CI/CD for all of our components including infrastructure.

In a CI/CD environment, testing is automated and integrated into the development process. This means that every time a code change is made, the application is automatically tested to ensure that it is still functioning correctly. This helps to catch issues early on in the development process, making it easier and less expensive to fix them.

Due to the pace at which we want to have a go-to-market MVP product we have not been completely focused on integrating testing in the CI/CD process. But we plan to start implementing this once we have the MVP release.

Conclusion

Creating a quality SaaS application requires a lot of hard work and attention to detail. Testing is a crucial part of this process and should not be overlooked. By testing your application regularly and thoroughly, you can ensure that it is of high quality, meets the needs of your customers, and is scalable and reliable.

In my 12+ years of consulting, I have learned that most companies either ignore testing or it gets outdated too fast. While we understand the pace at which we are building the MVP it becomes tough. We do realize that implementing automated testing is crucial for the stability of the product and thus we are committed to making that happen once we have a stable MVP. When we do implement it we will share more details on how we do it. 🙂

Mentorange is an application that provides a comprehensive set of tools to help mentors & coaches around the world to conduct their programs and manage their mentees with ease. It helps them build a strong and trusted community.

Make sure to sign up early to get extra credits that can be used when we launch. This is a limited-time opportunity.

Sign up for Mentorange

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Subscribe now

Every individual needs to disconnect from the hustle-bustle of life and take a much-needed break to ensure good health and well-being; not just of themselves but also of their family and the company.

When the CEO takes a vacation

I have heard that when you start a company; one of the trade-offs is no vacation for you. Well, I am not sure if it is true or not but that is not what this startup is (and will be) doing. Currently, it is only me & Minal (we are married) who overlook the work produced by the dev team. So it becomes challenging when we need to go on a vacation. So how do we do it?

First of all, we have made our developers very self-sufficient by providing them with the necessary tools, training, and automation. We have a strong backlog of items and all future sprints are ready.

We plan our vacations months in advance and a few weeks before our vacation, we set up some extra time to go over each and every item in depth that will be completed while we are away. This helps us identify any blockers or dependencies. Once we identify such hurdles we put a plan in place to work them out while we are still here. We also plan for a few extra items that can be taken over in case we run into any blockers while we are on vacation. These backup items are very straightforward mostly bugs. This helps keep the work going and enables us to take a peaceful vacation.

Do we carry laptops with us? Our policy on vacation is not to do any work and when you carry a laptop most of the time you may think of work. So as the proverb goes “out of sight, out of mind”; we mostly do not carry our laptops with us.

When key people take a time-off

We do want to keep the development going; but what happens when the do-ers need a time-off? We follow the same strategy as described above, but me being a full-stack developer helps keep the momentum as a backup person who the team can rely on. And we follow the same policy with the key people being out of the office to not contact them even if something is urgent.

Disconnecting from work is very important. It is like meditation; if someone interrupts you while having meditation you don’t feel the zen similarly when someone interrupts your vacation you don’t feel disconnected. You want the person to come back rejuvenated so they can be super productive.

Make sure to sign up early to get more credits that can be used when we launch. This is a limited-time opportunity.

Sign up for Mentorange

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com. Make sure to add our email address to the safe-sender list.

If you liked our content then share our newsletter with others and check out our blogs at https://www.blog.mentorange.com/ for more content on mentoring.

It will mean the world when you share this newsletter with your friends and family.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Subscribe now

Pricing Survey

Before we dive into our weekly update we wanted to capture your thoughts on the pricing. Please submit the survey here as this will help us to ensure we are pricing it right for you.

Weekly Update

Still continuing on the Zoom Video SDK; we ran into some issues when tying the functionality with the UI. But I am very impressed by the Zoom team into how much thought they have put into making this SDK very robust. In parallel, we worked on integrating the Stripe SDK for the checkouts and the payouts.

Pricing Structure

There are two types of checkouts; the first type of checkout is the process where the mentor is paying us a small fee for running the program - this is the cost we need to cover our infrastructure, and the other type of checkout is where the mentee is paying the program fee defined by the mentor - this fee goes directly to the mentor. Mentors c…

Read more

Subscribe now

Weekly Update

This week we continued to work on embedding Zoom into our platform. In parallel, we also worked on integrating social media login with our platform. We integrated Google, Facebook & LinkedIn logins but could not complete Twitter because they changed their APIs from v1 to v2. Also, they now are taking twice as long to approve the developer account. With all the new changes with Twitter, we decided not to spend any more time figuring it out right now and maybe we will come back to this post-MVP release.

Aligning our product with customer expectations

Next, we did an end-to-end flow walkthrough of the app and tried to map it with several requirements and expectations we had received from the interviews we conducted with our potential customers. Now, each and every individual does mentoring differently so we could not map all of their requirements in this …

Read more

Subscribe now

Weekly Update

This week we started working on embedding Zoom into our platform using Zoom Video SDK. We initially started with a proof of concept a few weeks back to understand the SDK which was somewhat successful but now taking it further up a notch by adding our UI theme around the components. This will provide the feature of running live sessions within the platform; so that mentors can have peace of mind and not worry about how to deliver the session.

We also have built an ability for mentors to upload pre-recorded Video, Audio, and PowerPoint as session content. But we had a bug with large file uploads for video & audio. We were able to resolve that bug this week. Now, we can upload a large file of up to 2 GB. More improvements need to be done around improving the performance of the upload itself.

Unique Features

• Live sessions: Mentors would not have to worry ab…

Read more

Subscribe now

The Good

Before we start providing the recap; want to give you an overview of what we have built so far.

Our public pages are all built; a version of which you can see at https://mentorange.com. The majority of our micro-services and backend are built. Focusing on building out the frontend. Truth be told; IMO backend and micro-services are faster to build. It takes time and effort to make sure the UI is pixel-perfect, not buggy, and secured.

The Bad

We completed sprint 13, and we did not complete all the planned items. The one item that dragged on for a while was building out the community feature. Yes, we built this feature from scratch. Why not buy vs build? Yes, a valid question. After very thorough research and reaching out to many other applications that provide community capabilities, it did not fit the requirements we were looking for. Either they lacked the se…

Read more

Subscribe now

This week we will be sharing our top 5 internal tools that we heavily use.

GitHub

This is our primary source control. We have 17 repositories for various purposes and we have implemented CI/CD on all of those. We do not use it for bug or task tracking.

➡️ Link

Azure DevOps

We use Azure DevOps for project management and have implemented Agile methodology. This is where we track our Epic, Features, User Stories, and Bugs.

We also use Azure DevOps for storing Artifacts that are used as external libraries in several repositories. We have both NuGet and npm private packages.

We do not use Pipelines except for Power Platform stuff but more on that some other day.

➡️ Link

Notion

Our internal wiki is on Notion. The flexibility of Notion is just amazing with so many component types. And it is lightweight. Notion also recently launched AI com…

Read more

We all do it - procrastinating. It can be a challenge to stay on top of our commitments and tasks, especially when we're feeling tired or overwhelmed.

But why do we procrastinate in the first place?

The most common reason people procrastinate is that they feel overwhelmed. Tasks can seem too big, too complex, or too time-consuming, so it's easier to put them off. We can also procrastinate out of fear of failure or fear of the unknown. If we don't know what to expect from a task or don't feel confident in our ability to complete it, we're more likely to push it aside.

Other reasons for procrastination include perfectionism, boredom, or even distraction. It can be easy to get caught up in distractions like social media or video games or to worry about making something perfect instead of just getting it done.

Fortunately, there are ways to overcome procrastination. One way is to break down tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. By breaking big tasks into smaller tasks…

Read more

What will this newsletter entail?

We will be sharing some of the nitty-gritty details on starting a SaaS company, pitfalls, plus tips & tricks. We will also be sharing some of the updates with our product as we plan to build it in public. You will get to know the progress and when we will be launching.

We launched our early access last week. So, check out the website that provides a preview of our product & its features. Request early access so you can get $200 credits.

Checkout Mentorange app

Even if you are not thinking of mentoring right now; this offer is not gonna last forever, you better hurry up and grab it now.

A great part of this offer is: credits won’t expire. How cool is that!!

Hope you like this newsletter. If you want to see any specific content, please send us an email at newsletter@mentorange.com.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Read more