The Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman, in just over 2 years, went from an idea to something that is having a very positive impact on students and founders in Canada. We focused at the broken market for judgement and how the mentorship structure or processes that existed were not optimized for either side of the market – the mentor/coach and the person being mentored.
It has made a difference in Toronto and in Canada overall.
In the Fall I made a decision to leave the amazing folks at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. It was a really tough decision as my heart and soul went into building the program but with so many great people supporting it felt like the timing was right. As of January 2015 I am focused on teaching a course for Rotman Commerce and I decided to join the best software/product people I know, anywhere, at Boltmade (that is another post).
When I look back at my time at Rotman there are three big things I learned:
- Mentorship needs to be managed closely, it isn’t good enough to just have people with successful jobs or titles or experience simply meet with people.
- The University of Toronto is an important resource to the country, graduate students even more so.
- There is no single model for supporting entreprenuers that works for every school/community.
Mentorship must be managed
When the CDL was started we looked at mentorship walls incubators and accelerators had (web pages that list dozens of mentors) as something we didn’t want to do. Instead we focused on the G7 Fellows being the only mentors that we were going to focus on because:
- G7 fellows have built (and exited from) successful companies.
- Everyone’s time is the limited resource.
- We wanted to reduce mentor whiplash.
The first point, building successful companies (and exiting), is the qualification that we used to speak to the level of judgement that someone has experienced. Building a company is a roller coaster and reaching a certain milestone (exit) requires both luck and good judgement to win out over the bad. That perspective gained on the journey is invaluable.
The founders that are just starting out and those that have built a $100M+ company share a common constraint on their time. Respecting that constraint and optimizing how time is used is essential. That means keeping the volume of email down, writing specific emails, and having very specific requests. Managing time allows you to sharply focus on what is important.
On founder/mentor whiplash, that is something I have written about before. I strongly believe that my key point on the expertise it takes to educate people. Pretty much every program out there that isn’t directly tied to education likely lacks the expertise to effectively educate people. That doesn’t mean that they all get it wrong, if they are focused on education and apprenticeship they could be getting it right. If they are ignoring the importance of education and the expertise required then they might not be as good as they could be.
The University of Toronto is one of Canada’s most important resources
Quietly situated in the middle of North America’s 4th largest city, the University of Toronto’s St George campus houses over 90% of its ~18000 grad students. There is $1.1+ Billion in research annually. A large amount of that is medical research but what is left is still more research dollars than any 2 schools in the country that don’t have a medical school. It’s big and it is the top ranked school by all measures in the country.
What this means is that it attracts some of the best talent in the world. That talent has direct ties to major international cities and the campus educates globally minded students. This is huge. The people there aren’t trying to be the best in Canada. They are trying to the be the best at whatever they do. Anywhere.
Compared to almost all other schools in the country there is a huge number of graduate level students in science based research (Waterloo only has ~3000 grad students in total, 1/6th of UofT). Grad students in Canada are an untapped resource. Too many employers dismiss them as over educated or inexperienced in work. They find high paying work in other countries as a result (the whole internationally connected thing kicks in).
The opportunities for founders and anyone else:
- You will find really skilled people with deep technology expertise and global connections.
- There is a lot of research that looks like science fiction to enhance your product or build a product around it — you just need to look.
- Your company can attract global talent to a city that has has a world class institution. A lot of the really talented people in the world have a partner that has some interested in research.
…and so much more.
There is no single model for supporting entrepreneurs — its art not science
Once upon a time there was just Y-Combinator. Then TechStars took a version of it and then everyone seemed to think there was a single model to rule them all. That model is essentially:
- People apply and those applications are filtered/selected and a cohort is created.
- That cohort runs for ~12 weeks where the founders work with mentors towards a due date.
- Demo day happens and investors compete to invest in these newly minted companies.
- Success follows!
My more detailed views are a post when I say there is just one model that works – Y-Combinator. I still believe that. If you are going to exchange equity for coaching/training and you have a certain type of company then YC is the only place you should go.
When it comes to supporting entrepreneurship in research based institutions there is no single way to do it. I don’t think there is a single program that could or should try and take on all the different ways to do it. Why? Organizations need to focus. You can provide a single service to a certain customer base but if you try and make everyone happy you inevitable be mediocre at everything.
University of Toronto is the only example I know of that has many different programs being delivered by many different ‘owners’ that have absolute control over how that program is run. That allows them to focus on their areas and deliver the best possible program. There may be some overlap and there may be some mistakes but no one really knows how this is done so the experiments are invaluable and should be watched by everyone interested in entrepreneur education/support.
Overall
I am really excited about the future of entrepreneurship in Canada. I don’t think anyone yet knows how or if there there is a common model to educate entrepreneurs in higher education. We do know many different ways that work and lots of others that don’t work as well. It is an exciting problem that I have worked on for nearly 10 years – I will continue to support entrepreneurship but in different ways.