Yet another reason as to why Rotman is “where it changes”...

Whether planned or not, most if not all of us are impacted by different turning points in our life. Ideally some or most of such turning points are planned, and one would hope for their positive effects

When it comes to advancing careers at 加拿大多伦多大学 - 罗特曼管理学院 (Rotman), we commit to making our students’ education a launchpad that can help generate a positive turning point –if not various positive turning points– in their careers

As an MBA Alum myself, I believe that having multiple avenues such as the Creative Destruction Lab or experiential learning practicums, among other Entrepreneurship-focused programs at Rotman, offer our students –especially those with an interest in pursuing Entrepreneurship as a career– an unfair advantage, and very unique learning opportunities (at the very least).

For example, in the most recent experiential learning course I taught this year; the Global Practicum around Entrepreneurship and Innovation, we had the chance to generate many opportunities for our students to reflect and introspect on the inclinations they expressed towards entrepreneurship and Innovation, perhaps helping them potentially find/see career turning points.

This year, our goal was to expose the students to as many practical and execution-focused perspectives in the industry as possible. We did so through an intense one-week immersion within the San Francisco Bay Area; that took place following a similar immersion in Toronto-Waterloo at Rotman back in March 2024. Within both regions the students get the opportunity to meet with a series of world-class leaders in the space, from early stage entrepreneurs and investors to later stage corporations and private capital investment firms; an overall experience that aims to enrich their knowledge through such exposure to expertise and industry insights.?

San Francisco Bay Area (May 2024)

Throughout our time in the region, we visited as many landmarks and areas as possible to help make this a truly immersive experience for the students. We visited places such as “The HP Garage” or “The Birthplace of Silicon Valley”, which followed a group tour we had earlier in the week of the beautiful city of San Francisco, where our group marked its presence as it does every year by taking the Rotman’s group photo by the Iconic Golden Gate Bridge.?

Why the Bay Area; from various perspectives:

On “the bridge” note, bridging the expert speaker sessions with what we initiated in Toronto back in March, we started our trip by meeting with Canadian leaders who reside in the Bay Area today and who shared the relative perspective and helpful-to-know facts about the region and “Why the Bay Area” is where they chose as home.?

Great perspectives were shared, from Michael Babiak ’s story and experience as an entrepreneur and investment banker; his beliefs around the region and its irreplicable uniqueness: mainly around the fact that Silicon Valley:

1. has been evolving at compounding rates since the fifties”;?
2. is home to some of the world's best talent –exemplified by places like Stanford and UC Berkeley’s cutting edge research.?
3. Has the highest density of capital in relative and absolute terms when it comes to venture capital
4. Has unique social circles that are hard to penetrate and engage with remotely

In addition to Michael’s intriguing perspective, we heard from Simon Pomel and on how Canadian entrepreneurs are supported in the Bay Area and across the world and he shared his key observation from years of doing such work by saying that

“The quicker businesses go global, the more likely they'll succeed”. Simon Pomel

A point I couldn’t agree more with as an entrepreneur myself when I co-built an international business that grew tremendously as a function of our export based work.?

Such work and global focus is generally an attribute of “Category Leaders” especially when they claim market leadership and dominance. Insights into Category Design and how to systematically think about designing and building new categories was shared by Peter Goldie of Category Design Co. Peter shared his experience of how he worked on developing many leading products over the years and how he and his business partner today, Deborah Kattler Kupetz help startups and later stage companies build and launch new categories that transform industries; a typical profile that interests Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley such as Raed A. Masri , Founding Partner at TRANSFORM VC and who shared his remarkable story with students from battling against monopolies as a telco entrepreneur to investing in "Category Kings" and "Category Queens" today.

A Pioneer’s Perspective... from Silicon Valley’s early days to... tomorrow

From very innovative hardware products being designed for astronauts to the latest in Generative AI, it was refreshing as always to have Jim Myrick ’s perspective on the continued evolution of many technologies and where he sees the world heading. Besides sharings his experiences with Silicon Valley’s unique mindset and culture and his incredible entrepreneurial stories and his work on some products with Xerox and Steve Jobs, Jim emphasized that the key skills to staying ahead (or abreast) with the increasing pace of innovation and technology growth in different industries, is adaptability!

Creating true lasting Global Impact

It was hard to disagree that there was no better story during our week of meetings around “changing the world” than that of the story of Endeavor and Endeavor Catalyst ! Allen Taylor 's journey is truly remarkable and inspiring. A journey that exemplifies many of the journeys within the Endeavor team and their global mission in supporting truly outstanding leaders and entrepreneurs across the globe.

Allen left the group with many great thoughts and important questions to ask; great topics were introduced and discussed such as the importance of social capital; the idea of cultivating serendipity; the often underestimated creativity of geographical innovators; the paramount importance of radical self belief (incredible self confidence); and the important notion for every entrepreneur to internalize:

“Valuation doesn't matter but dilution does” - Allen Taylor

Carrying on the theme of creating true lasting Impact, visiting IDEO 's HQ in San Francisco and spending some time with IDEO.org 's Mary Katica was another inspiring experience. Designing products with impact in mind and considering techniques such as futuring in addition to design thinking reminded the group of the significance of well guided design and how important it is to think and design with climate considerations at the heart of our work. The work and research that both IDEO and IDEO.org expose around "Climate" is truly eye-opening. In particular and as an example, a fact I found quite interesting yet unexpected the world's most exciting new technology, AI was the following:

Taking early and big bets on early stage Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley

Meeting with Chris McCann is always an intellectual luxury, if anything, the conversations feel quite short despite the density of knowledge, industry intelligence and insights that Chris is able to neatly articulate and pack within an hour long chat; just truly remarkable. Besides sharing his awesome story and how it started with Startup Digest, evolved to Race Capital through Greylock Partners, Chris shared his thoughts on where the industry is going, and shared some cool investments he’s led such as Databricks, Solana, Vectara, PlayHT, as well as others. Chris also shared some context on Race Capital’s new Accelerator Topline (a really intriguing program that I encourage seed-stage Enterprise focused founders to consider applying to) spearheaded by his business partner, Edith Yeung.?

Continuing along the early stage path of high-conviction and first-cheque investing, Omar El-Ayat shared his daring story of defying the odds in different stages of his career, from stories of cool deals he led in the past such as the investment in Postmates to discussing how he co-founded Euclid Ventures and their thesis around verticalized software.

Omar left the group with a few intriguing thoughts to consider –and I, Hussam, am paraphrasing here– the potentially overrated idea that repeat founders having higher likelihood of success; as well as the importance of speed for high-conviction investors and how "Time kills all deals".

What does it look like to work with and back later stage deals?

Our meeting with Golden Gate Capital 's Roman Burgess took our discussion about venture and private equity deals to later stages of the venture and private funding cycles.?

We discussed various important aspects, from starting a career in investment banking, to hustling one’s way to grow in such a competitive industry; the grit it takes; the consistency of effort required as well as the persistence to succeed. Other important concepts he came across through his career such as important concepts around value creation for portfolio companies as well as 'scarcity value.'

We discussed typical deals they (Golden Gate Capital) see and make, the traits they look for in a founder / operator / management team they back.

Roman emphasized the importance of building your network to succeed in the space, whether for facilitating classic investment banking deals or should you decide to build a career in the private/growth equity space. More specifically the importance of "originating" deals.?

The Tech Giant Adobe, and our rising Alumni across the Bay Area

Our Alumni continue to shine across the industry and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area as highlighted by Dean Susan Christoffersen last month. We extended the reunion of Rotmanites in the Bay Area through May. That started by meeting our very own Ross McKegney –and his co-hosts at Adobe Zack Ackerman and Ariel Sultan – as well our very own Ryan Barnett , Art Kulaga and John Ginther at 谷歌 . Our alumni event deepened our current students’ interests in the bay area and gave them the opportunity to learn more about Alumni experiences.

The Incredible Story of a True Tech Trailblazer, Michelle Zatlyn

An Absolute highlight of our trip and time in the San Francisco Bay Area, was the time we spent at Cloudflare with its President and Co-Founder, the true tech trailblazer, Michelle Zatlyn . Capturing our time at Cloudflare and the time we spent with Michelle learning about her story and learning from her model-humility is truly beyond anyone's ability to describe.

Drawing on Michelle's incredible experience as a very accomplished entrepreneur who took Cloudflare from ideation to the publicly listed company it became today, Michelle shared many invaluable learnings and anecdotes with the group. Some of these takeaways were around the importance for any professionals to constantly adapt to "Stay in the game", and how such situations of great learning come with great discomfort. To that end, one of the key statements Michelle made during the group discussion we had was that:

"The rate at which you learn is [one's] biggest asset… it is the best human power" Michelle Zatlyn

Toronto-Waterloo (March 2024)

Meeting high calibre leaders in the Toronto-Waterloo region and other parts of the world in the classroom at Rotman a few months ago (March 2024) was no less of an experience, especially when it came to the quality of the learnings that our students acquired from their discussions with different leaders; be it around the special resources and organizations that support our Startup Ecosystem –such as their conversation with Angela Larraguibel of Communitech , Sep Assadian of ventureLAB and Annie Long of DMZ – or around understanding the venture investment landscape through conversations with Venture Investors, such as Omar J. S. ( DASH Ventures ), Hamzah Nassif ( Real Ventures ), Sunil Sharma (Formerly Techstars ) and Laith Shukri ( RBCx ).

Journeys of Entrepreneurs, from founding to exit; to 'currently in the making'

The inspiring story of Luke Vigeant –and how important it is to persevere and how he relentlessly pushed his way through multiple failures and learnings until the story of Inkblot Therapy by GreenShield Health had a its special exit to GreenShield – as well as the story of Kareem Ayyad and his vision for Teammates.ai and Where The AI “Waves” Are Heading guided much of our founding stories and topics during our module at Rotman.

Many of our students described this practicum to be a life changing experience that gave many rich, new, unexpected –and in some cases, thought provoking and conflicting– perspectives on what it takes to build greatness and compete on the global scale.

Again, our goal was to cover a wide range of topics as well as meet with experts with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. This helped us cover a wide range of topics, issues and learnings to intrigue many of our students to potentially self qualify this experience of this course as a positive turning point in their career and as yet another unfair advantage and reason as to why Rotman is “where it changes”...

I’ll close by sharing some quotes from our course participants, and before I do so, I will take this opportunity to remind those of you out there who are interested in MBA or graduate business studies, and especially if you’re interested in Entrepreneurship, that such programs are additional reasons to why you should (if not “must”) choose Rotman. The promise is global, and the delivery is world-class.

Whether you’re working on advancing your career or on building a winning global business, 加拿大多伦多大学 - 罗特曼管理学院 can uniquely help you and provide you with the support and network you need to thrive.

Learn more about our programs here.

"This was the highlight of my time at Rotman! An incredibly inspiring and fun trip that I highly recommend to every student that has the chance to take it!" - Ashley Mann

“Exploring Silicon Valley through Rotman’s global practicum provided a great perspective on innovation and entrepreneurship, enriching my educational journey and inspiring future possibilities.” — Mohammad Ouhadi

“An enriching and inspiring experience to broaden your horizon and give practical insights into what entrepreneurial journey entails.” Hamza Malik

“The Silicon Valley global practicum is a must-do for anyone interested in tech and entrepreneurship. Hearing wisdom and stories from those on the ground facilitated by an experienced entrepreneur is an enriching practical exercise that empowers you to learn far away from the classroom." Hillary Webster, MBA

Before the Silicon Valley trip, I was leaning towards landing a job in a large corporation, as it seemed the next logical move after the MBA program. However, the engaging and insightful experiences I had during the trip opened my eyes to new possibilities. Working in a tech company or a startup better matches my personality and interests. That is what I'm pursuing next, even if it means waiting longer than securing a job at a traditional organization." - Rodrigo Azevedo

"I absolutely enjoyed every activity and meeting that we had as part of this practicum. It added a new perspective on how I can apply everything I have learned so far and what I plan to learn in my final year of the Rotman MBA program." - Natasha Kvitka

“If you are interested in entrepreneurship, this is a must take class.” Tony(yu) Feng, Rotman MBA

"This trip was really well organized. Students were engaged because the speakers/companies were interesting. This course helped me chart a new career path." - Priya Thakkar