Media Releases

University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab selects its newest cohort

December 3, 2013

TORONTO, ON - Build­ing on a suc­cess­ful inau­gur­al year which result­ed in eight suc­cess­ful ven­tures cre­at­ing over $65 mil­lion in equi­ty val­ue, 15  new ven­tures have been accept­ed into the sec­ond cohort of the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.

Offer­ing its ven­tures access to unpar­al­leled men­tor­ship, the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab has accrued a team of expe­ri­enced entre­pre­neurs who have suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed, nur­tured and har­vest­ed val­ue from mas­sive­ly scal­able, tech­nol­o­gy-based busi­ness­es. Dubbed The Group of Sev­en Fel­lows, or G7, this fel­low­ship spans from coast to coast, unit­ing some of the most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs in the coun­try.

This year, the G7 team is host to nine suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs who met on Novem­ber 1 to select the ven­tures for the upcom­ing year. This year’s new mem­bers of the G7 include:

·         Ted Liv­ingstonCo-Founder and CEO of Kik. Backed by Foun­da­tion Cap­i­tal, RRE, Spark Cap­i­tal and Union Square Ven­tures, Kik has raised $29.1M to date — $19.5M of that in a Series B fund­ing round ear­li­er this year.

·         Jevon Mac­Don­ald – VP at Sales­force, which he joined through the $70M acqui­si­tion of his com­pa­ny GoIn­stant. Co-Founder of Star­tup­north.ca, insti­ga­tor of Star­tup­Camp Toron­to, the Founders and Fun­ders din­ner, Star­tu­pEm­pire.ca, and most recent­ly, Hal­i­fax-based incu­ba­tor, Vol­ta.

·         Dr. Geordie Rose – Founder and CTO of the British Colum­bia-based quan­tum com­put­ing com­pa­ny, D‑Wave. He has received sev­er­al awards for his work with D‑Wave, includ­ing the 2011 Cana­di­an Inno­va­tion Exchange Inno­va­tor of the Year.

·         John Fran­cis – Cur­rent Board mem­ber for the Hos­pi­tal for Sick Chil­dren and Founder and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Fras­er Kear­ney Cap­i­tal Corp. Most recent­ly, he was Pres­i­dent & CEO of Trad­er Media Cor­po­ra­tion.

A sec­ond impor­tant part of the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab is a new MBA course that places stu­dents in the real-world volatile busi­ness envi­ron­ment which the Lab’s ven­tures  expe­ri­ence. Twen­ty-four of the Rot­man School’s top MBA stu­dents are engaged in the course work­ing close­ly with the ven­tures to help them tack­le crit­i­cal busi­ness prob­lems.

The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab’s 2013/14 cohort boasts inno­va­tion spread across a range of indus­tries, includ­ing med­ical, law, con­struc­tion, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, retail and oth­ers.

“We are real­ly excit­ed about the sec­ond cohort of ven­tures that applied to the Lab this year,” says Jesse Rodgers, Direc­tor of the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab. “We had an increase in both the over­all qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of appli­ca­tions. It was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to select only 15 ven­tures to start in the pro­gram.”

Found­ing mem­bers of these com­pa­nies have stud­ied at numer­ous post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo, West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, MIT, York Uni­ver­si­ty, OCAD, Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph, Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty, Insti­tut Nation­al des Sci­ences Appliquées de Lyon, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, the Cana­di­an Insti­tute of Char­tered Accoun­tants and McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty.

About the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab

Found­ed in 2012 by Pro­fes­sor Ajay Agraw­al, Co-founder of The Next 36 and Peter Munk Pro­fes­sor of Entre­pre­neur­ship at the Rot­man School, the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab lever­ages Rotman’s lead­ing fac­ul­ty and indus­try net­work, inven­tions and tal­ent from world-class, tech­nol­o­gy-ori­ent­ed fac­ul­ties at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and oth­er Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ties, and its loca­tion in one of the world’s most cul­tur­al­ly diverse cities and North America’s largest finan­cial cen­tre, Toron­to. The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab takes no equi­ty and charges no fee for par­tic­i­pa­tion – the only tuition for founders to get into and stay in the pro­gram is per­for­mance.

In its first year, the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab pro­duced eight suc­cess­ful ven­tures, and gen­er­at­ed over $65M in equi­ty val­ue.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it www.creativedestructionlab.com.  For real-time updates, please vis­it Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab on Face­book, Twit­ter and sub­scribe to their blog.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube: www.youtube.com/rotmanschool