The Founder City ProjectFounder-led network of startup/scale-up founders that has grown from 2 to 200+ in a few months; heading to 1,000+ founders.

Founder City: Toronto-Waterloo (T-W)

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We need to grow our diverse talent ecosystem by 200% by 2020*; therefore why can’t our ecosystem’s platform be recruitment training? Employees are the best recruiters, so training them to recruit would turn our employee talent into our competitive advantage (while building more leaders and improving retention). Selling leaders (and their families) on the Toronto-Waterloo tech ecosystem requires us to demonstrate our depth of career opportunities, ideally via a multi-company approach.

Founders in our ecosystem have committed to growth, but we must import additional, diverse, talent.

*Canada needs to fill *at least* 200,000 new tech jobs by 2020 (Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC)).

Training startup/scale-up employees (in all functions, at all levels, in all companies) on a recruiting system that transforms their founders' access to diverse skilled talent.

3.

Founder City Talent

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Ben Zifkin Founder @ Hubba.

Jim Murphy Founder @ Boltmade (acquired by Shopify).

Michael Katchen Founder @ Wealthsimple.

Allen Lau Founder @ Wattpad.

We are uniquely qualified to build this training initiative and its curriculum.

Eva Wong Founder @ Borrowell.

Catherine Graham Founder @ commonsku, RIGHTSLEEVE.

Mallorie Brodie Founder @ Bridgit.

Jessica Weisz CCO @ Soapbox.

Heather PayneFounder @ HackerYou, Ladies Learning Code.

Advisors and founding cohort are leaders; some spend 80% of their time recruiting.

+ Our trainer (name not released yet) has been hand-picked by founders; has 15 years’ experience designing/building/delivering over 50 learning and recruitment programs at startup/scale-up cultures, was a key early customer of Rypple, ClearFit and other local founders.

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1. Ensured effectiveness, because it’s a founder-led, multi-company program; employees/peers are the best recruiters.

2. Additive; no risk (participation doesn’t reduce competitiveness, nor share founders’ trade secrets); anticipates down economy too.

3. Low cost/time (83% cost covered by grant/refund and only ~4 hours/week for 4 weeks).

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Building world-leading recruitment skills, to draw the best diverse talent from other regions and industries.

Here’s what founders can expect.

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Entry-level employees who convert more referrals, become more effective communicators and presenters; while joining a peer group that improves their learning speed and retention (without giving away trade secrets).

Managers who rapidly build a diverse talent pipeline from other industries and geographies, assess culture fit, interview accurately; while enhancing the performance of their existing team.

Executives who can lead/motivate skilled talent, win key hires and build trust with peers; while using Founder City to free time and help onboard, support and track development of their own entry-level employees and managers.

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"Recruiting was the ultimate validation. Someone who could work on anything wanted to work on your thing.”

Recruitment success is the ultimate success predictor

Mike Shaver, on scaling Facebook’s mobile team: from 30 to 800 engineers; to 82% of revenue.

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Toronto-Waterloo founders, join us!

Who is behind this?

Ben Baldwin 4x Toronto founder and multi-patent-holder in predictive analytics for human work behavior. Board Member at Drucker Institute, Member of Silicon Valley i4j think tank.

Wall Street Journal Startup Guru, Inc Magazine Columnist.