Student entrepreneurs at UofT are making their mark. From Leila Keshavjee’s popsicle business Happy Pops landing a deal on CBC’s hit show Dragon’s Den to Genecis, a company using biotechnology to turn food waste into high-quality bioplastic, startups at UofT are ready to tackle anarray of markets and problems.
The University of Toronto is renowned for its robust programs aiding entrepreneurs. Its incubators and accelerators—organizations that help small startups grow by providing low-cost office space, managerial training, and other aid—are among the top five university-managed incubators and accelerators in the world according to UBI Global’s 2017 to 2018 World Benchmark Study.
These incubators and accelerators are incredibly valuable resources to student entrepreneurs. One such organization is The Hatchery within the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, which has helped launch over 67 startups with its NEST program since launching in 2012. Its Launch Lab offers support for research-based graduate and faculty-led startups.
In The Hatchery’s NEST program, successful applicants spend the summer engaged in tasks such as creating business models, familiarizing themselves with a cash-flow runway, and practicing pitching with various mentors. The program culminates with Demo Day in early September, when applicants pitch their companies to a panel of entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors.
Genecis, a biotechnology startup, won the first-place $20,000 Lacavera prize last September. Genecis’ founder and CEO Luna Yu completed both her HBSc and MEncSc at UofT and founded the company in October 2016 with the goal of converting “low value waste into high value materials.” The company is currently “commercializing its first product line—PHA biodegradable plastics,” a type of bioplastic produced using bacteria, says Yu.
“The team grew from one to eight full-time, award-winning scientists and engineers, with seven part-time interns,” adds Yu. “Over the next two years, the team will scale the process up to Demonstration Plant productions and build a synthetic biology platform. The SynBio platform will allow Genecis to create new bacteria at rapid speeds, making better PHAs and materials of higher value used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and nano-materials industries.”
Entrepreneurship does not come without setbacks, however. The team at Genecis faced many, but “was able to work cohesively to turn each disaster into an opportunity.”
This year’s $20,000 winner on Demo Day, Grid, is another company to watch out for. Grid aims to make parking easier by using wide-angle cameras to detect and broadcast information about available parking spaces in real time. Pilot testing begins next month.
The Hatchery’s other events include its Speaker Series, through which it hosts guests offering entrepreneurial stories and advice.
Other speakers, events, competitions, and clubs across UofT aim to inspire and aid aspiring student entrepreneurs as well. The Rotman Commerce Entrepreneurship Organization (RCEO), for example, hosts several events throughout the year to “connect passionate students with local startups who needed helping hands,” says the club’s president, Frank Zhang. Jumpstart, a networking event hosted by RCEO, “aims [to connect] students with the local entrepreneurship community” and has received “incredibly positive feedback” according to Zhang, who reports that many attendees were offered summer opportunities with the startups they met at the event. Zhang stresses RCEO’s philosophy to “approach networking like making friends and fostering that genuine one-on-one connection with the incredibly supportive community of innovators we have around us” as a factor that helped make the event such a success.
RCEO also hosts a handful of case competitions, as well as a pitch competition with a monetary prize for seed funding.
Being in an environment with like-minded people who have experience starting ventures means that members are “all able to help each other out with different challenges that come up.” The supportive environment allows them to “help other students who are keen to start their own venture and even help early-stage startups figure out their go-to market strategy.”
“We have been very fortunate to be able to attract some really keen go-getters,” says Zhang. He remarks that many RCEO team members “have ventures of [their] own that [they’re] trying to grow on the side, whether it’s a student-service startup or a personalized card company.” In fact, a past member was “so keen on starting his own business that he took a year off school to pursue that.”
Alongside UofT’s nine incubators, accelerators, student groups, and other organizations, over 80 courses and programs across all three campuses and several faculties are also available to guide student entrepreneurs toward achieving their goals.
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