Stepping out of the Box
Co-Founder: Diane
Hometown: Fuzhou, Fujian
Education: Currently in her first-year at Queen’s Commerce
Start-up: Y2
How did Diane get started?
Diane fell into entrepreneurship through philanthropy and noted that Y2 had a rather coincidental beginning. She was working on a non-profit and had a public speaking opportunity, when she connected with another guest speaker over a common vision. The other guest speaker, Lucas, now her Co-Founder, heard her speech, which was followed by a brainstorming session regarding problems high school students were facing. They realised there was a lot of interest in high school around entrepreneurship, but this was not available in the classroom.
The Problem.
Diane thought that it wasn’t that the community didn’t necessarily support young entrepreneurs, but there wasn’t any hands-on experience in high school before going out and starting a business. She noted “we didn’t have the mentor-ship or guidance or connections available that were previously built in our community.” At the time, she wasn’t in the mindset of thinking “how do I solve this?” It was more of an ongoing issue she was facing, and once she met her co-founder, he helped her change her perspective on the issue.
What is Y2?
They ended-up starting Y2 in May 2015. Y2 has been going on for 3 years now and they carry-out an entrepreneurship boot-camp held over two consecutive weekends for high school students on the topic of entrepreneurship. So far, they have reached over 200 students. Diane hopes to grow the team beyond the 5 founding team members and to continue to expand the reach to high school students across Ontario.
Over the past 3 years, a few great start-ups have come out of their inaugural event:
- Proxy-Meet won their competition in 2015 and has gone onto winning a competition at the Ontario Centre for Excellence and has also incorporated
- Candy Cutlery won their competition in 2016 and has gone onto multiple other competitions, exhibited at the Canadian National Exhibition, and has been a part of the DMZ. They make edible cutlery!
- Toronto Boarding Club did not win their competition, but has gone onto creating unique Toronto branded apparel that speaks to youth. They’ve taken a less formal route in terms of not participating in other competitions, but the founder is now travelling throughout the US promoting their business
What were some of the challenges Diane faced?
As young, ambitious entrepreneurs, Diane and her team wanted to differentiate themselves and they thought being so young would help them. But she noted, what they thought made them different came out to be a disadvantage. This was an ongoing struggle and she found that many people had a hard time valuing younger people trying to do something bigger for their community. When she was approached by successful people they wouldn’t always give her the respect they would give more experienced co-founders, for example. This changed over time as they established themselves and is a big reason why she is continuing Y2: to build an interaction within the community where young, bright minds are respected and to start a dialogue regarding entrepreneurship with younger students.
Mentors are important.
Having a great mentor will help you build from the ground up as an individual and will provide valuable advice to your start-up. For me, I consider a lot of my friend’s mentors and bounce ideas off them all the time. For Diane, she’s lucky to have a great mentor as a co-founder. Her co-founder, Lucas, is the lead for Start-up York under Start-up Canada and has given advice to Diane on jobs, school programs and she is grateful for his mentor-ship. She also noted her co-founding team has been helpful and has been very important since being introduced to the fast world of business.
When to Pivot.
If you realise what you are doing isn’t working, take a step back and re-evaluate. For Diane in Y2, they tried having mini events with the City of Markham between their boot-camp series, but found this mainly caused distraction from their primary event and diluted participation. So, they pivoted and hope to continue spreading their primary event across different locations in Ontario.
Be smart about Funding!
When you are starting a business, expenditures can come from every direction if you aren’t careful. At Y2, they keep their expenditures lean through their various partnerships. They receive support from the municipalities and small business centers. They had the Minister of Small Business and Tourism speak at their conference, along with 40 other volunteers who kindly gave their time. Seneca College also sponsors their venue space.
The Motivation
In high school, Diane noted that she was very passionate about music and at one point, was considering pursuing it as a professional career. She was in an arts program and noticed a lot of her friends dropping out because they didn’t have enough room in their schedule with their prerequisites for university. She thought this was unfair given their amazing talents and started a project “Creativity through Arts” to showcase their talents. She realised a lot of people shared her same message, which has been like her experience with Y2. She noted the community support and seeing how much impact she can make on other peoples’ lives has helped her continue to grow Y2.
Get to know Diane!
Nerdy Fact: Every website she goes on, she will spend 5 to 10 mins going over the code. Amazing!
Hobbies: Coaches competitive lifesaving, dances competitively representing Queen’s University, and you will find her playing the piano, drums, guitar, or percussion when she has time!
Inspiring books: She’s recommends Zero to One by Peter Thiel, The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries. For movies: Whiplash, and the Theory of Everything.
If she had to start all over again, she mentioned that “Within our team we were very excited to push the idea of Y2 forward. During our first conference, we wanted to control what each team was doing and set deadlines, like how each team should meet with their mentors for direction. For the teams to be entrepreneurs and own 120% of their ideas, we realised they should be able to pivot and speak to more than just their own mentors. When we gave them a rubric, they took it as what they should do. Now we give them a general direction and they run with it, going above and beyond. We learned if we wanted to provide an entrepreneurial experience we should treat them as entrepreneurs with full control over their ideas.”
Thanks Diane!! It is so easy to get stuck inside a box, so do something different today you wouldn’t normally do. If you would like to learn more about Y2 and have them come to your community, please check-out their website. If you have any questions for me, please feel free to reach-out to me through social media.
