Launching Information Ventures presentations a success

Submitted by Kathleen OBrien on Thu, 2012/06/07 - 3:14pm

With an industry panel including Andy Yang from Extreme Startups and John MacRitchie from Ontario Centres of Excellence, nine iSchool students presented their projects from the course “Launching Information Ventures” at the ThingTank Lab on Thursday April 12, 2012.

The projects were developed as part of INF2195: Launching Information Ventures, a 13-week course in which students developed business plans for their own startup projects.

Pictured above is Innovators' Choice Award Winners Michael Alguire and Justin Scherer.

The course was led by Adriana Ieraci, advisor at ThingTank and Principal of A-Line Consultants Inc., a company providing digital media strategy analysis, process and requirements development expertise.

Those enrolled in the course consider that it helped them develop valuable knowledge and skills to start their own business. “Launching Information Ventures provided me with a solid grounding in most business fundamentals -- Customer Segments, Finance, Marketing Channels, Competitors, etc. -- but also taught me how to turn everyday challenges into opportunities,” explained student Alexandra Hall.

The ventures presented included Share.a, a community-based sharing project for books, movies and videogames; Agri-Tours Canada, a database of travel resources for agrotourism; Antidate, a website taking a comical approach to online dating; and The League of Independent Booksellers, a cloud-based software for inventory management aimed at small booksellers.

“Now, with the knowledge and skills necessary to sustain a competitive advantage, and ongoing support from Adriana, my business partner and I are looking to take our business idea to the next level” said Alexandra, who developed Agri-Tours Canada.

These diverse projects were well received by the audience and Dean Ross expressed his satisfaction with students work. “A couple of the ideas could only be described as truly unbelievably awesome and they all can be described as thoughtful, well-presented, and inspiring,” he expressed following the event.

“What also impressed me was the depth of knowledge the students acquired about the process that they were able to apply very effectively. Adriana did a fantastic job and the students really engaged with the course. I was absolutely delighted,” added Dean Ross.