BC Business
Maninder Dhaliwal at an e@UBC event on how to pitch.
The six-month program will help Canadian entrepreneurs access mentorship, advisory and funding.
For most tech entrepreneurs in the country, the fun part is the innovation. Implementation and funding? Decidedly less so.
“In Canada, we spend billions of dollars on research and development, but we fail when it comes to commercialization of these ideas,” said angel investor Maninder Dhaliwal, founder of Vancouver-based accelerator and early-stage venture capital fund Startup Studio, in a release. “We are very good at innovation, but very poor at creating economic value from this innovation.”
Dhaliwal—who chairs nonprofit angel investor forum TiE Vancouver to help Canadian tech entrepreneurs get funding—recently founded the TiE Incubation Lab to connect pre-seed startups with mentors, advisors and global funding opportunities.
The new acceleration and incubation lab launches February 1, and is looking to prepare young businesses for the fundraising process—including how to pitch to investors. This is often an uphill battle for Canadian entrepreneurs, but Dhaliwal’s decade-long experience as the president and co-founder of Lions Gate International (a global venture capital and business advisory firm), plus her work as the founding chair of Vancouver TiE Angels (which is a part of global angel investor network TiE Global Angels), is bound to steer local startups in the right direction.
Twelve companies who meet the criteria will get the opportunity to join the six-month long incubator lab. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. For more information, see here.