MassChallenge is stepping up to the plate in round two of their global startup competition by hiring a ‘Chief Mentorship Officer.’ We have covered MassChallenge (The MassChallenge Story: Parts one, two, and three) quite a bit over the past year, and one piece of feedback from participating companies kept rising to the top: “I wish I had more time with my mentors.” The companies have spoken, and MassChallenge has listened.
MassChallenge has just announced the expansion of their executive team with the hiring of Karl Buttner as Chief Mentorship Officer. Buttner brings MassChallenge over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and mentor. He cofounded 170 Systems back in the 90’s and led it through 20 years of growth to a successful acquisition. Buttner also serves as a mentor for TechStars and MIT Venture Monitoring Service.
“We have always recognized that effective mentorship is the key to promoting successful
startups — that is why we incorporated the accelerator stage into our competition in the first
place,” said John Harthorne, Founder and CEO of MassChallenge. “We are excited to build on last year’s successful mentoring program by bringing in an entrepreneur and mentor with Karl’s experience. Karl was heavily engaged in the 2010 MassChallenge competition and accelerator, and he received universal praise from our startups and the community at large. It is our great pleasure and honor to bring him on board so we can provide even more support to help entrepreneurs win.”
Buttner participated in MassChallenge last year as a judge and mentor to a few teams, and apparently wanted more. “After a fantastic experience at MassChallenge as a mentor last year, I knew this was an organization I wanted to be more involved with,” said Büttner. “MassChallenge is delivering so much value to entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The team and community at MassChallenge are amazing, and I’m thrilled to be joining them in this capacity. I look forward to building on last year’s great success and helping to make it even better in 2011.”
I was over at MassChallenge last week, and the the place is already abuzz and getting ready for round two of their global competition. Applications for this years program are said to be available as early as February 1st, and will run until April 11th. Here is the list of the winners from last year’s competition.
