Althra

Since 1996, Futurpreneur has been the quiet force backing Canada’s next generation of founders before anyone else notices them. Canada's only national non-profit dedicated to entrepreneurs aged 18 to 39, has supported over 20,000 young founders with financing paired with real mentorship from a network of 2,000+ volunteer business experts. It's a model built on the belief that capital alone doesn't build great companies. People do. Mina Haghighi has been living that belief for over a decade. She joined Futurpreneur as a Senior Business Development Manager, personally reviewing business plans, coaching founders, and helping over 100 startups secure their first loans. Now, as regional director for BC, she's the person building the community partnerships and opening the doors that make Futurpreneur's work possible across the province. 👉 If you are a founder aged 18 to 39 looking for the financing and mentorship to scale your company? Visit futurpreneur.ca

90 seconds on the clock to stand up and pitch your startup in front of a room packed with other founders and get unfiltered feedback. Hosted with Futurpreneur, we have put together an open pitch night for early-stage builders who are deep in the trenches validating, raising, or just trying to figure out how to tell their story. You get a platform to see if you're actually communicating your narrative well; proving who the product is for, why the problem matters, and why you're the right ones to build it. You'll be getting immediate feedback on what lands and what needs sharper framing before your next real investor or customer meeting. Spots are limited so the room stays high-signal and founder-focused, if you're ready to put your deck away, and step into the hot seat... lock in your spot below. 👉 https://luma.com/18yv1ygk

Not a single panelist got into YC on their first try one founder even hit a streak of 12 attempts before getting the nod... The turnout for our YC mock pitch event was absolutely crazy people were packed onto the stairs, squeezing into any corner they could find, and the crowd literally spilled onto the sidewalk for an hour after it ended because no one wanted to leave. The highlight was a 60-second mock pitch where 7 founders stood up and put themselves in the hot seat. The panelists didn’t pull a single punch, they know unbiased, unfiltered feedback is what's needed when you build. Massive thank you Brandon Waselnuk, Josh Gray, Alexander Dungate, Sepand Dyanatkar, Jacob Shadbolt and Gautham Venkateshwaran for your insights. Applications for Althra Cohort 3 are officially open. We are building the ultimate launchpad to prep Canadian founders to full send it on the global stage. 👉 Apply Now: https://althra.ca

Yesterday in Vancouver, Althra hosted a YC Mock Interview Prep with YC Alum, a16z speedrun alum, and founders who bootstrapped. Steal my takeaways. At the event we heard from panelists like: Alexander Dungate and Sepand Dyanatkar from OnDeck AI (YC S25) Josh Gray from The Arlo Healthcare Company Jacob Shadbolt from IcePanel Brandon Waselnuk from Squire AI (YC S21) They provided lots of good feedback to the companies who were brave enough to pitch. 3 main things I picked up: 1. Be simple and concrete in your answers; if you have $0 MRR just say that. No one cares if you're "on track" to make X amount of money. If you don't know something, just admit it. 2. You don't have to know everything. Wanna get into YC or speedrun? DM people who've been there. 3. Get over your fear of rejection. An exercise Brandon Waselnuk recommends people to get over the fear of rejection is getting 5 high fives from strangers. (It'll be awkward and people might get weirded out but that is the point!) Meeting Sanket Mittal and William Johnson in person was awesome; I could really see the passion they have for entrepreneurship and investing in Canadians. After talking to early stage founders in the free-networking time, I saw promise in the room. If you're an early stage founder in Vancouver building something insane and looking to get that first cheque, DM me.

Althra will always be rooted in Vancouver. But I do agree it’s important to visit SF to shock your system, break your perception of time, and reset your baseline for speed. Lately, it’s become a common storyline: "If you're seriously building, you need to be in the Valley." I believe in an alternate approach; one I’ve heard almost every Althra mentor share (and all of them are based right here in Vancouver). You don’t have to live in the Valley. But you should visit every couple of months. In fact, that’s one of Vancouver’s superpowers, not a weakness: we can fly down to the Bay and back quickly, easily, and cost-effectively. The rest of the time? It's spent heads-down building and talking to your customers. For Cohort 3, this exact value-add is now baked into the program. In collaboration with Cansbridge Scholars, we are introducing a 5-day sprint to the Valley for all cohort founders. We will be visiting various pre-seed VC offices, taking you behind closed doors at top-tier scale-ups, and hosting an invite-only mixer while we're down there. (Final schedule to be released soon). You will get to put yourself in rooms where you can benchmark your own execution against the absolute best. If you are up for it... Applications for Althra Cohort 3 are live. Apply here: https://tally.so/r/ODk9Wg

Aswinkumar Rajendiran was employee #1 at Rippling, Ruchi Varshney led engineering teams at Dropbox, shipping products used by hundreds of millions of people. Aravindkumar Rajendiran built core systems at Airbnb and LinkedIn. Between them, they've seen revenue infrastructure at every stage, from first invoice to IPO. They didn't want anyone else figuring it out the hard way. So they built Measure. Measure brings contracts, billing, usage metering, and revenue recognition into one platform, built by people who've seen what breaks at scale and what doesn't. They're also self-funded by choice, which says a lot about how they operate. No pressure to oversell, no rush to ship something half-baked. Just a team that cares about getting it right. For Althra founders, that matters. Billing and revenue infrastructure is one of those things that feels far away on day one and suddenly very urgent on day ninety. Having Measure in the room means our founders get access to people who've lived that problem at the highest level, before it becomes their problem. 

Some people talk about building things that matter. Zeeshan Rasool just does it. And for Althra, this partnership is the ultimate full-circle moment: Zeeshan was an builder in our first cohort. Now, he’s coming back across the table as an official partner to pay it forward. Zee himself is the blueprint for high-agency execution. A deeply technical product designer, he has scaled everything from digital agencies to complex, AI-native platforms. His entire philosophy is grounded in a simple truth: stop overthinking, strip away the noise, and ship product that makes life a little better. Having a Cohort 1 alumnus who knows exactly what it takes to survive the Althra pressure cooker and who has gone on to build a global venture studio is the highest form of validation for what we are doing here. He represents the exact knowledge flywheel we are trying to scale in Canada. Zeeshan and the 11X Ventures, we’re incredibly proud to have you back in the room. 🚀

Althra going out to the East Coast!!, The team has never actually been to Startupfest. So finally making the trip, and you know we will be hosting an event. There is no one better to co-host this with than Naureen Ahmed, Project Atlas and Planned. - July 7th 6pm Use this as a reset from being extroverted and networking all day to just disconnect and ship. https://luma.com/ghrrf7jw

Here is our June roundup of entrepreneurial news and events that caught our attention 👀 • Government of Canada has launched the AI for All national AI strategy: https://lnkd.in/gWC6HRGE • BC Tech has announced the finalists for its Technology Impact Awards: https://lnkd.in/dUDB6qkG • Vancouver startup incubator Althra has opened applications for its third cohort: https://althra.ca/ • Accelerate Okanagan's Market Diversification funding is back, for export-ready businesses in the Southern Interior: https://lnkd.in/gMrU8BFS • Its awards season at BIV News. Submit your nominations for the 40 Under 40, C-Suite, BC Export and Influential Women in Business Awards: https://lnkd.in/gtPECG8X • BetaKit has published its 2026 Most Ambitious issue: https://lnkd.in/gjjuTJD7 • Canada has announced new funding to support domestic food security and supply chain resilience, to be delivered through the Strategic Response Fund: https://lnkd.in/gkPrtPtq Do you have an event or resource to share? Comment below 👇️