The evolution of Waterloo's entrepreneurial ecosystem over the last decade is one of the University's most celebrated achievements.
During his time as President and Vice-Chancellor, Feridun Hamdullahpur has supported the expansion of six entrepreneurship programs on campus, including Waterloo and Stratford's Accelerator Centre, the Centre for Peace Advancement, St. Paul's University College Greenhouse, the Problem Lab and Waterloo's flagship entrepreneurship program Velocity, which launched its campus focused program Concept in 2019.
Today, Waterloo is recognized as home to entrepreneurship education in Canada and one of the nation's top universities for venture capital-backed enterprises. These results have produced a large share of Canada's tech founders, with 19 per cent having received undergraduate education at Waterloo and 474 University of Waterloo entrepreneurs having raised $12.9B (Pitchbook 2020).
> Adrien Côté
> Executive Director, Velocity
"The continued investment into Velocity and other entrepreneurship programs under President Hamdullahpur's leadership has helped pave the way to well over one billion dollars invested capital into Velocity companies alone since 2010," says Adrien Côté, executive director of Velocity. "This has been made possible by Feridun's ongoing support toward both early-stage and early-scale companies, launch micro-VC funds and enable multiple expansions of the incubator including its new home, the Innovation Arena, on Waterloo's Health Sciences Campus."
