Mentoring Student Start-Up During Covid19 Pandemic

Indonesia Abstract The purpose of this research was to explore mentoring activities for student start-ups in the early covid19 pandemic. Mentoring activities involved faculty members as mentors and final year students as mentees in Undergraduate Business Program at Universitas Prasetiya Mulya. Mentees must initiate a start-up business as a Business Project Thesis. The method of this study was a case study and data collection through interviews with Faculty Members and Focus Group Discussions with student start-up business representatives. The data obtained were analyzed by using pattern analysis. Findings identified digital platform used for virtual mentoring varied from a virtual meeting, document sharing, and communication through chat group. Mentors had settled their role as facilitators, counsellors, and assessors through mentoring activities. Due to the covid19 pandemic, some challenges emerged in business execution and the paper writing process. Both mentor and mentee had adjusted their effort to resolve the challenges. The mentoring activities had given a positive contribution to day-to-day student start-up business operations. The study also provided recommendation for improving mentoring program, the need for careful design and implementation of pre-mentoring activities (mentor allocation and mentor training) and post-mentoring activities including mentor evaluation. one of by

lopment. Both parties may asses the progress, failure and success of agreed goals, and may redesign the goals. (3) Separation Stage, a stage where mentoring relationship ended for several reason (i.e. nothing left to learn, or mentees want individual identity). (4) Redefinition state, if both parties agree to carry on. If the relationship was formal and part of a mentoring program, it is less likely to be redefined (Memon et al., 2015;Ragins & Kram, 2008).
Based on the above explanation on mentoring relationship, this study adopts a Social Cognitive Theory to examine the learning of student entrepreneurs commenced. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) was developed from Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura in 1960s and posit that learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction of the person, environment and behaviour (Bandura, 1986).
In general, SCT recommends that an individual's behaviour is motivated by self-influence and past experience. Thus, it is suitable for understanding how student entrepreneurs plan and perform their entrepreneurial behaviour (i.e., launching a new venture). Equally important is the psychosocial support provided by mentors to help student entrepreneurs develop self-efficacy and gain confidence to pursue venture activities. As student learn to become entrepreneur, they observe mentor's behaviour, and regulate their future behaviour (Zimmerman, 2000). Student entrepreneurs can gain insights, experience, and advice on how to deal with new ventures condition from mentors who offer business development guidance (Ahsan et al., 2018).
In Indonesian university context, previous study of mentoring program conducted by faculty member has shown a positive impact to student-initiated business. In one of private university in Surabaya, faculty mentor acts as problem solver, as well as advisor (Effendy, 2017). Mentoring also has positive impact on student's business development (Asepta & Sienatra, 2016). A formal mentoring program can be differed in nature of participant, focus and program outcome. For example, some program assigned mentors to mentees, others mentees select mentor, some program designate location and meeting frequency, others leave it to participants, some programs are evaluated, others are not (Ehrich et al., 2004).
This study explores one of private university based in Tangerang, known for its learning experiential curriculum with university's motto "Collaborative Learning by Enterprising". Students in School of Business and Economies Universitas Prasetiya Mulya (SBE-UPM) regularly

INTRODUCTION
Major universities are playing a key role in providing graduates for companies, promoting culture respect for entrepreneurship and creating ideas for new ventures (WEF, 2013). To support the roles, universities has established various method of learning exercises within and outside class, to ensure students are engaged, motivated and inspired for starting business. Based on the concept of learning through experiences, student will have deeper understanding of managerial knowledge through their experiences in creating new ventures and improving their soft skills (Alves et al., 2019;Celuch et al., 2017;Grimaldi et al., 2011;Kuratko, 2005;Naufalin et al., 2016).
Previous study on student start-up (a business created by university's student) revealed some determinants that came from individual, organizational and regional context. The analysis suggest different context is important in understanding venture creation process (Bergmann et al., 2016). From an experienced faculty member or alumni who act as coaches and mentors in a university, student can exchange ideas and skills needed to develop new venture ideas (Mátyás et al., 2018). Therefore, mentors are an important sources for supporting student entrepreneurs by guiding them through the process of brainstorming ideas, developing product/services, and other activities (Ahsan et al., 2018) Scholars agreed on definition of mentoring as a learning relationship between a mentor (a person who has certain expertise), with a mentee (a person who search for guidance and support for certain matter). Mentoring is different from other form of teaching, as mentor puts the mentee's interest as a priority (Alves et al., 2019;Gibson, 2005;Gutiérrez, 2012). In summary, the mentor roles are: (1) coaching and facilitating, where mentors help and encourage mentees to develop their skills and capabilities. (2) Networking, where mentor can help mentees in developing their own network. (3) Counselling, where mentor may be required to give advice and support for mentees psychological issues like stress management, motivation, performance problems. (4) Assessing, where mentor will be required to assess and grade mentee's reports or business plans (Stewart & Knowles, 2003).
An impactive mentoring relationship will pass through four stages which consist of (1) Initiation stage, at this stage both mentor and mentee discuss and clarify their common goals and values, building trust with frequent meeting. (2) Cultivation stage, a stage of learning and deve-exercised business idea into implementation from early semester to final semester, and have worked closely in group project, supervised by faculty member.
For final year thesis, students in group consisting of 3-5 people, were developing Business Project (BP), as one of the requirements for graduating from undergraduate business program. BP was held on 8 th semester and initially developed in 7 th semester in Hatching Program course. On Hatching Program course, each group must identify one potential business ideas, perform market research to validate the idea and develop a prototype. By the end of the hatching program, the idea transformed into a feasible business ready to launch and execute. Each group was accompanied by two faculty members as their academic mentor. Faculty member was appointed by undergraduate program manager with a strong emphasis on business experiences suitable with the BP's product.
Due to covid19 pandemic that forced social restriction; university has taken precaution steps and has conducted online learning since March 2020. This time period is the beginning of 8 th semester, where students were supposed to launch their BP, after careful evaluation on Hatching Program. The students were forced to launch their business from home with taking serious consideration to fulfil social restriction regulation from government. Thus, Program Management must make some adjustment to these changes (from offline to online learning).
As changes emerged in university's learning policy during covid19 pandemic, a program management has to develop innovative method to overcome the challenges of learning without classroom environments to make sure high-quality teaching and facilitating method achieved (Ratten & Jones, 2020). Therefore, this study conveys research questions as follows: (1) How did the BP's mentoring activities conduct in the early covid19 pandemic? (2) How did the impact of mentoring activities to student's start-up? (3) What are the suggestions for the improvement of mentoring activities? In respect of continuous improvement of mentoring activities, this research is also addressed challenges and steps taken to overcome the next semester mentoring program.

METHODS
Having deeper understanding about mentoring start-up business in SBE-UPM, a case study was initiated. Case study approach is a powerful method in examining certain information from one unit or a case in one period or across multiple periods of time. Case study combines information from individual, group interview, observation, desk study, to gain in-depth perspective of the case (Schindler, 2019). Case studies allow researchers to identify causal mechanism by detailing the social process that affect the factors in the case. Case study also elaborate situation and process holistically and tolerating multiple perspectives (Neuman, 2014).

Data Collection and Analysis
This study has five stages of activities to support the research questions. First, a preliminary interview with selected faculty member (who acts as mentors) to identify the changes of conducting student's start-up business virtual mentoring due to covid19 pandemic. Faculty Members were selected with convenience sampling technique to increase faster response rate during studies (Tracy, 2019). Selected Faculty Members (FM) are from Program Manager and Vice Program Manager and additional five faculty member from Whatsapp Group FM S1 Bisnis. FMs were asking to propose one solid BP group (as mentees) to join this research as participants in Focus Group Discussion (FGD).
Second, FGD was carried out with representatives of BP group. The focus of FGD was on the mentoring activities that support student's business launch. A list of questions had been prepared and the main focus of the questions was on challenges during mentoring activities and improvement for next semester mentoring activities. FGD was conducting virtually by using platform Zoom Meeting and also attended by Undergraduate Business Program Manager.
Third, a group of mentors was interviewed to cross-check mentee's answer and identifying virtual mentoring activities. The list of FGD and Interview Participants are listed in table 1. Fourth, data analyzing was initiated by transcribing the FGD and Interview, to find pattern of mentoring challenges, impact and improvement. A double-checking with Student's Business Report was also conducted. Fifth, the points highlighted were discussed with Business Undergraduate Program Manager (who is in-charge for the mentoring program).
These stages were initiated to fulfil the reliability and validity of the research. Reliability in qualitative research can be achieved by using variety of data source (e.g., interview, group discussion, document studies) to gain consistency of findings. Validity in qualitative research in focusing on authenticity of data, by offering a fair, honest and balanced information from the participant (Neuman, 2014). Conformability and neutrality of this research were also highlighted from memo writing and data transcript.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The result of the study is divided into three subdivisions as follows: (1) mentoring guideline, consultation mentoring flow and the mentoring challenges are presented to explain the mentoring activities in early covid19 pandemic; (2) mentoring impact to mentees is identified to explore Social Cognitive Theory in mentor-mentee relationship and (3) improvement activities is offered for next year mentoring program.

Mentoring Guidelines
Business Program Manager under supervision of Vice Dean Academic has prepared several documents to support the mentoring consultation flow runs smoothly. The documents are: Fist, Faculty Member allocation as mentor. Each BP Group had been given two Faculty Member as Mentor. Faculty Member was appointed to each group based on research interest and related industrial experience if any. For example, FM6 with previous experience as Event Organizer (EO) was appointed as Mentor for BP Group with EO business idea.
Second, thesis writing guidelines for mentee. On this Guideline, a format for final paper was given to student. The paper consists of seven chapters (Introduction, Supporting Literature, Product Test Feasibility, Business Strategy, Oneyear Functional Plan, Launch and Gap Analysis, Conclusions). The paper was basically a report on what would be the business operational activities in relation with the management concept that had been studied by students during their years in undergraduate business program.
Third, consultation guideline for men-tor. On this Guideline, mentor had an overview of the consultation flow, requirement for activities during mentoring, for example, a Seminar 1 Exam was held after each BP Group had written chapter one through four. The Guidance also listed a Timeline for BP's activities in order to finish on time. BP Group must attend Seminar 1 and Seminar 2 Exam, followed by Comprehensive Exam. On these exams, BP Group needed to defend their business report and explain the lesson learnt after the business runs for a minimum of three months.

Consultation Mentoring Flow
Mentoring activities in the form of consultation session was discussed in the beginning of semester both by mentor and mentee, especially after receiving the guidelines from program management. The general flow of consultation as described in figure 1. The consultation flow before and after covid19 pandemic was relatively similar. The only difference was the platform used for meeting. Faculty Member as Mentor and BP Group as Mentee could schedule a virtual meeting every week or every two weeks, which last 1-2 hours per group meeting. Online platforms used for virtual meeting was Google Meet, since the school had an active Google Education account. On August 2020, school's learning management system had been upgraded and had been subscribed to Zoom accounts. The virtual meeting platform changed into Zoom Meeting. Beside virtual meeting, mentor and mentee also used other method of communication and sharing platform (see table  2). Several participants shared their mobile phone number, and made group chat using instant messaging Whatsapp application. Both Mentors and Mentees had identified platform's benefits during mentoring activities. Herewith are the explanation from mentors and mentee's opinion. First, group chat discussion in WA Group was a quick and responsive communication method during mentoring, as stated below: "…I can directly send instruction or share information in WA Group. Like pictures from Instagram's promotion or other link that I found related to mentee's business." (FM 7) "…To me using WA Group is helpful for fast response, there were time my mentee was asking if I know someone from my network, and I directly send the contacts via group chat." (FM 6) "…duration for every virtual meeting with mentee is about 1,5 hours, but we have been communicated intensely in WAG, especially when we (mentor and mentee) want to share any updates" (FM 4) Second, virtual meeting platform with recording feature was a tool that had been used by both mentor and mentee as they could play back the recording session to gain valuable insight or check any missing point. Third, google docs for sharing files helped the writing process transfer by collaborating among BP Group member and if necessary, with mentor. All inputs and questions had been identified first and could be answered later during virtual meeting. As mentioned by mentees below: "…we use google docs (on paper writing) and share the link to mentor, it helps us edited easily and FM can directly give comments on the paper" (BP 1) "…we were sending pdf format file so mentor can directly give comments and send it back to us, during virtual meeting, all questions already written down previously, so it saves time…" (BP 2) Guidelines provided by program management can assist both mentor and mentees to set dateline and target. One of the targets of the BP course was the accomplishment of seminar and comprehensive exams. Frequent meetings conducted by all the participant was a way to gain the same interpretation of targets and dateline. During the consultation, mentees updated their business progress and both mentor and mentees could reassess their target, and make certain changes if necessary. As mentioned by (Memon et al., 2015), the intensity of consultation meeting is needed during the initiation stage of mentoring to gain trust, before move to next cultivation stage, where progress had been discussed and business decisions had been taken.

Mentoring Challenges
Mentors and Mentees had identified some challenges during the consultation process. This process was needed to make it easier for mentors and mentees to analyze difficulties that may occur during the execution of business activities and the process of writing articles. Below were some of the challenges and actions engaged by mentor or mentee to resolve the issues. Challenges were divided into two area (1) business execution (2) paper writing process.

Business Execution Challenges
Mentee's business that once initiated to launch on March-April 2020 now had to be shifted due to changes in social restriction regulation and customer behaviour due to covid19 pandemic. As supporting mechanism, program manager released a revised BP Guideline and suggested that business project could be transferred into business plan. The difference was on the execution part, business project required business to be actively executed minimum for 3 months, while business plan required three business scenarios (pessimist, base, and optimist) calculated for the next 3 years, but business was not executed.
Mentees had intensive consultation with mentor, they discussed decision to be made (project vs plan). On this intensive mentoring, both parties re-visited again the timeline, guideline and especially explore more options on business executions, whether the business were feasible to be launched during covid19 pandemic situation.
Quotes from mentor below amplified this condition, "…one of mentee's business is event organizer, I remember on April 2020, we brainstormed quite long on what will be the final decision, should we go on or not, the group finally choose to continue the project and will execute the event virtually" (FM 5) "…my mentee's business is travel services, since all travel is prohibited during pandemic, the group then decide to make business plan" (FM 1) "… my experience is quite different, one group mentee is having lack of cohesiveness, they have personal issues with one another... I have to encourage them by giving deadlines, asked them to focus on business and requires more meeting so they were 'forced' to give updates and work out their lack of cohesiveness." (FM 3) Since all members in BP Group were forced to stay at home, they were scattered in several big cities in Java and Sumatera (i.e., Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Palembang). This condition made all group have to adjust their work load condition. Flexibility and adaptation were required by all members to overcome this condition. As mentioned by members of BP group below, "Before pandemic, we usually visit our vendor together, now we cannot do that and the responsibility falls to one of our members who lives nearby the vendor" (BP 2) "We divide our work group into marketing, operation, finance division. During pandemic we have to join e-commerce due customer changing habit, therefore all division now are focusing on how to boost sales in our online marketing channel, although maybe at first, they were not appointed as marketing division, we have to be flexible." (BP 7) Due to stay-at-home policy, communication method was conducting over chat, call, or group call, and virtual meeting. These physical changes on the first three months on March to June 2020 were very demanding. Both mentors and mentees had to adjust their way of work and expectation.
"…I open the consultation time (virtual meeting) every Friday for 1 hour per group. They can use the time to drop in some questions, or if they just want to sha-re updates on their business executions. By giving more and regular time, I hope mentees can use it for their benefits." (FM 3) "One of the challenges due to stay-athome policies is I cannot oversee the handcrafted wood product making from prototype to finished goods. To overcome this, I asked mentees to take pictures, and detailed product specs so I can give some inputs." (FM 7) Paper Writing Challenges Both options whether Business Project or Business Plan required a full report written by BP Group, where they could relate the business execution or plan with management concept. The report writing process challenges were on technical and conceptual understanding.
On technical part, during the first month of writing process, mentees were having difficulties on interpreting the comments given by mentor in the paper. Screen fatigue caused by reading documents online was also identified as the difficulties by mentor. On conceptual understanding, since the paper was a comprehensive management report on every management function in the business, mentees needed time to re-collect management concept that they already studied in the previous semesters.
To tackle these challenges, mentor needed to allocate more time for reviewing the paper and mentees needed to explore more on definition of conceptual management functions that related to their business before conducting virtual meeting. As reflected on statements below, "In the beginning of writing process, sometimes mentee did not understand feedback written in the paper, I have to give more explanation during virtual meeting. Mentees sometimes missed the feedback points and paper revision must be made several times" (FM 1) "mentees writing skills need further improvement, sometimes I act likes their editor due to their lack of writing skills" (FM 2) "…I have to allocate more time during several virtual meeting, since mentees did not remember some of the management concept I asked, so I have to explain further the relationship between the management concept and their business" (FM 2, FM 4, FM 5) These initiatives performed by mentors were related with mentor's role to provide facilitation, counselling, and assessment (Stewart & Knowles, 2003). Facilitating roles could be seen when mentors acquired mentees to take several precaution steps due to changes caused by covid19 pandemic. Counselling roles emerged when mentors motivated mentees and lifted their teamwork spirit to work on changes, while assessing roles emerged when mentor assessed the mentees on seminar exams.
In general, these finding was also similar with research from (Ahsan et al., 2018) that startup mentors provided psychosocial and business development support to mentees. Psychosocial support could help student to mature in teamwork and facilitate student's transition from student to entrepreneur. Business development supported such as online market development. These mentoring support helped students increase their self-efficacy through various role modelled by their mentors.

Mentoring Impact to Mentees
Both mentor and mentee acknowledged that the mentoring activities gave positive support to the business developed by mentees. During finishing the BP course, Mentees had experienced two type of mentoring activities platform, On September to January 2019 (odd semester) mentor and mentees started the Hatching Program Consultation using offline method. While on March-August 2020 (even semester) the consultation process started with online platform due to covid19 pandemic. Both mentor and mentees must adapt with this change, and keep their high performance. Herewith statements from mentees sides.
"…I don't think there is a difference in terms of advices quality given by mentor in both offline and online session. We can get the best and maximizing our discussion time with mentor. "(BP 3) "… mentors give the same good insights whether its online or offline session. Discussion topic can be wider on offline session, while on online session, we already have some written point items to discussed. "(BP 4, BP 7) Both parties admitted that the mentoring activities were one of the factors that made the business survives on pandemic. Questions were asked to both mentor and mentees about the Im-pact of mentoring to the BP, and herewith are the positive responses "…I think the Impact of mentoring to students is they become more motivated to write on the report and improve their business execution based on my inputs" (FM  2) "…Through my advises, BP Group is less confused on writing the report or taking business decision…" (FM 3) "…I think my input contributes to shape (mentee's) business ideas and process. On certain level when I challenge them, or give example from industrial perspective, somehow it motivates them to create innovative ways for their business (FM 5) "My mentor is also a business owner in wood industries, so he can give inputs on material quality, how to calculate cost of production so we will not be cheated by vendor. (BP 7) "We have to shift our event by creating online event on Instagram live (IG live).
Our mentor gives us several names to be contacted as our partners on creating IG Live. Without these first partners, I think we are going to have difficulties in shifting the event."(BP 6) Mentor's role as a person who helps mentees developing their own network is highlighted after analyzing this mentoring impact. With a close contact to mentors, student can learn about the theory and applied it to their business since key items of experiential learning is the exposure to real business condition (Ratten & Jones, 2021).
Similar to findings from (Ehrich et al., 2004), mentoring outcomes are the improved grades and behaviour of students related to networking and collegiality. As posit in Social Cognitive Theory, a certain behaviour was conducted by mentees from mentor's advices for continuing the business in the covid19 pandemic situation. The surrounding environment (i.e., social restriction and lockdown) had forced student start-up to adapt its business decisions.

Mentoring improvement
In terms of improvement for next semester, both mentors and mentees were asked to give any input on mentoring improvement. The answers were analyzed and classified into three parts of improvement: pre-mentoring, during, and after mentoring as follows:

Pre-Mentoring
Pre-Mentoring was defined as preparation needs to be done by management program before mentoring activities. On this stage, mentors and mentees gave inputs as follows: First, allocation of mentors. Allocation of FM based on its research interest, or business experiences help mentoring process run smoothly. Program Manager needed to allocate two FMs that could work together as mentors for one BP group. By combining two mentors in one BP Group objectivity could be maintained and cohesion during consultation flow could be achieved.
Second, workshop for mentors. As mentioned previously, BP course required a full paper report that needed academic writing skills. Mentor with minimum academic writing skills needed to be reminded on this skill. Meanwhile, mentor with minimum business experience, needed a business insight especially for student start-up. Therefore, mentors suggested program management to conduct short workshop on academic writing and business insights (i.e. Tips on Writing Process or Marketing Channel for start-up) to update their knowledge.
Third, guideline confirmation for mentees. As previously mention a writing guideline had been distributed to all students. To minimize confusion, mentees had requested that the guideline shared was the fixed one until the end of semester. Administration program could share the guideline via google drive. Previously, the administration program only shared the guideline using mailing list, while students had many other information shared via mailing list, where sometimes students unintentionally missed the information.

During mentoring process
Mentoring process was defined as activities during consultation period. On this stage, mentors and mentees gave inputs as follows: First, dedicated time. Mentoring required dedicated time from mentor and mentees. Since there were two mentors appointed with one BP Group, mentoring time would be best conducted if two mentors were available in the same time. This time allocation would validate the inputs given to mentees coherent between two mentors. In the first month of mentoring activities, mentors must analyze mentees group cohesiveness. If the group was having difficulties in creating good team work or having personal issues, the best way was to perform dedicated frequent meeting (weekly if necessary).
Second, technical process of mentoring. During virtual meeting, mentees could prepare presentation in power point format to share their business or paper writing progress. In the end of the presentation slides, questions could be addressed to mentors, and mentors could directly address these questions to speed up mentoring process. Other method, mentees could share in advance their recording presentation, and mentors would give inputs when virtual meeting was conducted.

Post Mentoring
Post Mentoring was defined as activities after mentoring period. Mentoring process usually ended when mentees registered for final examination. After mentees finished their final examination, mentees usually reported back to mentor voluntarily the exams result and to have required approval on paper from mentor. Mentor and mentee relationship ended after final exams performed. Since all course requirement had been fulfilled, this condition categorized as separation stage on mentoring activities (Stewart & Knowles, 2003). Mentees could choose to continue communicate informally with mentor or ended the relationship.
Business Management Program only had a report from administration office on numbers of BP Group passed the exams but not on mentoring evaluation nor the business continuity. It would be valuable information for program management to know the mentoring feedback to mentee's business continuity. Mentoring feedback was crucial to mentors, in finding whether their advices were valuable to mentees. The benefit of mentoring activities was not just for the mentees but an a professional achievement and personal fulfilment for mentors as an educator (Homitz & Berge, 2008).
The above rationale on mentoring improvement was an inclination toward mentoring program planning. The mentoring program must be carefully designed and wisely implemented. Program management as the planner can recognize the importance of mentor training, a growing body of research and implication of mentoring, the careful selection of participant and the need of constant evaluation (Ehrich et al., 2004;Stewart & Knowles, 2003).

CONCLUSION
Mentoring activities for BP in early co-vid19 pandemic relied heavily on digital platform learning (virtual meeting, email and google drive, and whatsapp group). Mentor and mentees had agreed upon on digital platform used to maximize its features. Mentors had developed their role as facilitators, counsellors, and assessors through mentoring activities. Some challenges emerged especially on paper writing process and business execution due to social restriction of co-vid19 pandemic. Both mentor and mentees had adapted and made adjustment to overcome the challenges. Mentees had highlighted the impact of mentoring activities to their business, when mentor gave advices, and networking options. In terms of improvement suggestion, this study give recommendation to program manager (as planner of mentoring activities) to focus on pre-mentoring and post-mentoring activities to increase the benefit of the program.
This study has implication for program management or incubators in designing a mentoring activity, especially during online learning. Other implication for faculty member who act as mentors, fluency in online communication and mastering the virtual learning platform in a vital skill in this occasion. This research has several limitations. First, the participant for this research was limited to selected mentor and recommended mentees (BP group with a good teamwork and performance. Insights from non-performed group can be extracted for further research. Second, limitation on review of virtual platform used during virtual mentoring. This research only reviewed platform used by mentor and mentees, there might be other platforms that can be explored in further research.