Blog

Harry Gandhi, an Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) and BET 300 student, recently traveled to Silicon Valley to attend Startup Grind 2014 and a "Biotech Business Bootcamp" as a semi-finalist in the OneStart Competition, the world's largest biotech idea competition.

As entrepreneurs, most of us will probably end up going to Silicon Valley at some point, whether it’s to meet potential investors, build relationships or learn about the "Valley mentality."

These are five main take-aways I learnt in my recent trip to Silicon Valley.

In January I had the opportunity to travel to the region of Kerala, in South-west India to participate in an International Conference on Entrepreneurship and Women: The Role of Business Incubation & Social Business Development. The conference was primarily based out of Assumption College, a women’s college that is affiliated with Mahatma Gandhi University.

At the conference, I had the chance to talk to and build relationships with a number of students and faculty at Assumption College. These students are keen, well spoken and many are driven to start their own business.

On Tuesday, January 28th, St. Paul's GreenHouse hosted a talk, Larry Smith presents, "So You Want to Change the World."

Victoria Suen, one of the Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) students that attended the event, wrote about a few of her takeaways:

Have a big vision, expect more from yourself, consider the challenges you face, ask tough questions, develop your understanding, social enterprises are businesses.

Calvin Chu has travelled from Waterloo, Ontario to San Francisco, California to Shenzhen, China all to develop his startup, Palette. What started as a fourth year design project during Calvin's Mechatronics degree at the University of Waterloo quickly grew into an international entrepreneurial pursuit.

Palette is a freeform, tactile interface that gives hands-on control of your favourite software.

Palette is a hardware platform made up of a variety of modules that lets you build a physical interface customized to your personal needs. Each module has a single physical input, like a button, dial or a slider. You snap together modules like Lego, no coding or soldering required!

Imran is different. Are you?

To cap off Global Entrepreneurship Week, we are happy to share a video of young entrepreneur Imran Jiwa. Imran, a University of Waterloo undergraduate student studying Arts and Business, has a strong entrepreneurial spirit, which naturally led him to the Conrad Centre. Imran is currently enrolled in Conrad’s BET300: Foundations of Venture Creation course, an introductory undergraduate course that guides students through processes of turning an idea into a venture. Course instructor, Wayne Chang, noticed Imran’s talent early on.

I have been fortunate enough to go through Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) this past term (January through April) and start my own business – ‘Counter Intuitive’. We distribute 1.5” thick glass countertops.  If you are wondering why you would ever want a countertop made out of glass, I suggest you check out the Counter Intuitive website! There were a number of lessons I learned along the way that I will share, as some of them may be helpful to you if you’re about to go through E Co-op, or just thinking of starting your own business.