“It’s obviously something about your great engineering school, combined with the resources and encouragement to start building and creating stuff while you’re still in school, that positions Waterloo founders so well to be starting companies," says Alexis Ohanian.
Alexis Ohanian will be spending quality time on campus with University of Waterloo students this Friday November 22.
Dean of Engineering Pearl Sullivan will introduce the well-known founder of reddit at 8pm, when he will address students and sign copies of his new book Without Their Permission.
Alexis Ohanian is an entrepreneur and investor with firsthand knowledge of some University of Waterloo alumni ventures. He has invested in more than 90 startups including Thalmic Labs, former resident of the VeloCity Garage. Thalmic Labs makes the MYO gesture control band. Founders Stephen Lake, Matthew Bailey and Aaron Grant are graduates of the Mechatronics Engineering program at the University of Waterloo.
Alexis Ohanian is using the book tour to inspire students to become internet entrepreneurs. Ohanian says his book Without Their Permission is for "aspiring entrepreneurs eager to embrace the future of the internet for fun, profit, and the good of humankind."
Alexis Ohanian is an entrepreneur and investor born in Brooklyn, NY, best known as the co-founder of the social news site reddit. While studying at the University of Virginia, he met his future co-founder Steve Huffman. They came up with the concept of reddit while at Y Combinator
Alexis Ohanian on Waterloo Engineeers: “[Waterloo] is no longer the best-kept secret. I think it was a secret maybe five years ago, and then we started noticing that the applications that were coming into Y Combinator from Waterloo [were] just on a different level. It’s not even fair now because the reputation precedes every single one of these graduates. It’s just a factory for entrepreneurial engineers, and it’s amazing.”
With files from Beth Gallagher.