Startups and
social ventures

Finding the right early talent and the right mindset accelerates your future. Experience Ventures gives you the opportunity to engage and recruit students to your local innovation network – at no cost to you. You benefit from their multi-disciplinary insights, perspectives — and passion.

How does Experience Ventures work?

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Students apply for an entrepreneurial thinking placement facilitated by their school, through Experience Ventures.

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New ventures provide in-kind support, such as time, space or expertise, and benefit from having students work on projects at no cost, while students receive an honorarium for their time through Experience Ventures at their school.

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Both students and ventures go through an onboarding process and participate in one of five types of entrepreneurial thinking placements. After they have completed the opportunity, both students and ventures evaluate their experiences.

What is an entrepreneurial thinking placement?

Experience Ventures facilitates entrepreneurial thinking placements at schools and new companies across Canada. Entrepreneurial thinking is being creative in finding innovative solutions. It involves taking initiative, exchanging knowledge across disciplines, being resourceful and learning from experience. It is essential to enriching lives and advancing society. An entrepreneurial thinking placement is a structured, short-term opportunity (with honorarium) with a startup or social venture that has partnered with a student’s school. The goal is to empower students to develop and apply entrepreneurial thinking skills aimed at making them future ready.

Experience Ventures offers five types of entrepreneurial thinking placements:

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Hack-a-thon or Tech-a-thon

A one- to two-day event in which ventures present students with real world challenges and ask them to provide innovative solutions.
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Challenges

Taking place over several weeks, these require students to build out more complete solutions to social, business, design or community challenges.
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Projects

Ventures present students with a specific project, and the school matches it to talent from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.
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Student-in-Residence

Students selected by the incubator receive unique opportunities to work with several ventures over the course of a term.
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Interdisciplinary Team Projects

Incubators create teams of students from more than one discipline and provide them with a project for a venture or group of ventures.

Entrepreneurial thinking placements creates a connection between today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges. Students experience innovation first-hand and learn how to apply its principles in their careers. Startups and social ventures can plan for the future knowing they have the right talent to power their growth.

Experience Ventures is funded by the Government of Canada and is delivered in partnership with post-secondary institutions nationwide.

Why should your venture participate?

Offering an entrepreneurial placement through Experience Ventures will enable you to:

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Engage students with minimum impact on your time and resources.
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Diversify the talent pool that seeks to work in social impact and/or tech innovation.
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Recruit early talent to your local innovation economy.
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Contribute to the success of your campus-linked incubator.
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Tap into the different insights and perspectives of students and evaluate prospective talent.
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Give your up-and-coming team members the opportunity to develop their managerial skill set.

What types of ventures are eligible?

Ventures who wish to participate in Experience Ventures should have an affiliation with a partner school or be in the regional innovation network. Ventures can be either for profit ventures or not-for-profit, including:

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Startups and social ventures.
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New ventures seeking ways to connect easily with student talent.
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New ventures needing specific input for a project or initiative, but can’t to commit to long-term positions for students.

Ventures who wish to participate in Experience Ventures should have an affiliation with a partner school or be in the regional innovation network. Ventures can be either for profit ventures or not-for-profit, including:

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Time/salary.
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Space offered for an entrepreneurial thinking placement.
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Equipment or materials provided for the experience.
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Job and skills training student expenses (honorarium for their participation in paid industry events, etc.)

If you are interested in participating in Experience Ventures please contact us.

Thanks for your interest! We look forward to connecting soon.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does our company apply?

Is funding available to us?

How is this different from a formal “Work Integrated Experience” like a co-op term?

Can I participate in both the Experience Ventures opportunity and the Student Work Placement Program?

How many students can I bring in as part of the program?