Akash Vaswani from Velocity Fund

Akash Vaswani is a General Partner at Velocity Fund.

Velocity Fund is a pre-seed fund spun out of the University of Waterloo to invest in world-changing companies at the earliest stage.

Waterloo grads have started companies like Databricks, Instacart, Faire, Substack, PagerDuty, Top Hat, ApplyBoard, D2L, Avidbots, BufferBox (acquired by Google), Kik, North (Formerly Thalmic Labs, Acquired by Google), Pebble (Acquired by Fitbit), Float, Vidyard and MUCH more.

Takeaways

What makes UWaterloo founders so strong, co-op, professors own their IP, success breeds success and more.

Why the co-op program is so legendary and drives so much impact.

What Velocity Incubator is and why Velocity Fund spun out.

Why UWaterloo is the fourth largest feeder school to Y Combinator after Stanford, Berkley and MIT.

Velocity companies have raised $4.2B with a net equity value of $26B.

Where should founders build? Canada or the US?

Chapters

00:00 Akash's Experience at the University of Waterloo and Introduction to Velocity

04:06 The Power of Velocity and University of Waterloo in Unlocking Entrepreneurial Opportunities

09:42 The Impact of the Co-op Program at the University of Waterloo

13:36 The Role of Velocity in Supporting Startups

18:05 Akash's Journey as a Founder and Investor

21:29 The Thesis and Approach of Alicorn Ventures

29:39 The US-Canada Debate and the Importance of Building in the Right Location

44:42 The Future of the University of Waterloo and Velocity

51:52 Connecting Canadian Entrepreneurs

52:15 Addressing Scarcity Mindset and Funding