A crash course in startup management

“Looking around the table at WATonomous, it’s amazing to see people come together to create something extraordinary.”

From the first day he set foot on campus, Ray Li planned to start his own business. “I came to Waterloo for its startup culture,” he says. In addition to a robust ecosystem for entrepreneurs, the University offered him unparalleled access to hands-on experience. “Only Waterloo students have the opportunity to work at four or five companies before graduating,” Li has realized. “Most people leverage co-ops to find better jobs down the road, but I viewed co-ops as a starting point for gathering knowledge that will help me build my own company.”

Li hit the ground running and participated in all the entrepreneurial opportunities that came his way. During his second term, he tried and failed to start a business that sold VR headsets. Undeterred, the Computer Science student reached the finals of Problem Lab, where he competed to pitch solutions to complex social and economic problems. When he came across WATonomous on a Facebook group for first-year students, Li took a chance on what would become the most fruitful management experience of his Waterloo career. 

Building a team that works

WATonomous, the University of Waterloo’s first undergraduate student-run autonomous car team, launched in the summer of 2017. When Li saw a Facebook post calling for student applications, he identified a unique opportunity to apply his skill set to design. As he’s moved through the ranks from Core Member to Business Director to Team Captain, Li has learned management lessons that only come through experience. 

Ray's team, from left to right: Ben, Ray, Charles, Rowan, and John

“My biggest takeaway from my time at WATonomous is that good products only come about when you can convince an entire team to move toward a common goal,” he reflects. “It’s not just one person coding. Some of our previous team members have tried to do the work of 10 people and it quickly falls apart.” As co-captain of the 150-person engine that fuels WATonomous, Li confronts the challenges of student turnover every four months. He worked long and hard to develop a strategy for managing co-ops through a newly-created system of student supervisors. Despite the headaches involved in training a new batch of employees every term, Li is in his element.

As he has mastered the nuts and bolts of delegating and coordinating work flow within a complex organization, Li has learned the importance of developing effective communication skills. “On the WATonomous design team, it’s not enough to be technically excellent,” he says. “You have to be able to speak in front of a group and communicate your ideas, because management pain points usually come from a breakdown in communication between departments.” Li worked to hone his public speaking abilities through pitching WATonomous financial needs to internal and external sponsors as the team’s business director, a position that required a savvy blend of technical knowledge and communication skills.    

Chasing opportunity

While Li will make ample use of his coding skills in the future, his experience with WATonomous has illuminated his passion for management. He will continue to pursue the dream of running his own business, but his future plans have expanded to include an MBA and consulting work.

Fresh off a series of pitches and competitions in which Li represented WATonomous, Li recently leveraged his experience to represent Waterloo at the Japan Canada Academic Consortium. “We had the opportunity to visit the Canadian embassy in Tokyo and meet Princess Takamado,” he shares. Li will never forget the Japanese royal’s advice: “It’s a given that you’re good at what you study. It’s the other skills you own that will set you apart.” From Li’s perspective, there is “no better place to develop these skills than Waterloo.”