EVP kicked off the summer of 2009 with a new program – Extreme University. “ExtremeU” is a summer technology start-up program that focuses on industry networking, technology mentoring and, above all, delivering a product to potential follow-on funders after only 12 weeks.At ExtremeU, three companies got a chance to bring great ideas to life, and draw upon the technology and business expertise of the EVP team.

What: A summer technology start-up program that focuses on industry networking, technology mentoring and above all delivering a product to potential follow-on funders after only 12 weeks.

How: Each company:

• * Received $5,000(US) + $5,000 (US) per founder in exchange for a 10% ownership stake in their company
• * Moved their team to our shared ExtremeU office space at Yonge & King (downtown Toronto)
• * Had weekly mentoring sessions by industry experts in technology, funding, legal, public relations, marketing and human resources
• * Met a who’s who of experts at our monthly socials and had an opportunity to practice their pitch and demo their in-progress prototype
• * Had access to local shared resources to accelerate product development

When: The program ran for 12 weeks starting June 22nd, 2009.

Press: “Startup University” Pays Off for VC

Weekly Mentorship

Albert Lai	Kontagent	Startup Lifecycle
Ali Asaria	Well.ca	How to get funding
Colin Ground	Cassels Brock & Blackwell	Setting up a VC friendly structure
Dan Debow	Rypple	Sales & Marketing
Leila Boujnane	Idee	Business Development
Mike McDerment	Freshbooks	Product Management
Rick Segal	JLA	Why do a startup now?
Rick Yazwinski	Tucows	Agile Development
Sal Rocco	Stonewood Group	How to hire superstars

ExtremeU 2009 Companies

	Uken Games makes highly addictive games for social and mobile platforms
	Visibli (formerly Assetize) helps web publishers brand and monetize the links they share.
	Locationary is changing the way that data on local businesses and other places is collected and verified.

Extreme University is led by Farhan Thawar, Dean of ExtremeU. Farhan has over 12 years experience in the technology sector. He is currently the VP Engineering at Xtreme Labs and is also leading the efforts behind the ExtremeU. Prior to joining Xtreme Labs, Farhan was the Chief Software Architect at I Love Rewards Inc and previously the Head of Search & MSN Platform for Microsoft Canada. Prior to that Farhan spent 7 years at Celestica Co. and Trilogy Software Inc. coding and running development teams. Farhan has a degree in Computer Science with Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the Rotman School of Business.