Over the last few years, Rotman has been steadily growing its status as a place to be for MBA students interested in starting their own company or working with start-ups. A big part of this is through the growth of the “Creative Destruction Lab” (CDL) here at Rotman. The lab is essentially a tech start-up incubator housed at Rotman but with a few twists:

• To get into the program, start-ups must apply, like in the popular television shows, Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den
• The start-ups that are accepted to the program are connected to post-graduate students anywhere in Canada, legal/professional services, as well as the “G7 Fellows”- 7 tech entrepreneurs who have successfully started and scaled up tech businesses (often very lucratively!)
• The start-ups that are accepted to the program get access to the CDL workspace at Rotman
• Access to the above resources are “free.” The cost being that each venture must meet milestones every 8 weeks and if they do not, they are cut from the program

In a bit over one year of existence, the CDL has generated over $65 million in equity for its start-ups! Interested in learning more about the CDL? Check it out here.

As a Rotman student, you can get involved in the CDL in a few different ways:

• You can submit your own venture to the CDL
• Participate in events organized by the CDL
• In your second year of studies, you can take the CDL Course where you act almost like one of the Shark Tank sharks:
  • You help the G7 Fellows determine which start-ups should be granted entrance to the CDL
  • Offer consulting services, providing the start-ups expertise on the business side of their ventures
  • You evaluate which start-ups show the most promise over the semester of the course.

As an added bonus, the CDL Course is taught by Professor Agrawal, who has won Professor of the Year (as voted by the student body) 7 years in a row!

Rotman has a few other courses available in your second year of study tied to entrepreneurship as well:

• Business Design Practicum– You work in teams with OCAD (One of Canada’s premier design schools), using design thinking principles to develop new products/services that create economic and social value
• Innovation and Foresight- You learn about how to employ new and existing technologies in new contexts to create all-new products or services

In addition, Rotman’s Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Association is a student-run club that offers events throughout the year to help aspiring entrepreneurs turn their ideas into businesses. Some of the club’s events this year include:

• Start-up Hackathon Weekend
• Business Plan Competition
• New Venture Capital Investment Competition– Where students listen to real start-ups pitch and the students decide how much (make believe) funding to offer.

Finally, Rotman also has entrepreneurs in residence. These are successful entrepreneurs (i.e. the founder of EB Games Canada!) who open time for students to drop in and meet them 1-on-1 at Rotman, to assist with anything students are interested in learning in the entrepreneurship space.

Given that Rotman is downtown, students are steps from the slew of start-up networking events that seem to happen multiple times per week at various locales in the downtown core. Check out startupnorth.ca for more on these events.

So for any aspiring entrepreneurs out there, looking forward to seeing you here at Rotman soon!