One by one, teams of students and alums stepped up to the front of the room to pitch their ventures. There was a lack of gloss or theatricality present in the popular Dragons’ Den or Shark Tank Programs but this meant something more. To some, this open house was a first step to a dream come true; of entrepreneurship being firmly established at Western University.
Despite the rising profile of entrepreneurship in popular culture, and its quantified importance to economies the world over, establishing its legitimacy in academia has been a long time coming. Ivey Professor Eric Morse remembers being one of the first faculty hired at Ivey to specifically teach in the emerging field and still speaks to its importance in business education:
“Entrepreneurship covers critical business dynamics like change, opportunity recognition, innovation, and the disruption of markets and industry. Through a better understanding of these dynamics students build a capability for decision making under uncertainty and in many cases ambiguity.”
Fifteen years later, Morse is serving his second term as the Executive Director of the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship and has played a major role in the inception of the Western Accelerator.
Building an ecosystem
“It’s long overdue in Western and I’m delighted to see the first group through the process,” said Morse. While entrepreneurship has manifested itself through the years in many forms across campus, Morse is excited particularly with the coordination of these efforts by different faculties with the help of the Western Entrepreneurship Steering Team, whose goal is to create an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem at Western that taps into local, national, and global ecosystems.
A key piece of developing this ecosystem is the accelerator.
With Western’s strengths in areas of business, engineering and medical science, Kevin Matsui of the Ontario Centres of Excellence, sees the accelerator as a natural fit for Western. “It represents a good step forward for the university and the area. You can see the pent up demand for this type of thing,” said Matsui.
Since its inception in January, four teams have moved through the accelerator. Each team is provided a stipend to assist with living costs and has access to a range of resources from administrative to legal services. They also receive weekly programming that includes sessions with industry experts, entrepreneurs, faculty members, and mentors to position their ventures for success.
The accelerator is located on the 3rd floor of Somerville House and consists of a working space, meeting rooms, a kitchenette and board room. Perhaps fittingly, the main working space has a prime view of the old Ivey building where the very idea of an accelerator was conceived by Morse and his contemporaries.
Gathering Support
Libro Credit Union has recently committed $50,000 per year for five years to support the development and implementation of the new program. “We think entrepreneurship is tremendously important to growing prosperity, not just in London but the broader region of southwestern Ontario,” said Stephen Bolton, President, and CEO of Libro Credit Union.
The Accelerator is also supported by StarTech.com, a leading London-based manufacturer of connectivity devices, which was co-founded by 2008 QuantumShiftTM alum Paul Seed.
Once fully operational, the accelerator will provide students, faculty, and alums an avenue to realize their high-potential business ideas. “There are a lot of good ideas in the world. The Western Accelerator is key to taking some of Western’s best ideas and making them work at scale in the world,” said Darren Meister, Ivey Professor and John M. Thompson Chair in Engineering Leadership and Innovation.
An Immersive Experience
For the first cohort, the accelerator provided a fast-paced, immersive experience fitting the title.
“It’s definitely been an accelerator. The mentors and the resources we got from this were really invaluable and something we wouldn’t have access to, if we were doing it by ourselves,” said Ryan Bauer of Aunt Mary’s Corp.
Fellow team member Erik Lapointe enjoyed the intensity of the program, which didn’t taper off as he had expected. “It’s really good to have that type of resources and support from day one to week two, to the end of the accelerator,” said Lapointe.
With Aunt Mary’s composed of full-time students, they found the opportunity to work on their business while completing the MBA program an add-on to their experience.
The accelerator has also allowed participants like recent grad Alan Kalbfleisch to see the bigger picture for his venture Pascal Press, a portable coffee press that was initially funded through a Kickstarter campaign.
Having been through a number of different entrepreneurship programs with Pascal Press, he credits the accelerator for preparing him to expand his current offering, converting a single product venture into a company.
Colin McDougall, MBA ’06, is working on an online education program for hockey coaches with Dwayne Blais. Being a serial entrepreneur who has been through the process many times, he enjoyed the camaraderie that was created by a room full of motivated entrepreneurs and looks forward to what the accelerator will bring to Western.
“People are going to realize that the jobs of today are not the jobs of tomorrow and the ability to be nimble, adaptive and come up with new things will be better for the school and the province,” said McDougall.