Together (YC S19) – App to facilitate employee-employee mentoring

We're Matt and Nathan, founders of Together (https://togetherplatform.com). We make an app that manages employee-employee mentoring programs, and that ultimately improves employee career development and company culture.

Matt and I met while we were working at the Boston Consulting Group, an unusual workplace that gets a number of things really right. They rank Top 5 on Glassdoor every year for best places to work. The best thing there is the culture of 'non-evaluative' mentoring. It was common to grab a coffee on a weekly basis with a senior colleague outside your team, talk through what strengths you want to develop, and that conversation would somehow eventually translate into a project together where you worked specifically on those areas. It's the reason why we felt our 'personal growth rate' really took off - someone was always aware of your goals.

That got us thinking about whether the experience could be replicable at other companies too, and that's why we started Together.

We learned that a lot of companies have tried to run mentoring programs but the experience for employees wasn't great. Examples: Someone picked your match for you, and it wasn't a good fit; your match left the company and no one on the HR team even knew; you had a few sessions but had no clue what to talk about / no sense of progress against any goals; as an HR person, you had no visibility into whether the program was working or not

Through Together, any employee can voluntarily sign up to be part of their company's mentoring program. You can sign up to be a mentor, mentee or both - we've even had VPs enjoy the experience as a mentee. Once you fill out your mentoring profile, the magic is in the learning experience that is personalized just for you:

As a mentee, you get a curated list of the top 5 people at your company who signed up and can help you reach your goals. You can be part of one or multiple programs at the same time that focus on different career checkpoints, such as "new manager" or "internship" tracks. With that comes special agendas and content to work through with your mentor/mentee You can track progress to your goals and look back through your personal session history with mentees/mentors - and if things aren't going as planned, an admin might even proactively reach out to you and see if they can tweak who you're working with

Many companies run mentoring programs today, but they largely fall flat. That's why companies like Disney Studios ask us to help them relaunch in a new and more impactful way.

What has been your mentoring experience at work? I'd love to hear about what worked and what didn't! What would you have liked to have? We'd love ideas for how an app like ours could support the mentoring experience for everyone involved. If you’re interested in launching Together at your workplace, [let us know!](https://www.togetherplatform.com/join-list).



Get Top 5 Posts of the Week



best of all time best of today best of yesterday best of this week best of this month best of last month best of this year best of 2023 best of 2022 yc w24 yc s23 yc w23 yc s22 yc w22 yc s21 yc w21 yc s20 yc w20 yc s19 yc w19 yc s18 yc w18 yc all-time 3d algorithms animation android [ai] artificial-intelligence api augmented-reality big data bitcoin blockchain book bootstrap bot css c chart chess chrome extension cli command line compiler crypto covid-19 cryptography data deep learning elexir ether excel framework game git go html ios iphone java js javascript jobs kubernetes learn linux lisp mac machine-learning most successful neural net nft node optimisation parser performance privacy python raspberry pi react retro review my ruby rust saas scraper security sql tensor flow terminal travel virtual reality visualisation vue windows web3 young talents


andrey azimov by Andrey Azimov