Having trained 200 graduates in three cohorts, SVA is ready to expand.
In 2023 York University Schulich School of Business launched a new certification program to upskill Canadian tech startups called Schulich Venture Academy (NVA).
While the business school has been supporting startups through Schulich Startups for years, SVA co-founder Cherry Rose Tan said many of its portfolio companies still struggle to access the mentorship and training they need to scale their businesses.
“A big part of what these founders were asking was, 'Hey, can we learn from somebody who's been there and done that?' — Tan told BetaKit in an interview.
“[SVA has] to truly become the skill development tool that we have been missing in the ecosystem for a long time.”
Finding a gap in the market, Tan and co-creator Chris Carder teamed up with Schulich Startups and the school's continuing education division to create SVA. Since then, SVA has served more than 200 founders and technology professionals across three sold-out course cohorts led by seasoned Canadian operators whose expertise spans startup and scale-up talent, operations, finance and venture capital.
SVA alumni tell BetaKit that they appreciated the practicality of the courses, the opportunity to learn from seasoned Canadian technology leaders, and the sense of community that Schulich cultivated around the program.
At an event in downtown Toronto last week, SVA alumni, faculty, organizers and partners gathered to celebrate the graduation of the third cohort. SVA leaders outlined the program's progress to date and shared a preview of its plans. The goal is to launch three new courses, three industry clusters (including artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cleantech), and double community support by 2029.
Earlier this year, SVA received more than C$3 million from the Government of Canada through FedDev Ontario to help make this happen. FedDev Ontario and SVA expect approximately 500 businesses and 1,000 individuals to benefit from this expansion.
SVA offers six-week courses with live virtual training based on the travel and knowledge of the instructors. Students gain credentials and complete key projects that they can take back to their organizations. Ontario members can access these programs for $500 each through FedDev Ontario, and SVA offers scholarships to residents outside of Ontario.
Tan said Schulich wants to lead when it comes to innovation and entrepreneurship, and noted that Schulich Startups, SVA and Schulich's technology ma continue this mission. She sees SVA as a way to provide large-scale education to people in the Schulich community and beyond.
Blade Air co-founder and CEO Edan Fida joined SVA's inaugural venture talent class because he realized he needed to grow to expand his business. “I will become the biggest bottleneck for the organization if I don’t take it to the next level,” he told BetaKit in an interview.
“One of the things I felt like I really had a knowledge gap in was managing people,” Fida said. He noted that this motivated him to take SVA's first Venture Talent course, taught by TouchBistro HR Director and former OMERS Ventures Head of Talent Jenny do Forno. “Jenny’s lessons changed my life,” Fida said.
He said the course had a “transformative impact” on how he manages employees and is committed to ensuring other Blade Air managers take other SVA courses.
Q2 VP of Services and former Sensibill COO Isabella Gabovich, who teaches SVA's venture capital course, said at the event that she wished something like SVA had existed earlier in her tech career, given the difficulty of building a tech startup.
“You're basically throwing parts of a plane off a cliff and trying to put it back together before it lands and hits the ground, and there's no tutorial for that—until [SVA]- said Gabovich.
“[SVA has] to truly become the upskilling tool that we’ve been missing in the ecosystem for a long time,” YSpace Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation David Kwok said in an interview with BetaKit. “They don’t teach you how to do this in school.”
SVA is currently recruiting for its fourth cohort, which starts in October and will include a new venture sales course led by Sellit9 co-founder and CEO Josh Gutman. Guttman has also held senior sales positions at Altrio, Lane and Top Hat.
“I think it could change the trajectory of my career, and I'm really excited to hopefully change the trajectory of other people's careers who are either emerging sales leaders at venture capital firms or founders who don't necessarily have the same experience, and help them just move faster,” Guttman told BetaKit.
Tan said figuring out how to translate the teachers' years of experience into a clear, hands-on course that students could take and come out with “wins” was a challenge that took SVA some time to resolve. But she now believes he has a repeatable model and a good idea of what works and what doesn't and can build on it.
She sees opportunities for SVA to grow with more courses covering more aspects of starting and scaling a tech company, and said SVA has a “bigger vision” for how it wants to support alumni through events and asynchronous community building.
“We are very grateful for all the support… and we are excited to see SVA grow in the next few years,” Tan said.
All images courtesy of Schulich Venture Academy. Photos by Epic11media.
