Startup & Scaleup

Women-owned businesses receive less funding than their male counterparts, with only two per cent of total venture capital dollars going to women in 2021. This disparity is due to multiple factors, including the under-representation of women in financial lending institutions, pervasive societal biases, and more. These tangible barriers have created negative outcomes, including women-owned ventures making 58 per cent less, on average, than male-owned ventures. Women also take on more risk when starting up, with a PayPal study indicating that 70 per cent of respondents financed their ventures solely via personal credit.

The Startup Women Advocacy Network (SWAN) is a group of early-stage womanidentifying entrepreneurs from each province and territory who advocate for women founders across Canada. The 2022 cohort has been involved in closed-door government roundtables, in-person entrepreneurial events, webinars, and other direct advocacy.

We asked SWAN members about women’s entrepreneurship and collective advocacy networks.

Here’s what some of them said:

Why is government advocacy vital?

Tell us about the roundtables.

“The amount of information I got really simplified things for me. Outside of SWAN, it probably would’ve taken me days, if not weeks, to gather this information. I had a seat at the table,” says Lourdes Still, Founder of Masagana Flower Farm and Studio in Manitoba.

“While there’s a lot of support available to entrepreneurs, sometimes it feels like we’re preaching to the choir. We need to ensure we’re being heard and that governments understand that support for founders isn’t one size fits all,” says Sophia Yang, Founder and Executive Director of Threading Change in British Columbia.

Why are women’s advocacy networks vital?

“The biggest benefit has been this feeling of community — it’s vital to not feel so alone and to remind yourself that you have resources because being an entrepreneur is hard,” says Lesley Quinn, Founder of Stellar Somm Wine Experts in P.E.I.

“The biggest benefit has been increasing my visibility from a national level as a BIPOC woman founder,” says Still.

“It’s hard to do business or to be taken seriously as a woman, especially as a minority Inuk woman like myself. We need

support to show us that we matter and that we’re safe,” says Bernice Clarke, Founder of Uasau Soap in Nunavut.

How do you challenge the startup ecosystem to do better for women?

“We challenge you — if you’re an investor, invest in women. If you’re a consumer, buy from women. Women-owned businesses outperform total success rates in profitability, social good, and longevity,” says Jessica McNaughton, Founder and CEO of memoryKPR in Saskatchewan.

“We challenge investors to put their money where their mouth is and ensure that when there’s access to capital, it’s also for impact-led projects,” says Yang.

“I hope we can empower more women entrepreneurs than ever with the mentorship, capital, and resources required to achieve success,” says Nadia Ladak, Co-Founder and CEO of Marlow in Ontario.

Government relations (GR) is deemed by many an intimidating space — it’s complex and often paved with seemingly closed doors for new players.

In my role as a connector in this space, an area of focus has been working to improve the intersections of GR and the startup ecosystem through Startup Canada’s program Startup Gov. Despite the steps we’ve taken, problems persist, including a lack of interaction between early-stage startups and government, minimal awareness of entrepreneurial policies as a whole, and red tape that impedes direct access to government. These problems are only exacerbated for women founders and hinder efforts to improve the circumstances for entrepreneurial success in Canada.

Increasing awareness and GR engagement

For early-stage entrepreneurs, GR is typically the last thing on their minds. However, the need for earlier government support is emphasized in the average startup fail rate of 38.8 per cent past five years of operation.

This raises the question of how the support ecosystem can train early-stage founders

to interact with their government earlier in their journeys. Through the lens of authentic advocacy by and for entrepreneurs, the Startup Gov program aims to be a 360-degree view of GR for all stages of business, streamlining founder awareness of and engagement with government via the following pillars:

Awareness: What is involved in the GR space? How can it help my business?  Education: How do I best utilize this information to accelerate the development of my business?

• Access: Facilitating access to key government offices, departments, and officials.  Advocacy: Recommendations directly to government as a collective.

For women, initiatives like the Government of Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy can be the difference between thriving and seizing operations. The support programs exist, but the problem is twofold: lack of awareness and strict entrance requirements that are often unattainable for early-stage ventures.

Reducing red tape

We must reduce barriers to direct access and create new avenues for connection. Founders

have the “asks” and solutions — they need the connections and building blocks. As some GR communication strategies are unknown to founders, entrepreneurial voices are too often left out of important activities like pre-budget consultations. More well-known mechanisms are often underutilized. Knowing your MP and requesting a meeting to relay your value in their riding can be incredibly fruitful in terms of curating information quickly and gaining an ally for your business.

Removing the red tape surrounding GR doesn’t need to be difficult. Direct access to parliamentarians and their offices is free and paid for by public tax dollars. If you’re an entrepreneur, where’s your return on this investment? It’s about empowering founders, especially women, to know their voices truly matter.

Creating streamlined processes for communication, connection, and advocacy to government should be a top priority for all. Startup Canada is pushing this vision forward through its platforms and connections — but imagine what we could accomplish with increased collective efforts and clear, fully accessible government supports.

Visit the Startup and Scaleup campaign at innovatingcanada.ca to learn more.

Visit startupcan.ca to learn

more.

Still

Founder,

& Executive Director, Threading Change

Corporate

Bernice Clarke Founder, Uasau Soap

Jessica McNaughton Founder & CEO, memoryKPR

SCALEUP It’s about More than Investment: Advocacy for Women Entrepreneurs

STARTUP

Morano Startup Canada’s program Startup Gov encourages early-stage female founders to reap the benefits of interacting with government entities on their entrepreneurial journeys.

Women Are Winning in Camrose, Alta. – Creating a Vibrant and Thriving Community for Women-Owned Businesses

What’s behind the high number of successful female entrepreneurs in Camrose, Alta.? For one thing, the former sleepy retirement city has seen an influx of young families over the last decade, bringing with them a youthful, entrepreneurial spirit. Another is the combination of lower startup costs, shorter travelling distances, and affordability of retail space in a small community, with the ability to get all the goods

and services of a big city. Then there’s the City of Camrose’s commitment to helping local businesses thrive and succeed through various grants, online resources, and access to a dedicated and knowledgeable staff. Finally, Camrose is a community where businesses support other businesses. All these add up to an ideal place for women to start up and scale up a business.

A strong contingent of successful

women-owned businesses is also good for Camrose. “They’re leaders in their fields, well connected, and tend to give back,” says Patricia MacQuarrie, General Manager of Community Development at the City of Camrose. “Many are also mentors to other business owners, both men and women, and tend to be guideposts for new business startups.” Mediaplanet spoke to a few of them.

When Teresa Kroeger opened her clothing boutique, The Trendy Walrus, in 2018, she wanted to create a personal shopping experience for customers to feel good about themselves. Through her storefront off-Main Street location in Camrose and online store, Kroeger sells mostly Canadian-owned clothing companies that are ethically and sustainably sourced, unique, and inclusive regardless of people’s age, size, or gender.

From the very start, Kroeger has felt supported by the City of Camrose and others in the business community. As well, the lower operating costs and cost of purchasing a space, compared to larger centres like Edmonton, have eased her entry. “It doesn’t even compare, so for a new business to get going, this is a really good centre,” says Kroeger.

During the pandemic, Kroeger managed to qualify for a façade improvement grant to pay for signage at her new store location and a web development grant to help boost her SEO rankings. She commends the City’s ongoing communication on grants and other information that can help business. “I feel they are certainly doing everything they can to get us supports that we might need and qualify for,” she says. She believes there’s plenty of potential for other niche businesses like hers to start up in Camrose and feel supported. “We have lots here, but we don’t have everything, so there’s room for some neat additions,” she says.

Bridget Lennartsson, a former administrative assistant, and her son thought it would be fun to open a small business together. One day they were given gifts of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. That sparked the idea to bring an olive oil and vinegar tasting room to Camrose. Vinesation opened in June of 2014, the day just happening to coincide with an outdoor City event called Jaywalker’s Jamboree, which brought thousands of customers to the shop.

Vinesation — which is also an Indigenous-owned business — continues to bring a steady stream of customers to the tasting room and employs one full-time and three parttime staff. Lennartsson has been active with her local Chamber of Commerce and women’s entrepreneurial groups like WISE — Women in Business and Leadership Group. “I didn’t know there was so much more I could utilize in our community, and these women became strong mentors for me,” she says. The City of Camrose helped Lennartsson with details related to obtaining her business license, and the downtown business community was welcoming and supportive. Last year when she was ill and off work for six months, the business community rallied around her. “These people wanted to see our business succeed, and so they fought for us,” she says.

Ten

Hawkins

Groups like WISE and other women’s groups have been

at the beginning. “Everybody’s industry is different, but there are still some very parallel struggles, and there’s always something that you can learn from somebody who’s been in business longer,” she says.

The City of Camrose has also been a great support and highlighted Hawkins’ business during 2021 Small Business Week. “This is one example of the City going above and beyond to help small businesses succeed in Camrose,” she says.

Sometimes referred to as the Cake Lady, Tania Greenwald started her home-based bakery, Cute & Classy Cakes, in 2013 as a maternity leave hobby. It soon turned into a full-time cake and cupcake business, which she ran on her family’s acreage just outside of Camrose. W hen COVID-19 hit and business slowed, Greenwald started experimenting with other baked treats like cookies, candies, tarts, and scones, and a local flower shop opened its doors to her, and let her sell them through a pop-up cooler display at their storefront location.

The new treats were a hit and business exploded, so much that Greenwald needed to find a store location in Camrose. She opened her new store, now called The Sweeterie, in August 2021 and employs seven full-time and two part-time staff. “The City did an incredible job helping make the transition very smooth. I’ve heard

about it taking years to get a development permit in big

I think I had it within the week,” she says.

Visit camrose.ca/ womeninbusiness to learn more.

This article was sponsored by the City of Camrose

Anne Papmehl

Offering plenty of support and amenities, Camrose, Alta., is a great place for women entrepreneurs to set up shop and succeed.

years ago, Denise Hawkins was a stay-at-home mom looking for a job that gave her some flexibility to make her child her priority. She and her husband were in the process of putting solar panels on their new home when he learned of an opportunity in the energy marketing field that required zero experience

jumped at the chance and today is the owner of Camrose Energy Corporation, one of 26 local, independent electricity and natural gas marketers operating under the umbrella agency of Utility Network and Partners. (Alberta is Canada’s only province with a deregulated electricity and natural gas system.)

integral to Hawkins’ success, especially

stories

cities like Calgary. Here

TERESA KROEGER, OWNER OF THE TRENDY WALRUS

DENISE HAWKINS, OWNER OF CAMROSE ENERGY CORPORATION

BRIDGET LENNARTSSON, OWNER OF VINESATION

TANIA GREENWALD, THE SWEETERIE

2021 Innovative Marketing Award, Camrose & District Chamber of Commerce Awards

2016 Home-Based Business of the Year Award & 2019 Small Business of the Year Award, Camrose & District Chamber of Commerce Awards

2018 Woman in Business Award, Camrose & District Chamber of Commerce Awards

2019 Woman in Business Award, Camrose & District Chamber of Commerce Awards

How Online Sales Are Taking Small Businesses to the Next Level

Small business in Canada is huge. Small businesses represent most of the country’s businesses and contribute to our communities’ economic and social health. Tens of thousands of Canadians have been following their passions and finding success growing their businesses or becoming “accidental entrepreneurs” by turning hobbies into a business with eBay.

A diversified market is good for business “Our mindset from the beginning has been to democratize commerce. It used to be that you had to be a massive company to sell globally, but now small businesses can reach a global market,” says Rob Bigler, General Manager of eBay Canada. “Canada has a population of 38 million people, but 135 million people around the world purchased something on eBay this past year, which creates a huge opportunity for Canadian small businesses.”

Selling on eBay allows companies to diversify their sales. Some businesses are also seasonal, so instead of shutting down,

they can play the hemisphere game. In the offseason, the Canadian selling sailboat parts can find a buyer in the Caribbean, while the ski shop can sell to skiers in South America or New Zealand.

eBay differentiates itself from other platforms in that it doesn’t hold any inventory and doesn’t compete with sellers. eBay has also built up a quarter century of trust — with both sellers and buyers. “We only succeed when our sellers succeed,” says Bigler. “We do many things on behalf of our sellers, including digital marketing and making sure their inventory gets seen. We take on the complexity of running an e-commerce site, so they can focus on their business.”

Small business success

And small businesses are finding success with eBay. In a recent survey of small businesses, 71 per cent said that eBay had helped them start their business and approximately 80 per cent said eBay had helped them grow their business. Almost

a third of respondents reported that their business wouldn’t be able to exist without eBay. That partnership is mutual because nearly three quarters of sellers strongly believe eBay wins when sellers win.

eBay doesn’t simply give a seller an account and walk away. Instead, it nurtures the success of these small businesses by offering tools to help them get the most out of eBay’s global marketplace. This includes its accelerator program Up & Running, a free service for sellers that offers powerful advertising tools and insights, virtual learning and development opportunities, and real-time advice and inspiration from other sellers and eBay staff.

“I hear of people who lost their job and are now selling on eBay, or hobbyists who quit their boring day job to pursue what they love. It’s fun to empower these accidental entrepreneurs,” says Bigler.

If you’re a small business looking to grow your sales, consider eBay as your global marketplace of choice. Visit ebay.ca/ upandrunning to learn how you can get up and running.

Marco Thorne, a former teacher, is passionate about hockey and sports equipment. His business, API Hockey PROS, started decades ago when he designed and manufactured a protective ankle insert for hockey skates, which received interest from some NHL teams. T wenty years ago, he listed that item on eBay. It was his only product. Over time, he discovered the potential of online retail for his equipment store. Today, he’s a fixture in Cornwall, P.E.I., where he operates a shop and now has an extensive list of products on his store’s website. Approximately 25 per cent of his sales are via eBay. “It’s been a good addition," says Thorne. "Without eBay, I might not still be doing this because there aren’t a lot of small, independent sports stores anymore.” His online customers, who otherwise wouldn’t know about him, come from North America and Europe. “The popularity of eBay is a big help,” he says. “And eBay takes care of everything so you can run your business.” In 2020, Thorne was recognized by eBay as a Hall of Fame seller. His advice for anyone considering becoming an eBay seller? “Go for it, but love what you’re doing because there will be some long days,” he says.

If you love shoes, you’ll want to meet Karina Bogle of White-Balmer Shoes. Bogle worked at this Stratford, Ont., store when she was in high school. It was her first job, and she fell in love with footwear. After school, she left the store and went to work for a footwear distributor. She maintained a relationship with the owners of White-Balmer and three years ago bought the store. After six months as an owner, the pandemic forced her to close the store. “I wanted to keep shoes moving and money flowing, so I launched an e-commerce site for my store,” says Bogle. It was super easy, and my online store connects directly to eBay’s platform. I’ve seen an increase in sales.”

While Bogle sells primarily to people in North America, access to eBay’s global market has been great. She recently sold sandals to someone in Australia, a sale that would be difficult to make during winter in Canada. “eBay has lots of resources and forums for people to learn how to grow their business,” she says. “I’d encourage anyone considering it to give it a shot. It’s easy to get started.” Bogle was awarded eBay’s 2021 Emerging E-Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year award, something she appreciates as it recognizes the hard work she puts into the business and reassures her that she’s on the right track.

The collectibles sector is a multi-billion-dollar market made up of hobbyists and small business owners. Christian Kentie, the owner of The Frugal Dutchman, is one of those. His shop in Ridgeway, Ont., a small Lake Erie community, gets a lot of foot traffic during the summer months, but to keep his business going in the offseason, he began selling online. Kentie sees an even split between his brick-and-mortar store and online sales. Last year, he recorded his highest sales revenue and today, 75 per cent of Kentie’s eBay sales are from international buyers. “The transition to eBay was easy. It’s an accessible marketplace with great training tools, so you don’t have to do a lot of the hard work,” he says. “It’s well-known and has a variety of sellers.”  Kentie was humbled to be recognized with eBay’s 2022 MicroMultinational of the Year award. “When a company like eBay recognizes me for my global sales, it means a lot, not only for me but also for our small town, which is barely known,” he says. “It’s good to support small businesses in places like Ridgeway.”

Ken Donohue

Rob Bigler General Manager, eBay Canada

MARCO KNOWS HOCKEY

This article was sponsored by eBay Canada

Marco Thorne API Hockey PROS

Karina Bogle White-Balmer Shoes

Christian Kentie

The Frugal

Dutchman

Startup or Scaleup, North Bay Is the Place to Be

With a 15-minute work-to-home commute, affordable living, and natural beauty, including vast lakes, trail networks, and a ski hill in the middle of the city, North Bay’s quality of life is matched only by its burgeoning innovation ecosystem. Located just a three-hour drive north of the GTA, the City of North Bay’s connected network of business supports come together to help foster startups and nurture scaling ventures.

Headquartered in North Bay, Innovation Initiatives Ontario North (IION) is a regional innovation centre that assists entrepreneurs and companies in accelerating their growth and marketing new or refined products, processes, or services.

North Bay’s post-secondary institutions, including Nipissing University and Can adore College, are involved in a wide range of research, including in human sciences, information technology, and mathematical sciences. Canadore’s Innovation Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping (ICAMP) is an example of an industry research facility focused on private-sector collaboration and technology commercialization.

North Bay startup One Red Maple hopes to level the playing field for local retailers using artificial intelligence. Its app provides pop-up notifications redirecting consumers to locally owned stores offering the same products as major online retailers. Capitalizing on innovation and technology funding through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario (FedNor) and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC), the company plans to grow to 340 within the next five years.

“We’re thrilled that FedNor is helping us create an app that gives customers an easy and efficient way to shop locally,” says Mark Sherry, President of One Red Maple. “North Bay is one of those cities that people are just finding out about — by that, I mean that it’s a great place to live. It’s a very friendly community and a great place to settle down and to establish roots.” Learn more about One Red Maple’s startup journey in downtown North Bay at moveup.northbay.ca.

“You don’t have to be in the GTA or Montreal to work in a dynamic tech company,” says Lora Webb, CEO of MetricAid. Launched as a startup in 2012,  MetricAid has since doubled its staff and

Women Business Owners Need Advocacy and Access to Capital

The Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce (CanWCC) is Canada’s first and only chamber of commerce that explicitly represents and advocates for woman-identified and non-binary entrepreneurs and business owners. Launched in 2018, CanWCC is a national organization representing approximately 1.2 million business owners across the country.

About 205,000 women-owned smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and one million women are self-employed in Canada. The research is clear, and the pandemic only proved that women-owned businesses face unique barriers and challenges. Therefore, it’s necessary to have an advocacy agent to represent the interests and speak for this group of business owners to effect change at the systemic level.

What is an example of a barrier or challenge for a woman business owner?

Woman-identified and non-binary business owners face numerous unique challenges. Intersections of race, status, sexual orientation, disability, etc., often amplify barriers. One of the most significant barriers is access to capital.

It’s standard advice for startups to engage in a “Friends and Family round” to finance early development. This round involves a business owner asking people in their network for financial investment in the business. According to the Founder Institute, a Friends and Family round can raise between $10,000–$150,000.

The Friends and Family round model of early-stage financing assumes that the business owner has access to a network of individuals with sufficient income to invest.

Women, racialized, Indigenous, LGBTQ2S+, and business owners from other marginalized groups often do not have access to this network. And it is just not possible to gain access to an alummi network or legacy family connection through hard work.

What is CanWCC doing to solve the problem?

CanWCC focuses its advocacy on economic equity and access to capital. We continuously gather information and insight from our members about their experiences and ideas, which we use to inform our advocacy activities and policy recommendations. CanWCC consults with the government on various issues, including early-stage and mid-stage funding for women-owned businesses.

grown its customer base to over 100 hospitals across the globe. This North Bay-based physician scheduling solution SaaS company helps physicians link their availability and expertise with hospitals and clinics, while reducing the administrative burden so health care providers can focus on their patients.

North Bay has caught the interest of GTAbased firms looking to scale and diversify their operations into more cost-competitive secondary markets. Newcomer to North Bay ThinkOn recently partnered with Canadore College to establish a Digital Public Safety Centre of Excellence.

“We were purposeful in selecting North Bay for the establishment of our Global Command Centre,” says Craig McLellan, Founder and CEO of ThinkOn. “North Bay is a welcoming and supportive community. It offers a superior quality of life and excellent infrastructure on which to grow our business.”

Entrepreneurs seeking investors are well positioned with the Northern Ontario Angels, ranked as the top angel organization in North America. The City of North Bay is committed to helping companies grow and expand their operations.

CanWCC informs its members of grants and other funding opportunities as they become available. For example, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Strategy recently launched a micro-loan program. We also make recommendations for new and alternative ways for the government to provide direct and indirect funding.

What can we expect from CanWCC in 2023?

We’re excited to launch new membership pricing that removes the financial barrier to full participation in the Chamber — it’s a pay-what-you-can model. Starting in January 2023, woman-identified and non-binary business owners can join CanWCC by paying a membership fee that makes sense for them. Our new pricing is an example of how CanWCC addresses the issue of access to capital within our organization’s policies and practices.

We will also be working on the Economic Equity Alliance, a cross-sector group of organizations assembled to examine and provide recommendations on policy relating to self-employed Canadians. We have 10 organizations committed to the project, including some of Canada’s largest national not-for-profit and labour organizations.

Visit investinnorthbay.ca to learn more.

This article was sponsored by the City of North Bay

Why does Canada need a chamber of commerce for women?

Nancy Wilson

Nancy Wilson Founder & CEO, Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce

Experience Ventures: Connecting Startups to Early Talent

Entrepreneurial thinking skills — including resiliency, opportunity recognition, action orientation, risk management, and systems thinking or trans-disciplinary thinking — help students become future-ready for careers in the innovation economy. At the University of Calgary, entrepreneurial thinking isn’t seen as being limited to a personality type, a discipline, or entrepreneurs alone. Instead, it’s viewed as an accessible set of skills that anyone can leverage to make an impact, big or small, in any career. Everyone can benefit from being collaborative and having a problem-solving aptitude and a growth-oriented mindset. Accordingly, UCalgary’s Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking is engaging students, faculty, staff, and the community with entrepreneurial thinking and innovation, placing it at the forefront of teaching and innovation discovery.

UCalgary’s community innovation hub

“Entrepreneurial thinking is being creative in finding innovative solutions,” says Anica Vasic, Director of Talent at the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking. “It’s about taking initiative and exchanging knowledge across disciplines. It’s essential to enriching lives and advancing society.”

Since 2017, the Hunter Hub has supported the community at UCalgary and the greater Alberta innovation community to think more like entrepreneurs, as founders, as leaders, and as changemakers within their own circles. It does this by cultivating and supporting changemakers, connecting and building com-

munity, and amplifying stories and impact.

The Hunter Hub is focused on connecting talent to innovation communities across Canada, and its Experience Ventures program is the vehicle for this important work. Experience Ventures offers entrepreneurial thinking placements for students at 11 post-secondary institutions across the country, from Simon Fraser University out west to Memorial University out east to York University in Toronto.

Connecting startups to early talent Experience Ventures is focused on helping students develop career-ready skills and, as an added benefit, helping ventures to build talent pipelines. “The program connects early talent and ventures in a way that drives value for both parties,” says Vasic. “We examined what barriers stood between early talent and ventures and worked to dismantle those barriers, thus allowing students to gain valuable skills and allowing ventures to connect with the talent that will drive their businesses forward. Talent is a venture’s greatest asset, and meaningful career experiences are the stepping stones for students’ success. Experience Ventures helps to deliver both across the country.”

The program allows early-stage ventures to grow and established organizations to adapt and innovate to thrive in an everchanging world. It also instills entrepreneurial thinking and skill sets in students, helping to bolster the Canadian workforce by creating future-ready leaders and doers. The program does so through a variety of entrepreneurial thinking placements, including hack-a-thons,  challenges, projects, student-in-residencies, and interdisciplinary team projects.

Practical partnerships

York University, one of Experience Ventures’ partners, has benefited greatly from the collaboration. “We’re providing entrepreneurial experiences for students to engage with community partners, including startups and organizations, to solve challenges that are crucial to their communities,” says David Kwok, Associate Director of Entrepreneurship at York University. “Not only do students get to gain or refine their entrepreneurial skills, they’re able to apply them in a hands-on, realworld way.”

Hop In Technologies, a logistics platform, partnered with Experience Ventures to work with students. “It was great to get a fresh perspective,” says Erich Ko, Co-Founder and CEO of Hop In Technologies. “We’re already innovating, disrupting the environment, and building something completely different. Through Experience Ventures, students have challenged the things we’re building and provided a new point of view, which was important to the growth of our startup.”

Tania Amardeil

Experience Ventures, powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at UCalgary, enables students to make an impact alongside real-world innovators.

The opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada.

Visit experience ventures.ca to learn more.

This article was sponsored by the University of Calgary

Entrepreneurial thinking is being creative in finding innovative solutions.

Anica Vasic Director of Talent, Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking , University of Calgary

Erich Ko Co-Founder & CEO, Hop In Technologies

David Kwok Associate Director of Entrepreneurship, York University