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Venture for Canada Founder Scott Stirrett to Step Down as CEO in Fall 2025 After more than a decade of leadership, Venture for Canada Founder and CEO Scott Stirrett will step down in Fall 2025. Since launching VFC at just 22 years old, Scott has helped shape a national movement supporting over 10,000 young Canadians in developing entrepreneurial skills. His departure marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the organization as it continues to expand access to entrepreneurship and build on his enduring legacy.
The Fellowship
2025 Employer Advisory Council: Driving Innovation in Canada’s Startup Ecosystem Meet Venture for Canada's 2025 Employer Advisory Council—a diverse group of leaders from across Canada, offering insights from startups, small businesses, and various industries to shape the growth and evolution of VFC's programs.
VFC News
Venture for Canada Launches New Pathway to Business Ownership with ETA Academy Venture for Canada launches a new program to help aspiring entrepreneurs explore business acquisitions. The 5-week course runs from March 22 to April 27, 2025. Applications are now open.
VFC News
A New Wave Podcast
“There could be more than one truth. Everyone has a different perspective.”
Meltem Kilicaslan
Conflict Resolution as a Superpower, Building Compassionate Communication, and Creating Workplace Harmony
S11 Episode 15
[00:03:00]
Listen
Conflict Resolution as a Superpower, Building Compassionate Communication, and Creating Workplace Harmony
With Meltem Kilicaslan
With Meltem Kilicaslan
Challenging Startup Myths, Finding Product-Market Fit, and Enjoying the Journey 
With Dave Sinkinson
With Dave Sinkinson
Raising Money Before Traction, Building Investor Trust, and Leveraging Partnerships 
With Mehrsa Raeiszadeh
With Mehrsa Raeiszadeh
Recent
Mohammed Ghalayini: You Have Time to Course Correct 
With Mohammed Ghalayini
With Mohammed Ghalayini
The Life-Long Learner The Life-Long Learner is an enthusiastic, open-minded individual that loves looking for opportunities to try new things. They love to read a good self-help book (or listen to an informative podcast if reading’s not their thing) because they’re information absorbers.
The Fellowship
The Connector The Connector is a social butterfly through their involvement in student councils, loves attending provincial/national level case competitions, supporter/member of the LGBTQ+ community, or through their social media presence. Connectors are active media users from posting regularly on social media, to always responding to your Instagram stories, and many have a large following themselves.
The Fellowship
The Innovator The Innovator is someone with an eclectic personality who is very adventurous and seeks a thrill. They are known for being very passionate about operational efficiency and their creative solutions to problems through thinking outside the box.
The Fellowship
The Leader The Leader always seeks to bring people together through vulnerability and humour. They’re typically not the ones to suggest an outing (but they will convince everyone else to join). They always look for ways to bring people together and find happiness and inspiration from uplifting others and watching them succeed.
The Fellowship
What Makes a High-Performing Team In the startup industry, people tend to believe if you throw a group of people together and give them a task to complete, they’ll figure out how to get it done with minimal effort. This isn’t the case. A guest article by our friends at Unicorn Labs.
HR Employer Resources
How to build dynamic and equitable ecosystems by leveraging data, creating stronger value propositions, and leaning into collective impact In April 2022, Venture for Canada attended the Canadian Accelerator + Incubator Network (CAIN) Summit. We've summarized our takeaways and resources using the L.O.V.E framework.
Leadership
Markus Frind - Continual Improvement 
With Markus Frind
With Markus Frind
Onboarding Series Part 3: The First Month, A Success For All In part 1 of this three-part series, we cover the importance of intentional onboarding progress; in part 2, we explain the pre-boarding phase and how focusing on the gap between offer and start date makes a huge difference for your team and managers. Here, we cover tips for success for your new hires in the first week and the first month to ramp up and provide within the first 30-days.
HR Employer Resources
Onboarding Series Part 2: Pre-Boarding, Building a Strong Foundation Part 1 of this series introduces the importance of why the onboarding process should be intentional. In Part 2, we introduce the "pre-boarding phase." We've developed a few resources you can access in our open-source drive to serve as the building blocks of your onboarding process.
HR Employer Resources
Onboarding Series Part 1: Why It Matters, A Master-Checklist Resource We should all care about onboarding. Leverage our research, best practices, tips and tools to avoid common mistakes young organizations make when they design and roll out their onboarding process.
HR Employer Resources
Applying Design Thinking Frameworks to Program Co-Creation An Update on the Design Phase of VFC’s Reskilling Retail Workers Project. You'll learn more about how we've created an innovative model design process that involves a consortium of cross-sector leaders, inclusive design, extensive literature reviews, and data validation.
Leadership
Recent VFC News
Venture for Canada Launches Fellowship Academy: A 60-Hour Shortcut into Canada’s Startup World
September 18, 2025
Venture for Canada Announces Recipients of the 2025 RBC Inclusive Entrepreneurship Award
September 18, 2025
ETA Academy Opens Waitlists for Three New Business-Buying Programs
September 18, 2025
Venture for Canada Announces the 2024 TD Clean Prosperity Award Winners
September 18, 2025
Morgan Tate is the founder of Breakwater M&A, an M&A Advisory specializing in the sale of profitable...
Jessica Lee is an experienced Learning Design Manager, curating learning experiences for new...
Touhami Abi is a learning design expert who specializes in creating transformative educational...
Jada Charles is a qualitative researcher and sociologist dedicated to conducting research and...
Kaileigh Klein is a creative and analytical person who mixes her passions for both the creative side and...
Rebecca Scott is a creative person who believes in leading with kindness. At VFC, you’ll find her using...
Sarah Mariani Sarah is an emerging voice in inclusive innovation, previously leading digital...
Jonathan Hutchinson Jonathan brings experience in IT project management, particularly for non-profits, and a...
Johanna Lao is a 2022 VFC Intern and BCom student at McGill University majoring in Sustainable...
Claudia Hepburn
Irfhan Rawji
Ownr By simplifying and automating business formation and everyday legal work, Ownr helps...