Symptom
Many of the tools we’ve discussed in this column are for established businesses. But there’s a contagious condition we haven’t warned you about.
Symptoms include sparkly eyes, disassociation from reality and stubbornness and could include memory lapses of basic normal functions like eating and sleeping. It’s time for a frank talk about entrepreneurship disease.
Recommended medications
Luckily, there’s hope and good local support networks. At a recent Vancouver Enterprise Forum (www.vef.org) event sponsored in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Canada (NSERC), representatives from a number of local clinics highlighted methods to help control and focus the condition.
They included:
•GrowLab (growlab.ca/): This is an intense four-month treatment program. The first three months are held in Vancouver, where, in the words of founder and principal Jason Bailey, you’re kept “locked up,” mentored and driven to “get on with it.” The inspiration for this column came from Bailey, who exclaimed to the VEF crowd that GrowLab was looking for folks with sparkles in their eyes, deeply infused with “the entrepreneurship disease.” All others need not apply. For the final month, you will be shipped to San Francisco, where you will have a chance to meet people with the most intense cases of the disease, as well as the venture capitalist dealers who back them on Sand Hill Road (a.k.a. Silicon Valley).
•instituteB (instituteb.com/): This specialized institute treats people who have the unique and interesting delusion that they can change the world for the better while making a lot of money. Although it’s made up of “purveyors of unreasonable business,” it’s in big demand.
•Entrepreneurship@UBC: (entrepreneurship.ubc.ca/). This is another specialized institute that really only wants to treat you if your symptoms first started while attending UBC or shortly after graduation. It has a seed fund that can help student entrepreneurs and an investment board chaired by Haig Farris, one of Canada’s pioneering experts on the entrepreneurial condition.
•Venture Labs: (ventureconnection.sfu.ca): Simon Fraser University’s facility for aspiring entrepreneurs focuses on SFU students and recent alumni, but it also accepts non-SFU outsiders.
•Alacrity Foundation (alacrityfoundation.com/canada): Associated with the University of Victoria, this accelerator works with business and engineering students and grads who want to start companies. Participants can get a master of applied science while under treatment.
•Peter Thomson Centre for Venture Development: (www.bcit.ca/business/venture/): Helping entrepreneurs since 1986, the centre provides online help via its virtual business hub.
•ARLO (bcit.ca/appliedresearch/): This newer kid on the block focuses on connecting industry with BCIT students and faculty, helping commercialize applied research and early-stage technologies.
•Wavefront (wavefrontac.com/): Wavefront is a government and industry sponsored treatment program for those who are mobile addicted and have the delusional belief their app will make it to the Top 10.
•Angel Networks: Local angel networks like VANTEC (vantec.ca), led by Mike Volker, another legendary entrepreneurship specialist, or the Vancouver Angel Forum (angelforum.org), led by seasoned veteran Bob Chaworth-Musters, have the experience to help folks with an early-stage case before it gets too expensive to manage.
Future management of condition
Ivan: Once you get through the early “accelerator” and “angelic” stages of entrepreneurship disease, you may need to find more powerful and deep-pocketed venture capital supporters to get you to the next level: full commercialization and scalability. This phase can often cost tens of millions of dollars or more.
Generic name and alternative medicine
Cyri: These clinics used to be called incubators, but they were so warm and cozy that no one wanted to leave and actually crack their shell into the marketplace. Now it’s all about overcoming your entrepreneurship disease as quickly as possible. It’s less costly for everyone involved. If you’re going to fail, better do it fast.
Cost
Ivan: How much are these treatment programs going to cost? They sound intense, no doubt a big bill attached? I’m not sure if I can afford the medication.
Cyri: Considering their effectiveness, the treatments are cheaper than you think. GrowLab will pay you to enter its program – not a whole lot, but at least enough to live in an “eight-square-foot apartment” and eat Ramen noodles.
However, if you haven’t raised millions of dollars in support of your addiction within four months, you’ll be back on the street. Most clinics will want a small piece of your flesh (i.e. equity).
Precautions/warnings
Ivan: Entrepreneurship disease leads to one of two outcomes: fame and fortune (extremely rare) or bankruptcy and failure (much more common).
Having good treatment at one of the local clinics mentioned above can mean the difference between business success and failure. For the sparkly eyed out there – and you know who you are – isn’t it time you got professional help?
Cyri and Ivan’s medication rating:
??? (not for everyone) •
