Social Ventures Zone

The Social Ventures Zone is thrilled to welcome ‘Blacksheep’ to the SVZ Wild Idea Wall of Fame 🥇

As you all know, this is the ultimate honour for a wild idea. Blacksheep had an incredible campaign, coming in as a late tournament addition and winning all of its matchups by impressive margins. 🐑

Thank you to the everyone who participated in Idea Madness 2026. We received hundreds of votes over the last few weeks, and we appreciate our community’s commitment to ideas: the silly, the bold, and the slightly bananas.

We will see next year for Idea Madness 2027 - stop by the SVZ sometime to add an idea! 🏀

Half the field: ELIMINATED ❌

We’ve gone from 32 to 16 ideas already, and it’s up to you to decide who makes it past the sweet sixteen! Matchups are now live on our story, and you have 24 hours to make sure your favourites stick around!

DON’T MISS OUT! 🏀

the svz has a SERIOUS case of olympics fever, and it’s got us drawing some totally legitimate connections to our startup roster 🥇

While they might not be competing in , our founders are creating serious impact for Canadians, and we’re proud to support it 🇨🇦 Scroll through to learn more about a few of our gold-medal ventures!

🫧April 4th, 2025: Bubble Trouble: What can you see bursting over the next few years? 🫧

Housing. Dot-com. Crypto. AI? Investment and entrepreneurship has a long history of massive boom and bust categories, many of which were, at their peak, heralded as the beginning of a new age.
With so many rapidly accelerating industries - Cleantech, AI, autonomous vehicles - something’s bound to give.

What will burst next?

Let’s talk about it at this week’s CI. As always, registration link in bio ☕️

🚨Please welcome our newest cohort!🚨

We’re thrilled to offer the four finalists from ‘Idea Madness 2025’ express entry into the Social Ventures Zone this month! We recently sat down with them to get a sense of, um, what they were thinking with all of this 🤔

Give a warm SVZ welcome to , , , and !

WE’RE DOWN TO ONLY 8 LEFT 🔥

After starting with 32, 8 of our wildest ideas are left 🏀 You all have some very strong opinions, and you’re making them known!

Vote on our stories while you still can!

🥦🥬This Friday🥦🥬

Eating Your Vegetables: Getting through your least favourite parts of your work

Even if you love what you do, there will always be parts that you don’t enjoy. That’s okay! But when the tougher stuff starts to pile up, it can impede progress in every area of your work. How do you get through it? Do you just have to grin and bear it?
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Let’s talk about it this Friday at Caffeinated Innovators - register at the link in our bio! ☕️

This Friday at CI: “I’m Sort of the Vision Guy”: Starting Up Without Technical Knowledge 👀💡

Most great ideas start without a solid understanding of how to execute them - and that’s okay! The key is finding the right people or learning enough along the way to make things a reality. How do you do that?

Register at the link in our bio or at lu.ma/caffeine ☕️

It’s ! 🎁

The SVZ supports a number of nonprofits and charities who are looking for your support this Giving Tuesday - monetary or otherwise.

Swipe through to learn more about these impactful organizations and give if you can!

TOMORROW MORNING:

Falling with style: Handling downturns and turning things around 📉📈

Unfortunately, it won’t always be ups. There will always be downturns, and wouldn’t you rather be the type to rise above and overcome them? Let’s talk about that at this week’s Caffeinated Innovators.

Register at the link in our bio or anytime at lu.ma/caffeine ☕️

Tomorrows at Social Ventures Zone features a tasty discussion (“The People Factor: The best ways to handle uncertain human relationships”) and tasty treats. Our baking theme this term is “all things square” - and tomorrow features rhubarb-strawberry breakfast bars. Be there or be … you get the idea

Burnout! Ah!

It's one of the scariest prospects for an entrepreneur. To make social change through entrepreneurship, it's critical to allow yourself the opportunity to recharge. What's the best way to do it?

For the final Caffeinated Innovators before the summer break, we'll be discussing ways to refuel. Join us at 9:15 in the SVZ.... last chance until September! Enjoy the summer break!