The League of Innovators’ (LOI) hosted their second celebratory Founders Showcase event virtually on Tuesday, November 24th. Young entrepreneurs from Vancouver, British Columbia to St. Johns, Newfoundland and everywhere in between gathered on Zoom to highlight the growth and impact of their startups made over the last few months in the LOI Labs accelerator and Foundations incubator programs. Why host the event virtually? LOI’s programs are driven by the virtual environment in order to make our programs as accessible as possible (in addition to being free, with no equity take and no strings attached) - part of LOI’s mission to democratize access to entrepreneurship for youth in Canada.
Labs is the LOI’s 12-week virtual accelerator program supporting youth-led startups across Canada to grow and scale. Labs is a barrier-free, sector-agnostic program fostering innovation, diversity and collaboration. 35 youth-led startups were selected through a competitive application process to dive into Labs 3 key learning pillars: Founder First, Get Your House in Order and Building Connections through leading workshops, Ask me Anything Sessions, coaching, peer support and access to resources.
Throughout the LABS program, the youth entrepreneurs refined the strategic direction of their businesses and built on their public speaking and pitching skills through workshops, 1:1 coaching, and peer support. We’d like to specifically thank Eric Termuende, a continuous supporter and advisor to LOI, who taught public speaking best practices from his work as a professional speaker at the NoW of Work. We’d also like to thank our program partner, Volition Advisors who delivered a Pitch and Presentation Masterclass, a Strategic Planning Workshop, and pitch coaching 1:1 office hours, giving our entrepreneurs the tried and true tools and best practices on how to make their pitch polished.
Foundations is LOI’s 8-week idea incubator supporting entrepreneurial youth through problem discovery, validation and early-traction. Over the course of the program, young changemakers, innovations and entrepreneurs are guided through an 8-week learning module complemented with live workshops and 1:1 office hours with LOI mentors from our community of young entrepreneurs.
A particular congratulations to Serge Livingston, Jake Bradshaw, and Sophia Yang for winning the Foundations pitch competition at the Founders Showcase for their tackling the problems of fun treasure hunts, building non-romantic relationships online and ethical fashion. As part of their prizes, they will be welcomed and offered early acceptance into the Labs accelerator program Batch 6 beginning February 2021.
Much Deserved Thank You!
We would like to thank all the panellists who joined us at the Founders Showcase event from partner organizations who joined us and helped make the event not only a success but a reality as well. We appreciate your time, insights from your lived experience and mentorship.
Afraj Gill (Director of Product, Strategy and Innovation at RBC Ventures)
Courtney Cathcart (Community Investment Manager External Affairs at Shaw)
Debra Jonasson-Young (Executive Director at Stu Clarke Centre for Entrepreneurship)
Faye Almeshaan (Global Operations Manager at Acceleprise)
Jen Lussier (Advisor at Platform Calgary)
Jonathan Ng (Product Manager at Waymo)
Jordan Rogers (Founder at Lloyd James Group)
Kevin Franco (Advisor at Platform Calgary)
Marina Radovanovic (Co-Founder and CXO at HeroHub and UX UI Researcher)
Matthew Smith, CEO & Co-Founder of Mazuma.go
Michael Grantmyre (Senior Associate, Osler LLP Emerging and High Growth Companies group)
Mike MacDonald (Advisor at Platform Calgary)
Paul Brassard (Managing Partner and Lead Advisor at Volition)
Pieter Schouppe, Canadian Director of Plant a Flag
Sauraj Gambhir (Strategy, M&A, and Investments at RBC Ventures)
Sonia Sidhu (Co-Founder of WE REPRESENT)
Tricia Jose (Co-Founder of Arrive)
Yamila Franco (Co-Founder of AfroHub Market and Nyoka Design Labs)
Here are some of the LOI team’s favourite key takeaways from the pitch feedback:
- Understand the vision you have for yourself in your startup whether you are building a lifestyle business or a billion-dollar idea
- Pieter Schouppe: Successful non-profits look at sales as an integral part of their business in order to stay in business and thrive and grow in making your impact!
- Matthew Smith: I failed 2 x in such a short amount of time we built and launched quickly and learned right away that our assumptions are wrong. Use manual and existing tech to test your theories. You can often test with no code and spending zero $$$
- Pieter Schouppe: The equation for the perfect pitch = whats your problem + what’s your solution + how are you going to achieve it
- “ There’s this sense of community that Im getting from LOi and from all of the different founders and the support that you’re getting from and providing to everyone else from the cohort and the batch and I just think that is a really really great environment to be in and just know that I think going beyond LOI and putting yourself out there for fundraising or customer development or for talking to users you’re going to be really faced with a lot of negativity and criticism and critical feedback and sometimes it’s going to be really tough to hear but important to hear but having this kind of base of positivity around people that mutually respect it is really real powerful and goes towards this idea of founders that really need support from other founders, and I think thats really great so kudos to everybody for attending” - Jonathan
And, last but definitely not least, a huge huge thank you to our community of amazing young entrepreneurs in LABS Batch 5 who have demonstrated a commitment to learning, community, and doing the work. You can learn more about the next generation of Canadian entrepreneurs in this blog post. They all deserve immense congratulations for their work building their startups, pursuing an entrepreneurial career amidst heightened uncertainty, and completing the LOI LABS accelerator program! The League of Innovators team is excited to have them join our diverse and expanding alumni community of over 350 young entrepreneurs across Canada building tomorrow’s businesses today and look forward to continuing to support them on their entrepreneurial journey. Check out the list of LOI’s alumni community here.
Last but not least, a massive thank you to our partners that make League of Innovators possible: RBC, Shaw Business, Hootsuite, Osler, SAP, Western Diversification Fund, New Avenue Capital, and the Vancouver Foundation.
If you are an aspiring or current entrepreneur, this could be you we are writing and raving about. Check out the different free and virtual resources and programs LOI has to offer. Ready to get started? Build your entrepreneurial skills with our Innovators Academy. Ready to build? Applications are open for Foundations, an idea-stage incubator program to get you started in building your MVP. Ready to accelerate? Applications for LABS accelerator are also open until Dec 7, 2020. Ready to scale? Applications for the Boost residency program are open.
