Entrepreneneurship

Startup Job Board

laurie.bulchak — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 01:47:59 +0000

Startup Job Board laurie.bulchak Thu, 07/25/2024 - 21:47

URL

https://jobs.entrepreneurs.utoronto.ca/jobs

U of T Startups

laurie.bulchak — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 01:45:37 +0000

U of T Startups laurie.bulchak Thu, 07/25/2024 - 21:45

URL

https://entrepreneurs.utoronto.ca/our-startups/startups-directory/

University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST)

laurie.bulchak — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 01:19:04 +0000

University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) laurie.bulchak Thu, 07/25/2024 - 21:19

URL

https://utest.to

Think big and harness community: Eva and Allen Lau share top tips for entrepreneurs

mattimar — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 19:41:30 +0000

Think big and harness community: Eva and Allen Lau share top tips for entrepreneurs mattimar Tue, 06/18/2024 - 15:41

Topic

Our Community

U of T Entrepreneurship

Alumni

Entrepreneneurship

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Startups

Eva and Allen Lau, business leaders and co-founders of Two Small Fish Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, have some advice for entrepreneurs at the University of Toronto: leverage the U of T community.

“Notice your classmates, your professors,” Eva says in a newly released video. “One day they could be your customers, your co-founders, your business partners.”

“It’s up to you to leverage all the resources within the U of T ecosystem so that it can drastically improve the success rate of your startup,” Allen adds.

The U of T alumni and spouses are widely known for their roles in launching Wattpad, a digital storytelling platform co-founded by Allen in 2006, with Eva as one of its founding members, and sold in 2021 in a US$600-million deal.

Last week, the venture capitalists announced Two Small Fish Ventures had secured the final close of its third venture fund, meeting its $40-million target.

Earlier this year, the pair delivered a keynote titled “School of Fish: Lessons from Swimming Upstream” at the Desjardins Speaker Series during U of T’s Entrepreneurship Week.

In the video, the Laus share their top tips for entrepreneurs and startup founders, including the importance of picking the right key performance indicator (KPI), taking investors through your story and thinking big.

“In the pitch, what I’m looking for is, will the startup be the category winner or – even better – the category creator?” Allen says.

“What I’m looking for are people who are ambitious, who want to be the game changer,” Eva adds. “To me, that’s what innovation looks like.”

Founded by sibling team, U of T startup partners with university to sell apparel

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:23:52 +0000

Founded by sibling team, U of T startup partners with university to sell apparel

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 03/07/2024 - 12:23

Cutline

Along with younger sister and creative partner Calille, left, Malik and Sydnie Pottinger worked with U of T's Trademark Licensing Office to create a capsule collection for their clothing brand MOTUS (photo by Varenya Danthurthy)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

St. Michael's College

Startups

ThisIsThePlace

Subheadline

Clothing brand MOTUS, co-founded by two U of T students and their younger sister, is collaborating with the university on a capsule collection

Startup co-founders and siblings Sydnie and Malik Pottinger are set to make history by becoming the first students to partner with the University of Toronto’s Trademark Licensing Office to create a capsule collection with their clothing brand MOTUS.

Sydnie, a third-year student at St. Michael’s College, and Malik, a fifth-year student in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE), will see their MOTUS line of fashion wear, complete with the university’s iconic T-and-leaf logo, go on sale at the U of T Bookstore’s St. George campus location in March.

The collection includes a varsity jacket, sweatsuits, beanies, soccer jerseys and T-shirts.

Bringing this dream to fruition has been a family affair for the Pottingers, whose younger sister Calille is also involved in the company – and whose parents have been a constant source of encouragement.

The siblings, whose university years saw them turn out for the Varsity Blues – with Malik playing basketball and Sydnie, volleyball – began to consider creating a line of comfortable but stylish fashion pieces during the pandemic. They launched MOTUS in January 2023, taking on everything from designing clothing and creating a logo to arranging manufacturing and shipping orders.

Malik says the brand name MOTUS is derived from the Latin word for motion. “It fits us because we are always pushing ourselves and each other to have one foot forward, and it signifies always progressing and elevating,” says Malik.

The business began booming shortly after the e-commerce brand was launched, with Malik and Sydnie soon making regular trips from their small warehouse to the post office to mail orders.

It wasn’t long before they met their first benchmark of success: seeing people on the street wearing their clothes.

“Success is your brand being recognized,” Sydnie says.

The siblings then began to think of how to create a brick-and-mortar presence and pondered whether they could reach an arrangement to sell their items in the U of T Bookstore.

“We brought up the idea to our parents. They encouraged us and said, ‘The worst that can happen is that the bookstore says no,’” Sydnie recalls.

Soon, they were in contact with U of T’s Trademark Licensing Office, where they were introduced to manager Ivan Canete, who previously managed the Under Armour portfolio for the Sport & Rec programs at KPE. Together, they discussed how U of T branding and logos could be integrated into a MOTUS x UofT collection.

In addition to the bookstore stocking their items, MOTUS also received support from Spaces & Experiences, which invested in initial inventory and connected the siblings with resources such as the Black Founders Network.

“We haven’t done a lot of this before,” Canete says of the collaboration, noting that only recently have big brands begun to create collaborative clothing collections with U of T.

Canete says that since U of T Bookstore royalties are poured back into student experience, partnering with students is a great path. “U of T is pioneering this kind of thinking and developing a model for other schools to follow,” he says, describing the arrangement as part of the bookstore’s evolution.

“It's a great feeling to know that something that my sisters and I created in our parents’ living room is going to help other people,” says Malik, who is set to graduate from KPE this year. “We are the first students to collaborate with the university’s Trademark Licensing Program and it’s really nice to see MOTUS among big-name brands like OVO, Roots and Peace Collective.”

Malik plans to spend at least a year following his graduation solely focused on building the business. Sydnie, who has two years of school remaining and also coaches volleyball, will also continue to make a full-time commitment.

Among MOTUS’s next steps is to produce leather goods, says Malik, who has been looking into suppliers in Portugal. “We are already developing an assortment of items of this category for our brand. Our goal for MOTUS is to have an international footprint,” he says. “We are so grateful for U of T’s backing.”

Malik says he would advise students to not let their studies box them into a corner. “Just take everything you learned from U of T and apply it in whatever direction you want to take in your life,” he says.

“My first two years at KPE provided me with a great foundation and perspective to figure out what I like. That structure, combined with playing on the varsity basketball team in the first two years of my studies, provided me with discipline and routine that come in handy today.”

Ada CEO Mike Murchison is using AI to 'make customer service extraordinary'

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 15:08:28 +0000

Ada CEO Mike Murchison is using AI to 'make customer service extraordinary'

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 11/20/2023 - 10:08

Cutline

Mike Murchison's startup Ada uses AI to help businesses and brands automate their customer support (supplied image)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneneurship

Faculty of Arts & Science

Rotman School of Management

Subheadline

U of T alum plans to talk about his entrepreneurial journey at upcoming event

For Mike Murchison, the best way to understand a problem isn’t to analyze it – but to immerse yourself in it.

So, when the serial tech entrepreneur found himself looking for a way to improve companies' customer service, he decided to work as a frontline tech support agent for several months.

“I used to believe that creating a solution to a problem is an intellectual exercise,” says Murchison, who studied cognitive science, psychology and human-computer interaction in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science. “But the way you execute on that is very different if you actually understand the toil that exists in the day-to-day.”

Murchison's call centre insights helped shape the work and mission of his startup, Ada, which uses AI to help businesses and brands automate their customer support.

Ada – which successfully completed the Creative Destruction Lab's seed-stage accelerator program at the Rotman School of Management – has established itself at the vanguard of the AI-enabled customer support business. In 2021, the startup secured a Series C funding round of $130 million. That pushed its valuation above a $1 billion, earning it “unicorn” status; its clients include tech giants such Meta, Shopify and Verizon.

Murchison plans to further discuss the startup’s growth and his own entrepreneurial journey in a keynote address on Nov. 21 as part of the Desjardins Speaker Series organized by U of T Entrepreneurship. The series is part of a three-year partnership with Desjardins that includes a student startup pitch competition with more than $100,000 in prizes.

It’s one of many initiatives designed to inspire U of T’s ballooning entrepreneurship community, which now comprises more than 12 campus-based accelerators that have spawned 650 companies, created more than 9,000 jobs and generated more than $3 billion in investment over the past decade.

Murchison says Ada is moving to expand its AI platform, which helps companies resolve complex customer inquiries with minimal human effort.

“We’ve developed what we call a reasoning engine which essentially brings together a bunch of different large language models – some of which are foundation models powered by the likes of OpenAI [makers of ChatGPT],” he said.

Ada also recently introduced a product, Generative Actions, that enables clients to train their AI bots on how to retrieve information from their business systems, making for more personalized responses and actions that can be carried out. “We’re now starting to see AI experiences that we’re powering that are not only on par with what humans are capable of, but are exceeding human capability,” Murchison said. “That’s huge because the whole mission of Ada is to make customer service extraordinary for everyone.”

Murchison urged entrepreneurs in the AI space to think of the technology as a tool to solve real-world problems, as opposed to an end in itself: “What sends people in the wrong direction is when they believe that the technology holds some inherent value and their intellectual or high-level approach is all they need to build the right solution."

He also suggested entrepreneurs view AI as an employee that requires feedback and coaching to improve its performance. “When you hire a human employee, you expect their impact will be greater a year later than on day one. That same paradigm is what’s needed to get the most out of AI,” Murchison said, noting his upcoming keynote will address some ways this approach can be implemented.

As for students interested in AI and other technologies of the future, Murchison urged them to seek out the array of knowledge, resources and mentors available at U of T.

“I went to U of T when [University Professor Emeritus] Geoffrey Hinton was still teaching and was very lucky to be able to crash his courses. I also spent a lot of time just going into random labs – like, [computer engineering Professor] Steve Mann let me just show up in his lab and hang out,” Murchison said.

“U of T gives you an incredible level of access to world-renowned research that’s at your fingertips. It’s on you to access it and tap into it.”

Murchison also appealed to students to take advantage of U of T’s vast entrepreneurship supports.

“It’s really heartening and exciting to see the growth of entrepreneurship at U of T,” he said. “Being in an environment where you have a structure to catch you if you fall – or as you experiment – is so valuable; it becomes harder later on. I’d love to encourage more students to do that.”

New autonomous lab at University of Toronto to improve drug formulation

siddiq22 — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 20:09:01 +0000

New autonomous lab at University of Toronto to improve drug formulation

siddiq22 Fri, 07/14/2023 - 16:09

Cutline

From left: PhD trainee Zeqing Bao, Professor Christine Allen, Allen Lab Director of Research and Partnerships Pauric Bannigan (photo by Steve Southon)

Eileen Hoftyzer

Topic

Breaking Research

Acceleration Consortium

drug development

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

self-driving labs

Artificial Intelligence

Entrepreneneurship

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

machine learning

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

Facility at Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy is one of six at U of T being funded by $200-million grant to Acceleration Consortium

A new autonomous lab being built in the University of Toronto's Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy will help to design and optimize formulations that will improve bioavailability, stability and efficacy of a variety of drugs.

Christine Allen, a professor in the faculty whose research focuses on drug development and disease diagnostics, is co-leading the lab with Frank Gu, a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“I see huge potential for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and automation in pharmaceutical sciences, for formulations and beyond,” says Allen, an expert in drug formulations.

“The world is finally understanding the impact of formulation technology and how powerful it is. Now we can marry that technology with AI and machine learning, so we’re kind of unstoppable.”

The new facility is known as a 'self-driving' lab because it uses AI, automation and advanced computing to test different combinations of materials and iteratively develop the best formulations. This approach will allow researchers to evaluate a much larger number of materials, significantly reducing both the cost and time required to identify a new drug formulation.

Allen explains that formulation scientists are often working under tight time constraints to get a product to market by deadline, and the final formulations are the best that can be done with the time available – but are not necessarily the best possible option.

“We’re providing a solution to that – accelerating development while looking for the best formulation,” says Allen, whose team worked in collaboration with Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik’s research group to develop a prototype of the self-driving lab last year.

The self-driving lab at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy is one of six being built at U of T through a $200-million Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant to the Acceleration Consortium, a global network of government, industry and academic researchers accelerating the discovery of materials and molecules needed for a sustainable future.

Researchers say the self-driving lab will help the pharmaceutical industry improve efficiency in drug development and production (photo by Steve Southon)

Allen played a key role in launching the Acceleration Consortium during her time as associate vice-president and vice-provost, strategic initiatives.

As a co-lead on the project, Gu is bringing his expertise in nanotechnology engineering to develop high-quality, precise formulations that use nanotechnology to improve the delivery, bioavailability and efficacy of drugs.

“Nanotechnology engineering has revolutionized the pharmaceutical industry, and its potential applications in a self-driving lab are both imminent and paradigm-shifting,” Gu says.

“By harnessing the power of nanotechnology in a self-driving lab for pharmaceutical formulations, my lab is working with Professor Allen’s team to unlock many advantages that will transform drug development, formulation, modular manufacturing and patient care.”

Allen says that the lab's strong collaboration between pharmaceutical scientists and computer scientists also provides unique educational opportunities for trainees that will provide them with key skills needed for a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

“The trainees are experts in both fields – this is where the future is going, and that to me is the power in all of this. It is true interdisciplinary collaboration,” Allen says. “The trainees are gaining knowledge, expertise and experience, and they are then able to secure exciting positions in industry and be leaders in the field.”

Last year, Allen took a leave of absence from the university to take on a leadership role with adMare Bioinnovations, an organization that helps support Canadian life science companies and researchers. She has now returned to the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy full-time and brings back a wealth of new experience in entrepreneurship that she plans to apply to her research and the work of the Acceleration Consortium.

To that end, Allen is also chairing the Acceleration Consortium's committee on commercialization and partnerships, and is also developing a graduate course in innovation and entrepreneurship.

With the lab's focus on translational research and commercialization, both Allen and Gu are excited about its potential to generate new formulations that will ultimately improve patient outcomes.

“The self-driving lab is the most cutting-edge technology to help the pharmaceutical industry to drive toward digitization, automation and ultimately improve efficiency in product development and production,” Gu says.

“With its unique capability in bridging automation and iterative discovery process, it is also the key to helping us accelerate the development and production of personalized medicines, which is prohibitively expensive and labour-intensive to be done today.”

Groundbreaking partnership will boost inclusive entrepreneurship and innovation in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA

lanthierj — Mon, 15 May 2023 10:01:57 +0000

Groundbreaking partnership will boost inclusive entrepreneurship and innovation in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA

lanthierj Mon, 05/15/2023 - 06:01

Cutline

Sam Ibrahim Centre for Inclusive Excellence in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Leadership (Rendering by CEBRA and ZAS Architects + Interiors)

Topic

Our Community

Wisdom Tettey

Work-Integrated Learning

Entrepreneneurship

President Meric Gertler

Research & Innovation

Scarborough

U of T Scarborough

A transformative $25-million investment from Scarborough-based entrepreneur Sam Ibrahim will establish the Sam Ibrahim Centre for Inclusive Excellence in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Leadership at University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) – taking the region’s innovation ecosystem to the next level and equipping student entrepreneurs with the tools and resources they need to flourish.

The Sam Ibrahim Centre will leverage the university’s vast pool of research and innovation expertise and global networks to provide entrepreneurs at U of T Scarborough with connections, resources and learning opportunities that can help accelerate their ideas and ventures. It will also encourage student entrepreneurs to develop their ideas directly in Scarborough, helping to spur economic growth for the Eastern GTA.

“The University of Toronto is renowned for its entrepreneurship network,” said U of T President Meric Gertler. “Sam Ibrahim’s visionary partnership with the University will help us enhance our impact on innovation in the Eastern GTA and show the world that U of T Scarborough is a vibrant hub for amazing, inclusive excellence in entrepreneurship.

“At the Sam Ibrahim Centre, our student entrepreneurs will have what they need to start and grow the next generation of Canadian ventures.”

Campus-led accelerators at U of T Scarborough will be aligned to offer the complete portfolio of coaching for successful entrepreneurs at the Sam Ibrahim Centre, which will extend their reach and impact and foster new collaborations. The Sam Ibrahim Centre will allow U of T Scarborough to expand on the programming these accelerators offer, support outreach activities such as work-integrated learning opportunities and lecture series and enhance the Eastern GTA’s broader innovation ecosystem by creating a network of new entrepreneurial leaders in the region.

“This partnership with Sam Ibrahim will allow UTSC to play a key role in helping to develop the next generation of Scarborough-based entrepreneurs,” said Wisdom Tettey, U of T vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough. “A core mission of the Centre is to ensure its innovators embody leadership values that promote Sam and U of T’s commitments to inclusive and equitable communities. We are all excited about the enduring legacy of creativity and impact that this will ignite.”

Equity and inclusion will be central to the Sam Ibrahim Centre’s activities. As part of this core commitment, student entrepreneurs who face financial barriers will be eligible for three new awards generously established by Ibrahim as part of this investment: the Sam Ibrahim Awards, the Gabriel Fanous Awards, and the Shaemin Ukani Awards.

“The Sam Ibrahim Centre will help inspire UTSC’s students to dream big, chase the impossible – and bring others along with them,” said Neel Joshi, dean of student experience and wellbeing at U of T Scarborough. “It will be a place that ignites hope and serves as a catalyst for real economic change fueled by inclusive excellence.”

Arrow Innovation Hall (Rendering by CEBRA and ZAS Architects + Interiors)

The centre will convene renowned leaders and experts, including through two new positions established by this investment: the Sam Ibrahim Chair in Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Innovation, who will lead the vision for the centre, and an entrepreneur-in-residence, who will provide valuable mentorship to up-and-coming innovators.

This new partnership will also support the construction of the Sam Ibrahim Building on Military Trail. Set to open in 2024, the building will act as a central hub for U of T Scarborough’s North Campus, housing the Sam Ibrahim Centre as well as Student Services offices and spaces for the department of computer and mathematical sciences.

“Scarborough is home to so many young people with great ideas,” Ibrahim said. “As a Scarborough entrepreneur myself, I want to make sure that the next generation can start and scale their ventures right here.”

Ibrahim is a noted business leader in Scarborough who strongly believes in the capabilities of the community and is deeply invested in it. He is the president and general manager of the Arrow Group of Companies, which provides strategic consulting and talent solutions to a wide range of industries. He is also a familiar face at U of T Scarborough as the co-founder of the Scarborough Shooting Stars, the first Greater Toronto Area-based franchise of the Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL). The Shooting Stars play at the campus’s Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre.

This is one of the largest contributions ever received by U of T Scarborough and Ibrahim’s first to the university, making it one of the largest ever to U of T from a first-time donor.

“I would like to thank Sam Ibrahim for his vision,” said David Palmer, vice-president, advancement. “His philanthropic investment is one of the largest ever for the Eastern GTA and is sure to inspire others to support Scarborough’s diverse and growing community at this exciting time for the region.”

Ibrahim’s philanthropic investment is contributing to Defy Gravity: The Campaign for the University of Toronto. Under the banner of inclusive excellence, Defy Gravity seeks to harness the power of the university's worldwide community of alumni, faculty, students and supporters to create the talent, innovations and solutions for today’s most pressing challenges. As the largest advancement campaign in Canadian history, Defy Gravity is raising the bar for engagement and charitable giving in this country and fueling U of T’s mission as one of the world’s largest engines of social mobility and progress.

Watch a livestream of the announcement

Startup's tech could put an end to unsightly screen 'notches' on smartphones

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 14:19:31 +0000

Startup's tech could put an end to unsightly screen 'notches' on smartphones

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 11/18/2022 - 09:19

Cutline

Michael Helander, CEO and Founder of OTI Lumionics, says thorny problems in tech manufacturing can often be "elegantly" solved by developing new materials (photo by OTI Lumionics/CC BY 2.0)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Startups

OTI Lumionics, a Toronto-based company that was spun out of research from the University of Toronto, recently raised more than $75 million to expand its line of organic LED technology solutions – including screens that are uninterrupted by “notches” common in today’s smartphone and laptop displays.

The startup’s latest innovation is known as CPM Patterning and represents a new way to pattern print thin films – usually on the order of nanometres or micrometres in thickness. This is important because some of the techniques that have been developed over the last several decades, including photolithographic patterning and laser ablation, can’t be used in certain manufacturing environments because the materials used are sensitive to oxygen, moisture and other factors that are difficult to control.

“What we’ve done is come up with a process, instead of new materials, that allows you to pattern thin films – but instead of making a film and removing materials, you can grow a pattern from the ground up at the atomic level. It’s a 100 per cent material science-driven solution,” says OTI founder and CEO  Michael Helander.

“What that lets manufacturers do in displays, for example, is pattern thin film coatings in the display that otherwise they couldn’t pattern before. That means they can start introducing new features and functionality that weren’t possible before, because they couldn’t be manufactured.”

One potential application for the technology is integration of displays with different types of sensors and cameras. For example, the dark spaces or “notches” that we see on our smartphones, tablets and laptops are necessary to give space for a front-facing camera.

“The idea is, if you can pattern little, tiny holes in the display between all the pixels, then those cameras and sensors can be integrated under the display,” says Helander. “You don’t have any kind of black area that doesn’t function, so you can get more usable display without having to make the device physically bigger.

“The other advantage, which is particularly important with all these new video conferencing tools that we’re all using, is that now you could hide the camera under a display. This helps in terms of making eye contact through a screen: you’re not limited to putting that camera at the top edge of a device.”

Helander first realized the potential to commercialize his research while working on his PhD in materials science engineering at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. He was being approached by brand-name consumer electronics companies interested in the new materials and process technology he was developing for the manufacture of organic electronics.

Encouraged by his thesis supervisor, Professor Zhen-Hong Lu, Helander decided to license the technology and start a company in 2011. Since then, OTI’s technology focus has morphed from consumer lighting applications to advanced displays, including organic LED (OLED). The company now works with some of the largest consumer device brands in the world.

Helander says that developing new materials represents the most “elegant” way to solve problems in manufacturing.

“Materials science and engineering is the foundation for all of electronics and most other major industries,” says Helander, who earned his doctorate in 2012.

“When you drill down to the bottom of what enables it, it’s all about new materials. New software like AI and machine learning is only made possible by better chips, better storage, better hardware – and that better hardware is all enabled by new advanced materials that allow for more components such as transistors in a smaller and lower-energy package.”

The new funding that OTI has raised will help the company to scale and grow – supporting customers and getting the technology into mass production.

“The types of problems that we work on are opportunities where the goal is to help improve the user experience of a device but do that at a very fundamental level, using material science, new materials to enable that,” Helander says.

Helander credits his time in the department of materials science and engineering with preparing him to be comfortable tackling new problems and learning how to quickly get up to speed on unfamiliar topics.

“The first day you walk in any course, you know nothing about the material, but by the end you figured out how to solve problems, and a lot of that ends up being self-driven,” says Helander.

“So now as a company when we have problems, we have the foundation to go out and consult resources, publications, textbooks, experts, and figure out how we’re going to solve this problem in a very efficient way. That ability to be a lifelong learner I think is something that sets engineers apart from a lot of other disciplines.”

A simple, eco-friendly chocolate-hazelnut spread? 'Real food only' startup has you covered

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 23:40:16 +0000

A simple, eco-friendly chocolate-hazelnut spread? 'Real food only' startup has you covered

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 08/30/2022 - 19:40

Cutline

Mounib Real Food Only, a startup founded by U of T Scarborough alumna Iman Mounib, makes a spread consisting only of hazelnuts, honey and organic, fair-trade cocoa powder (photo courtesy of Iman Mounib)

Topic

Iman Mounib’s chocolate-hazelnut spread – made of just three local ingredients – is a refreshing take on the iconic breakfast topping.

The University of Toronto Scarborough alumna’s startup, Mounib Real Food Only, sells a spread made only of hazelnuts, honey (courtesy of local Mennonite communities) and organic, fair-trade cocoa powder – with a vegan option that swaps honey with organic cane sugar.

The company also sells a chocolate and peanut butter spread (with its own vegan edition), and offers an almond-chocolate version at its farmers’ market booths.

“The end goal is to create an alternative that’s beneficial for your health and tastes really good,” Mounib says. “All of our spreads are good for your health and good for the planet.”

Mounib began developing the skills needed for her business early in life – in part because she grew up in a low-income household. “We didn’t have healthy, affordable options,” she says, “and that was big in inspiring me to start making my own foods at home.”

In addition to running her startup, Iman Mounib works as a marketing manager at the yogurt company Yogen Früz (photo courtesy of Iman Mounib)

Health issues later forced Mounib to stop eating refined sugar, but she still craved her favourite sweets: Nutella and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – both of which inspired flavours for her spreads. So, she started making her own versions with what would eventually become her three-ingredient recipe.

Today, Mounib Real Food Only products are sold in almost 20 restaurants, cafes and stores in the Greater Toronto Area, as well as at one location in Ottawa. Most retailers sell the jars themselves, but two locations use the spreads on breakfast items such as bagels and lattes. The company also appears weekly in the Woodbridge, Leslieville and Roundhouse famers’ markets in Toronto, and sells the spreads on its website.

The company’s glass jars, lids and labels are all purchased in Canada; Mounib even exclusively hires local graphic designers. Customers can also return the jars for reuse through the company’s in-house recycling program. The only plastic is in the legally required food seal, though Mounib is trying to find a workaround. She’s also trying to make the label biodegradable.

“As cheesy as it sounds, I really do believe that however you impact the environment impacts your soul,” Mounib says.

There are 46 startup companies currently operating out of The Hub at U of T Scarborough (supplied photo)

Mounib’s approach has been shaped by Ontario farmers. For six years, she spent every Saturday at a farmers’ market, helping sell baked goods from her friend’s local bakery. After the pandemic shut the market down in 2020, Mounib began selling her own products on Instagram, where her so-called “healthy Nutella” took off. In December 2021, she officially launched her company.

“Farmers are entrepreneurs too,” she says. “That farmers’ market taught me that even if you’re spending a little bit more to source local, the impact is so much better for the environment and the community.”

Mounib initially used her own kitchen and blender to make spreads. Now, she has a facility in Toronto, her own employees and an industrial blender. She’s working with The Hub, U of T Scarborough’s entrepreneurial incubator, to scale the business up and get into as many GTA cafes, grocery stores and restaurants as possible.

“Mounib has overly impressed me, she’s spinning really fast,” says Donovan Dill, interim director at The Hub.

Next, Mounib says she wants to expand throughout Canada before tackling U.S. cities such as New York and Miami – and beyond.

Entrepreneneurship

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University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST)

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Think big and harness community: Eva and Allen Lau share top tips for entrepreneurs

Founded by sibling team, U of T startup partners with university to sell apparel

Ada CEO Mike Murchison is using AI to 'make customer service extraordinary'

New autonomous lab at University of Toronto to improve drug formulation

Groundbreaking partnership will boost inclusive entrepreneurship and innovation in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA

Watch a livestream of the announcement

Startup's tech could put an end to unsightly screen 'notches' on smartphones

A simple, eco-friendly chocolate-hazelnut spread? 'Real food only' startup has you covered