We need your help. We're looking to create a new endowment for the University of Waterloo that is focused on creating more opportunities for people to find success. We want you to pledge support of a donation to get this started.
Supporting this endowment, we will build a sustainable alumni community that taps into the generations of success that spent time inside the ring road.
The Waterloo Alumni Endowment for Startups is an endowment at the University of Waterloo to invest in student-founded startups where the returns generated go back into the endowment.
We want to build on the game-changing donation that was made by Ted Livingston in 2011 that fuelled over 80 new companies.
Very early pre-seed funding is more difficult to get in Canada than in the US. This has always been true. What we know is that having a small amount of funding mixed with more startup activity will help prepare founders while bringing funders to the table.
It is also more difficult to find support and a collaborative community. Having Alumni rally around an endowment and support a program directly with their time and attention creates gravity for a community to come together.
Other universities (Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.) have strong networks of alumni who have founded, funded and worked at high-potential growth companies (startups). The University of Waterloo continues to provide a strong cooperative educational environment. 1 in 3 leading startups in Canada have at least one co-founder who is from the University of Waterloo.
The purpose is to create opportunities for students and alumni to create and build more companies. It will be set up so that returns go back into the endowment allowing future generations of students and alumni to continue to build the future. The endowment will support student entrepreneurial activities and connect alumni supporters with the student building.
By supporting the Endowment you will gain access to the room with the early-stage founders and have the opportunity to mentor them as they build their companies.
That room will grow and become an alumni network focused on startups, investing in the future, and building successful companies.
Jesse Rodgers Kunal Gupta Chad Bayne David Crow Hongwei Liu Amar Varma
Mike Kirkup Jay Shah Mike Janzen Farhan Thawar Henry Shi
Karamdeep Nijjar Kuljeev Singh Kevin Rooney + your name here