This YouTube walking-tour (narrated by Ray Walia) introduces Launch Academy, a 12,000 square-foot nonprofit tech hub in Vancouver that supports early-stage technology companies. Walia outlines Launch Academy’s three pillars—Academy (education and the Lean Entrepreneur Acceleration Program), Launchpad (the shared physical workspace), and Community (events, mentorship, and outreach)—and describes on-site resources: hot desking, Venture Alley (in-house venture funds such as Victory Square Ventures, Stanley Park Ventures, Highline Ventures, and BDC Capital), Lighthouse Labs (an in-house coding bootcamp occupying roughly one third of the space), events like Traction Comp (Vancouver and San Francisco), private/team rooms, quiet room, showers, bike room, kitchen/event spaces, boardroom and a Discovery Room/classroom.
Questions this video answers
12,000 square foot facility.
July 3, 2016.
Lighthouse Labs; it has taken up almost a third of the space.
Victory Square Ventures; Stanley Park Ventures; Highline Ventures; BDC Capital.
Chapters
Welcome to Launch Academy. Launch Academy is Vancouver's primary tech hub for early stage technology companies. We are a nonprofit that houses a number of different entities that are here designed to help entrepreneurs through that journey. Launch Academy is a non profit that runs the entire 12,000 square foot facility under one roof. We have everything that an entrepreneur would need to go from an idea all the way to an exit. During that journey, the entrepreneur goes through numerous scenarios of customer validation, product market fit, scaling and growing their business and more importantly, raising funds and building awareness of their business. And all the entities here help you through that journey. The main floor is where entrepreneurs come in on a daily basis and we call this hot Desking where entrepreneurs can sit down wherever they like, crash on the couch, jump in the kitchen, jump on any desk that's available, and sit side by side with new people on a regular basis. Over here is what I like to call Venture Alley. These are all the different venture funds that are in house at Launch Academy. First we start off with Victory Square Ventures fund that focuses primarily on sports and entertainment startups. In the tech space we have Stanley Park Ventures, a different take on the venture fund model. They're more of a foundry group as well as Highline Ventures and BDC Capital. Launch Academy is comprised of three pillars, the first pillar being the Academy. Under the Academy, we help entrepreneurs learn how to build sustainable, viable tech businesses in a lean way. We've developed our own in house curriculum called the Lean Entrepreneur Acceleration Program where we help entrepreneurs prove customer validation. Prove that there is a customer base out there that wants your product before you actually commit to building a product. Don't quit your day job until you know there's an opportunity that's really sustainable. Our second pillar is our Launchpad, the physical environment where entrepreneurs come in to build their ideas. This is an environment where entrepreneurs sit side by side with fellow entrepreneurs that are faced with the same challenges and problems as they are. We really focus on mentorship guidance, leveraging each other's networks and leveraging each other's experiences, good and bad, to learn how to properly build tech companies in today's day and age. Under the Academy, we are also fortunate enough to have an in house coding bootcamp. Lighthouse Labs started off as a startup within Launch Academy and now has grown to be one of Canada's top boot camps for coding curriculum. They have taken up almost a third of our space here and have a regular cohort of education going through on a monthly basis. The third pillar of Launch Academy is our community. We focus on providing as many opportunities for our members in house to connect with mentors, advisors as well as resources outside of Vancouver. Now we want to open this up to as many people as possible, so we try to allow the community to come in and experience these opportunities. We do a number of events in house in our facility, but we also do large scale events in different locations primarily in Vancouver and San Francisco. The primary one being Traction Comp where we bring thought leaders and tech leaders from Silicon Valley to Vancouver to talk about traction customer growth, customer acquisition, customer monetization. We also have a private room for companies that are a bit further along and want their teams sitting together to start building their corporate culture and team cohesiveness. The space also features a number of different amenities such as a quiet room where people can sit and work in quiet without having any disturbance around them. We have a full service shower, a bike room and a full stock kitchen. We also feature a number of event spaces. Our kitchen doubles as an event space, our quiet room doubles as an event space. We have a full size boardroom, but we also have our Discovery Room which doubles as a classroom. Thank you for joining us on this tour of Launch Academy. If you'd like to learn more or you want to reach out and connect with us, check us out at launchacademy Cat It.
