UBC-based Creative Destruction Lab promises to change the world several times over

Credit:

Kai Jacobson

UBC Sauder’s Darrell Kopke thinks CDL helps both founders and mentors

Inside the Vancouver Convention Centre on two windy afternoons in October, the fates of over 80 companies and their founders hang in the balance. In the coming months and years, some of the endeavours being pitched here will almost certainly end up changing lives beyond those in the building.

But at this moment they are operating in relative anonymity, huddling in groups together throughout the centre, talking in mostly hushed tones as they rehearse lines and go over the key items in their pitch decks. Over the course of two days, these founders will pitch their companies to rooms full of venture capitalists and experts in four streams—biomedical engineering, compute, climate and advanced therapies—in the hopes that, by the end of the event, one or more of the people listening will put up their hand to signal that they would like to offer their mentorship.

Already it’s been a tough route just to get here, and a hand up means that the mentor is willing to take on at least four hours of coaching. No hands up and your time in the program is done—please leave the tribal council area immediately.

But while it might all seem like something out of a TV show, Creative Destruction Lab – Vancouver (formerly known as CDL – West) is a lot more measured than that. The mission of this local branch of the nonprofit organization is what it calls an “objectives-based mentorship program for scalable, seed stage science and technology companies.”

CDL, which was originally founded in 2012 at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is now in 12 universities across the world, including five in Canada. The Vancouver version is supported by UBC Sauder and led by Darrell Kopke, an adjunct professor and long-time fashion retail executive who has served in leadership roles with companies like Lululemon and Kit and Ace and who co-founded performance-engineered clothing brand Aedelhard.

“Judgment is our currency,” Kopke explains. “One of the top three things these founders—many who have their PhDs—can do to accelerate their ventures in the next eight weeks is receive meaningful judgment. Only about 50 percent of the ventures graduate from the CDL, and many get funded because the mentors often write cheques.”

On the conference floor, the ventures and experts engage in what’s essentially an information-packed speed dating exercise before the founders take centre stage. But the main event isn’t what you might expect. Instead of the founders getting a chance to further argue their company’s mission or scalability, they simply get to air a short pitch video before hearing what the experts in the audience have to say.

And they’ll want to listen. In the room are some of B.C. and North America’s most well-known movers and shakers, from Snack CEO Kim Kaplan and BuildDirect co-founder Jeff Booth to venture capitalists like Chris Neumann and Ali Pejman. As you might expect, there isn’t much time wasting. Sitting right in front of the entrepreneurs who have worked for months to get here and, likely, for years on the ventures themselves, these experts are brutally honest.

“It sounds unbelievable; it seems to violate the laws of physics,” says Booth to the founder of a cleantech startup. He knows a thing or two about the subject matter in question, given that he has experience on the boards of well-known agtech companies Terramera and CubicFarm Systems.

Another expert tells the founder of a battery startup: “I’m still skeptical you can even do this.” Then, the founders are asked to leave the room and “deliberations” officially begin. Things get even more honest as Kopke, who is moderating the session, calls out the name of each company and asks whether anyone would like to take it on as a mentor.

“That was a disaster up there,” says an expert about one company.

“I don’t know if the CEO is receptive to feedback,” says another.

Some companies get hands raised quickly, while others take a little bit longer. The majority of ventures see at least two mentors join on, but CDL isn’t for everyone. A few ventures that the mentors deem to be successful may still not be the right fit for anyone to take on. “It’s a niche, family business, not a scalable venture,” says Marty Reed, a former Silicon Valley exec who launched Vancouver-based Evok Innovations, about an applicant. “It’s a great local business. But we’re trying to create something massive.”

The following day, the venture founders will get an email explaining whether they’ve been approved to keep participating in the program for the next eight weeks (after which comes another examination on whether they’ve met the goals that were set), or if they’ve been dropped.

In either case, judgment has been delivered.

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