Why is Plato a for-profit if the mentors are volunteering?

Plato is a for profit company, and a marketplace, close to Open Source

The mentees are paying members (typically their company are paying for the membership)
The mentors are volunteering their time and do not get any financial compensation

Why does Plato require a paid subscription?

Today, Plato is a company of 35 people, working on different aspects:
- Customer success
- Mentor community
- Engineers

The mentee do not only have access to a community of mentors, they also benefit from a hands on solution with challenges identification, mentor recommendation, mentorship program with success metrics etc

Besides 1-1 calls, they also have access to other content, such as mentor stories or group mentorship sessions (called Circles)

What are the incentives for the mentors?

- Giving back to the community
- Keep growing as leaders by helping people with different challenges and with a different company culture
- Building their personal brand thanks to Linkedin and events
- Networking with the tech community

Lot of mentors application (More than 50%) are actually organic inbounds! Experience tech leaders who heard about Plato and want to be part of a mentorship program where they can give some of their time and help inspire the next generation of tech leaders.

Why are the mentors not paid?

Like with every volunteer opportunities, it brings many perks:
- Mentors who decide to join the platform are truly dedicated to help the community and are not doing it for the money
- This ease the onboarding process since there is no money exchange: no contract to sign, no company conflict
- This helps us keep a fairly affordable price to our customers

What are the initiatives launched by Plato?

- Group mentorships (Circles) are free for everyone, new are starting every weeks
- Elevate, our quarterly Summit gathers thousands of tech leaders from all around the world to exchange on management topics and provide and amazing worldwide visibility to our speakers
- Virtual dinners: every weeks we gather dozen of tech leader in a casual setting for them to network

Updated on: 02/14/2023