The University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business is finding new ways to foster innovation and entrepreneurship with a new seed stage program done in partnership with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
The program aims to pair new entrepreneurs with successful business leaders who will both invest in and work with high-tech startups at their beginning stages.
“Here, instead of the ventures running around, making lots of presentations trying to get money and not actually working their venture, the money flows within days from the people who are also coaching these entrepreneurs,” said Paul Cubbon, Leader of the Creative Destruction Lab West.
The University of Toronto seed stage program peaked Cubbon’s interest when he noticed a number of Vancouverites were flying to Toronto bimonthly to participate in the program. Cubbon was interested in UofT’s Creative Destruction Lab’s unique approach that focused on high potential ventures that were highly scalable.
The goal of the Creative Destruction Lab is to work with, invest in and grow massively scalable, high-tech ventures. Creative Destruction Labs takes advantage of the unique skills their investor network has by using them as tools for their budding entrepreneurs to utilize.
“The serial entrepreneurs that act as both mentors and early stage investors. As we go through the program, our group of seasoned entrepreneurs, they not only provide the time for coaching but they also make personal investments as seed funding.”
Cubbon said there are two problems that slow the advancement of high-potential ventures: unfocused short-term goals and the timeliness of investments. Creative Destruction Lab aims to address these issues by mentoring budding entrepreneurs while finding investors so business owners don’t have to.
The University of Toronto has been running their seed stage program for a number of years and is now specializing in machine-learning ventures. Cubbon chose to partner with the Toronto university because that school’s model has had a proven track record of success. Last month one of their ventures, Thalmic Labs, secured over $160 million in investments – the largest amount of b-round funding in Canadian history.
Creative Destruction Labs West plans to follow a similar tragedy, planning to specialize in the future, but for now are accepting applications from a broad scope of tech sector businesses.
“If we can emulate what they’ve done in Toronto in terms of accelerating the number and size of technology ventures that are created and bringing in the expertise and the investment from outside of the region, then that’s going to be a success,” said Cubbon.
