With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1501233
50 BCBUSINESS.CA JULY/AUGUST 2023 3 3 UNDER J O S E P H L E E AGE: 28 Co-founder, Supademo and Freshline LIFE STORY: Not everyone can say they used to meet people in shady Vancouver parking lots at 14 years old, but not everyone's first entrepreneurial venture was arbitrag- ing retail electronics. "I would go out and buy electronics in bulk... and flip them on Craigslist," Joseph Lee recalls with excitement. "It helped pay for the first year of university, which got me hooked on entrepreneurship." By his fourth year at UBC, Lee had dropped out. Instead of completing his computer science and busi- ness degree, he dove headfirst into Coastline Market, a B2B seafood marketplace he co-founded with Robert Kirstiuk in 2016 to con- nect commercial harvesters with restaurants. Coastline's technology, which managed all of the logistics of transporting seafood, reeled in inves- tors like U.S.-based Techstars and made it to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2018, only to have to pivot into what is Toronto-based Freshline today. "It's an e-commerce and operations platform built specifically for food distributors," Lee explains. After attracting $2.4 million in venture capital and growing to a team of 16, the company faced the arrival of COVID and the resulting restaurant closures. But Lee's team was able to spin everything they learned into Freshline, a SaaS product that any supplier could use to digitize their sales. Then, at the start of 2023, Lee co- founded Supademo with U.S.-based fellow entrepreneur Koushik Marka. "It's the fastest and easiest way for anyone to create interactive [product] demos and tours," Lee says of the fully remote company. Even though he's come a long way from those shady parking lots, Lee still has the same goal. "I think what drives me in life is to create something from nothing," he maintains. "It's the most profound way for me to learn, grow and amplify impact." BOTTOM LINE : Supademo helps people and teams demonstrate product features upfront "without paywalling or forcing folks to sign up," as Lee puts it. The company was able to surpass 2,000 users within five months of launching. Freshline, on the other hand, was one of six food-tech projects to secure funding from the Canadian Food Innovation Network in May. It received $83,908 from the organiza- tion's Innovation Booster program to improve its B2B platform. –R.R. J O E L H A N S E N AGE: 26 Head of marketing, LOI Venture LIFE STORY: Joel Hansen believes in the power of stories to drive ideas. After completing his BBA at Trinity Western University, he started work- ing at a private equity firm. To flex his storytelling skills, he did marketing consulting on the side. "I fell in love with social media, events and story- telling as a way to empower young people," says Hansen. He built up some clientele and eventually got connected with the co- founders of LOI Venture: Ryan Holmes, the founder of Hootsuite; and Manny Padda, founder and managing director of New Avenue Capital. Launched in 2017, LOI (which stands for League of Innovators) is an early-stage venture fund that backs the brightest tech founders under 30. It helps young entrepreneurs through exposure, mentorship pairing and access to funding—much-needed support that Hansen thinks is lacking in our society. "Regardless of age, the entrepreneur- ial journey is a lonely path, and I think it almost doubles in loneliness when you're young," he says. Hansen is inspired by LOI's ethos of changing the way venture capital works; in a world where capital is tra- ditionally given to older, experienced folks, LOI is on a mission to give people better access, mentorship and capital so they can scale their idea earlier in life—eliminating barriers for young entrepreneurs to have an impact in the world. Hansen has played a key role in supporting the company's portfolio founders, fundraising inves- tor dollars, building rapport with the community and streamlining processes for events and demo days. BOTTOM LINE : Since joining LOI Venture, Hansen executed an 800-person online demo day that brought in $5 million of investor interest in 24 hours; he helped fundraise $2 million in investor dollars for the company's $20-million venture fund, and he continues to develop and manage the company's social media campaigns, which reach over 2 million followers across multiple platforms. In three years, Hansen wants to scale LOI to 10,000 founders, and to 100,000 in five years. –R.W.