A non-curricular university program that supports student entrepreneurs received a big boost this month with a $1 million donation from Coast Capital Savings.
SFU’s Venture Connection program, now renamed to include Coast Capital Savings in its title, accepted the massive investment at a ceremony at the Surrey campus earlier this month. Coast Capital Savings previously contributed $125,000 in seed funding to the program in 2008 and a further $750,000 in 2011.
The donation provides significant operational support for the program that does not receive core university funding, according to associate director Janice OBriain.
“[Coast Capital Savings] wants to continue supporting youth entrepreneurship and innovation,” OBriain said of the donation which will be realized over a five-year period.
“They’ve seen the successes that have come out of this program and they believe in what we are doing.”
Coast Capital Savings spokesperson Julienne Hills called the partnership “a great fit” given that the Surrey-based company focuses on supporting youth initiatives.
“When youth have a richer future the whole community benefits,” Hills said. “Our staff have really enjoyed engaging with this program, we have provided financial expertise and mentorship to the young entrepreneurs.”
OBriain emphasised that neither sponsors nor the program take equity from the business start-ups. “Our services are free, and part of our partnership with [Coast Capital Savings] allows us to provide the services for free to students,” she added.
“If a student, staff, or faculty have a business idea that they want to get vetted and get feedback on, we can provide that kind of resource to them,” she said. “If they want to pursue [the idea] then they can apply to our business incubator program.”
There are approximately 30 teams that the incubator program is working with at any given time from any industry, with any kind of business model. The program provides to the budding entrepreneurial teams by giving in-residence mentoring from industry professionals.
“They’re experienced entrepreneurs who work directly with the teams to provide advice and support for building their businesses, and then we connect [the teams] with other business development services,” OBriain explained.
The program also works with faculties to encourage entrepreneurship activities in classrooms and provides workshops, speaker events, competitions, and drop-in mentoring on all campuses throughout the year, leading up to the incubator program supporting the business development of start-ups.
In addition, program staff can help their entrepreneurial clients secure office space on SFU campuses.
Since it was established as a pilot program in 2008, Venture Connection has mentored over 500 student teams and included over 6,000 program participants.
SPARK, the newest edition to the program, is a pre-venture tool to help entrepreneurs evaluate their business ideas that was launched last month.
