Celebrating Entrepreneurship at Waterloo
Join President Feridun Hamdullahpur on a tour of the University of Waterloo’s Velocity Garage, a key component 
 of Waterloo’s world-renowned entrepreneurial ecosystem, and share in the news of Velocity’s recent funding successes.
VeloCity Program is a student start-up-focused incubator here at the University of Waterloo.
We have a variety of programs all the way from VeloCity alpha 
where we help people with their ideas and really get 
 them started to VeloCity residence and VeloCity science
we can turn those ideas into teams and actually build prototypes 
to the VeloCity garage and soon the VeloCity foundry to be able to 
 actually give them space to work on their businesses full time. 
I started this company because I wanted to make design services more accessible. 
There’s a lot of homeowners out there who want to do 
 renovations but they can’t afford professional design services 
and so drafting space was really to make that more accessible.
I’m one of the co-founders of Vetica Interactive 
 and we’re the creators of Planboard 
an app designed for teachers anywhere in the world in kindergarten 
 to grade 12 to plan and manage their lessons. 
It’s extremely important to our teams to be able 
 to see that the presidents coming down
to be able to meet with them to be able to 
 interact and learn more about what they are doing.
I think really demonstrate the importance that entrepreneurship plays at the University of Waterloo.
It’s always very exciting to have the president come down 
and really be interested in some of the innovations coming 
 out of this space that he helped create.
It was great having the president here. 
It was great seeing how interested he was in everything that was happening and 
 I even got to teach him a little bit of code. 
I don’t think that I am going to be able to sleep tonight 
I will be replaying every conversation I had with you.
The University is very proud of you. 
When I look at the future we have so many challenges we have 
 so many opportunities and I’m so glad that you are here. 
You are the ones who will make these things happen.
As an entrepreneur every single day I get exposed 
 to something different and I love it.
One day I’ll be a sales person, one day I’ll be an engineer, the next 
 day I’ll be a customer and the day after that I’ll be teaching. 
So it’s a very very well rounded experience. You get 
 to wear many different hats so to speak. 
So today we were very excited to announce that our teams have now 
 cumulatively raised 100 million dollars in a variety of different funding sources
primarily venture capital as a really great you know 
 lagging indicator of the success of our program
I don’t think I would have had like the guts 
 to go out there on my own 
if it wasn’t for the support that Waterloo has provided me.
Thank you so much for spending some time with me and explaining 
 some very difficult complex in such simple way to me. 
Thanks very much. All the best to you.  
