Salon.com looks at how Toronto's "Extreme University" is working to develop the city's entrepreneurial talent. "Extreme University", a project of Toronto's
Extreme Venture Partners is summer technology start-up school/competition that provides participants with industry networking, technology mentoring and help developing their own unique product.
"As
in so many other cities that aren't located in or near Silicon Valley,
the startup scene in Toronto is a fairly small and close-knit
community. It benefits from events such as "Demo Camp" and "Bar Camp,"
where young entrepreneurs can come and bounce their ideas off others
who have been down that road before, and get some critical feedback."
"Inspired by those kinds of events, and building on their own efforts to
create a community within their own portfolio companies, the venture
capitalists at Extreme Venture Partners decided to fund a kind of school/competition last year called Extreme University. It went so well that EVP recently announced it's running another one this summer."
"Based loosely on the format developed by Paul Graham at his Y Combinator incubator,
ExtremeU asked for entrepreneurs to "audition," "American Idol"-style,
for one of three slots in the program. Successful applicants got $5,000
each from Extreme Venture Partners, as well as office space and free
Internet access at the EVP offices in Toronto, and 12 weeks to build
and launch their app, product or service. The program was run by Farhan
Thawar, the VP of engineering for Xtreme Labs (one of EVP's portfolio companies) who says he's hoping to make it even larger by opening it up to more startups."
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original source
Salon.com