On the last Friday of July, 10 pairs of eager entrepreneurs who had gathered at Toronto's
MaRS Discovery Centre were given just 60 seconds and three PowerPoint slides to sell their business idea to panel of expert judges.
In that short window of opportunity, the teams needed to both convince the judges that their business model was feasible and to demonstrate how they planned to use the $1,000 of prize money up for grabs. This accelerated pitch session was especially fitting since the participants were not only the graduates of one of MaRS's most condensed business incubator programs (just one week long). They were also the centre's youngest entrepreneurs to date.
The pitch session was the culmination of MaRS's inaugural Future Leaders Series which offered 20 students between the ages of 13 and 15 the chance to experience the life of a "MaRs-ian entrepreneur."
"We had 20 amazing kids come in from across the city and we put them through essentially a boot camp: a compressed version of exactly what we do with our adult entrepreneurs," says Joseph Wilson, educational lead with MaRS Discovery District and the main curriculum planner for the week-long summer program.
The participants were provided with a combination of expert mentoring and hands-on assignments. The course worked to replicate, as much as possible, the many steps entrepreneurs have to take to see their idea reach fruition. On day one, says Wilson, the kids were talking ideas with MaRS entrepreneurs. By day two, they had their own business cards and by the end of day four, they had done customer interviews, business model brainstorming and blogged and tweeted about what they were developing. And that's how, by week's end, they found themselves in front of a panel of MaRS experts ready to pitch their original idea in just one minute.
At the pitch session, which Wilson describes as much a celebration of the students' work as a contest, the ideas included microchip tagged house keys— If you lose them you can just download an app to tell you where they are—and a water filtration system for the developing world, which takes water out of the air instead of ground water. The winner was garden solutions.
"They had this idea to sell prepackaged herb boxes so people could grow herbs and just add water," says Wilson. "They really impressed the judges with their account of how they were going to use the prize money."
Just because the students won for their creative idea doesn't mean MaRS expects them to use the money to become teenaged CEOs.
"We made it very clear that although we were interested in their business idea and they won for their business idea, really we're investing in them as entrepreneurs and not necessarily in their idea. These kids are 14, right? If they don't continue with this specific business idea that's okay. We definitely want them to prioritize school and time with family. They can invest that money in themselves in any they wish."
What's important, says Wilson, is not the money but rather the experience the students gained and the networks that all the students are coming away with.
"Many of them are still trading emails with their mentors. It gives them an anchor in the entrepreneurship community here in Toronto," says Wilson. "They might have another 10 or 12 ideas in the next 10 years. When they do find that million dollar idea, we want them to come to MaRS."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Joseph Wilson, Educational Lead, MaRS Disovery District