MBA Students, Entrepreneurs Collide And Collaborate At Saint John Block One Incubator
If there’s a place where students and entrepreneurs, with local and international expertise, can collide and collaborate in Saint John, then that’s 40 Charlotte Street, the new home of Economic Development Greater Saint John (EDGSJ) incubator Block One and the UNBSJ’s MBA program.
“The MBA program has a lot of international students that are coming with a lot of really great experience, some of it from existing companies, some of it from running their own businesses,” says EDGSJ Economic Development Officer Mark Breen. “We wanted to be closer to that, so we have a better opportunity to interact. It’s the whole idea of collisions.”
The Block One incubator offers long-term support for founders of scalable startups, including a professional office environment where company owners are surrounded by other high-potential entrepreneurs. They are also supported by EDGSJ staff, mentors, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
EDGSJ initially ran Block One from ConnexionWorks, a co-working space in the nearby Brunswick Square Office Tower. Now the region’s economic development organization operates both the incubator Block One and its Venture Validation Program (VVP) from the UNBSJ building, the old Bank of Nova Scotia on King Square.
The move allows EDGSJ to provide a larger dedicated space for companies in the Block One program. The space grew from 1,000 square feet in ConnexionWorks to 2,700 square feet with UNBSJ.
Block One’s alumni include successful startups EhEye, which has since been acquired by Patriot One and Four Eyes Financial.
And that “collision” Breen spoke of has already borne fruit in the new building, creating a new collaboration between the university and Block One.
Two of the MBA students are now interning with Block One company Millennia TEA.
“Our companies now are often looking for the kind of talent that the MBA [students] have,” Breen said. “It’s still very early, but we see more opportunities for that kind of collaboration here.”
Over the summer, MBA student Michael Kirkpatrick also got to work closely with Entrepreneur-in-Residence and UNB professor Dan Doiron, as well as professor Greg Fleet in developing the curriculum for the Venture Validation Program.
VVP is an acceleration program that aims to help entrepreneurs validate their ideas and learn customer discovery, market sizing, and pitching.
“By the end of this 12 to 13-week program, participants would be ready to pitch their business to investors or to raise financing or funding,” Breen said.
Kirkpatrick sought out the opportunity to be mentored by Doiron and Fleet as part of his nine-week business consulting module for the MBA program.
He said having the two organizations already well connected and in the same building made things easier.
“You don’t really have to do networking. One of them [Doiron] was my professor anyways,” he said.
He got to use some of his own ideas to help develop the VVP’s new customer discovery model.
“I was one of the first ones to test it in that time,” he said.
Doiron and Fleet also walked him through the steps of building a viable business plan.
Kirkpatrick says it was a great opportunity, especially for an MBA student like himself, to learn from Doiron and Fleet on how to build a business from scratch, and what to look at when doing so.
“We had a lot of great chats. They would look at your business model a certain way and we would talk about it and have a good discussion. This is a great way to learn what’s best for your business,” Kirkpatrick said.
The first VVP session during the pandemic took place virtually earlier this month. But Breen says EDGSJ plans to use one of the classrooms in the building for the program that will likely be offered both virtually and in-person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGEx6rIzNbY
Breen says having incubators connected to universities is a great opportunity for Saint John’s community and economy.
“When you look at really successful incubators, they’re always connected to the university,” he said. “That is because you have these students who are learning these really interesting ideas and they’re then able to come in and land in our programming, and we can help develop their ideas.”
Having the university professors be part of building curriculum for programming also serves both the students and EDGSJ’s clients, Breen added.
“It’s really good for our other clients who may not be directly connected to the university because they get all the really great advice and experience, but it’s also good for students who can then connect with the broader business community,” he said. “So, it’s a really important partnership.”
This story is sponsored by the UNBSJ MBA program.