“Incubator.” “Mentor.” “Angel.” Put those words together and you imagine Silicon Valley investors pushing money — and high expectations — at upstart entrepreneurs. You imagine a young innovator being told that (s)he has just six months for the company to make its first million, or else. It’s all about how fast you can turn an idea into a profit.
And that’s exactly the opposite of how the University of Alberta’s ThresholdImpact Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) works.
“It’s about the growth and development of the entrepreneur, rather than the growth and development of the business,” says Kristina Milke, who took over as the chair of the Board of Advisors of the nine-year-old program in winter of 2021.
Mentors talk about making sure the founders of new companies are looking not only at their bottom lines, but are caring for their health and nurturing their relationships.
Elvis Wong majored in finance at the University of Alberta and then launched The Compassion Network in Edmonton, which has recently expanded to Calgary. It’s a service which pairs seniors with home-care services; it allows nurses to assess what services seniors living at home need, and what they can access. The idea is to give seniors living at home more personalized and compassionate care.
In 2019, he was approved to join VMS, and get mentor-ship from a group of investment, tech and business leaders. His is currently one of 48 businesses in the program.
When he joined, he was itching to expand to Calgary. But his mentors asked if he was indeed ready to grow. Was the business in Edmonton stable enough?
“It made me uncomfortable, but they really helped me get out of my shell,” he says. “They told me I had to be able to rinse, repeat. They let me know I needed to have a good, stable model in one city before I moved on to another.”
And they also asked how he was doing — not as a CEO of a young company, but as Elvis Wong, resident human.
“They ask, ‘How are you doing? And how does it affect Compassion Network?’” he says.