Build ventures. Drive innovation. Lead change.
The Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business is the academic engine for entrepreneurs. Affiliated with Canada’s most innovative university, we provide students with hands-on experiences in innovative commercialization and strategic start-up success, helping them thrive as the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders.
Undergraduate
Enhance your undergraduate degree by joining Conrad School's specialized programs, experiences, and courses.
Graduate
Commercialize your ideas and earn your master's degree or complement your studies with graduate offerings.
News
Problem Pitch Fall 2025 competition finals
The Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business is set to host the Problem Lab’s Problem Pitch Fall 2025 Competition Finals, where student teams will demonstrate the depth of their research into important real-world problems.
Sponsored by Quantum Valley Investments®, the competition awards $7,500 to the team that shows the strongest understanding of the problem they aim to solve.
This year’s finalists represent a wide range of challenges and innovative thinking, supported by a panel of accomplished judges from the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Larry Smith: empowering students to reach their full potential for 45 years
This week, Waterloo News shines a spotlight on professor Larry Smith, who marks a remarkable 45-year milestone of teaching at the University of Waterloo. Over four decades, Smith has become a pillar of the university’s entrepreneurial spirit, helping build its reputation for innovation, risk-taking, and real-world relevance.
Building Coeurage, Community, and Change
Nicole Troster (MBET ’18) is helping women-led service businesses scale with clarity, confidence, and customer-centric strategy. After more than 15 years supporting entrepreneurs and co-founding ELLA, Nicole launched Coeurage Labs to fill a growing gap in Canada’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Inspired by her own family’s journey and driven by a commitment to empowering founders, Nicole combines evidence-based frameworks with deep customer understanding to help entrepreneurs build sustainable, scalable companies.
Events
Problem Lab Problem Pitch Fall 2025 Competition Finals
Welcome to the Problem Lab's Problem Pitch Fall 2025 Competition Finals hosted and sponsored by the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business.
The Quantum Valley Investments® Problem Pitch competitions challenge students to research an important problem and pitch their research to a panel of judges. Funding of $7,500 is awarded to support the student team that demonstrates the most thorough understanding of their chosen problem to develop a solution.
The competition will take place Friday, December 5, 2025, from 12:00–2:00 pm in the Pearl Sullivan Engineering (formerly E7) Pitch Space on the second floor.
The student team finalists are:
- Cool Flash
- TaxBuddy
- Yogipop
- OBEL
- Sweet Sorrow
- HALO
The judges' panel includes:
- Nabil Fahel, Vice President, Communitech
- Kyle Faller, Co-founder and CEO, Intelline Inc.
- Julie Ellis, Founder and CEO
Register to join!
Blog
Building real-world impact in 36 hours
Charles Huxley, Tom Kizito, and Joshua Olonade, three MBET candidates, won the Experience Ventures Hackathon by building a fully functional zero-waste analytics tool in 36 hours. Their “constraint-first” approach, shaped by MBET’s focus on rapid prototyping, customer discovery, and problem-driven design, allowed them to deliver the only live product in the competition: the Zero-Waste Dashboard. The tool provides instant transaction processing, customer segmentation, product insights, and actionable recommendations that small retailers can implement immediately. Their win highlights how MBET equips students to build fast, validate assumptions, and create real-world impact. The team is now exploring opportunities to extend the platform to other retailers seeking simple, data-driven solutions.
How Hayley So turned a classroom idea into ClickNShare
When Hayley So, a Kinesiology student in the Faculty of Health, competed in the Spring 2025 Problem Pitch competition, she walked away with $7,500 in R&D funding to advance her startup,ClickNShare. The platform aims to make creative equipment like cameras and devices easier and more affordable to access, helping students and creators alike share their tools and talents.
Where are they now: how Conrad School undergrad alumni built Zero Experience and shaped the future of innovation
When Covid-19 hit and students started losing their co-op placements, two Conrad School BET 300 students and Problem Pitch alumni Holden Beggs and Jackson Mills teamed up to give their peers experience anyways.
That idea changed everything. It became The Zero Experience, an all-online program that has now reached over 5,000 learners worldwide and been recognized in Forbes 30 under 30 Class of 2025.
“Zero was born from our experiences with the Problem Lab, entrepreneurship at Conrad, research across national labs, and too many side projects to count,” says Holden. “We saw common threads in successful innovation, but also a big gap: there was no true first step for students who didn’t yet have ‘a great idea’ or didn’t feel like innovators.”