Diversity Before PushFar I was working as a senior developer for a
PropTech startup in Canary Wharf. It was here that Ed approached me and asked whether I’d be interested in co-founding PushFar. I certainly was and within a few days I’d handed in my notice to begin working full-time on PushFar. It’s gone from strength-to-strength ever since! As a first-generation immigrant, with English not as my first
language, I know the importance of needing support and guidance which is why mentoring has always appealed to me.
What is PushFar? PushFar is a platform and soſtware solution aimed at both individuals and organisations. As a B2B proposition, we support organisations who are looking to launch, run and scale mentoring and coaching programmes. Traditionally, mentoring’s been sporadic and hard-to-manage, at best. It’s ended up in Excel Spreadsheets or word documents. With PushFar’s technology, we enable the standardisation of best-practice mentoring at large scale, automating things like matching and management for learning and development leaders and HR teams. At the same time, we have an open network with over 100,000 participants, to ensure mentoring is as accessible as possible, for everyone, everywhere. PushFar development began in 2018 and we launched in January
2019. In the last four years, we’ve raised two funding rounds, grown to being a profitable, award-winning and world-leading soſtware solution, and have the privilege and pleasure of working with some of the greatest brands around. With clients including Sony, Samsung, Nissan, Lloyd’s and the NHS, we continue to learn more every time we work with a new client. Our biggest challenge to date has been the first few months, in gaining our first contracts – it was a challenge to find a brand who was willing to take a risk with new technology. However, once we secured the first contract, more and more came through pretty quickly. Our biggest achievement, in our minds, is undoubtedly being a profitable startup within the first five years. We look at so many startups that raise more and more but burn through cash, only to end up closing down. Our stable growth has been so important to us.
Who can be a part of PushFar? We think mentoring makes sense for everyone. We can all learn from the knowledge and experience that others have and the benefits for both mentors and mentees are vast. Anybody can volunteer to mentor or find a mentor through our open, free, platform at
PushFar.com. We oſten find that the most beneficial mentors can actually be outside one’s own industry. Skills like communication and leadership can be shared regardless of industry and the external perspectives a mentor can offer are brilliant.
What can potential mentors and mentees get out of PushFar? Mentors can find keen and hungry-to-learn mentees on PushFar’s open and free platform. Mentoring itself has lots of benefits for a mentor, including re- enforcement of existing knowledge, the ability to
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learn from a mentee, improvement of interpersonal and leadership skills and, of course, can be extremely rewarding too! It’s not as big a time commitment as a lot of people think. A mentor only really needs to spend an hour or two per month mentoring, in order to have an enormous impact. For mentees, PushFar provides a space to find and form relevant
mentoring matches, globally. Our community has mentors from all industries and experience-levels and as well as forming mentoring relationships, our platform offers goal tracking, networking and learning resources for mentees and mentors.
Where is PushFar now? Where is it going? PushFar continues to expand its offering, both with our technology and our mentoring solutions. We’ve recently partnered with a new investor and are looking to further grow PushFar to new territories, with additional offerings and expanded teams as well. Te future of mentoring is extremely bright and powerful!
What are the challenges you help people overcome in the professional environment? Ultimately, we’re about helping people to connect with the right people for professional development. For those individuals new to an industry, career or organisation, or those who are looking to progress, it can sometimes be tricky to find the right person to support that growth. Mentoring with PushFar really helps to ensure that these individuals are easier to identify and connect with, whilst helping HR and learning teams to understand more about their employees, their development and the metrics behind that too. Ed knows firsthand how beneficial a mentor can be in supporting that career development.
How do you see the future unfolding for young people in the channel? More and more, younger generations are turning to mentoring as a really impactful way to develop. Whilst podcasts, books and videos can help with technical skill development, soſt skill development can be really utilised through mentoring. Te working world is becoming more and more complex to navigate and a mentor can really make a big difference.
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