Founder spotlight: Sukh Singh on his journey from co-op student to entrepreneur

For Global Entrepreneurship Week, we’re spotlighting some incredible University of Waterloo entrepreneurs making a difference for humanity and our world.

Sukh Singh (BASc ’12) co-founded Ground News, a media platform designed to offer users a comprehensive view of news coverage across the political spectrum.

Ground News addresses the rising concern of media bias by enabling users to compare different perspectives on current events. Drawing on his experience in Waterloo’s co-operative education program, Singh combines his passion for technology with a commitment to fostering informed, balanced discourse in today’s media landscape.

How did your time at the University of Waterloo influence your entrepreneurial journey?

Very deeply. I went through the engineering program at the University of Waterloo, which apart from the academic side, included the co-op program. My first four co-op terms were more traditional, taking place at established companies. Those experiences were enlightening in terms of developing my skills as a technologist.

During my fifth and sixth co-op terms in the Enterprise Co-op program (E Co-op), I launched my first startup and gained invaluable entrepreneurial experience. After taking a year off to extend my co-op into a 20-month immersion, I learned about my strengths, weaknesses and the importance of building a complementary team. This experience laid the foundation for my journey as a full-time entrepreneur with Ground News.

What inspired the idea for Ground News, and what problem were you trying to solve?

I give the credit for the original idea to my co-founder, Harleen, who is also my sibling. Harleen is a technologist through and through. Her background is in aerospace engineering, and she worked at NASA, even helping launch a spacecraft that flew by Pluto.

Harleen and I started talking about how technology had enabled us to explore the farthest reaches of the solar system, but as a society, we still couldn’t agree on basic facts here on Earth. Despite all the advancements, there was a disconnect in the way news was being presented, and people weren’t getting the same set of facts to make informed decisions.

That’s what led us to create Ground News. We wanted to use our technical backgrounds to deliver unbiased, comprehensive news coverage, showing people all sides of a story. The name Ground News comes from this idea: what’s happening on the ground — giving everyone the same starting point of information.

What do you want users to gain from comparing media across the political spectrum?

The number one thing we hope users gain is a comprehensive view of all the information available on any news story. Over the past 20 or 30 years, with the rise of the internet and social media, we’ve seen people retreat into echo chambers, where they only consume information that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs. That’s a problem because it creates blind spots.

We’re not here to tell people what conclusions to draw from the news. But if people can compare different viewpoints —whether from different political perspectives, countries or media outlets — then we’ve done our job.

What were the biggest challenges in building Ground News, and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge was achieving product-market fit. Ground News is a mass-market product, made for the average person, not for a niche audience. To make a product like that work, it requires a lot of iteration and learning. It took us at least three, maybe four years to get to that point. Along the way, there were small successes and failures, but the journey was about finding the right balance between delivering a valuable product and making sure it resonated with a broad audience.

What advice would you give to Waterloo students interested in entrepreneurship?

My biggest piece of advice is to expose yourself to startups during your co-op terms. There’s often a temptation to use those terms to work for big tech companies or prestigious firms, and that’s fine. But I would encourage students to use at least one or two co-op terms to work in a startup or do E Co-op. You won’t have the same low-risk opportunity after graduation to see what working in a startup environment is like. Even if you don’t end up becoming an entrepreneur, you’ll gain invaluable experience that will serve you well in any career.

Waterloo’s unique innovation ecosystem attracts entrepreneurial students like Singh, offering unmatched experiential education, top-tier programs, mentorship, funding and connections to support their ventures at every stage.