Canada’s Home for Ambition

Canada needs a home for ambition. I want Waterloo to be that place.

I’ve had the experience of going to San Francisco and finding Canadians everywhere, working on things they care about. Then I come home and it can feel surprisingly lonely. We have the people here. Finding one another shouldn’t be the hard part.

When I asked why I hadn’t heard more about a group in Waterloo, I was told they only had a small meeting space once a week. I thought I could help fix that. I founded Akatos because I wanted to be useful to people who were trying to start something.

A house gives people a place to meet, but the work is more personal than that. What do you want to make? What’s stopping you? Who could help? Those are the conversations I want to have. Sometimes someone needs an introduction. Sometimes they need a place to work and people who take their idea seriously.

That’s why I care about entrepreneurship. To me, it means seeing a problem and deciding to do something about it, even if nobody has assigned it to you. The result might be a company, but it doesn’t have to be. I want more people to feel able to begin before they have an impressive title or everything figured out.

Akatos can only go so far on its own. I want Waterloo to make starting easier: places to find collaborators, room to try something, and a clearer path to opening a business. I also want a life here that people enjoy after they finish work. A city has to offer more than a reason to be busy.

People don’t owe Waterloo their whole lives because they studied or started something here. We have to earn their company. I want someone with a difficult, unusual idea to look at Waterloo and think: I could do that here.