The Entrepreneurship Hatchery provides a comprehensive suite of activities and programs designed to create startup companies. Engineering students, faculty, and the broader U of T community come together to address meaningful problems and obtain seed funding. We call this the development of entrepreneurial human capital. Our goal is to ensure that a significant number of students and faculty increase their confidence and ability to create a start-up companies by solving high-impact problems and generating new ideas. We believe this will stimulate the economy in the short and long term through job creation and increased economic activity. The Hatchery’s impact on the Canadian entrepreneurial ecosystem is significant. According to LinkedIn, companies that originated at the Hatchery reported employing 946 individuals as of August 2024. Hatchery programs bring together the U of T community—across all disciplines—to explore and engage their entrepreneurial interests. Students and faculty identify and evaluate business opportunities and seek Hatchery seed funding to transition into founders and operators of incorporated entities. The Hatchery brand and track record are well established, both within and beyond the University of Toronto. Between 2017 and 2025, the Hatchery received applications from over 5,300 students (organized into 2,064 teams). During this period, we were able to support 1,000 of these students (289 teams). Our students, faculty and community learn to act in an entrepreneurial way by acquiring the skills (to evaluate and screen opportunities) and the attitude (an active predisposition to respond to those opportunities) that define an entrepreneur.

• a. Business Identification and Share your Problem – We have dedicated personnel actively engaged in outreach to investors, research faculty, and students. Our Idea Market sessions and Build-A-Team matching tool are regularly updated with meaningful societal and existential problems submitted by investors, researchers, industry professionals, and the broader student community.
• b. Team Formation – The Build-A-Team matching tool, searches for the talent that have the interest and skills to address the problems gathered above. We currently maintain a database of over 3000 individuals, and our system is being enhanced with the help of Ai models to better identify the talent within the broader community. We seek for individuals with the motivation, the skill and the attitude to be part of a high performing team.
• c. Business Definition – We use a unique methodology for venture formation (called ¹FEEL™). Teams of students and faculty go through a structured process to define a business blueprint and validate its market potential. This process is guided by a strong advisory board of experts that are affiliated as volunteer mentors at the Hatchery. While ventures are not expected to have fully developed proprietary datasets, models, or prototypes at the outset, we emphasize defining a clear path to acquiring or developing these unique capabilities. The businesses we aim to foster are grounded in true innovation—building on existing technologies, identifying those that need to be created, and suggesting research directions. We offer 4 distinct programs: NEST, a summer bootcamp open to the broader community; LaunchLab, designed for graduate- level and faculty research driven start-ups; Start@UTIAS Hatchery, University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies student-led start-up companies; Hatchery Alumni, Faculty of Engineering alumni coming at a later time in their careers to leverage their expertise and skills and launch a startup company in partnership with current students.
• d. Seed Funding – Successful startups are promoted to the Go-To-Market stage following a rigorous oversight process. A recommendation for investment is submitted to the Faculty by our investment committee, which includes independent professional investors and domain experts. The Hatchery’s investment enables student founders to fully dedicate themselves to their startups after completing academic obligations. It also supports raising follow-on investment to execute the venture’s defined plan. In addition to financial support, the Hatchery offers the First Employee Program, which leverages the U of T Work-Study Program to provide experiential learning opportunities. In the 2024–25 academic year, 87 students were employed by startups and the Hatchery.
• e. Follow-on Investment – Our work continues until the necessary follow-on risk investment is secured with our support. This marks a key milestone in a startup’s journey toward sustained growth.