Denver Startup Week: Fireside Chat: Why Having a Mentor Makes Everything Better

Join GAN - a curated community of accelerators, partners and investors - and Brex - the first credit card for startups - in a fireside chat discussion where they will delve into the importance of mentorship and share experiences that will inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

GAN was launched to align the accelerator industry around best practices and create a standardized model for success. Almost 10 years later, GAN has over 80 accelerators and 4,700 startups in over 120 cities all over the world.

Growing up the daughter of a sugar mill manager in one of the poorest states in Brazil, people have doubted the feasibility of Larissa Maranhao Rocha's goals throughout her life. When at the age of nine, she decided she wanted to be the first person in her state to go to Harvard, people said it was a very far fetched dream. But she did it, and it was one high school professor who she debated with in class every single day over economics and policy that believed in her and took the time to help her apply to school in America. At Harvard, it was the mentorship of her thesis advisor and mentor to Sheryl Sandberg, Larry Summers, that showed her the ropes of leadership and perseverance. When she turned down a fast-track position at a Fortune 500 company after graduation, people were even more flummoxed. But there's one thing she learned from her mentors and her experience - achieving success means taking risks to do something you’re passionate about. Today, she is Brex's first employee, and is leading by example, empowering the next generation of leaders.

We invite startup founders and aspirational entrepreneurs to join Brex's first employee Larissa Maranhao Rocha and Patrick Riley, CEO of GAN, to hear about their experiences, the mentors they learned from and how that taught them to lead by example. As part of the conference, we welcome local students to join and enter a raffle sponsored by Brex to win $5,000 to kick start or supplement an entrepreneurship program at their school.