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BLAKE FARQUHARSON: So yeah, as I said, my name is Blake.
I'm a Programs Lead at the DMZ.
And going through these slides--
so what the DMZ is, is it's a world-leading tech accelerator.
We work with entrepreneurs to really scale their businesses.
We work across industries, whether it be health
care, fintech, real estate.
Mainly in business-to-business, software
as a service, because of the mentors that we
have and the services we have.
But increasingly, we're seeing different business models
of B2C, marketplaces, hardware.
So really, anything that is kind of "innovative" technologies,
if you guys want the business and the scaling resources,
we're here to help.
I think one of the big differences between us
and other accelerators you might hear of, like Techstars and Y
Combinator, is that we're a non-profit
and we don't take any equity.
So what that means is there's just
a desk space fee associated with what we're working on
and the resources we have.
But yeah, we don't take any part of your company.
That said, we don't have money to give.
So we're a little different that way.
But we do have access to a pool of investors and connections
to help you guys out if you're raising money.
All right.
And I think the goal of what we're trying to do,
the value proposition, is as you guys come into the DMZ,
we're trying to create the playbook for startup growth.
So as you exit the DMZ, what that means is you
have a repeatable process-oriented way
of getting to your next milestone.
For instance, if you're saying, I need to go to $1 million
in sales.
What are the activities I need to get there?
What are the metrics we need to keep in place, a good process
to really understand how to scale a business
to hit the next milestone?
So if you look at our impact to-date,
we've had over 420 companies come through the space.
And cumulatively, our alumni and current companies
have raised over $600 million, creating almost 4,000 jobs.
So it's something that we're really proud of.
And just to give you an example of some of the success stories
you may have heard of, we've been around for about 10 years
now.
So we have guys like Sensibill, who's
digitized receipt management.
They just raised a $41 million Series B.
They're working with a lot of the big five banks in Canada.
They're doing really well.
And I think Borrowell there on the end too,
that's one that I want to highlight.
Because they came through the space,
and they also just raised their $20 million
Series B. And so one thing with Borrowell I want to highlight,
and one thing that we're always encouraging with our founders,
is outside of the business success you
guys are having and that we want to promote,
it's really the culture and the type of team
that we want you to build as well.
Borrowell has about 80 people now.
Culturally, they would say 50% of their team
identifies as women, 50% identifies as men.
And I think it's a good example of where
we want to go to create a more inclusive and diverse culture
for any founder in any startup.
So it's something with our mentors,
that we have executive coaches, talent coaches.
That's something that we like to see.
So to give you an example of how we got here is in 2010,
we started as the Digital Media Zone at Ryerson.
So we are housed at Ryerson University,
and we were just for Ryerson students at the time.
There were two students that came to the president and said,
we want to build a digital media company.
We need a place to do this.
So he said, great.
That sounds great.
I'll just put a co-working space together,
and you guys can work out of there.
What we've done over time is evolved
to re-brand just as the DMZ, so not only digital media,
but any kind of company that's going through.
And we're much more than a co-working space now.
We're access to mentors, workshops,
sales peer-to-peer groups.
Really, anything you guys need to scale the business.
And with that said, starting at Ryerson,
still being in Ryerson, we've evolved
to now work with entrepreneurs who
are not only Ryerson students, but Ryerson alum.
Anybody, really, in Toronto, Canada, and worldwide.
So we're still firmly at Ryerson,
but we really help any entrepreneur.
And these are Michal and Thiago.
Those are the two guys that kind of sparked this whole journey.
And when it says "zone learning," one
thing I want to highlight is the DMZ
is one of 10 zones at Ryerson.
We have nine other zones that have their own focal point.
So Legal Innovation Zone would be
where we have legal tech startups,
if you're in law and building a legal startup.
Social Venture Zone.
Kind of a social enterprise.
Biomedical, it's health care.
So for any Ryerson student or any entrepreneur that
wants the resources and specific niche resources to get access
to, we have this zone network now.
So how do we work?
So at the DMZ, what we do is we have now three programs.
I work with the latest-stage program,
so that is $20,000 of monthly recurring revenue and above.
These are businesses that may have raised some money already,
or are looking into probably raise a seed round,
or post-seed.
But what we've done to really get businesses to that
is create two new programs in the last year-- structured.
The DMZ Sandbox, which is a minimum viable product
at ideation stage, pre-revenue, to get your legs
off the ground, and then Validator, which
is that middle ground where you probably
have a problem-solution fit.
You have a couple customers.
And then you're kind of working towards the accelerator, where
you find that problem-- sorry, that product-market fit.
So for any stage of the company that you're at,
we have the resources and the programs to help you guys out.
And just to quickly go over our core offerings,
I think first and foremost, it's definitely down to coaching.
We spend a lot of time trying to find industry experts
from around Toronto and outside of Toronto
in all different areas, so sales, marketing, product,
operations, talent, to really help any company out.
And depending on the program you're in,
you're going to meet with these guys
on a weekly, biweekly ad-hoc basis.
And what they are is they're really
executives to come and almost join your company
for the amount of time that you're at the DMZ
to help you through the scaling issues.
I think it's pretty cool when you're
trying to start a sales organization,
or start running sales at your startup,
and you can talk to somebody who has been in sales for 20 years
at a startup, and has built these over and over again,
and can help you guys out.
So customers as well.
We've been around for a while, so relationships
with all the big banks, telcos, everything like that.
So if you're in the space and it makes sense,
you can always make an introduction.
Capital.
So as I said, we don't give capital.
But we have a network of over 300 investors
and VCs that come into the space through office
hours for introductions, to meet with the startups
on a weekly basis and make those introductions to try
to help you raise that capital.
And we have a team, a fundraising mentorship team,
that can help you pitch deck, cap table,
anything like that to get you ready for that kind of stuff.
And then lastly, just community.
I think at any point in time, we have over 60 to 70 startups
in the space.
One thing that I'm sure you guys have found
is if you're building a company or anything like that,
it always helps when you're with people
that are doing the same thing, or maybe even
a month ahead of you.
Because if you're saying, I have to hire somebody.
How does that work?
And they've done it just-- they just hired somebody, so they've
been through the process.
They put that in place.
So I think relying on the community
is a really cool part of it too.
One thing I wanted to mention is Sandbox
is definitely our earlier-stage program,
where we have companies come in the space,
work out of the space.
But Sandbox also has some programs
specifically for students.
A couple that I wanted to highlight here,
at least one, was the Base Camp Program, which is actually
happening right now.
It happens every summer, and what
it is is it's an opportunity for high school and university
students, two cohorts, to come to the DMZ,
and for a period of a month go through intensive workshops,
innovation tours, so they come to Google and other offices.
And then at the end of the month,
they have an opportunity to pitch for $5,000 in prize money
to accelerate their business.
So for that, we're looking at students at an ideation stage,
and just starting the journey.
And that happens every summer, so I
guess the next one will be probably next summer.
And so that's about it.
Just a couple of thoughts.
If you want to connect any of our programs,
the Sandbox and the Validator program
are rolling applications, so they're always open.
So that's on the website as well.
The Accelerator Program happens three times a year,
January, May, and September.
And those are-- everything's on the website there.
"DMZ Insiders" is our newsletter.
It goes out so you can keep involved in the community.
That's also on our website.
And then just any social media channels.
We're always posting things on Twitter, Instagram,
and things like that.
And yeah, I would love to just stay connected
if you guys are working on some stuff.
But with that, I guess I could just open it up to questions
if you guys have any.