Mentors who have been through the journey
SpinUp mentors are experienced founders and operators who guide founders through the tools — not around them. They have built and scaled companies, navigated the South African ecosystem, and understand what it actually takes to get from an idea to a viable business.
Why mentors make the difference
The evidence on mentorship is clear: founders who receive structured, long-term, relationship-based mentorship — practical guidance from people who have been through the journey themselves — build stronger businesses, raise capital more effectively, and make better decisions at every stage.
What does not work is one-off advice, lecture-style coaching, or generic frameworks presented in workshop format. What works is a mentor who understands your specific situation, can see what you are building in context, and guides you through the hard decisions rather than around them.
SpinUp is built so that mentors can see exactly what each team is working on — the specific tools, the outputs, the gaps — and provide guidance directly in that context. No update decks. No status reports. Just mentorship embedded in the work itself.
What we look for in a mentor
Operational experience
You have founded, co-founded, or operated a company — ideally a spinout or early-stage venture. You know what it feels like to be in the room when the hard decisions get made.
South African context
You understand the SA ecosystem — its capital constraints, talent market, regulatory environment, and the specific challenges that founders here face that their Silicon Valley counterparts do not.
Commitment to the relationship
Mentorship on SpinUp is ongoing, not episodic. We ask for a minimum of monthly touchpoints with the teams you support, guided by what they are actually working on in the platform.
Specific domain knowledge
Deep expertise in one or more areas — whether that is medtech, agritech, SaaS, B2G, fundraising, unit economics, or scaling teams — that is genuinely useful to founders working in that space.
Current mentors
Fred Lutz
Co-founder and spinout founder with experience taking deep-tech ventures from research lab to commercial scale. Has run companies through scale-up across blockchain, AI, and analytics.
Companies
- —Custos Media Technologies
- —VoxCroft Analytics
Industries
Become a mentor
If you have built and scaled companies in South Africa and want to help the next generation of research spinout founders, we would like to hear from you. Fill in the form below and Fred will be in touch.