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As we reflect on our work at League of Innovators and our learnings (and unlearnings) this year, one question has always come up for us: how can we truly provide access to the entrepreneurial skillset and mindset and ensure no young person is left on the sidelines? While we are nowhere close to democratizing entrepreneurship for youth and are collectively navigating this space, we are excited to have our own Alumni Advisory Council call on the community to assess how we can centre our work around young people. We know they are the future so how can we better support them on their path - faster and more efficiently?
The LOI Alumni Advisory council is excited to share their open letter to the community on:
- How the pandemic has impacted Canadian youth and young entrepreneurs
- Why entrepreneurship is a viable career choice and must be prioritized for the future of work
- What it means to democratize entrepreneurship and how we can commit to building diverse and inclusive spaces for youth
- What we can collectively do catalyze youth entrepreneurship
Read the full report and provide us some feedback. What are you doing for youth and the development of future leaders, innovators. entrepreneurs, changemakers?
Published by Manisha Narula in Youth Entrepreneurship News
Last week the world (at least what felt like the world - much of the startup ecosystem, a couple celebrities, and LOI) descended on Toronto to attend #CollisionConf. It was the first Collision hosted in a Canadian city and hands down, it was in the top five conferences in Canada. Filled with immersive brand activations, ecosystem boosts, lightning speed talks, a massive start up showcase and pitch event, and a night summit to accelerate networking for the most social of attendees.
And it was BIG - with over 25K attendees over the 4 days and some heavy-weight speakers like Seth Rogen, Major Lazor, Akon, Timbaland, Kara Swisher, even Justin Trudeau made an appearance on opening night. The big names in tech were represented too - Facebook, Twitter, Mailchimp, Microsoft, IBM and the list goes on. Added to this esteemed list were so many incredible startups from early stage to scale, from all over North America. It was a true delight to see all that incredible hard work and vision in one very large room. The LOI alumni ventures were also represented with Blume, Trufan, Ava, Aiva Labs, MultiMuse and Ascend Solutions all represented in the Alpha and Beta programs.
Certainly people's’ first reactions were of sensory overload, which quickly turned into excitement about the potential of a conference like Collision having a home in Toronto. If anything, it reminded me of the potential and opportunities we have to tackle the problems in our world growing at increasing speed. Solutions are abundant and they are ready to be seized - but it is up to us. We as Canadians are in perfect position to take advantage of what our start up ecosystems have to offer in terms of support and networks all across Canada, and the proximity to the largest startup meccas in the world. I believe we sometimes forget what we are capable of.
If I was to take anything away from my time at Collision and share with others, aside from the great time, was the vital need to THINK BIG. #WeTheNorth have so much potential, but perhaps our Canadian nature of being too polite or too comfortable to think aggressively, prevents us from thinking big and believing we can truly change the world. There was no better session to remind us of this then the final panel of the entire conference featuring our own homegrown talents from across Canada including Michele Romanow (Clearbanc), Ryan Holmes (Hootsuite) Jean-Francois Gagne (Element AI), and Ba Blackstock (Bitmoji). They shared their experiences building global companies right in our own backyard, the struggle to innovate and what it really takes to adopt a mindset of growth and innovation. Michele Romanow of Clearbanc said it best ‘I want to grow a global company, IN Canada’ Its’ a change of perspective but it starts with you.
And it reminded me, that sometimes what it takes to go big is to simply believe that you can go big. It is about changing your perspective of how you view your role and the vision of your startup. You do not have to move to different places, bring in external talent or follow a previously set out pattern to success. You can, in fact, build right inside Canada, on your own terms. This is particularly relevant for our work at League of Innovators ensuring that youth across Canada understand they too can build ventures - successful, scalable, impactful ventures wherever they may be - on their own terms.
2019 was an interesting year for us all, we lost some, we won some, we got sideswiped, we got re-educated, and we are more ready for 2020 than ever before. We turned 2 in 2019 and it feels like no better time to come of age than in 2020. We are like a toddler getting their footing and starting to run! Youth all across the world are stepping up and challenging the status quo, realizing the strength of their opinions and voices. Our League of Innovators youth entrepreneurs were right alongside those taking on the world by building their ideas and startups to soaring new heights this past year. From business rocketships to world-changing technologies to networks of the future to inspiring thousands of youth - they are all just at the tipping point of the impact they will create in our world. Through observation and deep engagement with this diverse and growing group of youth over the past couple of years, we saw the potential for a future that is bright, sustainable, and equitable for all, not just the few. But, that future requires the collaboration of many unlikely partners, and we are so fortunate to have an incredibly committed group of partners that believe, like us, that youth are the future. We asked ourselves some really big questions at the end of the year - How can we nurture our growing alumni network of 200+ young entrepreneurs BETTER? How can we engage and support all those entrepreneurs-to-be we have not met yet?
Focusing on democratizing entrepreneurship - is going to be critical for us in 2020 in beyond - but how are we going to achieve this you may ask? We know so many young people do not have access to top-quality programming, education and support particularly if:
- They live outside of major Canadian city centres
- Do not go to certain post-secondary institutions
- Pursuing an entrepreneurial journey in an unusual industry
We are laser-focused on bringing our resources and programming into more digestible and accessible formats online and creating opportunities for connections of unlikely partners across regional and industry divides. We believe we can reach, engage and connect with a broad range of youth all across Canada who are eager to learn, grow, and shape their future on their own terms. Look out for our launch of the Innovators Academy later this spring to accelerate access to in-depth resources on everything from how to start a business to dealing with burnout to using business for social good.
Fundamental skills for success and sustainability - Here at LOI we are thinking about the skills we all need to succeed not just in entrepreneurship, but also in life. We are doing this by expanding our focus on themes we believe are essential: resilience, mental health, social purpose, personal development. We are bringing these themes to the forefront of all our programs and conversations. What is more important than starting a business or being successful is being healthy in mind, body, and spirit. We want to ensure that all the youth we work with have the tools to create that within their own lives. We have some big announcements coming up in 2020 including something about a Resilience Expert.
Creating programs with no cliffs - It is crucial for us to stay true to our word about creating experiences for youth and youth entrepreneurs that support their needs where they are at. We have decided to build out our acceleration programs offering in 2020 to create opportunities for youth to work with us on the startups in two different new capacities. Building off the success of our Labs incubator program for early-stage startups we recognized the need for programming before and after the program itself. We asked ourselves, how can we create a space - outside of the classroom - where youth can explore their ideas and put them through the grinder? As a result, we are launching Foundations, an 8-week idea validation program to support all those young individuals dabbling with startup and change-making ideas but not really knowing how to realize them or even validate them. At the same time, we recognized the real need for a different kind of support for youth entrepreneurs who are scaling their startups (post-seed rounds and first millions) and dealing with an entirely new set of challenges and adventures, requiring a new set of tools to tackle what is ahead and as always a peer group rising together. We are excited to launch our Boost program for youth-led scale-ups this spring with a cohort of 10 leaders in the BC region!
As we come of age as an organization we have a unique vantage point and position as part of so many young peoples’ journeys of coming of age themselves - stepping into their confidence, jumping into the unknown, and accomplishing impossible feats - building the future they desire. We are excited to continue building cutting edge programming at the intersection of entrepreneurship, skills for the future, and leadership to support all the youth that are in the network and all those that we have not met. If you are a young person building a startup or pondering a startup idea we want to meet you and if you are wanting to get engaged as a community member whether it be a partner, mentor, activator, speaker with us and all our entrepreneurs drop us an email in 2020!
Published by Joanna Buczkowska-McCumber in Youth Entrepreneurship News
Tags: Annual Letter
Building entrepreneurial acumen for youth.
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