Validate and build.

What is consistent about our early-stage founders on campus is how many of them are motivated and ready to do the work to intimately understand their future customers.

And it’s not just undergraduate students that are exploring startups, graduate students, post docs, and faculty are coming to Velocity as well. Specific funding programs such as Up Start are where these researchers can access the resources they need to become business leaders and bring their research-initiated innovation to market.

Considering the depth of insight made through research, these business-building opportunities are massive and can have a big societal impact. By bringing research to market, innovations become accessible to a wider audience beyond academic circles, maximizing their impact and potential benefit.

Through Up Start, Velocity has engaged thirty University of Waterloo research spin outs and has awarded $450,000 since 2023.