Meet the minds behind the unicorns and get advice from people who’ve done it all before. Mentor Hours connects rising startups with established experts for 45-minute meetings.
Apply for our 2025 startup program, and join us in Lisbon.

You&#8217;ll receive an email with more information.

Thank you for applying for startup tickets at Web Summit 2025.

Mentor Hours

Mentor Hours is a series of pre-scheduled, 45-minute meetings between our high-level attendees and startups.
Mentor Hours has four distinct tracks: lead, engage, build and grow. Each track has a specific focus and mentors with relevant expertise to ensure you discuss the issues most important to your startup.
Mentors spend 45 minutes coaching startups in a group session. This mix of backgrounds means the session will be shaped by individual and collective experiences in the startup community.

What is Mentor Hours?

Master the art of leadership, strategy, entrepreneurship and hiring. Our attending CEOs and managing directors will share their experience on enhancing leadership capabilities while optimising your team’s personal growth and company strategy.

Lead

Learn how to tell your story to the world. Our attending brand experts will share their personal experience on marketing, brand identity, social engagement and public relations. This is your chance to ask questions you can’t ask the media or your customers.

Engage

Learn more about product development, software, hardware, big data, UI, UX or front/back-end development. Our attending engineers, data scientists and product designers will share their extensive personal experience on all things tech.

Build

Raising capital or just need financial guidance? Quiz our attending investors and top-level fund managers on the do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts of financial management, or ask your burning questions about negotiating investment or applying for a business loan.

Grow

Meet our 2024 mentors

Founder & Principal

Carla Viegas-Barber

DevEx & Startup Partnerships

Stefan Despotovic

Head of Venture Capital AI EMEA

Cian Hughes

Partner

Dora Trachana

Jana Budkovskaja

Investment Associate

Francis Ireland

Co-founder and CEO

Marie Fabiunke

Manging Director

Rafiq Ahmed

Regional Lead, Turkey, Central Eastern Europe + Central Asia

Xiaomin Mou

Managing Partner

Patricio Hunt

Founder & CEO

Silvina Moschini

Executive Director

Gil Azevedo

Co-Founder

Alicia Grimes

International Presenter

Flo Akinbiyi

Principal

Franz Diekmann

Chief Marketing Officer

Menaka Gopinath

Founding Partner

Rudolphe Cabral

Deepak Ahuja

Ben Stokes

Founder

Jeffery Potvin

"Web Summit is now the largest gathering of entrepreneurs."

"The world’s biggest tech event."

"The largest technology conference in the world.”

You’ll now get exclusive access to speaker announcements, ticket discounts and much more.

Thanks for subscribing to the Web Summit newsletter.

Never miss another speaker announcement

Mentor Hours | Startups | LIS25