Laurier Launchpad

The Laurier Launchpad is an experiential learning opportunity for students and alumni from all faculties to discover, validate, and launch an innovative new venture!

Taught out of a flipped classroom in the Communitech Hub, the Laurier LaunchPad teaches students and alumni the latest methods in entrepreneurial management to eliminate risk and increase the chances of creating a successful start-up.  Unlike any traditional classroom, you’ll be rolling up your sleeves and applying this training directly to their own businesses week by week.  By completing lectures and readings on your own, class time is used to present weekly findings from customer development experiments, act as advisors for other startups, and receive individualized coaching from our alumni and community partners.

Many of the entrepreneurs entering the Laurier LaunchPad are building their first businesses.  To support budding entrepreneurs we have directly connected startups with industry experts, Laurier alumni mentors, and Entrepreneurs-In-Residence to help you through the initial stages of defining your business. This eco-system is a distinctive quality of this program and unique to the Laurier LaunchPad.

Startup teams can apply to the Laurier LaunchPad by presenting their business models to a panel of faculty and entrepreneurs. Each application is reviewed based on innovation, business model, team, motivation and passion. Companies accepted are integrated into our entrepreneurship eco-system to work with our community partners through defined milestones and proven practices of successful start-ups.

The Laurier LaunchPad has been built on the shoulders of giants, and focuses on developing a lean and iterative mentality.  The strategy and design of this course stems from the current thought leaders in entrepreneurship including:

The Start-up Genome Report – UC Berkeley & Stanford University

The Start-up Owner’s Manual – Steve Blank & Bob Dorf

Business Model Generation – Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur 

The Lean Start-up – Eric Ries

Running Lean – Ash Maurya

The Lean LaunchPad – Standford University, Columbia University & UC Berkeley

Your startup will use this foundation of knowledge to experiment and make evidence based iterations to quickly turn an unproven idea into a business model that works.

Coming into the LaunchPad Program we expect you to have a well-thought out, unproven new venture idea.  The Laurier LaunchPad focuses specifically on the discovery and validation stages of development, and requires the hunger to step outside and meet with customers to prove your business model!

Prove your idea to have a sustainable business model?  Following the program successful startups are invited to continue working out of the Laurier Sandbox in the Communitech Hub and transition into local incubators such as the Communitech Venture Services or Hyperdrive to scale your business to market!

      So what do you say – lets get your new venture off the ground!