Speed mentoring is speed dating with a business plan. You get a card, you find your table, you have ten minutes to explain what you're building to someone who has heard a thousand pitches, and then someone calls time and you move. I went in with one question and came out with a to-do list I'm still working through.
It was my first time inside the Accelerator Centre for more than a quick event. I'm not in any of the hubs, so I didn't know what to expect from a room built for its own clients. What I found was a lot of people who wanted to help, and an events manager who already had heard of me and Builderloo. Which was a nice surprise!
4rounds
10 mina round
9mentors on stage
2sponsors
How it works
The Open House: Meet the Mentors was free and ran Thursday afternoon at 295 Hagey Boulevard in Waterloo. At the door you made a name tag and got a card for each round with a table number on it. Mentors stayed put and founders moved tables for each of the rounds.
The cards work as long as you read them. In round three I sat down at the wrong table, pitched for a minute, and was politely sent across the room 😅. A founder near me at the start said he wasn't sure he was in the right place at all, and was told to stay and meet people anyway, which is good advice for most events.
The mentors
Loza Abebe, the AC's Founder Experience Specialist, opened the afternoon and thanked the two sponsors, RSM Canada and the IP firm Smart & Biggar. Then each mentor took the mic for a minute, and it turned into the best part of the day.
Bruce Brown has been around the AC for seven or eight years and a mentor for two. He works on investment readiness and has a med tech background.
Ellyn Winters-Robinson has mentored at the AC for 17 years and called herself the mentor OG, which nobody argued with. She covers marketing communications, market strategy and storytelling.
The founder of Momentum Product Co. has been a mentor for one month. Momentum runs AI workshops in the region, including Communitech's AI Power Hours. The founder's point was that AI makes it easy to build things, but it is still hard to build things customers love and pay for.
Jim Dell spent 25 years at Maplesoft, from two UW professors' start-up through the sale. He mentors on sales and revenue and also works with startups at Velocity. He asked founders not to bring up heavy metal or martial arts, because according to his wife he talks about them too much.
Joanna of Smart & Biggar is an electrical engineer turned IP lawyer who works on patents, trademarks, copyright and designs.
Lisa Cashmore is listed for scaling and partnerships and calls herself a generalist. She's a strategy consultant, and a lot of her work is helping founders rehearse hard conversations with an employee, a customer or an investor.
Melissa Durrell was a journalist and is now the AC's pitch coach.
RSM Canada's mentor studied mechanical engineering at Waterloo, built products in the automotive industry, then grew a SR&ED practice that RSM bought in 2021. He helps founders fit SR&ED, grants and funding into their plans.
Tricia Mumby co-founded Mabel's Labels, bootstrapped it from nothing, and went through its sale in 2016. She mentors on direct to consumer strategy and organic marketing, which she likes because she doesn't want to see the billionaires getting any richer. Her advice was to get your SEO and social working before you spend money on ads.
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I'm only interested in talking to entrepreneurs ever.
Tricia Mumby
RSM's mentor had the line of the day when he introduced his firm as "the largest global accounting firm that no one's ever heard of".
What I took from the rounds
The advice I heard in the rounds applies to anyone trying to build a following around local tech, not only to me. Waterloo Region doesn't have its own BetaKit, and fewer people are writing about the companies here than there used to be. One mentor suggested working with local journalism and writing programs, such as the ones at Conestoga, Laurier and UW, so that students can cover events and profile companies for their portfolios. Another suggestion was to write about themes, like what the region is doing in defence tech, instead of covering one company at a time.
The first piece of advice was the simplest, and it made me wince, because it was obvious and I had been putting it off: tell every startup on the site that it is listed.
What's open to everyone
More of the AC is open to outsiders than I thought. AC clients get free mentor hours every month, and the mentors listed online go well past the nine who were on stage. The AC's networking area is open to anyone, whether or not you're a client.
My to-do list from four ten-minute conversations is to email every listed startup, call Conestoga, and stop sitting at the wrong table.
Thank you to Loza, Shriaa and the AC team for the afternoon, to the mentors for their time, and to RSM Canada and Smart & Biggar for sponsoring it.
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