General VeloCity: Awesome Community Highered mentor startups students Waterloo
by Jesse Rodgers
1 comment
Mentor a student entrepreneur while helping your startup
Being a student at the University of Waterloo has one huge advantage over most other schools, Co-op. Startups have one huge advantage available to them available here in Waterloo, Waterloo students in co-op and the Small Business Internship Program along with a ton of other funding programs. From my perspective at VeloCity there is no better mentorship opportunity for students wanting to break into the startup world than by working for a startup.
However, it is not that easy for startups to stand out and be found by students — there is a lot of competition and with companies like Yahoo!, RIM, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and more posting jobs startups need to market themselves. On top of that, it is really hard to startups to get the timing right and navigate the co-op hiring process at the University. It’s not the fault of the process but more the nature of a fledgling business balancing a lot of demands meeting the deadlines that are at the start of each term.
Through VeloCity I want to help startups find good students to work with and I want the students to have the opportunity to gain some great experience working with a startup in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Boston, San Francisco, etc. What I ask is that startups take a moment and fill out some basic information first (at the end of the post or use this link). From there go over to the Employer Manual on the CECS site and read up on hiring a student. You will need to follow their process to get a job posted.
Next VeloCity will follow-up with you. Once you have a job posted with CECS we will need to share that job posting number with students so they can find it faster.
What we plan to do is create a list for students at VeloCity to see right at the start of each term so that the company names are front and center. We will also send out the list of students (and some recent grads) that have been in VeloCity. We will share the details as we get them and keep them informed. The last thing is that we will develop a poster for campus that can feature startups and working for them.
What is asked in return…
We have the following topics that need speakers on the specific dates at 4pm:
As well as networking lunches at the Bomber every other Wednesday starting on September 22nd that it would good if you (by you I mean the founder(s), CEO, etc) could try and attend at least one. There is also are start of term BBQ on September 20th and would encourage you to come out that night.
Student entrepreneurs need mentors
The end of spring term at VeloCity marks my one full year at the residence. What a way to end it. I can’t say enough about how good the students are at the University of Waterloo but this term I got to work with a few students from the University of British Columbia and Queens. There is no question in my mind that the future for Canada is bright but we (the community) need to do all we can to cultivate the talent and encourage them to think big.
Canada has a lot of naturally talented young entrepreneurs but…
…we don’t have a big enough community to support them naturally. We have a lot of young people that need to be given the opportunity to try something. In order to try something the support needs to be there to help them accelerate quickly to either failure or success. We have a government sponsored system in Canada that can offer life support to enable a long process of building a company around a product (with tax credits, etc), what I don’t think we have is a system (or community) that can help people with the development of ideas into product. Some localities have communities that are decently strong but they aren’t big enough to meet the need that I believe is there.
Canada has lots of great young entrepreneurs that figure it out regardless but I see way too many talented U of Waterloo students that could be incredible entrepreneurs given the right community support that would encourage them away from the incredible job opportunities they have right in front of them. They don’t need money, they need a realistic chance of getting a product to a customer, receiving feedback, and trying again. They need the support of their peers and a place to meet new people with new ideas.
What is needed the most are really good mentors
My focus at VeloCity for the next year will be cultivating the mentor/student relationship. We need mentors that connect with what a particular group is doing, help them with their product, and get them to their first sale. That isn’t an easy task but if the right connection between an eager student team and a mentor happens, I am certain both the mentor and the students will learn a lot from each other.
What I want to see from a mentor/student relationship is a team given the opportunity to test their product on people that they think would pay for what they are building or service they are providing, along with help identifying when to pivot or when to walk away. As a mentor, you provide a sense of hindsight which is invaluable to any young entrepreneur. VeloCity is working towards building this student/mentor relationship through democamp style events where the teams pitch or demo their ideas, receive feedback and the mentors can get an idea of who they are and if they can help.
VeloCity will help a little to formalize the relationship but I would hope the connections happen naturally at these events. If you are interested in being a mentor please get in contact with me (jrodgers at uwaterloo.ca).
