After incubating more than 100 ventures, we are excited to announce the launch of YEDI’s Business Acceleration Campus. Committed to helping fuel high potential, high growth ventures, the 80,000 sq ft. facility is complete with commercial, industrial, office, educational, TV studio and theatrical spaces to serve a diverse mix of industries and needs.

The Acceleration Campus aims to provide a robust co-working and educational space for ventures requiring resources past the initial incubation phase. Access to subject matter experts, broad investor base, one-on-one goal setting and on-going educational sessions are all part of the accelerator’s value-added free service suite.

For those looking to take residence in this new and innovative space, we strongly believes in ventures retaining full ownership and do not take equity in exchange for participation. Instead, accepted ventures can choose from several space options at market value price points.

Upon acceptance, one year goals are set and reviewed on an on-going basis with program advisors to ensure participants are continuously taking their organizations to the next level.

Applications are currently accepted from both for-profit and not-for-profit ventures that are in their growth stage. Interested applicants may submit an application via www.yedinstitute.org/accelerator; all applications are reviewed on a rolling-basis and acceptance is dependent on fit and space availability. ”

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On Monday October 26, we hosted our quarterly alumni networking event on the ever popular topic of social media. Alumni learnt valuable tips and insights from industry experts Blue Door Inc.

For those who were unable to attend the event in-person, here are 5 things you must be doing on social media:
1. Create great content 
– Re-post or create content that is relevant and will be interesting to your target   market.
2. Distribute content (ads, hashtags, contests, influencer network)
– With so much content being published every second, it may be difficult for your target audience to find you without some added help in getting their attention. Some free and easy ways to get your content in front of a larger audience is by using hashtags which are relevant to the post and audience. Additionally, investing in ads across relevant social media platforms can increase exposure in a shorter period of time.
3. Engage with customers & prospects
– Your customers, both past and future, are human. They would like to interact and feel that there is another human on the other side of the screen. Some useful ways to do this are: respond 100% of the time, like, comment & share, use a name and always provide exceptional service.
4. Use tools
  – It can be a challenge to manage a social media presence while simultaneously overseeing many other aspects of your start-up or organization. To make the process more manageable, consider using free platforms such as Hootsuite to pre-schedule posts and Followerwonk to quickly find potential followers and influences in your industry. 

5. Measure results
– In order to know whether your strategy is working or not, you must invest time into measuring it along the way. Consider important metrics such as:  followers, engagement, sales, phone calls and web traffic among others. 

The event was hosted at the newly renovated JRCC East Thornhill and refreshments provided at the event were generously donated by Tov Li and DANI Toronto. ​

Marking the culmination of 4 months of hard work, graduates of the Spring Incubator and Existing Not-For-Profit tracks pitched their ventures to YEDI’s funder audience on
June 26th and 29th.

Events featured remarks by various politicians, YEDI partners and supporters including: Dr. Marat Ressin (President, YEDI), Dr. Alan Middleton (Executive Director, SEEC),
Gail Gillian (President, Canadian Association of Business Incubation), Hon. Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua (City of Vaughan), Hon. Peter Kent (MP, Thornhill), Hon. Mark Adler (MP, York Centre), Rabbi Yoseph Zaltzman (JRCC) and Ms. Jennifer Ladouceur (Economic Development City of Vaughan).

We look forward to their continued success!

Have a start-up idea? Growing an existing venture or not-for-profit organization?Applications for the Fall 2015 Incubator and Existing Not-For-Profit tracks are accepted until August 16, 2015. Please follow this link to apply and learn more about YEDI’s various program tracks.