By Hailey Eisen 

In the midst of Ontario’s COVID-19 stay at home order in early 2021, Maria Poonawala was conflicted between a job she loved and becoming an entrepreneur. Making this sort of high-risk decision in the middle of a global pandemic was challenging, but Maria says working a 9 to 5 job, and running her start-up from 5pm to 1am was taking its toll.

“Feeling mentally worn out and triggered by the stay at home order, I realized that I was young and didn’t yet have a family, plus it was difficult to have a social life during the pandemic — and with that extra time it seemed like the perfect storm of circumstances coming together to take a leap of faith and try something like this,” she recalls. 

In officially launching Connexa, Maria was poised to offer small and medium sized businesses a customer service platform that would help them maintain a human connection with their customers through a centralized inbox that saves them time while leveraging machine learning to provide customer feedback insights in an analytics dashboard. 

She’d built the idea into a functioning high-fidelity prototype in the months prior with a team of women in STEM apprentices. The premise for Connexa came from observations and experiences Maria accumulated during the five years she’d worked in the technology sector prior to venturing out on her own. But, as she explains, her interest in technology came about almost by accident, leading to a career journey she probably wouldn’t have imagined for herself. 

“I went to Ryerson to study international business,” Maria recalls. “And while I was looking into strategy consulting for my third-year internship, I kept hearing that digitization was the way companies were going and that technology was where I should be focusing my attention.” 

Maria credits Ryerson with being an entrepreneurial minded school with great incubators and an atmosphere in which students were encouraged to pursue ideas as student group leaders and start their own businesses. “That’s where the entrepreneurship seed was planted,” she says. “And while I’d never before considered technology, I decided to apply for internships in that space.” 

While she faced many rejections, as a result of her inexperience, Maria says Cisco took a chance on her, offering her an internship and an opportunity to build her skillset. “I fell in love with tech that year,” she recalls. 

Upon graduation, Maria took a consulting job with Ernst & Young (EY) in their Technology Advisory practice, where she had the opportunity to work on a number of projects and dive into Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, and Virtual Agents (Chatbots). “Things were moving fast, I was learning on the job, and I just knew that it would be technology that would change everything – I wanted to brand myself as someone who was an expert in AI application, and I sought out opportunities to do that.”  

“Feeling mentally worn out and triggered by the stay at home order, I realized that I was young and didn’t yet have a family, plus it was difficult to have a social life during the pandemic — and with that extra time it seemed like the perfect storm of circumstances coming together to take a leap of faith and try something like this.”

Maria came across her next career move while doing a vendor assessment for a project she was working on with EY. “I was evaluating this small company against some big vendors, and when they pitched to me, I fell in love with what they were doing.” The company was Wysdom.AI, a conversational AI optimization platform and service that delivers chatbots. 

“I went from a 4000-person company to a 40-person company,” she says. “Being part of an AI start-up was a really interesting, fascinating opportunity, and I was eager to learn as much as I could.” 

Maria dove into her work at Wysdom, and within a few years, was promoted twice and became a people manager to a team. “I learned a lot about leadership and developed the confidence to know that if I ever started my own business, I’d be able to manage a team,” she says. “I’ve never loved a job more than I did working with them. Being part of a growing start-up is magical.”

This made Maria’s decision to start Connexa all the more difficult. But in late 2020, her entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with a calling and a strong desire to give back, propelled her forward. 

“I’m an empath by nature, and during the pandemic, I really felt devastated for small businesses and also for the students who I noticed had a sense of hopelessness, facing limited career prospects,” she says. Feeling fortunate in her job and her ability to work from home, Maria says she wanted to employ a mentorship model with her start-up where she could help women in STEM and provide access to experience. 

The idea for Connexa had been planted years prior when Maria worked in customer service automation and saw the need for a system that was easy for agents to interact with — and that handled the data analytics they often struggled with. “The goal was to reimagine customer service while letting the platform do the hard work,” she says. The platform would help those small and medium sized businesses that were already struggling because of the pandemic. Finally, she saw a way to build her platform while also providing opportunities to women in STEM who were looking for experience to build their resumes. “I wanted to give them the opportunity I’d been given in tech early on,” she says. 

“The barriers to entry have never been lower to become an entrepreneur. As such, I think everyone should measure the cost of inaction, recognize failing is part of the process, and avoid spending too much time on decisions that can be reversed.”

Thanks to an encounter with another woman founder and Tech Undivided alumnae, Maria was pointed in the direction of the Female Laboratory of Innovative Knowledge (FLIK), a program that connects female founders with student talent from around the world in an apprenticeship model. “I put out what I was looking for with Connexa, looking for help to build this company, and overnight my inbox was filled,” Maria says. “Over the December holidays in 2020, I booked 30 interviews in a week and ended up having the most incredible conversations with women from around the world who I was so impressed with and inspired by.” 

Maria put together a team of 6 people in functional roles to begin with virtually, and maintained the goal of creating an inclusive, supportive environment where an all-woman team would thrive. She then began to build out her business in the hours she wasn’t working at Wysdom. 

A few months later, with the support of her mentors at Wysdom and her family, Maria says she was ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship full-time. Since then, Connexa has continued to grow, building relationships with investors, and getting the platform in the hands of initial users. “We are delivering a simple platform that’s intuitive and affordable.”

Recently Connexa was selected as one of the women-led start-ups to be part of the third cohort of ventureLAB’s Tech Undivided program. “Female founders are typically over-resourced and underfunded in North America. I was looking for an accelerator program that would centralize these resources, provide mentors to reach out to with targeted help, and a cohort or community of peers to lean on,” she says. Tech Undivided is designed for founders building breakthrough technology solutions. It draws on the expertise of strategic mentors and partners to help founders refine their product-market-fit, amplify sales, and hone their pitch for customer and investor meetings. “Being a woman founder can be lonely at times, and having others who are going through the same things at the same time can be really helpful.” 

As Maria looks at Connexa’s growth ahead, she says she would love her company to be the next great Canadian success story, like Shopify. She’s committed to creating a culture that’s supportive, inclusive, and that values all of its employees. She’s also eager to advise other young women entrepreneurs, sharing advice she’s been given along the way. 

“The barriers to entry have never been lower to become an entrepreneur,” she says. “And, as such, I think everyone should measure the cost of inaction, recognize failing is part of the process, and avoid spending too much time on decisions that can be reversed.” Her advice for anyone with an entrepreneurial inclination: “Take action as soon as possible.”

By Hailey Eisen  

When she was just 11 years old, Roya Kachooei remembers a friend asking her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her response is something she recalls clearly to this day. “I told him that I wanted to have my own business first, buy a sports car next, and then get married,” she says with a laugh. 

After earning a computer engineering degree and a number of tech jobs later, Roya is now living her childhood dreams. “I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who makes the world a better place to live in, and I believe that in building our start-up, Walletifai, I’ve found a strong way to contribute,” she says. (She still has her eye on her dream sports car.)

In 2019, Roya was working as a software engineer for FreshBooks when she and a business partner decided to start building out their idea for Walletifai. It wasn’t the first time they’d worked together on an idea, but this one definitely had more traction. 

“Over the past seven years, I’ve had 4 or 5 serious business ideas, but the first one we developed as a side project ran into some international difficulties, so we put it aside,” she recalls. 

This time around, after many coffee shop discussions about the state of the world and the future, Roya and her partner were ready to go. In conversations, they kept coming back to the idea of personal finance and what the future would look like in terms of money management and savings. This fueled the plans for Walletifai. 

“I saw a problem that needed solving, and I’ve always been someone who likes to solve problems, to fix things.” 

“I saw a problem that needed solving, and I’ve always been someone who likes to solve problems, to fix things,” Roya explains. The immediate problem was that no matter how many apps she tried — and she tried many — Roya could not find a solution that would help her manage her personal finances better than the spreadsheet model she’d always employed. “As a user, I thought, if I can’t find a solution on the market, I’ll build one.” 

The goal was to build a personal finance management application that would help people understand their spending — in the past, in the form of visualized spending history, and in the future, in the form of prediction; this would help people identify how else to spend their money, and how to make the most out of money that they make. It makes saving more intuitive and more fun, cutting back on fees, and avoiding human error, Roya explains. The overall focus would be to maximize what’s left in a person’s wallet at the end of the day. “I truly believe that savings is a great contributor to getting the things you want in life.”

Using machine learning and automation, Roya has developed a mobile app that can predict expenses and provide insight into a person’s spending history. It works with 20,000+ banks and financial institutions, allowing users to connect their bank accounts and manage their personal finances. The app will soon launch a “savings challenge” component, something Roya is especially excited about. “It’s different from all the savings tools out there, and it will help users shift their perspectives and expectations around savings.” 

Walletifai is free, and eventually the app will have a premium offering for those who want to pay for additional features. Roya is currently working on developing partnerships which will tie into their savings feature. 

“I don’t have a business background, but I’m passionate about learning, and having good advisors available to use, to help unblock you, to brainstorm with, and correct you along the way is incredibly valuable to any start-up.” 

She’s excitedly tracking the app’s milestones while working hard behind the scenes to continue to grow and develop its offering. “When we reached the first 100 users on our platform organically, that was an amazing moment,” she recalls. “It proved that what we were building had demand.” When she talks to early adopters, she says, the response is overwhelmingly positive. “Some people — including potential investors — may try to make you doubt your decision, but if you know the product really helps crack the code and it isn’t out there yet, then that gives you the confidence to push forward.” 

In order to gain more support and help Walletifai reach the next level, Roya applied to ventureLAB’s Tech Undivided program, which offers a comprehensive 6-month program to enable women-led tech companies to scale their businesses through access to critical pillars like capital, talent, technology, and customers. Tech Undivided curates a supportive community focusing on equality, open dialogue, and overcoming obstacles — all things Roya is eager to embrace. 

“We met with ventureLAB last year when we only had an idea and a presentation,” Roya recalls. “They liked our idea and said to me as many others had, ‘prove to me you can do this first and then come back’.” 

After their first release in 2020, they went back to ventureLAB and were chosen to be part of the third Tech Undivided cohort. “I’m so excited that we were accepted into the program and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they can support us on our journey,” Roya says. “I don’t have a business background, but I’m passionate about learning, and having good advisors available to use, to help unblock you, to brainstorm with, and correct you along the way is incredibly valuable to any start-up.”

By Hailey Eisen  

Being part of an emerging health and safety technology company with a focus on hygiene outcomes is an interesting place to be more than a year into a global pandemic. For Natalie Ambler, Co-Founder and Director, Innovation and Development at OptiSolve®, the past year has been significant to say the least. 

“Understanding cleaning has become a lot more important, and while I used to spend time explaining why infection prevention was important, since COVID-19, I no longer have to do that,” Natalie says. 

OptiSolve was born out of business expertise in the cleaning and disinfection industry, and as a result of the big, important questions a small team began to ask. Its two key offerings are a proprietary surface imaging technology that enables you to visualize contamination, and a quality management system that produces a comprehensive program to validate cleaning and disinfection. Essentially, you’re enabled to answer the question: “Is this clean?” 

Natalie began working on the technology behind OptiSolve more than five years ago as part of a team at an existing company that formulates and manufactures cleaning products.  The team began working with an academic partner to find answers to their own questions about product innovation. Specifically, they wanted to know what more could be done about two key issues: despite living in a microbial world, people have high expectations for clean, healthy spaces; and despite leaps in sanitation, medicine, and technology, one of the world-wide causes of death remains infections. How could they better support practitioners in maintaining healthy spaces? How could they improve education and training? And how could they identify when a space was clean? 

“Understanding cleaning has become a lot more important, and while I used to spend time explaining why infection prevention was important, since COVID-19, I no longer have to do that.”

“In the beginning, we started taking images of surfaces to determine the efficacy of products, but quickly realized that being able to come up with new test methodologies was an extremely innovative and interesting area to be working in,” she explains. 

Early on, the team was able to secure grant funding which allowed them to transition their research project into the development of a surface imaging technology. “We knew the industry standard for cleaning and disinfection validation was predominantly visual assessment and checking a box, which wasn’t necessarily the best methodology.” 

OptiSolve became a stand-alone company two years ago— but the journey began long before that for Natalie. In university, she completed an undergraduate degree in sciences, fueling a desire to find answers and an interest in systems thinking. She went back to school later in her career to complete a Master’s in Business Strategy and Sustainability. She found her passion point in the intersection of science and business.  

“My career has been focused on having a scientific mindset for finding real-world solutions through innovation, strategy, and business development,” she says. “In the work I’ve had, that’s been a pillar for me.” 

As a mom of young daughters, Natalie says it’s important to demonstrate what passion looks like. “We talk about following your purpose,” she says. “I’m in start-up mode and spend a lot of time working, and they’re so supportive of what I do because they can see the passion I have.” The excitement Natalie feels about this technology and its potential is palpable — which has certainly helped as COVID-19 has ushered in a whole new set of challenges and opportunities. In 2020 change came fast and furious for many industries, especially around cleaning standards. While the OptiSolve technology and services were deployed in healthcare and food services settings, they are now also targeting commercial facilities, hospitality, government, and other places where health and safety have become a lot more important. 

“We provide systems, tracking, and reporting for cleaning and disinfection productivity which helps facility managers support their duty of care responsibility,” Natalie explains. This is often a big part of the re-opening strategies for many companies.  

“I love the collaborative aspect of the business, knowing that the sum is always greater than the individual parts.”

Looking ahead, OptiSolve is also focused on the idea of precision cleaning, which is another area Natalie and the OptiSolve team are very passionate about. “Precision cleaning uses resources more effectively for better outcomes, saving time and effort,” she explains. “In response to COVID-19, many have been employing ‘deep cleaning’ which may include spraying entire rooms with chemicals without knowing the unintended consequences. Our aim is to help people better understand what’s on a surface and how to clean it with the appropriate products and processes.”   

With a small but dedicated team — including a chemist, CTO, marketing coordinator, and supportive business advisor/investor — OptiSolve now relies on strategic partnerships to accelerate its growth. “We’ve worked with one of Canada’s leading R&D medical device companies on the engineering side, as well as fantastic academic partners, and software and digital experience experts to enhance our technology,” Natalie explains. “I love the collaborative aspect of the business, knowing that the sum is always greater than the individual parts,” she says.

“Our greatest challenge now is being able to scale, and that’s why I was so pleased to be accepted into ventureLAB’s Tech Undivided program,” Natalie explains. As part of the accelerator’s third cohort of the program, designed for founders building breakthrough solutions leveraging hardware and/or enterprise software technology, OptiSolve will have access to industry experience, strategic partner connections, and a dedicated ventureLAB advisor. “Working with Tech Undivided helps us think big about what we can do to make OptiSolve into a global leader for the detection, diagnostics, and surveillance of environmental risk,” Natalie explains. “It’s an exciting opportunity and we’re really looking forward to what’s to come.” 

By Sarah Kelsey  

The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the way we do many things — how we shop is one of them. Because of city and province-wide lockdowns and restrictions, many retailers have had to rapidly pivot to e-commerce and the online world — a strategy that can be quite costly if implemented incorrectly. 

“We’re now in a situation where most retailers don’t know how to digitize, and they are lacking the staff to help guide them,”  Karen Wong says. “It’s a very different thing to sell online. You find customers differently — it’s about SEO, online presence. It’s about digital marketing. Profits can get eaten up by shipping — something most retailers do at a great loss to their bottom line. It’s not as simple as it looks.”

If Karen sounds like she knows what she’s talking about, that’s because she does. She is the CEO and co-founder of TAKU Labs, a transformative point-of-sale (POS) software company that allows brick-and-mortar shop owners to open up online with next to no effort. The software can help an entrepreneur track everything from sales to customer data all while offering an accurate real-time view of inventory so consumers know exactly what is available to purchase when. 

Essentially, it’s a game changer for store owners who are now being forced onto the World Wide Web. 

“Retailers can get online in two weeks,” she says. “They upload their product information once, or we can help them do it, and then after that the retail experience is seamless. No more inventory issues, no more sales issues — retailers know exactly what is available when. The customer experience is vastly improved.” 

“By the end of everything, I was flying every week and I was working non-stop. The experiences I had were great. I did well, but I was burnt out.”

POS and managing a tech startup wasn’t something Karen ever imagined she’d end up doing when she graduated university. 

“I graduated with a B.A. and no real work experience, so I started doing admin work at Husky. There, I found out I really liked marketing.” 

She made the leap to CPG and worked her way through an MBA part-time. She tried her hand at running a wholesale home decor company (“I did everything I shouldn’t have done!”) and even moved to Asia for eight years where she worked in manufacturing and operations and eventually opened up her own retail business in Taiwan. 

“By the end of everything, I was flying every week and I was working non-stop. The experiences I had were great. I did well, but I was burnt out,” Karen says. So she returned to Canada. 

That’s when lightning struck. 

At every turn in Karen’s career, she found she was forced to work with disconnected systems to accomplish a variety of retail-based tasks. “There was a tool for marketing, another for sales, another for operations,” she said. “Nothing spoke to each other. Nothing was integrated. Nothing was simple.” 

Karen realized a system that could amalgamate all of these features could change the retail landscape. One purchase of a languishing company that offered the basics of this service and 5,000 customers later, and she had the beginnings of what would eventually become TAKU.

“My journey to become an entrepreneur… I would say it was no less risky than working at a big corporation today,” Karen says, alluding to the tenuous nature of employment during a recession. “But I wasn’t afraid of failure. In fact, you can’t be afraid of failing in this line of business. You have to adopt a mindset that it’s absolutely key to growing and learning, because once you make a mistake it’s unlikely you’ll make it again. It’s the most expensive training school you’ll ever have.”

“I know what that opportunity feels like. I was my clientele. Support is everything, and that’s what makes what I do rewarding.”

She notes building her business over the past few years has been possible because of the support network she’s built, including a key relationship with ventureLAB, a leading technology hub in York Region. 

Since joining ventureLAB in 2018, Karen has relied on ventureLAB for everything from sourcing funding to explaining “Silicon Valley lingo” in a way that was understandable. As a member of ventureLAB’s Innovation Space, TAKU also has access to exclusive collaboration and networking, as well as opportunities to showcase their product. TAKU was even selected by ventureLAB’s partner Digital Main Street for their community collaboration program, something that enabled Karen to bring select retailers online for free. 

“ventureLAB has been incredibly supportive,” she says. “One of the biggest challenges for women in the tech space is there aren’t a lot of mentors. At ventureLAB, there’s a heavy emphasis on the practical and tactical tools you need to be a founder and woman in tech. I always tell people in this industry to do their research and find an organization you can lean on like I have with them.”

Karen’s other big piece of advice for entrepreneurs is to find a partner who can help lighten the startup load.

“No one knows everything, so unless you have a partner who can challenge you and push you, you’ll end up being an entrepreneur that works in a vacuum, and that’s not really valuable,” she says, noting many big organizations (even Google) won’t work with a company if they’re not headed by two or more people. “You have to have someone at an equivalent level challenge you and your assumptions.”

When discussing where TAKU goes next, Karen says it’s all about expanding the business to help retailers thrive and grow in a post-COVID world. Most of her current clients are medium-sized, multi-sector yet still independent outlets like cafes, pet food stores, grocers, antique shops, and specialty sellers like Kawartha Dairy.

“A lot of our customers have said it’s been incredible to have the ability to go home and work on the store from there — they can update product pricing or add inventory from home as opposed to only in the physical store,” she says. “It’s helped bring balance to their life — that’s particularly true for women — all while expanding and scaling their business. I know what that opportunity feels like. I was my clientele. Support is everything, and that’s what makes what I do rewarding.”

By Sarah Kelsey  

The next time you’re wearing a pair of shoes, take a good look at them. How do they fit? If you’re like 75 percent of the population (this figure could be as high as 90 percent depending on the research you read) they’re probably the wrong size. And the repercussions of wearing shoes that are too small, too tight, too long, or too wide are many — from ingrown toenails to back and leg issues. 

“Everyone’s foot is so different, and buying shoes is not like buying a sweater or shirt, where if a seam is not aligned with your shoulders, it’s fine… shoes can be incredibly painful if they don’t fit,” says Sophie Howe, the CEO and co-founder of the innovative app Xesto (pronounced “zesto”). The app uses a smartphone’s FaceID camera to take a 3D image of a person’s foot. When integrated into the e-commerce sites of retailers, a person can virtually figure out which shoes will fit best (the app is accurate to under 1.5 mm). Over 10,000 people have used the tool, and the company now has major partnerships with several shoe manufacturers. 

“The first time I saw someone using the app my brain broke for a moment, because it was so surreal,” Sophie says. “But with the rise of e-commerce, it makes sense to have the ability to take a scan of your foot with your own phone.”

Sophie’s journey to become the CEO of an industry-leading, first-of-its kind app started straightforward enough. She studied finance and economics at university and realized that she really enjoyed problem solving. While many of her peers began to look for work in finance, she fell into the “uncool at the time” world of startups because of a friend. And that’s where things began to click. 

“I spent a lot of time learning about and trying to understand what technologies could exist in the future. There was a lot of not knowing and having to learn from the ground up.”

With no prior knowledge of how to run a tech startup or build an app, Sophie and her co-founder found themselves knee deep in conversations about the innovative ways smartphone cameras could be used for customization. A few dozen discussions about sizing and e-commerce later, and Xesto was born. 

One of the most impressive and inspiring things about Sophie’s journey to date is that almost all of her success has been built on the skills she learned through self-guided education. 

“I spent a lot of time learning about and trying to understand what technologies could exist in the future. There was a lot of not knowing and having to learn from the ground up. It was frustrating how bad the resources were if you wanted to learn about something. There were no websites saying, ‘if you want to learn how to code, go to this website.’” 

Sophie found herself digging through the Internet and doing deeper and deeper dives into specific areas where she lacked expertise; that would inevitably lead her to another Internet hole of research, and so on. “I would start creating mind maps of how everything was connected in the tech and AI world, and how things could come together,” she says. “I’m always looking for opportunities to learn and grow.”

That digging eventually led her to ventureLAB’s Tech Undivided — a six-month program that emboldens women-led tech companies to scale their business. “We are at an inflection point and have a lot on our plate for the next six months, so it will be invaluable to tap into [the organization’s] advisors and mentors,” she says, noting that building a support system is key to making entrepreneurship work. 

“There’s always progress happening. You have to celebrate all of the wins, even if they’re not for certain.”

“It took a long time to get here — like, many years, and that story is never really told to anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur. We went through many years of hitting wall after wall without success,” she says. “You just have to keep on going and figuring it out. Our first idea didn’t involve footwear; what we’re doing now was many iterations down the line.”

Sophie also hammers home the notion that success doesn’t look the same for everyone, and that as an entrepreneur, you have to get used to the idea of imperfection. “Not everything needs to be perfect. Work with a prioritization matrix. What needs to be done first? Things will slip through the cracks. And as much as you hate it, that’s OK. You’ll figure it out. Just make sure that the ball that gets dropped is not one of those things that’s important to the business.”

She adds “founder’s guilt,” if not monitored, could lead to burnout. “What will make you effective is to build a work schedule around boundaries that will keep you healthy.” 

Sophie’s next big goal for Xesto is to grow it into a sustainable and profitable business (hopefully with the right venture capitalist who wants to form a marriage with the company), and to acquire more users.

For now, she’s celebrating all she’s accomplished and the big wins she and her team have had over the past year — despite the pandemic. “There’s always progress happening. You have to celebrate all of the wins, even if they’re not for certain,” she says. “I love that we brought something into the world that has never been done before. In spite of all of the challenges, it’s really rewarding to know you’re making an impact on someone’s life.” 

By Sarah Kelsey  

When Andrea Palmer and her Awake Labs co-founder Paul Fijal conceived of a platform to measure anxiety in people with autism, she didn’t think it would be relevant to her personally. But that’s exactly what happened a few years later when she sustained a brain injury during wrestling practice. 

The trauma of the takedown was so severe it impacted her cognitive function, which led to a decline in her mental health and well-being and a rise in her anxiety. Their platform wasn’t yet ready to help with her own recovery, but she certainly wishes it was.  

“The platform wouldn’t have been able to heal my brain faster — it can’t physically do that — but it could have let me know when I was going to react to something negatively, helping me to manage my responses to situations” Andrea says. “It could have helped give me my quality of life back — and that’s what we want to do for other people.”

Awake Labs is a revolutionary app that’s connected to a smartphone and smartwatch that detects a person’s heart rate. Using a clinically validated algorithm licensed from Holland Bloorview, the app detects when stress and strong emotions are escalating and alerts a person or caregiver to the impending big emotion (fear, joy, anger, etc.) so they can intervene and support the person affected. 

“Any big emotion, if left unchecked, can have a negative outcome. Sometimes, that big emotion will cause someone to completely withdraw and turn inward; sometimes it looks like an external outburst of aggression; other times, antipsychotic medication is administered,” she says. “Incidents like these can be disorienting and draining for everyone involved. They’re not good for those experiencing them or for those caring for them.” 

“It could have helped give me my quality of life back — and that’s what we want to do for other people.”

Today, there are 300 individual users of the app, including almost 100 self-advocates and 30 agencies who use it with people they support. The agencies really value the platform. There are strict checks and balances when it comes to consent, and anyone who wants to stop using the tool can do so.

“Staff and caregivers report feeling more confidence in being able to support people because of our platform,” Andrea says. “It helps them know how to respond to an individual’s needs and helps them feel safe. Everyone can build a trust relationship quicker.” 

It’s also begun to change the lives of adults with intellectual developmental disabilities. 

One young woman who wants to live independently is using the tool to learn how to self-regulate her emotions so she can manage certain situations without a caregiver. In another case, a mother of a young autistic man — whose anxiety presents as self-harm and who gets overwhelmed by loud, busy environments — was able to host her first family event in years. The Awake Labs technology helped them recognize the early signs of big emotions and take steps to make everyone feel comfortable.

“When we get messages like these from our users, it’s very motivating,” Andrea says, noting she and her team are currently working on some pretty incredible new use cases for the platform. She acknowledges that many communities are often underdiagnosed and therefore overlooked, including women, people of colour, and people who can’t afford to get diagnosed. “It’s important to be aware of these inequities when providing our platform to our users.”

“I don’t know everything, and I will ask anyone who will listen to me to help me figure something out.”

The success stories are all pretty surreal for Andrea, especially because she says she went to university unsure of where her life would lead. “I wanted to be a math teacher, and my mom convinced me to try engineering… she said it was a good base for a career.” She ended up studying mechatronics, which eventually led to her acceptance into the prestigious New Venture Design course at UBC, designed for individuals who want to develop their creativity while learning about the business cycle of a startup. During the course, students are tasked with creating a product with a real-world use case. That’s how Awake Labs was born.

“The New Venture Design course really taught us to get up out of our chair and talk to people and to validate every assumption we had,” Andrea says. It taught her to seek out people who know more than her on a daily basis. 

That’s partially how she stumbled upon ventureLAB’s Tech Undivided program, a six-month initiative that helps women-led companies scale their business through mentorship. She wanted to learn from those who’ve had success in the industry. 

“I don’t know everything,” she says, “and I will ask anyone who will listen to me to help me figure something out.”

Andrea has also learned something that’s key for any owner of a company: perseverance. “Never be afraid to ask for what you need — the worst thing people will say is no, or they won’t respond,” she notes. “There will be sacrifices, and we probably survived because we continued to proceed and push through things when other companies with similar ideas to ours stopped.”

Andrea adds the key to continuing when the going gets tough is to stay laser focused on the benefits of what you’re trying to do. “We have the ability to change lives. That’s what really matters.”

By Hailey Eisen 

The challenges facing immigrants are ever evolving, but for the most part, support for newcomers typically remains offline. Kushi Kaur, a young entrepreneur with a first-hand understanding of the trials and tribulations of immigration, hopes to change that with the development of an online platform and app targeting a global audience. 

Kushi and her family emigrated to Canada in the years following 9/11. She was born and raised in India and moved to Libya in North Africa before settling in Toronto. “As a young minority Indian family, adjusting to life in Canada was tough,” she recalls. After studying business marketing at Humber College, Kushi got her first job in marketing working for an IT company. 

Around that time, Kushi’s cousin came to Canada from India as an international student. “My cousin was living with us and I tried to help her out, to navigate the immigration system,” Kushi recalls. Her cousin ended up facing visa and work permit concerns, moving from Ontario to Calgary in pursuit of permanent residency based on the advice of an immigration advisor, and spending thousands of dollars on advice that got her nowhere. 

Witnessing her cousin’s struggles and feeling quite helpless, Kushi decided she had to do something about it. “I was always passionate about technology and I had an understanding of globalization from my own experiences and those of friends and family,” she says. “I realized that what was needed was digital support.” 

Kushi left her job and started taking courses in digital entrepreneurship. She began planning for Joint App, with a goal of helping immigrants navigate the immigration process, gain reliable information about visas and permits, and connect with a vetted, hand-selected  group of lawyers and advisors — all in the name of saving time and money. 

“I’m a learner, and as I started to plan things out, I was looking for ways to build my skill set,” Kushi explains. “There weren’t a lot of accelerators helping woman founders — not just with business advice, but with tech advice as well. When my friend told me about the Tech Undivided program, I eagerly applied.” 

“Tech Undivided empowered me to seek mentorship and advice regarding raising capital, and my mentors pushed me to put myself out there.”

In the summer of 2020, Kushi joined the second cohort of Tech Undivided, a program run by ventureLAB, which focuses on woman-led tech founders. Through the program Kushi gained access to industry experts, strategic mentorship, and investors. “Tech Undivided empowered me to seek mentorship and advice regarding raising capital, and my mentors pushed me to put myself out there.” Kushi notes that as a woman founder, she’s amongst the minority raising capital for a tech startup.

Another benefit of being part of Tech Undivided, Kushi says, has been the opportunity to work with the other members of the cohort — all women founders building breakthrough solutions. As a group, Kushi explains, the women have helped each other with applications, hiring, preparing to raise capital, and so much more. 

Armed with the right support, Kushi was ready to bring her idea to life. Before she could even get her app into production, demand for her services were greater than she could have ever imagined.  “I was getting emails and LinkedIn messages daily from students looking for help and support,” she says. In January 2021, Kushi realized she needed to create something that she could launch quickly — and thus, MangoVisa was born. This web-based community connects American and Canadian students living abroad on study permits and work visas and those trying to gain permanent residency. There are currently hundreds of members accessing the free services provided by MangoVisa. 

“I think COVID really helped us grow, because when the pandemic hit, immigration became even more complex,” Kushi explains. Distributing information, connecting students, and sharing stories are among the services currently provided by MangoVisa — but Kushi has even greater plans which she hopes will be realized with the launch of the app by the end of 2021. 

Ideally, Kushi says she’d like the technology to be so accessible that anyone can access it — from students looking to attend school in Canada to people in rural towns across the globe who have to walk miles to access a lawyer, and risk rejection as a result of simple paperwork errors. 

Armed with growing confidence and a strong sense of urgency to help improve the immigration process, Kushi is excited to see what happens when the app launches. “The market is hungry and I think our launch will be explosive,” she says. 

As an entrepreneur, Kushi believes inner strength is key to success. While she says her family couldn’t imagine her — an Indian girl — at the head of a tech company, they’ve been supportive none-the-less. “They don’t have anyone to look to, to understand what I’m doing,” she says. That’s something she hopes will change. 

“I’m really paying attention to the innovators of the world right now, trying not to worry about competition, but really hoping to break the industry apart.” 

By Hailey Eisen 

The story behind HyIvy Health — a Hamilton-based women’s health start-up — began with a personal medical crisis. After years of pelvic health issues, Rachel Bartholomew faced her ultimate challenge in 2019 when, at 28, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Rachel’s surgery was followed by radiation therapy and a lot of time spent on bed rest. 

“I couldn’t do much, but my brain was on fire,” Rachel recalls. “I’m an innovator — problems are my thing and I feel an obligation to solve them.”

The problems Rachel was facing were the after-care following her treatment, the pelvic pain she was experiencing, and the life-altering health implications of surgery and treatment. “Part of my healing journey was connecting with other women going through similar things,” Rachel says. In private Facebook groups, Rachel found more than 50,000 women — many experiencing similar struggles. 

“These groups were my lifeline,” Rachel explains, and the frustration, pain, and feelings of not being heard were unanimous. This shared experience was what sparked Rachel’s entrepreneurial drive. 

But this wouldn’t be Rachel’s first foray into entrepreneurship. At 28, she was already a bit of a veteran in the start-up world. Since graduating with a Master’s in Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology from the University of Waterloo in 2014, Rachel had successfully launched and sold a software as a service (SaaS) a-commerce platform that used 3D and augmented reality to help car enthusiasts visualize modifications to their vehicles. She had also taught entrepreneurship at the University of Waterloo, and started Launch Pad, a campus-linked incubator out of Laurier University. 

Post-cancer surgery, Rachel says she was lying in bed with her computer, her brain working at full capacity. “In a way, having something to focus on through this time was a great distraction for me — it took me away from my suffering and pain.” 

Leveraging extensive research and her own personal experiences, Rachel put together a rough plan for a pelvic rehabilitation device (a dilator) to help alleviate pelvic health symptoms. The product she had in mind would work more intuitively than the current product on the market, which had been invented by a man in 1938 and had not been updated since. “I had this beautiful opportunity to be around doctors every day during radiation treatment,” Rachel recalls, “so as they were treating me, I found the chance to pitch my idea to them.”

“My biggest motivator right now is data. Providing therapy and helping women is great, but where I really want to help is in preventing women from having issues in the first place, and that’s where data comes in.”

Word of Rachel’s plans got back to her Oncologist, who requested a meeting with her to discuss it. “I got great validation from a medical perspective on the actual product, and realized that it wasn’t just a patient problem, the medical system recognized that this was a problem that needed to be solved as well.” 

Around the same time, Rachel pitched her idea to a friend who had a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. “We got together and ended up sitting for seven-and-a-half hours designing exactly what this product would look like and how it would function,” Rachel recalls. This friend, Kamyar Rouindej, is now HyIvy Health’s CTO and Rachel’s business partner. “While he had no intention in getting into the women’s health field, we make a great team and he’s now just as passionate as I am about this product and the field we’re working in.” 

Rachel realized there was an opportunity to take this product a step further, developing something that could collect data and help better understand the patient experience. “Our connected, smart device is able to collect real-time information through biosensors, and is also connected to an app where patients can answer questions about their pain and mental health,” she explains.  

Currently in the preliminary user testing phase and in the pipeline to get FDA approval, HyIvy Health is also in the process of raising capital. In August 2020 they were chosen to be part of the second Tech Undivided cohort, a program run by York Region incubator, ventureLAB. With a focus on women-led tech companies with breakthrough products, Tech Undivided provides access to a strategic mentorship network and investors, among other things. 

“We were paired up with a great mentor which has been a lifeline for me,” Rachel says. “I came at this from the patient perspective, not with a medical background, and having someone who has experience in the medical field to guide me through big decisions like understanding the market, process, and sales side of things — has been invaluable.” 

After Tech Undivided, Rachel applied to ventureLAB’s Hardware Catalyst Initiative (HCI), Canada’s first lab and incubator for founders building hardware and semiconductor focused products. “I’m really excited to be part of this program and I know it will help us get ready for manufacturing and the hardware side of things,” Rachel says. HCI was designed to enable tech companies to accelerate their time to market in a sector that normally incurs lengthy entry and scale times. 

HyIvy Health is just at the beginning of what Rachel expects to be an exciting journey. They incorporated at the height of the pandemic last year, and went from a team of two to 34 people working on the product, getting patents, applying for funding, and more. “My biggest motivator right now is data,” Rachel says. “Providing therapy and helping women is great, but where I really want to help is in preventing women from having issues in the first place, and that’s where data comes in.”

While Rachel says there’s obvious stigma around women’s health and vaginal health especially, she’s been delighted by how willing and open doctors have been to work with her. “Some investors have been obviously uncomfortable talking with me about this product,” Rachel says. “But I tell them ‘don’t worry, we don’t know either;’ even people with vaginas don’t know anything about them.”

With any luck, HyIvy Health will have an impact on that. “Getting sick a lot helped me learn to advocate for myself and to not take no for an answer,” Rachel says. These skills also come in handy in the start-up world. “It’s not easy being a woman in business and tech; there’s so much more we have to prove. But while it’s easy to roll over and be passive, we have to hold our ground, grow a thick skin, and learn to play the game.”  

By Hailey Eisen 

Gender inequality wasn’t on Mahshid Yassaei’s radar — that is, until she came to Canada at 22 to do a Master’s degree in computer science. “I grew up in Iran, went to an all-girls high school, and always loved engineering, math, and logical thinking,” Mahshid recalls. “I studied computer engineering in undergrad, and while there were more boys in the program than girls, it wasn’t a big thing in my mind. I always knew girls were equally competent.” 

As an entrepreneur in the field of medical technology, Mahshid has since experienced her share of gender inequality. But if anything, it has propelled her forward. “In high school, I had this image of myself having an impact — creating something from scratch,” she says. “Later in life, I’ve had to fight against how successful entrepreneurs are portrayed in the media — it’s not usually a woman of colour. To imagine yourself in the role you want is a mind game.” 

But, it’s a game that Mahshid, for all intents and purposes, is winning. In 2015, after working for a variety of technology companies, including Blackberry, in data security, Mahshid co-founded Evenset, a software company specializing in healthcare and medical industries. “In every job I had prior to starting my own business, I felt like I was reinventing the wheel for that company,” she says. “I was always repeating myself, and I thought, this could be a service I could provide.”

Mahshid says she and her co-founder, Hesam Dadafarin, a PHD in biomedical engineering, were the perfect fit and his background helped bridge the gap between technology and medicine. 

“As a woman starting my own tech business, I was a bit of an outlier, but my super star partner is amazing, he always looks at me as an equal.” 

Through Evenset, Mahshid and Hesam have consulted for a wide range of companies from small start-ups to large multi-billion-dollar organizations and government agencies such as Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). In 2019, they were hired by PHAC to conduct research on a problem this national health agency was experiencing. 

“They were spending time and resources developing hundreds of pages of evidence-based content for physicians and patients, and they weren’t seeing engagement with the content,” Mahshid explains. “Because it was time consuming to search through all of these documents, doctors were often turning to Google or other physicians when they came up against something they didn’t know — rather than referencing PHAC’s resources.” 

For six months, Evenset worked with the agency to determine if they could leverage AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to take passive content and turn it into intelligent content. In doing so, the idea for Tali was born.  

It just so happened that the launch of Tali coincided with the start of the COVID pandemic, a time when a great deal of information was being released — along with a great deal of misinformation. “We quickly built out a library of government guidelines, medical resources, and journal articles, and set up a mobile app to be trialed by a medical clinic in Alberta,” Mahshid explains. “The doctors’ feedback was positive and Tali allowed them to save a lot of time searching for answers.”

“This is a very exciting time and I think COVID has dramatically accelerated innovation in healthcare, opening doors instantly that once took years to open.”

Tali is described as an information retrieval chatbot, trained on an organization’s knowledge base or internal documents that can answer users’ questions in natural language. Mahshid explains it like this: “If a doctor asks Tali, ‘Can I give the MMR vaccine to a patient with a history of cancer?’ the bot will understand that cancer patients are often immune compromised and patients who are immune deficient can’t be given MMR.” It will then provide a summarized response, allowing medical providers to navigate lengthy articles and guidelines quickly at point of care. 

Tali can also be used by patients, something Mahshid is excited about. “We have started partnerships with patient education platforms so that eventually a patient could see his/her doctor and then turn to Tali with questions after their visit,” she explains. “The doctor would have access to the questions that were asked and could follow up on those as well.” 

Mahshid sees this as part of an on-going transition — or revolution — in healthcare. “We are seeing a shift from doctors and hospitals being the centre of the healthcare system to a mindset where patients are the centre and they’re empowered to take responsibility and accountability for care,” she explains. In doing so, knowledge and information becomes invaluable to patients. 

“This is a very exciting time and I think COVID has dramatically accelerated innovation in healthcare, opening doors instantly that once took years to open,” Mahshid says.  

But all of this change doesn’t come without its challenges. Navigating a field like medicine isn’t easy to do on your own — especially as a fairly young start-up. “We’ve been really lucky to have had the support of ventureLAB, and through them, access to amazing advisors and mentors in the healthcare space.” Mahshid attended a pitch night at a venue where, coincidentally, the Director of Venture Growth from ventureLAB — a technology hub located in York Region — was also in attendance. She was approached by the Director who encouraged her to join the Tech Undivided program. The program, created to help women-led tech companies access resources to grow and scale, seemed like a perfect opportunity for Mahshid. “Beyond the access to an experienced healthcare advisor who’s been invaluable in providing support around client growth, partnerships, and business development, the best part of this program has been connecting with other like-minded women founders and meeting regularly to support one another’s growth.” With women founders often being underrepresented in the tech sector, Tech Undivided aims to bridge those gender and diversity gaps. 

When it comes to navigating the healthcare space, Mahshid says she’s learned a lot. “It takes patience and respect for a system that’s been around for hundreds of years. To navigate a culture like this you need to wear the glasses of an observer and engineer and develop products with user understanding in mind.” 

In terms of her personal growth, Mahshid says there has been alot as of late. “I love where I’m at, at the intersection of tech and healthcare, building more and more impactful products in this space,” she says. “As a friend once said to me, if you dream about starting your own company or building an interesting product, but are holding yourself back for whatever reason, ask yourself, if not now, then when?” That same friend encouraged Mahshid to take action and do what she was passionate about — and she hasn’t looked back since.