2025 StartUp Lab Year in Review Newsletter

Dec. 20, 2024

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It’s the most… wonderful time... of the year! That’s right, it’s time for the StartUp Lab Year in Review newsletter!!! This year was absolutely bananas – in all the right ways!!! So buckle up and let’s dive in…

People

Programs like StartUp Lab don’t run well and certainly aren’t successful without fantastic people. Whether staff, mentors, administration, it certainly takes a village to build this program and maintain momentum.

StartUp Lab staff had a big year in 2024! Sonia Gallardo celebrated some major life milestones, Adrian Krebs and his family are preparing to welcome a new addition, and the team continues to support one another through exciting changes. While Adrian will be on leave for a short time, we’re thrilled for him and look forward to his return.

Hussain Phalasyia, founder of Visora, winner of 3rd place in the pitch comp, and StartUp Lab’s newest employee, graduated from his double-degree program in October! He then stepped seamlessly in to his role as Programming and Student Engagement Coordinator with StartUp Lab. They always say hire people smarter than yourself, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have Hussain help move this program forward.

Sofia Bruno, our Social Media Assistant stepped away from academics in Fall 2024 to do her first co-op term in a marketing role. While we miss seeing her around StartUp Lab, we knew she’d crush it and she still found time to support our growing social media efforts while attending as many Lunch & Learns as her schedule would allow. We’ll look forward to seeing her around more in the new year as she returns to full-time study.

LaunchPad Brantford is joining StartUp Lab and will be rebranded as StartUp Lab Brantford. Why mention that is this section, you ask? Because with this development, we welcome the wonderful Julie Perkins to our StartUp Lab Team. Some of you may have met Julie through Shad or our various events. We are thrilled to have Julie join us – she’s extremely good at what she does and is an absolute pleasure to work with!

Finally on the staffing front, Jason Whalen was appointed Associate Director, Executive Programs and StartUp Lab for a 1-year term starting in May. This role brings the added responsibility of planning and executing the first MiX/Lazaridis MedTech Leadership Training Program, designed to help 10 MedTech startups build skills to take their companies to new heights!

Ventures

Awareness of StartUp Lab and our activities continues to grow on campus and beyond. We started 2024 with 42 ventures. With increased social media traction (thanks Sofia!!!) and regular events, we saw continuous growth in our applications to the point that we passed our annual all-time high of 57 applications in June of 2024! We will finish off the year with a total of 90 applications to StartUp Lab, with 48 from students, 19 from alumni, and 23 from community members. At present we have 30 ventures receiving support from StartUp Lab.

Events

By far the biggest event of the year was the 1st Annual StartUp Lab Pitch Competition. This competition was designed to be exclusively early-stage, with participants required to have a combined earnings/raises/winnings of under $100k CAD. The event attracted interest from across the country with one participant coming in from University of Calgary. We had a great turnout for the event, including several members of the senior leadership group at Laurier. President and Vice-Provost Dr. MacLatchy kicked off the event with a wonderful welcome address to the participants and attendees.

Participants then spent the next 90 minutes speaking with evaluators about their venture, in hopes of having their name called to pitch live on stage for a share in $35k in prizes! Our own Hussain won 3rd, with his company Visora. The goal was to establish the StartUp Lab Pitch Competition as the CAN’T-MISS early-stage pitch competition in Ontario, and now we’re aiming higher. As of today, we have 11 applications, 4 of which are from the USA. Applications will pick up in January and we hope to get many more from across Canada, the USA and abroad. We’re spreading the word about StartUp Lab and Laurier, one Pitch Competition at a time!

StartUp Lab held 9 ‘Lunch & Learns’ this year, with a total of 197 attendees! These folks came from everywhere – StartUp Lab, Laurier students, Conestoga, UW, community members, partners, mentors, faculty, etc. Fantastic growth and a testament to the equality of sessions put on by our mentors and guests! The Winter 2025 schedule is out, so be sure to check it out and sign up for the sessions that interest you!

Programming

There have been a number of new programs launched this year, to incredible reviews. First of all, we started offering Entrepreneurial Co-op Stipends. In the past, students could do their co-op with us and build their own venture through an unpaid work term, but it was an uneven playing field – if they could not afford to not work, they could not take advantage of the opportunity. StartUp Lab now offers E-co-op stipends that students can apply for, to get paid to work on their own company!

Another exciting new program we’re offering for the first time is the StartUp Lab Co-op Placement. In talks with the Co-op Office, we discovered a big need for more co-op jobs. When we thought about our own startups and how we often have founders with technical challenges they don’t have the skills nor money to overcome, the opportunity presented itself. Over the past week we interviewed a number of Computer Science and Business/Computer Science double-degree students. We then extended two offers, both accepted, for technical co-ops to join us in January and be re-deployed to our startups to give them the talent they need to overcome technical hurdles in their business. This innovative approach is not being done anywhere and we hope to attract a funding partner to keep it going after the initial pilot!

This year, we've also introduced Discovery stage to our programming, supporting entrepreneurs at the earliest stage of ideation. We've also introduced and grown weekly Entrepreneur StandUps from a small group of 4 to regularly averaging 15-20 founders in our space every Friday! Integrating these young founders into our weekly standups has shown immense growth in engagement across the board, as young founders accelerate their growth by working with later-stage founders who bring valuable insight and experience weekly.

StartUp Lab ran the entrepreneurship programming for Shad Laurier, for the third consecutive summer. This program brings in high-achieving high school students from all over the country for an intensive 1-month STEM + Entrepreneurship program, culminating in a Pitch Competition in the last week. These bright young people never cease to amaze me with what they can do from zero to pitch inside of a few weeks! Shad Laurier will be back in summer of 2025!

In the Community

With the onboarding of Hussain, we have a little more bandwidth and have been making a concerted effort to get out in the community and participate more. We’ve been attending events in the ecosystem like Communitech Breakfasts, and GTAN. Jason was asked to guest judge the Conestoga Pitch Competition and sat on a Conestoga Panel for entrepreneurship students.

Finally, Sonia went the to the Tech Connect Mixer where she met Dan Gibson who has since become one of our newest Mentors! We’re getting out there and spreading the word, and people are taking notice!

Our Mentors

As we always say, StartUp Lab could not exist without the generous support of our amazing mentors. Our mentor ranks continue to grow, and We are amazed at the wonderful people who donate their time to help, advise, nurture, and guide not only our ventures, but each other and the StartUp Lab Team. I hope you all know how much we truly appreciate you and all you do for StartUp Lab as a program, and each of us as individuals.

Our Champions

StartUp Lab is so fortunate to have amazing people is its corner, supporting us and cheering on our efforts as we continue to grow. I’d like to send out a special ‘Thank you’ to Michael Lisetto-Smith, Kate Tippin, and Dean Kyle Murray. Finally, StartUp Lab would not be possible without the generous support of TD Bank, whose continued support over the past several years has allowed us to make a difference and continue to produce well-rounded, amazing entrepreneurs.

What a year! It’s time for us all to take some much-needed time away to rest, rejuvenate, and come back in January 2025, ready to take StartUp Lab to new heights. Happy Holiday from all of us at StartUp Lab, and see you in 2025!