Former 30 Under 30 winner Qayyum Rajan has had no problems with Nuu Ventures

Our talented cohort of annual 30 Under 30 winners don’t just disappear when they turn the big 3-0.

Take Qayyum Rajan, for example. As an alumnus of our 2018 class of 30 Under 30 winners, he was recognized for co-founding iComply Investor Services (iComplyICO), a company that automates compliance processes for blockchains and digital securities (i.e. cryptocurrencies). 

“I learned a ton, like everything from marketing to business to sales to legal agreements to global connections,” Rajan says, recounting his first venture. Though Rajan has since stepped back from his role at iComplyICO, he’s no longer an amateur in Canada’s startup scene.

Following a brief stint at Ernst & Young, Rajan decided to follow his entrepreneurial instincts. “After about a year, I really had the startup bug. And so at that point, I felt pretty confident in myself to go out and try a venture,” Rajan says. He went on to develop ESG Analytics, a platform that analyzes how companies rate on environment, social, and governance (ESG). His goal was always to sell the company, and he achieved more than just that. 

“I’m not sure how many people get to sell the same company twice,” he says, laughing. When things didn’t work out with the original buyers, they eventually gave ESG Analytics back to Rajan for a fraction of what he sold it to them for. All the while he was simultaneously completing another the sale of a different start-up called Offsety, which focuses on tracking carbon emissions offsets.

“After that, it kind of set off this nature of our business of new ventures,” he says.  So Rajan started the aptly named Nuu Ventures—an homage to his childhood nickname. Nuu Ventures has acquired five startups within the last year.

“What’s really cool now is we don’t really need outside funding,” he says. “We don’t need any investors, and we can actually just kind of focus on building our own startups.” They’re looking to develop products and ecosystems with traffic already generated, so that it’s ready to deliver to potential buyers. 

Now that he’s on the flipside of completing a few micro-exits himself, Rajan’s biggest takeaways for young and budding entrepreneurs (calling potential 30 Under 30s!) is to not wait for money to start.

“Get it done yourself—bootstrap, use the free tools. Understand what you can do because that’s what we need in Canada,” he says, noting a funding gap in the Canadian market where entrepreneurs can go public on the exchange with very little, while Canadian VCs are often risk-averse, seeking out already established companies with the right figures before backing. “I wasted my time at multiple early ventures trying to do that venture capital circuit, only to come out on the other side knowing that, like, thank God I didn’t actually get it in the first place,” he says.

Rajan also warns young entrepreneurs not to underestimate the importance of marketing and branding. “People think about, ‘build and they will come,’ but it’s not the case. You have to really build that network, that community, that funnel, before you even deliver something,” he says.

But, thankfully it’s easier than ever to be a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur. “The world’s changed, right? Look at where we are now, with all the AI tools, no-code tools, there’s never been a better time,” he says.