During the program, you’ll hear from some of the most inspiring innovators and thinkers from the technology, investment, design and creative industries. Each week, there are tailored workshops, fireside chats and speaker sessions with subject matter experts that uncover new ideas and approaches for your business.
Look who’s stopped by JOLT in our photo gallery.
Steve: Brand Strategist; Design-thinker; Human Insights; Idea Architect Today's strongest brands are "belief-based;" offering us a "why they exist" more than just "what they offer." But that belief must transcend product, design and communications to be famously recognizable and differentiated. ________________________________________________________________________________ Paolo: Business Designer and Project Leader in IDEO's Chicago studio. Help companies innovate, grow and pursue new strategic directions by bringing new offers and ventures to market. Project leader for IDEO's start-up-in-residence program. Also serve as a mentor to start-ups participating in TechStars Chicago (formerly Excelerate Labs), an intensive summer accelerator.
Cheesan: Cheesan is a leader in customer experience innovation rooted in empathy-based discovery. Working to transform business systems, applications and how both customers and employees experience brands, clients look to her as a trusted advisor to support sustainable growth and translate big aspirations into tangible solutions. ________________________________________________________________________________ Michael: Michael is a devout believer in designing meaningful experiences. Starting with real world human connections and creative play, his focus is on integrating interaction designs from digital spaces with urban/architectural way-finding and environment design.
Canadian Entrepreneur. Founder of Clarity - Angel Investor (23 tech startups). Co-Founder of Flowtown (Acquired 11'), Founder of Spheric Technologies (Acquired 08'), Mentor @ 500Startup, GrowLabs & theC100.org
“Knowing that my efforts help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams gets me out of bed everyday” says Gaurav Jain as he reflects on his role at Founder Collective. As a first generation immigrant, Jain knows first hand what happens when a strong work ethic meets unbounded opportunity. “We were starry-eyed software engineers from the University of Waterloo with big aspirations but nothing more than a rudimentary product when an angel investor wrote us a check for $600,000. Since then the company has raised another $9 million. This would’ve never happened back home,” says Jain as he describes Polar Mobile, a company he co-founded out of his “dorm room” at the University of Waterloo. Polar now employs 50 people and has over 18 million users.
Jonathan joined Foundation Capital as a Partner in September 2013, nine months after joining the firm as an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR). He concentrates on identifying and investing in early-stage consumer, mobile, and small business-oriented startups and technologies. Jonathan has deep experience building fast-growing startups. From 2009 to 2011, he ran Marketing for Facebook where he led the company's consumer and brand marketing efforts. Prior to his career at Facebook, he was the executive vice president, online, at Indigo Books & Music, Canada’s largest book retailer, where he was responsible for building the online business to over $100 million, over-taking Amazon as the number #1 online specialty retailer in the country.
Allen Lau is a serial entrepreneur with a laser sharp focus on consumer Internet and mobile opportunities. Allen is currently CEO and co-founder of Toronto-based Wattpad, the world’s largest community for readers and writers to discover and share stories. Wattpad’s investors include Union Square Ventures, Golden Venture Partners and W Media Ventures. Prior to co-founding Wattpad, Allen was CEO and co-founder of FeedM8, a mobile advertising company that was acquired by Upstream Systems. Before FeedM8, Allen was CTO and co-founder of Tira Wireless. Founded in 2001, Tira raised over $30M in VC funding and was a leader in mobile content publishing and deployment.
Alistair has been an entrepreneur, author, and public speaker for nearly 20 years. He’s worked on a variety of topics, from web performance, to big data, to cloud computing, to startups, in that time. In 2001, he co-founded web performance startup Coradiant (acquired by BMC in 2011), and since that time has also launched Rednod, CloudOps, Bitcurrent, Year One Labs, the Bitnorth conference, the International Startup Festival and several other early-stage companies.
Paul has mastered the art of the hustle and has the extraordinary ability to extract a business model from a rock. Also from startups. Prior to 500, he was the founder of a handful of his own startups and spent some time at PBworks, AOL and Symantec. As a 500 Startups Mentor, Paul guides our companies with Analytics, Customer Acquisition, Customer Analytics, Engineering, Infrastructure, Operations, and SMBs expertise
Michael has spent most of the last 10 years devoted to driving growth in businesses dedicated to innovation in financial services. Prior to co-founding CommunityLend, Michael was the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at epost (www.epost.ca), a world leader in the electronic bill presentment and payment industry. Michael was responsible for leading the team that built the epost customer network which grew to include every major Canadian financial institution, over 100 of Canada's largest companies and over 3 million online users.
Sandee Kastrul is the president and co-founder of i.c.stars; Founded in 1999 i.c.stars provides opportunities to break the cycle of poverty that limits inner-city youth. Through training in technology, in leadership and in business skills i.c.stars prepares change-driven, inner city future leaders to develop skills in business and technology for high-level careers in information technology (IT) and community leadership. As a speaker, Sandee is an engaging and inspiring storyteller drawing the connections between creativity, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. As the founder of a non-profit and social enterprise Sandee discusses the powerful result of optimism and raising the standards for our communities with a unique perspective on Capitalism and Civil Rights. Sandee as well as i.c.stars was born in Chicago.
Croxon is one of the popular judges on CBC's hit show Dragons' Den and is the entrepreneurial co-founder of the revolutionary online dating website Lavalife.
James hates the challenges that small businesses experience while trying to meet their accounting requirements. He got that way by leading the accounting and tax development team at one of Canada’s most successful small business accounting firms, and spending a load of time working directly with small business owners on their accounting. His mission at Wave: to continue to develop revolutionary tools that make accounting headaches disappear.
Darren is currently a Senior Design Engineer at Mozilla, working with the Firefox UX team and the Developer Tools team. Previously, Darren worked with the awesome team at Polar, taught graphic design to the next generation at Humber College, hacked away with the ingenious folks at Wattpad, and got his start as a freelance consultant.
Eric Migicovsky is the founder and CEO of Pebble Technology, the company behind the Pebble watch, a smartwatch for iPhone and Android. While studying engineering at the University of Waterloo, Migicovsky began building smartwatches alongside a group of friends and created the first model, InPulse. In April 2012, Migicovsky and his team launched the second generation, Pebble, on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform, where it became the most successful crowdfunded project in Kickstarter’s history. He lives in Palo Alto, Calif., where he and the rest of the Pebblers are busy working on the first watch built for the 21st century.
Fascinated by the influence of digital innovation on identity, communication and behaviour on a global scale. Lover of poignant statements and damn, but intellectually more interested in the insight behind the words. Grammar and programming nerd, obsessed with the secret structure behind creative presentation.
At heart, Andrew is a problem solver: puzzles are really what excite him. In his own words: "I thrive on the journey of figuring out the appropriate and efficient way to see the pieces come together. Whether it's analyzing data, creating unique experience for a user-base, strategizing a succinct product or structuring accurate analytical tools, finding the most effective and completed unit is my end-game. Currently, on the Product team at Fueled, I have the opportunity to help transform the mobile and web intents of our clients into marketable, scalable and effective products. "