Ilsa Chaytor
Sales and Marketing Intern, Laughing Heart Music Ltd.
2021 Intern
Stories
Employers

Employers say it all

“VFC has helped our social enterprise grow. We brought in an intern for eight months and wondered how we ever lived without this person! We realized with our second intern that this was truly the way to grow our company and find great employees for the long term. This summer, we will have three interns and hire many of them full-time.

We can track our growth to the incredible input these interns have brought to our perfume brand. These students are problem solvers and not afraid to try new things. They have blended so well into our entrepreneurial family that we will never go anywhere else to hire.

We could not grow at the rapid pace we have over last year, at 180%, without interns and new hires from the program. If you are a business, you need to get involved in this program and invest in the incredible students they bring.”

Barb Stegemann
Barb Stegemann
Intrapreneurship Employer
CEO, The 7 Virtues Beauty Inc.

“Until Venture for Canada's Intrapreneurship program, we had never heard about Work-Integrated Learning. Our experience with VFC students has shown us that WIL is--and I don't say this lightly--the future of work and learning. An interdisciplinary program like VFC's Intrapreneurship (InP) program is at the core of what makes hiring one of the most exciting parts of startup life. It opens our horizons to unconventional intersections of talent that startups like ours might otherwise never have been exposed to.

What was our talent pipeline before VFC's Intrapreneurship program? Zilch, nada, zero. What was our pipeline after Venture for Canada? Vibrant, surprising, challenging, a shot in the arm--in short, what every venture needs.

It would be 100% accurate to say that Phare would have never gotten off the ground if it were not for Venture for Canada. The students they connected us with and the hard work they put into making sure that both students and we as a company had everything we needed to succeed were indispensable. We've worked with over a dozen organizational partners, but VFC has distinguished itself at the very top in terms of providing value for ventures like ours.”

Dr. Ray Hsu
Dr. Ray Hsu
Intrapreneurship Employer
Co-Founder, Phare Mental Health Ltd.

“Fellow App’s growth has largely benefited from the impact of our VFC Fellows. VFC has helped our organization not only bring on top quality people who are higher performers; but who also have an entrepreneurial mindset and are looking to solve problems for our customers as our solution scales. Entrepreneurial mindset is crucial for startups and for the future of work in general. For companies experiencing hyper growth, leaders need to work smart and think strategically as they prioritize the work streams in front of them.”

Aydin Mirzaee
Aydin Mirzaee
Fellow Employer
CEO, Fellow App
Intrapreneurs