Entrepreneurship Activities

I believe encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs is an important mission for a university. The University of Toronto produces many excellent research results and top-quality students, but to bring many research ideas to market and to create the most vibrant Canadian economy, we also require entrepreneurs to turn research ideas into products and businesses. Furthermore, being is a great experience; the most intense and memorable period of my life was when I started Right Track CAD -- it was incredibly rewarding!

I am a mentor at The Entrepreneurship Hatchery at the University of Toronto. The first thing we encourage prospective entrepreneurs to do is to read this very nice Harvard Business Review article Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything which advocates applying agile programming principles to business model creation.

Teams mentored:

Team Optx (2015): In progress, so their business plan is confidential for now!
FuelWear (2014): clothes with smart, active heating. Jason Yakimovich and Alex Huang. The team developed and marketed clothes with smart, active heating. Team FuelWear launched a successful Indigogo campaign to fund production, and won 1st prize and the $20,000 Lacavera Prize in the 2014 Hatchery competition.
Discovery Channel Story (at 40 minute mark of Sept. 12, 2014 Daily Planet show)
National Post Article
ECE news article

DealsHype (2013): a cell phone app and back-end analytics to enable push marketing and social media campaigns by small merchants. Mike Zhang and Satyam Merja. Team DealsHype pivoted to find this business niche, and then developed their cell phone app and partnered with LiveGreen Toronto to launch it. Team DealsHype won the Orozco Prize in the 2013 Hatchery competition.

Talk on Business / Entrepreneurship

A talk I gave on my start-up experience at the launch of TechnoLabs, a new incubator for graduate students considering commercializing their research.

A talk on how to create a patent and the value of patents that I gave to the University of Toronto Leaders of Tomorrow group.

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