BioLinc Blogs

Every year BioLinc, hosts a weekend dedicated to improving the business pitch of various entrepreneurs. This Improve Your Pitch weekend took place last weekend, January 20-21, 2018 and hosted a variety of both student and young entrepreneurs, and experts there to give mentoring to these entrepreneurs. The weekend is set out in such a way thatparticipants have the opportunity to participate in a variety of seminars aimed at improving their pitch as well as improving their self awareness. The participants also get to pitch their business idea to a panel of judges twice. At the end of the competition the judges give out an award to both the best pitch and the most improved pitched over the weekend.

Personally seeing the difference in pitches from day one to day two, I can say that a mere one day of improvement showed that these entrepreneurs were ready to take on the business world. During the second round of pitches it was clear that the participants were much more confident in both their business idea and their public speaking. They were much more liberal with their time and communicated their ideas more clearly. All entrepreneurs might have improved but there were still two groups that seemed to outshine the rest. Domenic Alfieri took home the honour of the most improved pitch, displaying his passion for custom designed interior doors. While Mel Gencer and Sage Gervais combined to take home the weekends best overall pitch for their company HoloEducate, an app designed to assist in the learning experience of youth.  Overall the weekend was a huge success and a lot of fun, I am sure that all participants left feeling as though they are a better entrepreneur.

With the start of the year beginning and everyone getting back into their daily routine, we here at BioLinc kicked off the year with a bang. The annual Monster Pitch competition was hosted on Monday January 8. The competition is Brock’s own version of the T.V. show, Dragons Den. Even hosting some of the same judges from the hit show. The competition was a complete success and for one student in particular a chance to expand on his own business and perhaps grow his already promising company Life Points. Ethan Foy the creator of Life Points, took home the winning prize at the annual pitch competition. This could lead to big opportunities for Ethan but the same can be said for all the candidates. I am sure that every one who participated in the experience gained valuable knowledge and connections through a whole host of experiences. From the exposure, to the mentoring, the practice and research, the networking and finally the overall life experience that Monster Pitch has promised to deliver. Every one of the competitors has been through so much over the past few months. It is hard to overstate the wealth that the event has provided to these young entrepreneurs.

That being said the potential for these young entrepreneurs does not end there. There are always new experiences around the corner. For example, the Deborah E. Rosati Entrepreneurship Award applications are now open and give any new entrepreneur a chance to really break out and turn their idea into a something marketable. The award allows a student to work for one term on their own entrepreneur adventure. The award is also attached with a  $10, 000 monetary value allowing for the recipient to work at their goals without financial risk. It is just another opportunity for students to make the most of their experience, and learn about the in’s and out’s of business along the way.

Some BioLinc student entrepreneurs, Josiah Dueck, Olivia Poulin and Bailey Cochrane gave the winning pitch at the Grant Dobson Case Competition on November 21. They claimed the grand prize of $2,000 for their #Tellastranger #Tellafriend #Tellyourself campaign.

The three dedicated Brock students are highly involved with BioLinc. Dueck is the president of the Brock Innovation Group and collaborates with BioLinc to make The Monster Pitch Competition possible. Poulin is a Monster Pitch finalist for 2017 with her business Olivia’s Pupadise; she is also the 2017 Deborah Rosati award recipient. Cochrane is a consultant with the Goodman MBA Consulting Group and is part of this year’s Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship cohort.

Read the full article here.

During November 12-19 BioLinc joins the celebrations for the Global Entrepreneurship Week. The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, issued a statement on Global Entrepreneurship Week in which he emphasized the important role that Canadian and global entrepreneurs play in maintaining and growing a strong economy as well as creating jobs. At BioLinc we not only celebrate entrepreneurship and innovation during this week, but we also embrace the young entrepreneurs daily by providing them with support services, mentoring, training workshops, and physical incubation space.

Most importantly, BioLinc fosters collaboration between entrepreneurs by offering multi-day boot camps such as The Young Entrepreneurship Kick-off Weekend in which participants form teams to develop startups.

Check out some of the activities that BioLinc participated in for Entrepreneurship Week!

BioLinc Activities for Global Entrepreneurship Week

BioLinc is dedicated to support young entrepreneurs by offering training to develop entrepreneurship skills through experiential learning opportunities. We collaborate with our community partners and network of incubators to show entrepreneurship as a viable career path for youth and to enhance their entrepreneurial aspirations. Recently, BioLinc join two new affiliates: The University Business Incubator (UBI) index, and Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centres (GCEC).

Learn more about upcoming events here.

Brock University BioLinc and Niagara College ncTakeOff co-hosted the Niagara Young Entrepreneurship Kick-off Weekend during November 3-5, 2017. During this event, participants had the opportunity to gain entrepreneurship skills through experiential learning activities and to make great connections. Participants formed teams to build an idea and to pitch it to judges at the end of weekend for a chance to win a “Kick-off Weekend Prize Package” with an estimated value of $6,000 consisting of:

• $500 cash from the Brock Innovation Group (BIG)
• Legal starter from Fogler & Rubinoff LLP
• Video from Visual After Visual
• 5 coffees with 5 mentors arranged by BioLinc and Innovate Niagara
• Assisting with prototyping and design for 3D printing if applicable
• Automatic advance into the 2^nd round of BIG’s Monster Pitch Competition.

The opening event on Friday night started with a networking reception followed by inspirational keynote speaker Talli Osborne. She shared her journey of becoming an entrepreneur who wanted to inspired and entertain people. Osborne encouraged participants to embrace who they are and to find what were they put on this earth to do without giving up during their journey. Following the keynote, the young entrepreneurs participated in a team building exercise. Then, they formed teams to create working startups and to collaborate with like-minded individuals during the rest of the weekend.

Between Saturday and Sunday, teams developed demos and pitch presentations, and received feedback from local entrepreneurs along the way. Participants had the opportunity to attend two training workshops—The Business Model Canvas and Pitching seminar. There were 6 teams from 2 to 6 passionate entrepreneurs that brainstormed business ideas to then select and work on the best idea with the guidance of mentors.

On Sunday, teams pitched their star-ups to our panel of judges which consisted of four industry leaders:

• Rob Belchior: Small business consultant at St. CatharinEs Enterprise Centre
• Hugh Scholaert: Industrial technical advisor from NRC-IRAP
• Mick Higgins: CMO Caddle
• Jessica Potts: President of Inspired Strategy

In the end, the team named League of Gamers won with their idea of creating and facilitating gaming events to bring the gamers community together. The entrepreneurs on the winning team are: Michelle A Spiller, Shavon White, Edward Burnip and Leela Pilli.

During this weekend event, participants connected with other entrepreneurs who had different skill sets and improve their business skills by testing ideas. Entrepreneur of the winning team, Michelle Spiller, said that she would highly recommend attending this event because you have the opportunity to think about the idea as a whole. Spiller added that sometimes we get hung up on the idea rather than the functionality of it.

If you are interested in participating in future events like this, check out our events page.

On Wednesday October 25^th BioLinc and Innovate Niagara co-hosted one of the biggest networking events—BioLincUP! Which took place in the Cairns Scotiabank Atrium at Brock University. Entrepreneurs, innovators and anyone with an interest in entrepreneurship attended the event to network with student innovators and community members from Brock University and across Niagara.

The networking event started with opening remarks by BioLinc Manager, Dan Lynch. Lynch referred to a famous quote from the 1976 movie Network: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” He explained that at this event it was the complete opposite: “we are happy as hell to have you all here.” Then, Lynch emphasized the valuable opportunity for mentors and young entrepreneurs to have the ability to connect during this networking event.

Opening remarks were followed by an evening of networking. BioLincUP! Was a huge success this year due to the great turnout. Over 100 attendees expressed satisfaction with the event as they had a positive experience while networking. Young entrepreneurs had the opportunity to practice their networking strategies and to gain valuable connections with mentors and other students enrolled in the Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship Program. Likewise, industry experts, local entrepreneurs and researchers were fascinated by connecting with student entrepreneurs who were highly engaged.

The Hamilton Spectator featured the opening of Brothers Brewing Ale House in Guelph.

Brothers Brewing is owned by brothers Colton and Asa Proveau, and their business partner, Michael Bevan, Colton is a graduate of the Goodman School of Business at Brock University and an alumni of BioLinc’s Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship Program.

View it here.

The students of the media communications class at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School got the chance to experience some of the latest emerging technologies last Tuesday through the help of BioLinc start-up companies UP360, Parallel, and HoloEducate.

The students were given the opportunity to test out the latest virtual reality gear through a variety of headsets that UP360media and Parallel had provided. These headsets demonstrated a selection of virtual reality games on the market as well as 360 videos that had been produced by UP360. HoloEducate provided a demonstration of their educational cue cards that help children visualize answers instead of memorizing text.

Now what is the new age of technology? UP360 is focused on 360 video productions, which provides a better way to interact with videos and images to get the full experience of what it is like to be in the videographer’s shoes at the locations they shoot.  Another way to escape your physical location is through virtual reality. Parallel provides mobile virtual reality stations for parties and corporate events. Their goal is to let people experience the latest in gaming technology through the HTC Vive, a Virtual Reality headset that has room scale capabilities to allow tracking for both your hands and head. While in the headset it provides a great way to experience a new location (real or fictional) and interact with your surroundings.  The biggest advancement thus far has been a mix of the virtual world and the real world, which people are calling Augmented Reality. This incorporates your real-world surroundings with a surreal layer of computer generated images.

The students were thrilled with their experience of the new technology and were given the opportunity to work with one of these companies through a summer internship. The students were also encouraged to pursuit their own entrepreneurial ventures and take advantage of the resources present at BioLinc for student entrepreneurs no matter what stage their ideas are at.

To see the recap video provided by the media communications students please visit the link below.

SWC Co-op Video

The excitement around this year’s Monster Pitch event was like never before, with the return of our two celebrity judges and amazing presentations by the finalists made this sold out event one to remember.

Monster Pitch is a Brock pitch competition hosted by the Brock Innovation Group in partner with the Goodman School of Business and BioLinc. It allows four finalists the chance to pitch their upcoming business ideas to a panel of judges in hopes to win the grand prize package of $12,500.  The judges included Jim Treliving and Bruce Croxon from the hit TV show Dragon’s Den, as well as Brock Alumni and successful entrepreneurs Jason Sparaga and Deborah Rosati.

The finalists benefited from the competition regardless of their success during the competition, as the feedback from the judges was both useful and encouraging for the entrepreneurs to continue to pursuit their ideas.

The finalists included:

Dalton Steele: Dalton is a 4^th year BBA student who has developed HOMESHARP, a professional photo editing service for realtors that he plans on incorporating with his existing business Huvr Media. This app will focus on servicing real estate agents selling low-to-mid range homes looking to eliminate the use of professional photographers but still use professionally edited photos for their listings.

Olivia Poulin: Olivia is a 3^rd year BBA student with a passion for animals. Her company Olivia’s Pupadise provides a more personal and luxury pet-care service, which includes long-term and in-house care for a variety of pets.  With her hard work and team of student employees Olivia’s Pupadise has cared for over 65 different pet owners in the Niagara Region with a 100% return rate.

Ryder Damen: Ryder, a 3^rd year Biology student with the passion for aviation and innovation is working to create Hundred Dollar Burger. This is a unique web-based platform, which connects pilots for the convenience of ridesharing and cost sharing. The concept “Hundred Dollar Burger” stems from the aviation slang for flying for the sake of flying. “You get in your plane, you fly to another city, you get out, get a hamburger and you fly back.” Ryder says. He has a very niche target market but knows he will grab the attention of a high percentage of aviators looking for a buddy to fly with.

David Lisi: David, a 2^nd year student completing his Bachelor of Arts has developed a social enterprise based around high quality scarves with a one-to-one business model. His plan is to provide a free scarf to the local homeless shelter for every Bundle Scarf he sells. This concept won over the judges as two of them purchased scarves on the spot.

The finalists have worked very hard building these ideas and it showed with the quality of the pitches and their ability to tackle the tough questions they were asked. These four finalists have taken advantage of the services offered in BioLinc and plan to continue to use the on campus incubator for support.

Our big winner this year was David Lisi, you can read the full story here.

On Friday January 27th the Niagara West MP Vance Badewey visited Brock University to answer some tough questions that our student leaders had for him. With students from all departments in attendance Badewey was asked a series of questions regarding International student tuition prices, support programs for minorities, and future money allocation for the region of Niagara.  Badewey was very receptive of the issues our student community had and left no question unanswered. After a lengthy Q&A Badeway was thankful for all the issues that were addressed, as he plans on taking them into consideration while continuing his role of MP in the Niagara Region. He encourages students with concerns to contact him and hopes to have more sessions like these to better connect with the Niagara Region and its citizens.

For more information on Vance Badewey you can visit his site here.