Brandon suffered from 2 autoimmune diseases from age 13-18, but he was not able to find any solution to cure his disease, and Michael lost many of his family members due to cancer during his teenage time; the unfortunate experience Brandon and Michael been through has motivated them to learn more in biology, and one-day creating useful solutions in biotech to save lives. In their second year of University, Michael and Brandon came together. They created BioDojo, now Nucleate Dojo, a community and training ground for the next-generation biotech innovators to connect, grow and build in BioTech together.

Branden is a 2x Founder (iAscend, Nucleate Dojo),  Analyst (Winning Together Fund) Consultant (Onova, ex-KPMG) and a Laidlaw Scholar (UofT)

Michael is a visiting research student at McGovern Institute, MIT, Cofounder of Nucleate Dojo, and Project lead on REMEDI repository (remedirepo.org)

Here's the topics that we've covered:

• What is BioTech?
• Cellular agriculture
• Unfortunate experiences in their teenage lives that lead them to BioTech
• How Michael met Brandon
• Starting of BioDojo
• Robotics & the power of cross-collaboration
• Future of BioTech & How will it change our lives
• Advice for Community Builders

Ghalia is the Founder of TalkMaze, 1-1 virtual public speaking & debate training for kids. Ghalia is the  EO GSEA National Champion 2021, YEG Student Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Board of Directors at Junior Achievement Northern Alberta. She's also a Cansbridge Fellow, and a 4x TEDx Speaker

Where is what we've discussed in our conversation:

• Growing up in an immigrant family
• Starting a tutoring business at 13 years old
• Power of Debate
• From a Shy Kid to starting a public speaking company
• Steps Ghalia took to start TalkMaze
• Thoughts on the future of communication

Leejoo Hwang, Co-founder @ MeaningulWork, an employee volunteer program management tool that bridge the corporate and nonprofit world in volunteerism. Leejoo is the BC 30 Under 30, and won the 1st place @ EO Vancouver GSEA in 2021

Unlike many others who graduate with the mandatory 40 hours of volunteer hours, Leejoo finished with 2000+ hours of volunteering by the end of high school. Through hours of volunteering, Leejoo developed his personal value of Curiosity, Adventure, and Passion. With the burning desire to share his passion for volunteering, he dropped out of University and co-founded MeaningfulWork to enable companies to start thinking about Corporate Social Responsibility by engaging organizations and their people in volunteerism.

Here's the topics that we've covered:

• “Pen Business” as a Kid
• Growing up & Relationship with Volunteering
• Building confidence through Dancing
• WHY Everyone should do Volunteering
• Dropping out of University
• Starting Story of MeaningfulWork
• Future outlook - Impact Investing

Shawn Pang, co-founder@matterverse, a cloud-rendered Metaverse platform trusted by many creators and top brands, backed by MiraclePlus(previously YC China) and LD Capital. He’s a graduate of the Ivey Business School at Western University. Before Matterverse, Shawn was a software engineer at ByeteDance, a Tech Consultant at EY, a venture fellow of Ripple ventures, and a member of the NEXT 36 Entrepreneur.

In our conversation today, we talked about:

• Shawn’s Previous Start-up experience & What he learned
• From a 3D home-interior visualization tool to entering the Metaverse
• Recruiting Talents
• How CPGs are adopting the Metaverse
• Future of shopping & commerce
• Pivot to Web3
• Integration of the Metaverse & Blockchain
• DAOs, NFT, and the Token Economy

Clair grew up on Vancouver Island, Claire was raised with a passion for the outdoors and all things sustainable. Composting was a daily practice of hers growing up and she is passionate about it. Claire completed her Commerce degree at MacEwan University while competing on the Women’s Varsity Volleyball team. Clair started Friendly Composting in 2020 to provide organic waste collection, local food delivery, compost soil distribution, education, and more. Since then, they have diverted 733 040 lbs of Food Waste and help Avoided 667 436 lbs of C02 EquivalentEmissions. Clair was also selected as the BC business 30 Under 30 in 2021 and won the Globe and Mail Change-maker Award in 2022.

Here’s what we’ve covered in our conversation:

• Growing up in a family of academics;
• Volleyball, and how it has influenced Claire’s mindset.;
• Finding co-founder through Volleyball, and “Drama”;
• Brainstorming Ideas;
• “WHY isn’t there composting in Kamloops?”;
• “If the city doesn’t care, why can’t we start collecting composts?”;
• 733 040 lbs of food-waste Diversion later, the future….

Eric is a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto, specializing in Computer Science and Economics. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Sanctuary sneakers, the leading sneaker price aggregator that has raised over $150,000 to build predictive analytics for future sneaker prices. Eric has one of the most uncommon stories in his early life. He grew up as a “Problem child” where he held a nihilistic view of the world. However, as he grew older, he had a mindset shift from “Things don’t matter, I’m not gonna do anything” to “Things don’t matter, I could do ANYTHING”. That has motivated him to start learning about programming, working in big tech, and starting his own company.

Here’s what we talked about during our chat:

• Dropping out of Elementary School.   
• Dropping out of Middle School.   
• Mind-set shift from “Things don’t matter, I’m not gonna do anything” to “Things don’t matter, I could do ANYTHING”.   
• Inspiration from saving the environment.   
• Starting Story of Sanctuary.   
• Story of meeting his co-founders at Sanctuary.   
• Power-lifting.   
• Future plans.   

Keer Liu is a computer science graduate from the University of Waterloo. During her time in College, she’s worked at some of the largest Tech firms such as Uber, Slack, Coinbase, and Apple. At one interesting encounter in a sandwich shop, she met a friend who later founded a start-up that was selected by YC W22. She soon joined the start-up as the Chief Marketing Officer. Within one year, Keer helped the start-up grow to 1 Million Users. She’s now the Head of Global Growth for a Series A+ start-up called API7.ai where they help engineers and teams manage traffic for APIs and micro-services. Keer also received early admission to the UC Berkeley MBA program during her senior year.

Our Topics Include:

• Upbringing & Coming to Canada
• Co-op experience @ Apple, Uber, Slack, Coinbase, Silicon Valley Start-ups.    
• Sandwich shop story: Joining as the CMO of a YC Start-up.    
• From Software Engineer to  Marketing Expert.    
• How she grew the start-up to 1 Million Users.    
• Challenges of running a start-up.    

Lianna Genovese is the CEO & founder of Imaginable solutions. She created an assistive device called Guided Hands at the age of 19 to help people with limited hand mobility to write, paint, draw and access tech through touch screens. Since the founding of the company, Lianna has won multiple awards including the 2021 Canadian National James Dyson Award, 2022 People's Choice Award at the Arthritis Society, and 2021 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. She also recently secured institutional investment from a group of US Impact Investors

In our conversation we talked about:

• How Lianna turned her school project into a real business
• How Lianna overcomes her fears and obstacles as a female solo-founder
• Routines & Habits that helped her to balance school and start-up 

Mohammed is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto, Mohammed and Frank started Sumer in 2020 to deliver groceries to residence students in 15 minutes. Since the launch of the start-up, Sumer had attracted more than 3000 users, partnered with 7 University residences, and accumulated more than 37 locations of partnerships with local grocery stores. Mohammed was also selected to be a member of an incubator program called Next36 where they select 36 of the most entrepreneurial undergrads in the entire nation of Canada. 

This is the very first and experimental episode of the Ideas Can't Wait podcast, in this episode we talked about the following topics:

• Why Frank Started the podcast; 
• Where is Frank going in his career; 
• Starting Story of Sumer; 
• Why & How Sumer Failed; 
• Learnings from doing Sumer; 
• How family impacted Mohammed as founders; 
• Start-up Mentalities; 
• Our biggest struggles as young start-up founders; 
• Future outlooks