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“The judges spent time with us, helping us to think about our business and just being good sounding boards and advisers. Barr says that taking part in the UPstart pitch competition was especially impactful. Barr, who had always known he wanted to be an entrepreneur, and his co-founder took home $30,000 at the Smith pitch competition in December 2020.īrüst products are now in more than 350 stores in Canada, and the company is looking to expand to the U.S. It was Shearer who encouraged Smith alumnus Joshua Barr, BCom’10, to participate in the UPstart Venture Challenge after he approached the CBV about his growing new venture, Brüst Beverage Company, which makes cold-brew coffee packed with protein. This year alone, he conducted more than 350 coaching sessions with students and alumni, frequently helping them connect with investment opportunities, advisers and mentors. No matter where they are at-whether they are in the process of raising their first dollar or have 10 ideas and don’t know where to start-we will support them.” In his role, Shearer works closely with entrepreneurs at all stages. “We support everyone, from ideation to startup, to emerging, growing and scaling. “What we do at Smith is educate, encourage and enable,” says JP Shearer, associate director at the CBV. The network, which this year offered virtual events due to the pandemic, currently has close to 4,000 members. QVN brings together Queen’s and Smith students, graduates and the wider business community for networking events and entrepreneurship-related talks in Toronto, Calgary and, most recently, Vancouver. That support has been further extended through the Queen’s Venture Network.
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In the last year, for example, more than $400,000 in competition funding and awards was disbursed throughout the Smith network, most of it thanks to philanthropic support from Smith alumni.
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“I wouldn’t be where I am right now if I hadn’t gone through Smith.” Launching enterprisesįrom pitch competitions to incubator programs, the CBV is part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem at Smith that helps students and alumni grow their business ventures. “A lot has happened over the last year,” she says. The funding (generously supported by donor CIBC) enabled her to hire an enterprise architect and take her business to the next level. Indie Tech got a leg up this past year when Stone won $15,000 from the Dare to Dream program, run through the Centre for Business Venturing (CBV) at Smith. Her company, Indie Tech, an enterprise gateway marketplace, helps financial institutions make better and more equitable decisions around hiring consultants, while managing, measuring and monitoring supplier risk. “I joined Smith to build a stronger foundation around a potential company,” says Stone. Stone, who worked in consulting with large banks for nearly a decade, knew exactly what she wanted: a program that would enable her to grow her idea for a business and help her get it off the ground. When Sophia Stone, MMIE’20, decided she was ready to build her own company, she started by enrolling in the Master of Management Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MMIE) program at Smith. How Smith is creating a culture of entrepreneurship and new venture success At broad spatial scales these analyses are largely congruent with each other and with areas of high diversity and endemism for species of terrestrial vertebrates.New business growth Leading the way for startups We illustrate this with analyses of geographical patterns of plant diversity from three different data types with differing degrees of geographical and ecological resolution. Here we review the current state of knowledge of geographical patterns of plant diversity around the world, compare this with our knowledge of vertebrate taxonomic groups, and reflect on next steps for better characterizing patterns of diversity in order to achieve effective conservation prioritization. SummaryĪreas of high diversity for vascular plants, both for numbers of species and of endemic species, are by now well established and in agreement across a variety of studies using a wide range of data from different sources. This will be of interest to botanical professionals and conservationists seeking to identify and conserve priority species-rich environments, including those working to progress international conservation targets, and to all those interested in the global distribution of biodiversity and its conservation. We present a review of global studies of plant diversity, including novel analyses from our own work, and highlight areas of the world that are consistently identified by multiple studies utilizing varied data sets as being particularly rich in plant species. Identifying regions of the world that are rich in plant species will enable conservation efforts to be more effectively targeted.