Lorraine Murphy, who decided to utilise The Entourage when she started her business, says one of the best things an agency can offer is accountability.
The Entourage, led by managing director Jack Delosa, aims to inspire entrepreneurs to start, build and exit high-growth ventures in order to develop “the social entrepreneurs of tomorrow”.
Murphy, meanwhile, heads up The Remarkables Group, a talent agency for bloggers.
“When you’re a start-up, no one’s telling you what the best way is to do it. For a business like ours, because it was the first of its kind, no one had done it before,” Murphy says.
“That’s what really drew me into The Entourage. Also, the quality of the information. I also liked the idea of being accountable to someone else as well.”
Jones says he is wary of placing too much emphasis on mentoring, despite its prominence in other start-up programs.
“One of the most difficult things for a mentor is being able to step outside of their own experience,” he says.
“I’ve worked with successful entrepreneurs in the past. All they’ve been able to do is tell their story.
“You need a mentor to be able to look across a few different stories… and draw lessons from that.”
Delosa says there’s another potential problem associated with mentoring programs.
“A potential drawback… is that you start to listen to them without running it through your own filter, in which case you’re being intellectually lazy,” he says.
“Yes, you need to surround yourself with people with more business experience than you. However, you still need to be the master of your destiny.
“The voice inside of your head needs to be the loudest voice in the room.”
“I think we’ll see more [start-up agencies] popping up,” Jones says.
“To my knowledge, Pollenizer was the first start-up agency and it’s now more of an accelerator and incubator fund, and BlueChilli sits somewhere in between.
“With The New Agency, I do personally invest but the agency doesn’t. I certainly think there’s room for more players in all of the three slots.”
