Entrepreneurship

Sukh Singh (BASc ‘12) and Harleen Kaur were frustrated with how they saw news being presented and how it was fueling the spread of misinformation. In 2017, the brother-sister team launched Ground News as a way to provide the public with a full picture of the news stories they’re consuming.

Dubbed as the world’s first news comparison platform, Ground News helps users see how news stories are covered around the world and across the political spectrum. It then goes deeper to reveal where and when the story originated and how the narrative changes over time and across geography.

While many live events are being cancelled due to restrictions for in-person gatherings, Concept continues to showcase their achievements and successes by hosting virtual competitions. Similar to Velocity’s virtual Fund Pitch Competition (VFPC), Concept pivoted two of their major in-person events to video submissions which garnered more than one hundred applicants combined. Audiences were then invited to virtually attend each event where a panel of local startup founders scored and selected the final winners.

Eric Migicovsky (BASc ’09) had no idea what to expect when he started his own company. Although he created the Pebble — one of the world’s first smartwatchs — Migicovsky had only just completed his engineering degree at Waterloo.

“I had no expectations,” Migicovsky said. “I was fresh out of school and just happy to build stuff. I have great memories of running the assembly line to build the watches in the garage behind our house.”

A world-leading University of Waterloo spinoff company, that decodes blood samples for potential treatments for illnesses like cancer and COVID-19, is expanding operations with the help of a $5-million USD investment.

Bin Ma, a University of Waterloo computer science professor who co-founded Rapid Novor in 2015, says the company’s technology is the most advanced in the world when it comes to deciphering the complex workings of antibody proteins, a process called sequencing.

Marcelo Cortes
Faculty of Mathematics
> CTO and Co-founder, Faire

Since the age of 11, Marcelo Cortes has been passionate about computers and coding. By 13, he was considered the “resident computer expert” after his parents bought a system for their family-owned store in Brazil.

Michael Litt (BASc ’11) smiles when he recalls the factors that led him to starting the company that would later become Vidyard. A cross-country road trip with his friend and now business partner Devon Galloway (BASc ’10) created the right environment for bouncing around ideas and building a dream for the future, but it was Waterloo’s co-op program that molded Litt into the entrepreneur that he is today.

It was an event well-attended, although presented entirely virtually for the first time ever.

Within the initial 12 hours, Velocity’s virtual Fund Pitch Competition (VFPC) garnered more than one thousand pageviews through its new VFPC video portal — a page designed specifically for this term’s competing entrepreneurs. Eleven companies went head-to-head in hopes of receiving up to $400,000 in pre-seed investments.

Although graduates cannot be together to celebrate their spring convocation on campus, the University of Waterloo hopes to make their achievement a more memorable experience with a personalized video.

The videos were made using a product created by Vidyard, a video platform for business based in Kitchener, that was founded by two Waterloo alumni. Michael Litt (BASc ’11) and Devon Galloway (BASc ’10) founded Vidyard in 2010.

As COVID-19 has introduced a host of new challenges to the world collectively, it is simultaneously presenting new opportunities and approaches to existing, real-word problems, according to a panel of experts at the University of Waterloo.