News

By: Casey Spears  

When was the last time you worked on one single task for 48-hours straight? That’s exactly what 50 students from Dalhousie University and the Faculty of Agriculture did on the weekend of January 22 - 24th, 2016.  A partnership between Dalhousie Norman Newman Centre and Cultiv8 Sandbox, the two campuses merged students interested in entrepreneurship and combined their skills at Startup Weekend.

From varying backgrounds like agriculture, business, computer science, biology and other areas of studies, the participants joined their expertise and unique interests together to form teams and create a business strategy to be pitched at the end of the competition on Sunday.

Startup Weekend, an event that takes place all around the world, aims to get participants thinking about problems they see in the world and how they can come up with solutions. It forces people out of their comfort zones and to work with others they might not otherwise partner with. Participants not only have to develop their idea and do background work, they must pitch their idea in under five minutes at the end of the weekend. Pitching is expected to be polished and include necessary information for judging.

Beginning Friday evening, SUW kicked off with participants giving the crowd a 60-second pitch as to why their idea was worth being worked on over the weekend. Over a dozen agricultural related ideas were pitched and then participants voted on their favourites.

Students were immersed in the startup environment with mentors with different backgrounds and expertise on-site to give them advice and answer questions. Phone calls to companies were made and students spoke to local business owners to see if their idea was actually needed in the industry.

 “Startup Weekend was an awesome opportunity to not only hear people’s interesting ideas, but learn to perfect a pitch in a short period of time. This is definitely a skill that’ll come in handy later in life,” Holly Fisher, third year animal science major at Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture explained.

SUW Truro was fortunate enough to have four industry professionals donate their Sunday afternoon to judging the competition and the nine participating teams. Faith Matchett, VP Operations Atlantic and Eastern Ontario at Farm Credit Canada, Mark Wood, founder and president of Ocean Sonics, Jeff McKinnon, CFO of TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture and Andy Horsnell, co-founder of Common Good Solutions were there to judge the pitches.

The judges scored participants on customer validation, the business model and execution.

Third place was awarded to Yaser Alkayale and Arazoo Hoseyni, from Dalhousie University for their innovative Food Finder concept. Food Finder was pitched as a database where customers with special dietary needs can scan their products either through their cell phones or at kiosks set up in grocery stores.

Second place went to Agent Farm comprised of Dalhousie University and Faculty of Agriculture students Faisal Ajeeli, Jillian Brent, Arin Douglas, Josh Kelly, Jon George, Madeline Visser and Kalab Workye. Agent Farm aimed to be a connection and distribution system joining restaurants to local producers.

The first place winning team was R-Farm. Sam Alexander, Brandon Werenka and Sabina Wex from both campuses suggested on-site container farming for access to hyper-local produce which won the judges over.

“Startup Weekend was an awesome opportunity to not only hear about people’s unique ideas but to mix with students from the main campus that we might not otherwise engage with,” Holly said.

Overall, plenty of food was eaten, businesses were built and fun was had at Truro’s third Startup Weekend. Participants can now rest and recuperate before they get back to solving the next industry problems. Because after all, work never ends for an entrepreneur.