In 2018, U of T ranked among the top five universities in the world for launching a business. Incubators and accelerators facilitate the launch of most businesses; an incubator launches an idea into a startup, while an accelerator helps an existing business grow and develop. If you want to launch your own business, here’s a guide to U of T’s 11 incubators and accelerators. 

The University of Toronto Early Stage Technology Program (UTEST) is a year-long program that focuses on high-potential technology developed at U of T. UTEST partners with Mitacs, MaRS, and Ontario Centres of Excellence, among others, to provide services to early-stage ventures. UTEST assists students, faculty, and recent alumni with developing business plans, and provides legal advice and office space to launch their business. UTEST applications are due in May each year and final decisions are made in June. It will invest $100,000 in selected businesses, with access to an additional $500,000 in capital. Twelve companies participated in UTEST’s 2018 cohort for innovations, ranging from surgical adhesives to wound treatments. 

The University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Hub hosts a startup competition to help students and recent alumni launch their ideas into businesses. The Hub’s fifth annual intake will be held on Saturday, November 16 when entrepreneurs will compete for up to $5,000 in seed capital. The Hub has launched over 130 startups since its inception five years ago. To name a few, the Hub has helped launch CheaprEats, an on-campus food ordering app that rewards users; Weav, a ride-sharing app designed for students to carpool with one another, and BlumeX, a venture dedicated to helping startups hit sales targets. 

ICUBE is an incubator based in the Institute for Management & Innovation at UTM, but isn’t restricted to UTM students. ICUBE has a three-stage system: Startup, Scaleup, and SXL Grant. Startup includes extensive support for refining a business plan. Scaleup is for companies that have made less than $100,000, and includes networking opportunities and smaller cash prizes. SXL Grant comes with a 50 per cent labour coverage for one employee when the company hires a UTM student. Notable ICUBE alumni include Just Vertical, a company that promotes food sustainability, and Micharity, an innovative fundraising platform. 

Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL) is a startup incubator and accelerator for innovations rooted in computer science. In addition to helping launch businesses through their Research to Commercialization Program, the DCSIL offers courses in software and product development to undergraduate and graduate students. It works with U of T, government organizations, industry partners, venture capital firms, and other incubators and accelerators to commercialize promising innovations. In the past, the DCSIL has helped launch Brainsview, a software company that can monitor brain injuries in real time, and deepPIXEL, a company working to improve and automate online customer support. 

The Entrepreneurship Hatchery is a place where student entrepreneurs can submit any problem online to the Hatchery Idea Market, and their team will help them find a solution. The Hatchery operates through two streams: NEST is designed for students interested in launching or growing a startup, while the Launch Lab facilitates startups born out of graduate-level research. Previously, the Hatchery has helped launch Vercel, a company that created a subzero preservation system that extends the life of organs for transplant, and Medme, a smart pillbox that helps patients manage their medications. Each year, the Hatchery hosts Demo Day, an event that showcases startups that participated in NEST’s rigorous four-month program. 

Start@UTIAS is part of the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) and collaborates with the Hatchery to help students in UTIAS develop their business ideas. Start@UTIAS applicants can apply to the Hatchery’s Launch Lab, NEST, and social program streams and are eligible for up to $60,000 in funding. One of the successful past winners is Medchart, a cloud-based portal that gives patients access to their medical records. TeaBOT, a startup which sells robots that can custom-blend teas in under 30 seconds, participated in the Start@UTIAS program in 2015. 

The BRIDGE is an accelerator built on a partnership between the Department of Management at UTSC and the UTSC library that emphasizes experiential learning. The BRIDGE is best known for its New Venture Program, which allows students from a range of disciplines to gain business planning and management skills through industry and community placements. Program placement is contingent upon submission of a letter of intent, the completion of required coursework, and an interview. The BRIDGE also functions as a working space and a resource for business and financial services. Most recently, the BRIDGE collaborated with DCSIL and IBM Watson to launch a chatbot for Canadian financial services and information. 

The Impact Centre is an accelerator that aims to bring scientific discoveries to the market. The Impact Centre provides opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to learn about entrepreneurship through Techno, a week-long course on entrepreneurship, and also provides opportunities for eligible undergraduate students to work in startups for course credit. Some of the Impact Centre’s alumni include RealAtoms, a reinvented molecular modelling kit for students; Somnitude, a company developing artificial-light blocking glasses; and Pueblo Science, a non-profit organization focused on science literacy.

Health Innovation Hub (H2i) is an incubator that supports innovations, advances, and research in health care. H2i promotes external affiliate events such as ECHO, an entrepreneurship in cardiovascular health startup competition during which five ideas are judged and awarded from a $250,000 pool. In addition, H2i hosts the Pitch Perfect health matters competition, which awards $5,000 each to three fellowship winners. In the past, H2i has helped launch Scipertise, an online platform for scientists to share tips and tricks for scientific methods and troubleshooting equipment. H2i has also helped early-stage pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies like Porphysome Foundry and Phoenox Pharma get off the ground. 

The Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a seed-stage incubator for companies developing innovations in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, clean technology, space, and more. As part of the Rotman School of Management, CDL provides companies with mentors in business and scientific development. CDL has one round of application intake per year, which took place in August. Since its creation in 2012, CDL has launched over 500 companies and has generated $3 billion in equity. One of the more well-known companies launched through CDL, Kepler Communications, works to build internet connectivity and improve real-time communication through satellites. 

InnovED is an start-up incubator based in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). While it has not officially launched yet, InnovED began ramping up their operations this past summer. InnovED has partnered with Speax, an app that helps users learn new languages, and Cited Media Productions, a production company that develops engaging podcasts on academic research. The OISE-based incubator will also host face-to-face and online learning events throughout the year that will focus on social innovation. For example, one of their planned events will provide entrepreneurs with the tools to navigate their mental health while launching their business.

Editor’s Note (October 1, 8:50 am): The previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Innovation Hub is an incubator. The description of Innovation Hub was removed and a description of InnovED was added.

On June 12, U of T Entrepreneurship hosted the 10 finalists of its inaugural Sustainability Innovation Prize for a pitch competition at ONRamp, a coworking space that supports U of T accelerators. The finalists, selected from a larger pool of applicants, each had three minutes to pitch their innovations to a panel of expert judges in the hopes of being selected as one of the three $5,000 prize winners.

The 10 finalists were chosen according to the opportunity, viability and impact, growth potential, innovation, talent, and communication skills demonstrated in their proposals. In April, each of the finalists was encouraged by U of T Entrepreneurship to work with an advisor to prepare them for the big day.

Following the 10 pitches, which ranged from energy efficiency innovations to financial services, the judges announced their verdict.

Daniel McKee and Lisa Pooley’s Circular Toys; John Russell and Leanna Smid’s SoluSave; and Paulina Szalchta, Samantha Dilorio, and Tom Chen’s STP Sports claimed top honours, each earning $5,000 to be used to support their innovations.

Circular Toys

McKee’s project aims to bring the circular economic model to the youngest members of society. Circular Toys is his answer to the short use of kids’ toys, few of which are recyclable.

Circular Toys is a subscription-based, eco-friendly toy delivery service. Consumers would pick from a range of educational toy packages, targeted according to age group, and can expect a continued delivery of five to six toys every three months to their homes.

After toys have been used to the child’s satisfaction, Circular Toys encourages its customers to send them back to the company, which they would then refurbish and incorporate them into boxes to send out to other families.

McKee told The Varsity that the $5,000 prize would be used primarily for marketing, “getting the website up, and reaching the first hundred [users].” Circular Toys will launch in August.

MICHAEL TEOH/THE VARSITY

SoluSave

Life science students John Russell and Leanna Smid’s SoluSave provides a waste reduction solution for laboratories.

SoluSave aims to develop and provide technology to recycle used solvents. The two undergraduate students were inspired to develop their startup from having first-hand experience in U of T laboratories.

They hope that, once completed, their technology will make its way into more undergraduate laboratories to minimize waste.

Russell and Smid, who were participating in their first-ever pitch competition, were surprised that they were selected as one of the winners.

“One of our biggest concerns was to make sure that [our pitch] came across as pretty clear, what we were doing, and to have a little bit more of a story,” Smid told The Varsity. “We knew we were not pitching to chemists.

MICHAEL TEOH/THE VARSITY

STP Sports

After this year’s NBA championship, Torontonians who have attended sporting events can vouch for the wasteful mess that fills an empty stadium after a game. Paulina Szlachta and Tom Chen pitched a service to reduce the wasteful nature of sporting events through a closed-loop supply chain model that diverts waste from ending up in landfills.

The pair had conducted field research, including a trip to Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium and a meeting with its officials.

Beyond the excitement of the prize, Szlachta was particularly excited about the fierceness of the competition. “The other pitches got me thoroughly excited about what the future of U of T Entrepreneurship is, from the use of chemical waste to sustainable toys,” she told The Varsity. “[It’s] an amazing space and this competition is coming at a really, really good time.”

A good time it was — the pitch competition featured a great variety of pitches, and despite there only being three prize winners, there were no real losers. From searching for solutions to empower women in Afghanistan, to providing portable electricity to families in Western Africa, the 10 finalists truly embodied the standard that U of T is known for.

MICHAEL TEOH/THE VARSITY

Editor’s Note (July 12, 5:50 pm): This article has been updated to correct the description of ONRamp.

A panel of industry leaders convened at ONRamp, a U of T-led accelerator, on May 30 to discuss the barriers and opportunities that entrepreneurs face in the highly regulated industries of health, finance, and cannabis technologies.

Greg Pantelic, founder of AHLOT, a cannabis curation company; John Soloninka, founder of health tech company Accelerant Health Innovations; and Teri Kirk, founder of investor-entrepreneur matching program Fundingportal, described their experiences in their respective fields and how they have navigated government regulations.

The event was organized by the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in association with ONRamp. This was not the first time the two organizations had collaborated — Queen’s partnered with ONRamp in February to expand its entrepreneurs’ networking opportunities.

Breaking into the industry and changing with trends

Pantelic’s AHLOT is a cannabis circulation company that “created the world’s first multi-licensed producers’ sample pack and storage accessory product,” despite not being licensed vendors.

“Our vision was creating experience before and after consuming cannabis,” Pantelic said, citing the overwhelming choices of recreational cannabis available to consumers.

After seeing new sign-ups and subscriptions grow at 40 per cent week-over-week in 2017, Pantelic decided to run AHLOT on a full-time basis. The increasingly growing demand for recreational cannabis following the enactment of the federal Cannabis Act, coupled with the market inefficiency of cannabis sampling, led him to create the Cannabis Collection, a series of one-gram samples from different premium licensed producers.

According to Kirk, “one has to have a larger risk appetite and more capacity for innovation [when pursuing entrepreneurship] in heavily regulated space.” Kirk used Fundingportal as an example explaining the importance of measuring cost and benefit. For example, when matching entrepreneurs with investors, geographical costs and benefits differ between Canada and the US, so proximity is a useful measure for deciding which markets to become involved in.

Regulations and innovations

According to Pantelic, the highly regulated nature of the cannabis industry prompted AHLOT to work with licensed producers rather than wait to obtain its own production license. As its Cannabis Collection collects sample cannabis from different licensed partners, every regulation policy regarding the product is dealt with directly by AHLOTS’ partners.

Kirk highlighted the importance of understanding regulations before entering the marketplace, highlighting how her experience of being a lawyer helped her in this regard. She also pointed out that entering a heavily regulated industry like finance technology requires innovators to embrace larger risks than in traditional industries, especially since latent regulations create more opportunities for failure.

Soloninka seconded this perspective. He mentioned that a strong understanding of regulations would provide a competitive advantage for innovators.

“Fitting into regulation is really strategic for starting your own company,” he said. Apart from that, entrepreneurs should remember that regulatory approvals are mostly regional, which is critical when deciding where to start a business.

To solve this regional regulation issue, Soloninka provided two suggestions: first, working with a consulting company that specializes in global regulatory systems; and second, conducting research on the internet.

Data accessibility

In the cannabis industry, data can be described as necessary but nascent. AHLOT is collecting its data by launching a cannabis circulation campaign, to hire people to provide feedback on recreational cannabis quality.

Kirk added that data allows entrepreneurs to understand the world around them despite it being “massively and heavily regulated.” As such, it may be important for entrepreneurs to take the costs of accessing data into account when making market-entering choices.

Right before Christmas last year, then U of T math and statistics student Mikerah Quintyne-Collins received over $100,000 USD in cryptocurrency from Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and promptly dropped out of U of T.

In a Twitter thread between cryptocurrency developers in December, Quintyne-Collins tweeted to Buterin, “I will quite literally drop out if we got $100k in ETH.” She asked and she received.

I will quite literally drop out if we got $100k in ETH.

— Mikerah (@badcryptobitch) 19 December 2018

After dropping out, Quintyne-Collins, a programmer, researcher, and blockchain enthusiast, switched to working full-time at ChainSafe, a Toronto-based startup that works on blockchain applications, such as automatically enforced smart contracts. Blockchain is a decentralized method of securely storing data that relies on cryptography, the math behind encoding and decoding messages securely.

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capital, next to Bitcoin. At the time of the transaction, the 1,000 Ether that Buterin sent Quintyne-Collins had a value of $100,630 USD. Now, that same amount is worth around $174,000 USD.

Buterin is a university dropout himself, having left the University of Waterloo in 2014 to work on Ethereum full-time after receiving $100,000 USD through the Thiel Fellowship, a grant awarded annually to people aged 22 and under to drop out of school and pursue full-time work.

These days, Quintyne-Collins is pretty busy with her job, working to develop a platform that may eventually be a part of a new version of Ethereum.

“The main thing that I miss about university [is] Goldring,” she said.

While her mother had wanted her to return to her studies, Quintyne-Collins does not see the need. “People haven’t asked me about my degree. In fact, every time I tell somebody I dropped out to work on Ethereum, they just say, ‘Congrats.’”

“I know myself well enough to know that this is better for me, rather than taking courses I’m not interested in,” she told BreakerMag.

When I asked about her ambitions and plans, Quintyne-Collins said that she was going to “go with the flow.”

Even before university, much of her efforts had been focused outside of school. She taught herself how to code when she was 13 by borrowing library books. Bitcoin then piqued her interest around 2011 when she was in high school and it first made the news; this prompted her to start reading research papers on cryptography.

She became more involved in blockchain during her second year, when Buterin came to U of T for a talk on crypto-economics. This also brought her in touch with ChainSafe, where she would eventually start working part-time as a project lead while continuing her studies.

Before dropping out, Quintyne-Collins was also President of the U of T Blockchain Group and had co-organized a number of blockchain hackathons. Even after dropping out, she helped host this year’s ETHUofT hackathon alongside the group’s current president. This is where I met Quintyne-Collins, as I was volunteering with registration on a Friday evening in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology.

She believes that universities are more useful for forming connections than learning. She added that a number of top universities have materials and resources available online for free.

“This last semester, I wasn’t doing… any schoolwork, to be honest. I might have failed some courses,” she told me.

That being said, she would not encourage just anybody to drop out and find work. “If you have nothing else going for you, then your GPA is pretty much all you have.”

Quintyne-Collins was admitted to the first-year computer science stream when she started at U of T but chose not to pursue the program of study. “I wasn’t going to pay the extra tuition… If you can get a degree for 8k a year versus 15k a year and end up with the same job, who’s the idiot? The person who paid more for it.”

She has also co-authored a study published in the STEM Fellowship Journal and is currently conducting research with a fellow U of T dropout working in blockchain. They are not sure about which journals to publish in yet, but it will at least be on arXiv, an open-access digital repository of research papers.

“For computer science, it doesn’t really matter that much,” she said, referring to the publication they will ultimately choose.

When asked how to get involved in the blockchain scene and get one’s foot in the door, Quintyne-Collins said, “Contribute to open source projects and attend events if you’re technical. And if you’re non-technical, you should organize the events.”

She emphasized the need for talent in the scene beyond just computer science, but also in communication and outreach. “If you’re good at building communities and bringing people together, that’s just as important as being able to write code.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens’ timeless wisdom certainly resonates with millennials today. On the one hand, we are blessed with an unprecedented amount of possibilities to launch new projects. On the other hand, the chance to start anew often feels imposed. Inspired by successful entrepreneurs, we detest the prospect of a career of clerical drudgeries and punching clocks, but we also fret about the insecurity of our gig economy, because the more the traditional market economy prospers, the more fleeting entrepreneurship’s promise seems.

Additionally, society’s romanticization of self-made entrepreneurs can conceal the challenges involved in launching and maintaining a startup. The road to successful entrepreneurship is a lot bumpier than one might expect. Students need to be mentally and financially prepared if they are serious about having their own business ventures.

On behalf of ExploreTO, a startup led mainly by U of T alumni, here are some insights into our entrepreneurial adventure and some survival tips we’ve picked up along the way.

Getting started

ExploreTO is a phone app that helps users find what to do and where to go in Toronto. Our four founders came up with this idea when they ended up going to the same places every time they hung out. As they saw the same faces at the same spots, they knew that they weren’t the only ones feeling tired of the same routines and frustrated by the surfeit of new options that popped up on search engines. People’s continued desire to have new and exciting hangout spots easily sorted for them is a testament to the necessity of this app.

Once they were set on what they wanted to do with their app, they began their research into the events listing industry, which consists of two types of companies: technology-oriented companies like Yelp and Facebook and content-oriented ones like blogTO and Narcity.

In the first category, companies work like aggregators that glean data from nearly every event and venue — there is nothing happening in the city that you can’t find on their apps. Despite their omnipotence, they lack original content and curation. Wading through the thousands of options they proffer, users may or may not eventually find something that interests them, contributing to the conundrum that ExploreTO seeks to resolve.

In the second category, media companies usually provide great original content. They have staff writers and editors who understand audiences’ expectations and deliver relevant content. Their apps, by contrast, are lacking severely. Most people we know either have no clue that these popular content providers have apps, or they have tried these apps only to delete them minutes after. Few system updates have been made on their apps, and with a focus on web content, their apps are generally poorly managed — restaurants in some of the reviews don’t even exist anymore.

ExploreTO targets what both of these game players miss: an easy-to-use app with carefully curated, updated, and original content. Not only does our team manually select venues and events for our collections, but we build in features that take into account users’ preferences, weather, the day of the week, time of the year, and other relevant factors. When launching a startup, the first thing to do is conduct research that helps you understand the industry. At the same time, it’s important to consider how to address some of the shortcomings of your competitors.

As the company has continued to grow, our founders have leveraged their education and spoken to a few professors who have offered valuable advice. So for any aspiring entrepreneurs, don’t let this resource go to waste. U of T also has such a large talent pool where you can meet your future business partners who share your values. Socialize as much as you can and meet people from different schools and departments — you’ll need different talents to build a successful business.

Building a team

The four founding partners are Val Neiman from engineering, Philipp Soummer from Rotman Commerce, and Liam Kelly from computer science, all graduates from U of T, as well as Ivan Gudov, a math graduate from the University of Waterloo. Between the four of them, ExploreTO had the perfect team. With Ivan as the developer building the backend database and Liam working on the frontend user interface, Philipp and Val took charge of business operations and project management.

The lesson for aspiring U of T entrepreneurs is to never overlook the importance of choosing the right partners. You will need them to be as competent as they are trustworthy, be able to meet deadlines, and share responsibility as team players, so you know that you can count on each other at the end of the day.

Building ExploreTO from scratch, our team has learned to work on everything independently and to keep costs low because we didn’t want to get funded too early and give away an outsized portion of equity. It may sound like an exciting learning experience, but in reality, it has been very daunting given how we are self-funded, and all four founders have highly demanding jobs in hedge funds, IT consulting, and project management. We all need to be resourceful and diligent, and we need everyone to play ball when working countless extra hours. Juggling ExploreTO with demanding day jobs certainly hasn’t been easy for them, and it can sometimes feel hard to stay motivated and keep a team motivated as well. Although our founders have never seriously considered quitting, the thought did cross everyone’s mind in the first two years as they didn’t know how it would turn out. But as our team keeps hitting milestones, gaining more traffic and user recognition, we believe that there is no better way to invest our time and efforts than in this venture.

Funding

Of course we do want to seek new sources of funding. The team is looking to expand and still wants to pay future interns in more than just charismatic experiences. In fact, Neiman and Soummer just auditioned for Dragons’ Den and received very positive feedback, so you may see ExploreTO with a deal on the next season!

That said, it’s not all about the money. The motivation is creating a product that people love and, if that ends up being financially rewarding, then it’s the cherry on top. But it’s also worth mentioning that while money problems can certainly be daunting — especially when they involve potential lawsuits — they are not always difficult to resolve.

ExploreTO’s issues with larger companies in the industry surprisingly only took a few emails and short explanations to resolve. People make threats and get threatened in the business world all the time, particularly related to money, but confidence and communication dissolve more conflicts than you might think.

Continued growth

It is difficult to know when to quit. It takes some intuition, which will probably come with experience. It’s important to define some goals, metrics, or milestones to judge your progress. If the project doesn’t seem to be progressing based on that outline, perhaps it’s a good time to re-evaluate. Maybe the goals are too lofty, or maybe it’s the strategic direction that needs work.

The best way to reconfigure your ideas is to ask the people who will be using your product. ExploreTO had small focus groups in its Alpha stages that involved our founders asking friends to test the app, while telling them that they were testing an app that someone they vaguely knew had developed. That way, the team could get honest feedback without testers feeling as if they were criticizing them directly. The app is currently on its 15th iteration because we takes the feedback of our users very seriously. Had ExploreTO never asked its users what they thought, the app would still look like it did a year ago. We would have liked it personally, but our users wouldn’t have.

For aspiring entrepreneurs in the initial stage of development, it’s imperative to testify the necessity of your product, coin down your specialty, and find the right partners who specialize in these areas. As the team develops, it’s also necessary to think about building a culture.

A successful startup needs to be people-oriented. Take into account the opinions, criticism, and concerns of your users, interns, and employees — those are the contributions that every startup needs.

— With files from Philipp Soummer

April Jin is a Content Writer at ExploreTO.

U of T recently approved the Four Corners Strategy framework to guide the university in new real estate investments. Four Corners replaces the previous real estate strategy, which was implemented in 2007.

Four Corners Strategy goals

According to the Four Corners Strategy Report, one of the two main goals of Four Corners is to “facilitate amenity uses that support the [university’s] academic mission.” The key tenet of this goal is to expand available housing for faculty, staff, and students.

In an interview with The Varsity, Vice-President Operations and Real Estate Partnerships Scott Mabury said that a detailed housing survey of employees and graduate students had been conducted. With over 1,000 graduate students on waiting lists for housing each year, Mabury believes that there is a need to expand the available residences owned and operated by U of T.

“The solid outcome of that survey is that there is significant demand from faculty and senior staff for wanting to live near or at the University of Toronto,” said Mabury. “[We] have the confidence of building residential units that our faculty and staff will want to live in.”

Other objectives of the amenity use goal include providing space that “supports the university’s research and commercialization efforts,” creating “gathering and meetings spaces” for the campuses and broader community, and facilitating “retail uses serving the campus community’s needs.”

Another main goal of Four Corners is to “grow ‘other’ revenue while maintaining long-term real estate interests.” Given that U of T is heavily dependent on student fees and government and donor funding, the report suggests that diversifying U of T’s revenue streams with new sources will create “increased financial visibility, flexibility, and security.”

“Almost the entire university budget — 87 per cent — comes from students paying tuition fees or government operating grants,” said Mabury. “That’s not financially sustainable. We need to grow the remaining 13 per cent, to increase the resilience and sustainability of the institutional budget.”

The Four Corners Strategy aims to generate $50 million in operational funding per year by 2033 through its two cornerstone developments: a 23-storey residence at Spadina and Sussex Avenues and a 14-storey innovation centre at College Street and University Avenue.

Cornerstone developments

Revenue from the buildings will “be focused on a University of Toronto strategic fund to be invested into institutional priorities to advance the research and teaching mission of the university,” explained Mabury.

The residence at Spadina and Sussex will be the first new residence built at U of T in nearly two decades. First proposed in 2013, the building design has undergone many years of public consultations and workshops. It is expected to house 511 students and is scheduled to be built by 2021.

The innovation centre plans to house student, office, and retail spaces. According to Mabury, one quarter of the centre will be assigned for offices and academic support, while a second quarter will accommodate U of T Entrepreneurship, the Innovations & Partnerships Office, and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The third quarter has been set aside specifically for student startups. The final quarter is slated for scaling and successfully expanding companies.

Explaining the decision to devote half of its 250,000 square feet of floor space to startup companies and established corporate partners, Mabury said that the innovation centre is “designed to be a landing pad and a starting place for our students start-ups.”

“As they grow, [students] could move out of the startup part of the building into the scaling company… portion of the building,” Mabury said. “At some point they will grow large enough that [students] need to vacate both to make room for other companies coming along, but also because they’ve grown large enough that they need to be out and fully fledged and on their own.”

Mabury said that the building will also meet and exceed current provincial energy efficiency standards.

The Four Corners strategy will prioritize “building non-academic spaces we need today in a way that supports the University of Toronto’s academic and strategic priorities tomorrow.”

Regarding its longevity, Mabury says that if successful, “Four Corners will continue indefinitely into the future,” but that “from a planning perspective… we felt that a 15-year horizon was appropriate.”

U of T has received a $100 million donation to fund a new innovation research complex that will support artificial intelligence (AI) and biomedical research. The donation, from the Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation, is the largest that the university has ever received. U of T President Meric Gertler, Toronto Mayor John Tory, and Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains were among the speakers who lauded the donation at U of T’s March 25 press conference.

“Today we enter an incredibly exciting new chapter in this history of generosity, signalling a new era of world-leading innovation and progress at the University of Toronto,” Gertler said.

Gerald Schwartz is the founder and CEO of private equity firm Onex. Heather Reisman is the founder and CEO of book retailer Indigo.

Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre

The new 750,000-square-foot Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre will be located at the corner of College Street and Queen’s Park. U of T expects that the building will host thousands of researchers, investors, industry partners, and international visitors annually. The building will also house the new Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Gertler told The Varsity after the announcement that the centre will provide opportunities for graduate and undergraduate U of T students from a variety of disciplines, including the humanities and law. “All of these disciplines are really trying to understand this incredibly tumultuous time that we’re in, both [with] the advances of technology and their applications but also what it means for society,” Gertler said. “Students will be fundamental for this.”

U of T will appoint a director to lead the new institute, who will oversee the development of programming and research initiatives, as well as the creation of new fellowships and a research fund. The institute will research digital surveillance laws and the ethical and societal implications of AI and biotechnology.

U of T Professor Emeritus, winner of the Turing Award, and leading AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton said, “My hope is that the Schwartz Reisman institute will be the place where deep learning disrupts the humanities.”

Construction will begin in the fall.

The donation

Reisman said that the donation was inspired by an article that the billionaire couple had read about U of T’s plans to further tech-driven entrepreneurship, business partnerships, and artificial intelligence leadership. She praised U of T for creating “a foundation upon which true greatness can be built.”

“At the end of the day, what stirs us most is the opportunity to supercharge the university’s ability to recruit and inspire the best,” Reisman said. “We are grateful to be part of something so pregnant with possibility.”

The gift is the largest donation ever made to the Canadian innovation sector.

“A testament to our excellence as a city”

Tory praised the donation as further evidence that Toronto is a powerhouse in international innovation. He said that continued public, private, and philanthropic investment are needed to succeed academically and commercially and that he hopes the donation will encourage further donations to Toronto’s innovation sector. “It is vital to our ability to finance the things that are very human, whether it’s education or whether it’s support for those who are struggling,” Tory said. He added that the gift will attract more researchers and academics to the city.

Bains also emphasized the importance of an “all hands on deck” approach in furthering the federal government’s long-term vision to “build a nation of innovators.

“I think it’s a great day not only for Toronto — I think it’s a great day for Canada. The investment… will make sure that Canada will leave its mark on the world,” Bains said.

Hinton added that the donation “will further cement Toronto’s leadership as a thriving industry for innovative applications of AI.”

— With files from Srivindhya Kolluru

Founders, innovative thought leaders, pioneers, role models: these were just some of the terms lavished upon U of T alumni-cum-entrepreneurs Leila Keshavjee, Saara Punjani, and Pooja Viswanathan at a panel event at ONRamp on the eve of International Women’s Day. Dubbed “Female Founders,” this event was the first in an annual speaker series that leverages both the celebration of International Women’s Day and U of T’s thriving entrepreneurship culture to discuss the triumphs and challenges of being a female founder.

Christine Allen, the Interim Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, moderated the panel. She is also the co-founder of tech startup Nanovista.

Overcoming structural challenges

Punjani cited credibility as one of the main hurdles on the path to success. Punjani is the Chief Operations Officer of Structura Biotechnology, a startup founded by her brother Ali and also Marcus Brubaker. The business develops machine learning technology for structural biologists.

“We have a product that’s based on a completely new technology. The market is something that we are actively trying to create as we go along,” she said. Part of building this market is finding ways to establish credibility within existing markets, which is why Structura Biotechnology has offered its software to academic institutions for free — results published using the software are their “foot in the door,” according to Punjani.

Keshavjee, the founder of healthy, all-natural fruit ice popsicle startup Happy Pops, said that earning credibility as a young female entrepreneur has been a recurring challenge. “People often don’t trust young female entrepreneurs… but I think hopefully we’re changing that,” she said. Keshavjee said that preconceived notions of what an entrepreneur looks like can be a strong inhibitor for women. Her appearance and subsequent $150,000 offer on Dragons’ Den, she said, has allowed her to partially overcome this issue when dealing with clients, despite nothing about her product having changed.

For Viswanathan — co-founder of Braze Mobility, a startup that develops sensors that improve accessibility for wheelchair users — perception can be turned to her advantage. “I think a lot of the [problems are] just how you perceive [them],” she said. “So when you walk in thinking you’ve got a competitive edge because you’re a woman, then it actually turns out that way.”

Failure can be healthy

Failure has been a recurring motif for the three entrepreneurs, and each has their own approach on how to fail and how to come back stronger. “You’ve gotta fail fast,” Keshavjee said. “You’re gonna fail so many times as an entrepreneur… there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this.”

Viswanathan said that failure prevents complacency and pushes her to pursue alternative solutions to problems. “One thing that I actually love about failure is there’s nothing [like it to] get you moving,” she said. The lack of wheelchair standardization made it difficult for her startup to create universal sensors, especially without enough expertise in mechanical engineering and design. Her solution was to assemble a team capable of complementing each other’s expertise.

As for Punjani, overcoming failure depends on “changing the definition of what it actually means to fail.” She added that “having had more life experience and more of an entrepreneurial experience, you start to see that it’s not really about what you accomplish at the end of the day or what you expected, but… that you keep going.”

Sensing a bright future

Keshavjee, Viswanathan, and Punjani’s brother all relied on U of T’s Impact Centre to help launch their startups. The Impact Centre is one of the university’s nine accelerators; it provides resources and commercialization aid for aspiring entrepreneurs. Punjani had also relied on support from the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab and UTEST, two other U of T accelerators.

Changes are on the horizon for all three startups, owing to the continued success they’ve been able to achieve thus far. Keshavjee’s Happy Pops is projecting 500,000 sales in 2019, in what is only its fourth year of operation. Keshavjee hopes to distribute her product across Canada and the US within the next five years.

Punjani and Structura Biotechnology are likely to shift from developing software to becoming involved in the field of drug discovery as they continue to expand their reach into their market.

Finally, Viswanathan’s startup is aiming to be “the intelligence behind the entire wheelchair manufacturing industry.” She said that the “industry is very mechanical heavy,” meaning that it has not significantly invested into software and intelligence data, which in turn limits wheelchairs’ mobility and ability to overcome certain accessibility concerns.

Impact Centre founder and U of T Entrepreneurship academic director Cynthia Goh described each of the entrepreneurs best at the start of the evening as “changing not only the conversation, but the very landscape of their fields.”