This time around we sit down with this unique consulting firm that helps organizations align user experience, content and technology across the core processes of knowledge management.

Join Yenza3's Anuj Rastogi, Shveta Malhan and Martin Byrne join StartWell's founder Qasim Virjee in this fun conversation that explores some of their own career history that lead to forming this consultancy, why people need to feel empowered within organizations and how important culture is to companies.

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Qasim Virjee 0:11

Zach once again for this 17th episode of the struggle podcast. I am circles founder and CEO Qasim Virjee. Sitting here in the studio is always well, not always I don't only sit in the studio, I go to other rooms at our campus on King Street in Toronto, regardless, but we are back in the studio this time with very interesting trio that call themselves Enza three. I'll let them explain what you guys do and introduce yourselves and your thing. Roll call.

Anuj Rastogi 0:44

So this is a new Jogi. I'm one of the three co founders of Ian's three.

Shveta Malhan 0:50

I'm Shweta. Mohan, part of Enza three.

Martin Byrne 0:53

And I'm Martin Bern, also part of the Enza three.

Qasim Virjee 0:57

Okay, so straight up. Obviously, the three is the three of you, is it No,

Anuj Rastogi 1:01

it's got the sort of many, many layers to this. So yeah,

Qasim Virjee 1:05

quadruple entendre

Anuj Rastogi 1:06

Yeah, totally quadruple entendre. So we we had already kind of settled on this name Enzo, which actually, Martin came across. It's a Zulu word of all things, to create something in such a way with a group of people that ensures buy in. So it's essentially the Sulu word for design thinking. And as we start to think about, you know, what we want to be when we grew up, three kind of just worked its way in because there's three of us. There's three different perspectives on looking at the problem of learning and knowledge management in organizations. And it just sounded funky. Yeah, three is a

Martin Byrne 1:42

magic number. Yeah, absolutely. De la

Qasim Virjee 1:45

for life. For life. Della Absolutely. Mandy Tong.

Martin Byrne 1:51

I saw them at the beer festival a few years ago. And I would you say the beer festival? Yeah, the beer festival de la Sol came to the beer festival in Toronto and played? Well, it was it was wonderful. It was wonderful to go back. And remember how great there was that period where there was like rappers going through this really, fellas? It's

Martin Byrne 2:06

a great time.

Martin Byrne 2:07

It was a great time. You know, it's funny, it

Qasim Virjee 2:09

happens almost every time and listeners, you know, regular listeners on our podcast will agree with me on this hopefully. Something about being in a studio makes people feel like it's a safe space, and you can open up. And we always get nostalgic every time that awesome old man.

Martin Byrne 2:30

Rapping the day. You don't know hip hop?

Qasim Virjee 2:33

Drake? Call yourself a hip hop artist mumble rap? Yes,

Anuj Rastogi 2:41

yeah. So that's the end of the three.

Qasim Virjee 2:45

How did you guys come together to form and we'll talk about the work that you do. But what's How did you meet? And how old is this firm?

Anuj Rastogi 2:53

We're almost a year and a half old at this point. Right? But with a lot more experience behind

Qasim Virjee 2:58

it, of course. So yeah, how did you come together?

Shveta Malhan 3:01

So we were fortunate to get together at clique clique has been instrumental in bringing us together, click out, right, we were part of clique learning solutions at clique. And we just happen to get assigned to a really cool project that was going on at clique. And that's where our adventure of working together as a team dream team started Dream Te

This live recording was made during the March instalment of AWENiteTO - a monthly event presented at main campus in downtown Toronto.

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Qasim Virjee 0:17

Welcome back to this the 16th episode of the start well podcast, I'm start was founder and CEO Qasim Virjee. And once again, I'll be bringing some interesting voices to the mic. The recording which you're about to listen to was captured last night live as part of our new realities programming channel, through 2019, you'll be able to come to start well as well as tune in to our various media channels online to hear voices from augmented reality, virtual reality, and whatever else the kids are calling it. Anything that essentially is questioning using technology to question kind of our understanding of subjective and objective realities. In partnership with organizations like augmented world expo and the AWB night to chapter, which this event was held in partnership with last night, and the Canadian film Center's Media Lab, the series that we're calling new realities that start well, will bring together all sorts of people from C suite executives at corporations that are developing technologies and placing them in consumers hands to technologists, hackers, futurists, innovators that are creating innovations that startups are using to investors in this space who have a lens on what the commercial viability of this sector is to all sorts of other people. Last night's interactive panel on the topic of augmented reality in retail was moderated by Amanda Cosco, the founder of electric runway and features Charles burn the CEO of patio interactive, Farina contractor, the head of Walmart's innovation community and Matt McPherson who is the CEO of quantum capture. As always, we invite you to come back to start well, Ko to find out more information about our community how you can join us as a member on campus on King Street West in Toronto, or virtually. So head over to start with CO slash programming to find out what events are happening. And you can also go to start well.co/communitytoreviewmediathatwascapturedatourvariouseventsandanevenliveinstudiowhen We've done recordings in person with people. Alright, I'll leave you to the conversation and welcome any feedback you could drop me an email as always, to Qasim that's QA si M at start well.com Hi, everybody,

Amanda Cosco 2:44

and welcome. My name is Amanda Kasco. From electric runway, I am a journalist and entrepreneur focused on the intersection of fashion and technology. And I created a little bingo game for our panel tonight. So on your seats, or if you were lucky enough to receive a bingo card from me when you walked in. Those are kind of the AR and retail buzzwords. And so if you hear us say one of those buzzwords use something to mark the word. And the first person to get a line is going to get a prize. And then the next person to get I think a box around the outside will get a prize. So for prizes tonight, I have two wearable tech items. So this is just to keep everything, you know, spicy and interesting.

Fareena Contractor 3:32

Why is Walmart a buzzword?

Amanda Cosco 3:35

Because you're gonna say it because we know you're gonna say it done. So before I get my panelists here to introduce themselves, I'll just say, you know, we've seen augmented reality being used in fun and games and in filters for popular apps like Snapchat and Instagram. But what is its role in retail? That's what we're here to talk about t

In this conversation we sit down with Scott Nihill, the co-founder of Embreate - an interdisciplinary agency focused on creating and producing original, interactive, story-based experiences that is resident at StartWell.

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Qasim Virjee 0:20

All right back once again for this time, the 15th episode of the struggle Podcast. I'm Qasim Virjee, the CEO, and founder of start well, and this time around, I'm in the studio on King Street West in Toronto with Scott from Embrey. Eight. There was another, another person in the studio a second ago. But unfortunately, Alison, your partner? All right, yeah, two partners in the company had a cold. So she'll be joining us for another session of the podcast. Unfortunately, it's just Scott and myself. So that might make it more boring. I don't know. We'll see. We're talking about their company embryo and a couple other things to do with Toronto's animation. Illustration kind of creative scene, we'll see where this conversation takes us. And with that, I welcome you to the studio. Thank you very much good to be here. Or do you want to just introduce to our listeners introduce who you are, and then we'll jump into the company a little bit? Sure.

Scott Nihill 1:15

Yep. My name is Scott. I run a company called Ember eight been working in the I guess, the industry, sort of gaming, interactive animation, music, video, that sort of thing for about 15 years.

Qasim Virjee 1:29

15 years. So this goes back to like, when, you know, the media Wild West a little bit the days of flash? Yeah, Macro media.

Scott Nihill 1:36

Yeah, I can remember a time when the first studio that I worked at was a place called Big casters. It's not around anymore. But that was at a time when the you know, maybe down Richmond street, there was a handful of companies doing websites, right. Not doing fancy flash websites at the time. Oh, yeah. But the, you know, this whole kind of maker scene, and the startup scene, which just didn't exist whatsoever at that point.

Qasim Virjee 2:04

Yeah, absolutely. Better force. No, I remember. I mean, I remember the early days of kind of the media scene, it was all intermingled. Right? interactive design was this thing people were thinking about for digital interfaces with fresh kind of eyes. And it was conversational from Yeah, all elements from web to animation to it's interesting to content creation in linear kind of narrative format, as well. And those, yeah, it was a very creative time in Toronto. I think we're also the city felt like it was coming out of whatever it had been always but this kind of like sleepy Anglo malaise. For me anyway, when I moved here in 2005, from New York, so I felt like I was coming into this kind of like, too large to be as provincial as it felt city. And I knew interesting things were going to start to that was one of my motivators for

Scott Nihill 2:54

coming here. So that's where you were from was New York, or That's

Qasim Virjee 2:57

right. I was recently from like, I spent a year in New York before coming here. And then before that, all over the place. So I guess, Montreal, for university and before that, I was in Nairobi, Kenya for like six years, and doing my own levels, a levels like school, and originally before that as an Albertan. Okay, so yeah, I don't know if I've ever said it on the mic. But yeah, I was born in Edmonton.

Scott Nihill 3:22

Alright, you're coming out? Yeah, I remember a couple years ago, I went to New York for a few months and came back and was amazed at how much of a sort of a cottage town Toronto felt like compared to the size of, you know, in the experience of a city like New York, but living here, it feels like there's a lot happening, and there's a lot going on, but it is it is still a city that where I think there's a lot of room to grow.

Qasim Virjee 3:

Our whole community at Main Campus has been in love with their personalized tea since we first partnered with teaBot to bring their machines to our cafe and bar.  Based at StartWell, teaBot is a startup that has been through acceleration programs including Y Combinator and Creative Destruction Lab and weathered their first 5 years in existence to now have over 100 machines placed globally.

In this conversation we sit down with Noor (Operations Manager) and Rehman (Co-founder, CEO) to discuss how a couple of engineers from Waterloo set out to solve an efficiency problem for a family business and ended up founded a company that now makes the world's best self-serve robots to brew custom teas on demand.

*More info @ https://teabot.com/

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Qasim Virjee 0:25

All right, welcome back to this, the 14th episode of The Star podcast. For everyone listening who is well familiar with us. Hello, welcome back. It's nice to have you again. And for everyone who's checking this out for the first time, there are 13 More episodes to listen back to everything's available from our website at circle.co/communityandofcoursetherearesyndicationpartnersincludingtheonethateveryoneusesitunessoyoucangotoitunestypeitinonyourcomputermachineoryourphoneorwhateveryouusetoconnecttotheinternetanddownloadthisstartwellpodcast. You'll love it. This time around, I am back in the studio at King Street in downtown Toronto, with a couple of fine guests who are our partners and members and residents on the third floor of this campus, our main campus in downtown Toronto. We're joined in the studio here with Romana and Nora, from T bot. Alright, how are you? Hello. I'm great. So guys, why don't we just start by introducing to our listeners what a T bot is? Or who Yeah, let's start there. What is a T bot?

Rehman Merali 1:35

What is a T bot T bot is a robot that makes t so we have these large T bot machines in malls, airports, a lot of schools, universities, colleges, and the customer walks up, there's a beautiful touchscreen interface, they create their own blend of tea, they can adjust the water temperature, the strength of the different ingredients. And even the strength of the tea itself. And in a retail environment like that they just swipe their credit card or tap or whatever you choose. And then it makes you a really nice cup of tea a couple of loose leaf tea.

Qasim Virjee 2:10

And do you think that that explanation was necessary for most of our listeners for some of our listeners? How, how known is tea bought? Would you say?

Rehman Merali 2:19

I don't know. I mean, to me, it still feels like a startup. But we have been at this since 2014. So it's been a few years. And it's it's always nice that you know, I go into my pitch mode and I start telling the story. Oh, yeah, I saw one of those. And so as I'm starting to finally get people be like, Oh, of course I know what that is. So that's really nice. So filling,

Qasim Virjee 2:35

right it is this one recognizes the brand, or at least the brand is tied to the product. Yes, absolutely.

Qasim Virjee 2:42

So tell me a little bit I know this is now five years, five years on did I get that math right? Feels like the end of the day. It's not the end of the day listeners is three o'clock. For all you hustlers out there you Gary Vaynerchuk fans, it's just morning. But yeah, so tell me a little bit about the early years. How did you get started?

Rehman Merali 3:03

Yeah, absolutely. So I did an undergrad at the University of Waterloo and mechatronics engineering, which is basically a robotics degree. When I was doing my PhD in robotics, as well, at the University of Toronto, and my friend Brian, he's an old high school buddy also did engineering, but at McMaster University. And

Our whole community at Main Campus has been in love with their personalized tea since we first partnered with teaBot to bring their machines to our cafe and bar.  Based at StartWell, teaBot is a startup that has been through acceleration programs including Y Combinator and Creative Destruction Lab and weathered their first 5 years in existence to now have over 100 machines placed globally.

In this conversation we sit down with Noor (Operations Manager) and Rehman (Co-founder, CEO) to discuss how a couple of engineers from Waterloo set out to solve an efficiency problem for a family business and ended up founded a company that now makes the world’s best self-serve robots to brew custom teas on demand.

*More info @ https://teabot.com/

In this episode we sit down with Addo, one of the co-founders of Source - a new venture based at StartWell who are using Blockchain technologies for their interoperable data platform that lets developers create innovative ways to distribute access to information.

One of the example use cases for their platform we discuss here briefly - being able to sync data between disparate MS Word files using what Source calls 'Cards' that act like a central repository of information which can exist as a living chunk of data in multiple documents.

[expand title="Podcast Transcript"]

Qasim Virjee 0:07

All right back once again for another installment of the several podcast. This struggles founder and CEO Qasim Virjee coming at you live and direct. Probably you're probably listening to this on demand. So sorry, live to do live in the moment. And yeah, this is the first time maybe you're hearing this. So in a way, it's live. I'm alive. This is not artificial intelligence at work. But yeah, basically coming to you from start well on King Street West in Toronto, Canada, a hub, global hub city have all sorts of cool innovation. Yeah. Got some gesticulation going on in the studio. I'm joined today by Otto, who is the founder, I guess, CEO of a company called Source, co founder, co founder. So who's missing from the room today? who's not here?

Addo Smajic 0:57

There's four of us. So me, Alex, Dave, and John.

Qasim Virjee 1:02

So this is really interesting. I like this, because very rarely do we come across these teams as a sort of assumed hierarchy corporate hierarchy out of their, like 80s IBM days, or something that people assume startups should subscribe to, which is founder or co founder. And then everyone else, you know, might get a C suite title until you actually have employees, but they don't have a vested interest in the success of the company, because there's some hierarchy. So are you all equal partners in the company?

Addo Smajic 1:28

I mean, equity splits, you know, differently right now. Like, I mean, that's private to us, for sure, like the way we had to split. But essentially, for us, it was important from the get go to kind of, as you said, the way we viewed things just to have kind of like the heads of different key departments, or, you know, verticals, for the for the company, for the startup and have everyone have a vested interest and feel like they're, you know, owning that part of the company in that part of the business. So they can ensure the growth in the future and kind of be vested in.

Qasim Virjee 2:03

And so I guess, it's must be a very interesting story about how we're like, let's first talk about what source is doing. Like, at the moment, what is source? Yep. And then let's dig back into the a little bit of the backstory around how you guys came together and what the journey so far has been. Is that cool?

Addo Smajic 2:21

Yeah, sure. Ah, so, I mean, we kind of we started with one idea, which was, as freelancers and people, you know, we worked with, we had dev shops, we have freelancers, we worked with different people across different verticals, different industries, different sizes of companies, but from, you know, other freelancers to large enterprises. And the thing that always you know, there was always friction points around different productivity applications that everyone would use. And so we thought, what if we could make it that different people could work in different applications, and we could collaborate without having to, you know, if one person isn't, you know, Word, you know, save it as Word file, and then I'm using Google Docs, I have to open it as Google Docs, right? What if there w

In this episode we sit down with Addo, one of the co-founders of Source – a new venture based at StartWell who are using Blockchain technologies for their interoperable data platform that lets developers create innovative ways to distribute access to information.

One of the example use cases for their platform we discuss here briefly – being able to sync data between disparate MS Word files using what Source calls ‘Cards’ that act like a central repository of information which can exist as a living chunk of data in multiple documents.

We recommend staying in touch with these guys by subscribing to their newsletter via https://sourceapp.io/ for interesting updates regularly plus news on upcoming platform and app releases.

In this episode, our CEO sits down with Marianne Bulger (People and Platform at Golden Ventures - a tech focused, industry-agnostic seed stage venture capital fund based in Toronto that invests across North America.) The conversation touches on our local VC landscape, the rapid growth we are experiencing in Toronto's tech sector, diversity and wait for it.... Burning Man!

Golden Ventures - https://golden.ventures

Prospect.FYI - https://www.prospect.fyi/

[expand title="Podcast Transcript"]

Qasim Virjee 0:49

All right, welcome back to another installment of the start well Podcast. I'm Qasim Virjee, the founder and CEO of start well, which is a company that essentially brings people together to create magic it technology and related fields here in Toronto, Canada. This is the 12th episode. If you're a avid listener of our podcast, you'll have heard from Kareem Haji in the last episode, if you're new to us, please do check that one out. He's a lecturer at Oxford University that does really cool stuff with impact investing, and I highly recommend listening to that episode. Today I'm in studio on King Street with Marianne Belcher. And I pronounced your name correctly. Yeah,

Marianne Bulger 1:34

yeah, you did. It's like the criminal. Whitey Whitey vulture. I think he actually just met his peril in prison.

Qasim Virjee 1:42

Did he become a criminal because of his first name or his last name?

Marianne Bulger 1:46

Hmm. I think he became a criminal because he was. Well, I actually don't know the answer to that. Who wants

Qasim Virjee 1:53

to be called YT? Can you imagine?

Marianne Bulger 1:56

I will. It was William Bolger. And that was actually my grandfather's name. So he ran into quite a bit of trouble at the border of

Qasim Virjee 2:02

getting confused with the criminal and they said, Hey, Whitey, he's like, I'm not white. And then it just got very confusing.

Marianne Bulger 2:10

Yeah, perhaps.

Qasim Virjee 2:11

So if I have this correct, Maryanne, I you lead people and culture at Golden ventures, people in platform actually people in platform. Yeah. And why don't we just jump into it? What does that entail? And who is gold ventures?

Marianne Bulger 2:27

So golden ventures, I'll start there. It's a seed stage venture capital fund based here in Toronto, but investing across North America. We're currently in our third fund. We're sector agnostic, which is fun, because it means we can invest across the board in any industry. As long as the company is leveraging technology. It also allows us to divorce ourselves from being experts of everything, and allowing founders to really step up and say, This is why I want to build this. This is why I want to change the world. And I'm the one to do it.

Qasim Virjee 3:02

Yeah, no, this, it must be thrilling to have the freedom to be able to work with brilliant people doing awesome stuff, and passion, without the limitations of focusing on like mobile apps

Marianne Bulger 3:15

or whatever. Well, that's where golden ventures got its start, okay? Matt Goldin has a lot of wealth or a wealth of knowledge and a lot of experience in the mobile sector. And the same with one of our other partners, Amit Shah, they both came from that industry. And they both realized very quickly that their expertise in mobile was not as important as the expertise of any founder that they were investing in. And it opened up the doors in our second fund. And now in our third fund for us to invest in everything from quantum computing, to aerospace to temporary tattoos to marketplaces for restaurants and chefs, it seems endless. The possibilities, and it makes every partner meeting each week. Quite fun.

Qasim Virjee 4:05

So the team comprises of you mentioned that too early, I guess. Are they both co founders or

Marianne Bulger 4:12

no, so Max, the founder of the fun

In this episode, our CEO sits down with Marianne Bulger (People and Platform at Golden Ventures – a tech focused, industry-agnostic seed stage venture capital fund based in Toronto that invests across North America.) The conversation touches on our local VC landscape, the rapid growth we are experiencing in Toronto’s tech sector, diversity and wait for it…. Burning Man!

Links:

Golden Ventures – https://golden.ventures

Prospect.FYI – https://www.prospect.fyi/

Karim Harji brings over a decade of international experience in impact measurement and impact investing. He is a Senior Fellow with the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation; Programme Director of the Oxford Impact Measurement Programme at the Said Business School, University of Oxford; and Managing Director at Evalysis, an impact measurement and management consultancy. He is an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Associate at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation at Carleton University.

Karim was previously a co-founder and Director at Purpose Capital, where he established and led its Impact Investment Advisory practice. He was the Co-Chair of the Impact Measurement Task Force convened by the Government of Ontario, the Canadian representative on the Impact Measurement Working Group of the G8 Social Impact Investment Task Force, and an Advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation on social impact measurement. He co-authored the strategic assessment of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Impact Investing Initiative, and the global market review, “Accelerating Impact: Achievements, Challenges and What’s Next in Building the Impact Investing Industry”.

Recommended Resources:

https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/programmes/oxford-impact-measurement-programme

https://www.innoweave.ca/

https://www.evaluatingimpactinvesting.org/

https://ventureforgood.org/

[expand title="Podcast Transcript"]

Qasim Virjee 0:04

Okay back once again for another installment of start wills conversation series this time over on camera. We're also on the mic. This will probably get find its way onto iTunes and through our syndicated audio partners for our podcast, the stairwell podcast as well as onto Facebook. Not live this time. We're doing a live session this afternoon. But we'll try and get this up soon. I'm Qasim start with CEO. For this session, I'm in the studio at our King Street main location, we call it main campus in downtown Toronto on King Street West in the studio, this time around with Kareem Hiji, friend of mine, who is an impact investor. And I'm really excited to hear more about what defines impact investing. What are the metrics for success for investments, all the stuff that you've been working on, as well as learn more about your I guess you as an educator, we haven't caught up yet too much on the new course that you're teaching at Oxford University. So let's just jump into it right away. And tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah.

Karim Harji 1:11

Well, it's great to be here and welcome, everyone. As you know, I've been part of the storewall community now for I guess a year. Yeah.

Qasim Virjee 1:19

Yeah. Last year. Yeah. Last startup. That's honest trajectory to an IPO. Yeah. Well, working well, maybe. Well, it's

Karim Harji 1:27

getting there. So, by way of background, like, you know, from Kenya, from Mombasa,

Qasim Virjee 1:35

Mombasa, for our listeners is,

Karim Harji 1:37

yeah, Mombasa is an awesome piece of, of coastline. Along the east African coast. Yeah, essentially 30 degrees all year round. Yes, not a bad place to grow classically. Yeah, and, you know, moved here for school. And so have been over the last, I guess, you know, 15 years