The University of Waterloo is known for generating successful startup companies, with many of them originating in the tech-based programs.
But Marc Lafleur (BSc ’13, Health Studies) took a different road into the startup world. He enrolled in health studies at the University of Waterloo, with only vague ideas about his future. He became co-founder of three technology companies. Two failed. The third, truLOCAL, a subscription business allowing people to buy locally-raised meats online, was a huge success and sold at the end of 2020 to Emerge Commerce for $16.8 million.
The paths he took were not without bruises and disappointments. But Lafleur made it, and recently put his experiences into a book, True Founder, which offers would-be entrepreneurs advice and inspiration based on his hard-learned lessons.
Wasn’t thinking about business
When Lafleur was in high school, in Cornwall, he loved football. He vaguely thought about becoming a dentist. That was more about a job than something he felt deeply called to do, but still, he enrolled in health studies and played football for the Waterloo Warriors until an injury sidelined him.
“I wasn’t thinking about business at the time,” Lafleur says. Not knowing any Blacks who were company founders, he didn’t have a role model in business.
But given the University’s entrepreneurial culture, “You always hear whispers and rumblings about founders and startups,” he says. After Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion (Snapchat spurned those advances in 2013), he was blown away. That sparked the dream of becoming a founder.
His first company, Tell, was envisioned as an instant messaging app. He and his partners didn’t have experience with startups, but they found developers to create a prototype. It struggled to get off the ground, and when Lafleur accidentally deleted the user base, it was too expensive to redo the work.
But by then, entrepreneurial blood was coursing through his veins. “It gave me confidence and the sense of freedom from having to rely on others for opportunities,” he says.
The second startup was DashTask, an online marketplace for busy students who needed jobs done for a price. A computer science engineering student, Andreas Ricci, who came highly recommended, partnered with him to get the app idea into beta testing. But Ricci got a great job offer from Google and Lafleur didn’t have the funds to keep the company going. That brought his second startup to a close.
Nevertheless, valuable lessons from the first two startups led him to successfully co-found truLOCAL, a subscription-based business that allowed people to buy locally raised meats online.
Then came the Dragons
Lafleur pushed to get the company on the popular Canadian TV show, Dragons’ Den. It took multiple efforts, but when he and his partner, Greg Quaile, finally got there, it was a big hit, getting a $100,000 investment from the Dragons for 10 per cent of the business.
Even with the ensuing fame, it wasn’t easy. “We were underfunded; there was fierce competition coming up almost daily. We were pushing the boulder up the hill for five years,” he says.
The hard work paid off. The company hit eight-figure sales and Lafleur was featured in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine in 2020. Not long after that, truLOCAL was acquired by Emerge, an e-commerce company.
A giant cauldron
Lafleur picked up new skills and fresh confidence even in his co-op jobs as a student. In one job, he was a personal trainer at a gym. It was not remotely related to technology but it was about taking responsibility and working hard. “What university in general taught me was how to learn, how to buckle down, how to commit to timelines and projects,” he says.
“It's like a giant cauldron of past life
experiences, character traits, relationships, environment. You are putting all of that together into this pot and stirring it to see what comes out.”
Many students limit themselves, but they shouldn’t, he says. “There are many things you can learn that is not in the class material, and I am a product of that.”
He has also developed a passion for motorsports. He recently had a stellar car racing year, winning the CASC GT3 Pirelli Championship as well as the Rookie of the Year award.
But these days, he is mostly enjoying promoting his book and giving back. He started a grant competition for $50,000 worth of professional agency support for founders, allowing them to enter with a two-minute video.
His advice for future startup founders is that choosing the path is not as important as walking it. “The idea doesn’t matter because it is you who will make it successful. Just choose something and go after it.”
