Train young innovators like athletes and keep them in Canada: CEO

Rob Ironside, executive director at the League of Innovators, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss investing in young entrepreneurs amid uncertainty.

Young innovators are the future of the Canadian economy and Canada needs to invest in them the same way it does with athletes, says one CEO pushing for youth empowerment in business.

Rob Ironside, CEO of a startup accelerator, League of Innovators, which mentors innovators 30 years of age and under across the country said supporting youth innovation is one way to create a national pipeline of talent and keep young entrepreneurs in Canada.

But in order to do that, there needs to be an effort made on both sides he told BNN Bloomberg interview on Wednesday.

Ironside said Canada needs to do a better job of “incentivizing and de-risking” the entrepreneurial path for young people while young people need to be comfortable with failing.

“Being an entrepreneur or being a founder isn’t something that you can go to school for. It’s something that you have to practice,” said Ironside.

He says young Canadians need to do “customer and problem discovery work” to find opportunities in the business world especially in newer industries like AI, which have less established competition.

But they also need to understand that they won’t get it right the first time, he added.

“A lot of times, first time entrepreneurs, their ideas aren’t that great, and that’s part of it,” said Ironside.

“But it’s really hard to learn these things without practice….so if you’re already forcing them to have conversations around, oh, what equity are we going to get…that kind of kills that ability for them to pursue and learn these skills.”

Hootsuite, a Canadian success story

Ironside said his organization’s goal is to accelerate the process of entrepreneurs reaching success.

He gave the example of Ryan Holmes’s journey, the founder and CEO of Hootsuite, who also works with League of Innovators.

Ironside explained how the Vancouver, B.C. native’s entrepreneurial success was a long journey of trying different ventures, from a pizza shop to a paintball field to a web agency, before finally creating Hootsuite, a social media management company two decades later.

Today, it is valued at US$1 billion.

Ironside said League of Innovator’s goal as an organization is to shrink the journey to success for young entrepreneurs to two to three years. This way, the organization can help Canada develop its own innovative talent, rather than losing potential entrepreneurs to other markets.

“It’s generally not the idea they come in with that they end up running with over time. It’s something that comes later on their path,” said Ironside.

He said the experience of building a business, even if it fails, is incredibly valuable, stating that an entrepreneur who spent four years trying to start a business is more attractive to an employer than someone who only has a four-year business degree.

“The skills that it teaches you are super marketable in our economy,” said Ironside.“ Especially in terms of building skills that are going to be future proofed.