Nathan Caddell

1. Later came out of a 2013 hackathon. How did that translate into a business? The concept that Ray Walia, Jesse Heaslip, and I had when starting Launch Academy quickly gained momentum in 2012 when we added cofounders Alex Chuang and...

It was just three years ago that Amrit Maharaj and Andrew Barnes leased an East Vancouver building with the hope of eventually quitting their day jobs. Maharaj was working for his family’s real estate business, and Barnes was a tech exec...

Life Story: LeeJoo Hwang is either lying or being overly humble when says he was “just a normal kid growing up” in Surrey’s Fraser Heights neighbourhood. In Grade 9, Hwang became super invested in the PC video game League of...

Life Story: After growing up in Regina with a janitor father and warehouse worker mother, Joe Parenteau knew he just had to go somewhere the weather was a bit better. So he followed a golf scholarship to William Woods University...

Life Story: After Hayden James and Josh Baker met through a mutual friend four years ago, they started working on an idea to build a Hootsuite-type social media automation business for independent professionals and entrepreneurs. Their startup was housed in...

Life Story: Nishal Kumar was pushed into studying medicine in university by his love for the TV program House and its eponymous foul-mouthed genius of a doctor. But it wasn’t to be—after three years in chemistry and biology at UBC, the...

Life Story: There’s no doubt that more than a few business ideas have been born out of UVic parties. But it’s likely safe to say that not many of them have made Time magazine’s annual list of the top 100...

Life Story: Trying to sell colourful rocks to neighbours in her native India may not have worked for Anamika Gioia as a child, but it’s a good thing it didn’t dim her entrepreneurial spirit. A few years later, at 13...

Selene Dior launched Vitae Apparel–named for the Latin word for life–in December 2016 while she was studying for her first-year finals. Dior dropped out of school (“my mom was pissed,” she laughs) to focus all of her efforts on the company, pivoting it to athletic wear in 2018.

Life Story: A competitive squash player growing up in Vancouver, Rumi Tejpar turned his attention to Ultimate Frisbee when he left the city for McGill University. Tejpar, who would eventually represent Team Canada at the Ultimate world championships, was serving...

Life Story: Sam Siegel was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder as a kid growing up on Vancouver’s west side and, as he puts it, “never had much of a shot at school.” He ended up working at the Jericho Tennis Club’s...

Life Story: Piero Castillo had his own College Pro franchise before he even set foot into UBC Sauder School of Business. “I got thrown into the trenches at a young age,” the Richmond native says of operating one of the...