Mentoring – A Great Way to Give Back

Mentoring at the Macquarie Uni Incubator – Alan Baghdasarayan.

As a Macquarie University alumni, it feels nice to come full circle and now offer my expertise and experience to help start-ups get off the ground. 

The Incubator is all about start-ups. They have 50+ start-ups across a range of industries including education technology, financial technology, health, virtual reality, clothing and textiles amongst others. Post Covid the Incubator is looking to provide much more face to face interaction between mentors and start-ups. 

My role in mentoring these start-ups is more around providing information regarding the various government grants that are available to companies. It’s not only at the start of a company’s life but throughout its growth as well. 

One of the key factors to focus upon is raising the awareness of the financial help that the government provides across all levels of business. There’s a lack of awareness and misconceptions about the grants and tax incentives that are available. 

Start-ups are inherently cash poor and operate with a smaller resource bandwidth than established corporations. With my background I can raise awareness not only of the government grants and tax incentives but also other financial indicators which allow businesses to grow. 

Quite often with the intense focus that a start-up has, things like cashflow forecasting, are not considered. It is these business fundamentals that should be established from day one. Not only is managing cash important for financial health, when the time is right to apply for a grant or tax incentive, numbers are already accessible and easy to either plug into the application or for potential investors to see. This shows a high level of business acumen supporting the ‘start-ups’ new product, idea or service. I’ll be mentoring and guiding start-ups across these key fundamentals as well as helping them if they are in a situation to apply for the grants and incentive programs the government has available to them. 

The government hasn’t been that active in promoting the grants and tax incentive programs recently. There’s a resource issue internally as they have been struggling to keep up with the current number of applications coming into the system without overloading it with more. Hopefully with the start-ups I’ll be mentoring, relationships will be established right throughout the life cycle of their business. 

Becoming a mentor at Macquarie Incubator hub is fully supported by BridgePoint Group and the management team is behind my involvement. It’s a further example of BridgePoint Group developing its people to their full potential.  

For more information about the government’s grants and tax incentive programs, please contact Alan Baghdasarayan via email Alan@bridgepointgroup.com.au or call him on 1300 656 141. 

For more information about the Macquarie University Incubator hub click here.

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Alan Baghdasarayan

GOVERNMENT GRANTS & INCENTIVES DIRECTOR

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