​​Wearable Tech​

 

As a fresh Mechanical Engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo in 2014, I co-founded my first startup in wearable technologies. Our goal was to help athletes prevent injuries by detecting the movements that led those injuries early on. However, despite pouring our hearts into it, after 1 year of developing prototypes we learned that the market did not want to spend money in injury prevention, only treatment. So I left.​

 

Taking a Break

 

A bit disillusioned, I took off to Australia for a break. For a year and a half, I surfed, worked in hospitality, and even worked as a real estate agent and a headhunter. It was a fantastic ride, but my entrepreneur spirit started calling me  back. So in 2017, I came back to Canada and launched a 2nd startup.​

 

2nd Startup

 

This time, I bet on Canada's cannabis legalization and started making unique smoking accessories out of wood & glass, through a highly complex manufacturing process. We sold our products at retail and online, but sales were never enough to keep the lights on. After a year, we had to let it go. Through this particular failure, I learned that having a great product isn’t enough - you need to know how to sell it. ​

 

Consulting​​​

 

So I dove into sales and marketing to learn everything I could, and spent the next 3 years on consulting gigs, startup coaching, and trying my own ideas. I successfully helped launch and grow many of my client's products, in fields such as ag-tech, ed-tech, health-tech, and even robotics, to name a few. Through my consulting I developed a 3-step process that helped entrepreneurs sell over a million dollars in product, which is the same process I used to make my next venture succeed.

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BudTrainer®​​​

 

During COVID, I decided to get a post graduate degree in Commercial Cannabis Production at Niagara College, so I could work at a large cannabis facility and find a solution I could turn into a business. However, during college I realized that the market for people who grow cannabis at home was highly underserved. There were no gardening brands catering specifically to cannabis, so I founded my 3rd startup, BudTrainer®, where we make ultra durable and user-friendly gardening products for cannabis home growers. Today, our products are available in over 200 retailers, in 3 different continents, and we are making over 1,000 online sales a month, with reviews averaging 4.8/5.

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Your Market Fit​

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I have walked the path, hit the roadblocks, learned the lessons, and wasted a lot of time learning what I know today. While I still work full-time at BudTrainer, I also make time to help startups find the same success I found for myself and my clients. If you have a startup and a product ready to hit the market, book an intro session with me today and I can show you the 3-step process that helped me succeed with BudTrainer. If you are an incubator or accelerator, let's talk about how I can help your startups succeed.