Paying it forward pays off

Former Accelerate intern’s startup incubator creates opportunities for Canada’s next generation of entrepreneurs

It all started when TandemLaunch’s founder, Helge Seetzen, was given a chance to participate in the Mitacs Accelerate program while he was a PhD student at UBC’s Structured Surface Physics lab. In 2002, Helge and a team at the lab developed a new way to control the brightness of visual screens and sold it to audio and cinema giant Dolby Laboratories.

By 2010, he’d formed TandemLaunch, a company that takes young scientists and entrepreneurs in universities and gives them seed money and coaching to transform their ideas into profitable businesses.

Rebecca Reich, Mitacs’ Quebec and Atlantic Canada team lead for Business Development, says Helge came back to the Accelerate, Elevate, and Globalink programs — this time as an internship provider, mentor, and potential employer — after they met through a startup fair in 2011. “I really liked how TandemLaunch was trying to stimulate innovation, growing real companies that create interesting products, wealth, and jobs.”

“Mitacs has been phenomenal,” says Matt Smith, Partner and Chief Operating Officer at TandemLaunch. “Its programs help us develop better long-term relationships with graduates and their professors, which gives us access to more ideas and talent that we can develop in the future. The streamlined and easy-to-use grant process is also a breath of fresh air.”

Over the years, TandemLaunch has recruited dozens of interns and post-doctoral fellows from Concordia, École Polytechnique, and McGill, in fields ranging from engineering to life sciences to the arts.

“The success of this relationship speaks for itself,” says Matt. “And when we develop something into a product or new company, that creates value for the researchers, for us, and for innovation across Canada as a whole.”

Mitacs thanks the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia for their support of the Accelerate research internship in this story. Across Canada, the Accelerate program also receives support from Alberta Innovates, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Ontario, the Government of Prince Edward Island, the Government of Quebec, the Government of Saskatchewan and Research Manitoba.

Do you have a business challenge that could benefit from a research solution? If so, contact Mitacs today to discuss partnership opportunities: BD@mitacs.ca

Mitacs Team

Mitacs’s website content is created by people throughout our organization, united in their passion for innovation and eager to share their perspectives with others in the innovation ecosystem. 

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