Inventor To Founder Showcase Event
Join YSpace and the IP Innovation Clinic at York University for the Inventor to Founder Showcase, an inspiring evening celebrating the culmination of the Inventor to Founder Fellowship, a 13-week commercialization program, powered by IPON, that empowers researchers, students, faculty, and recent graduates to transform breakthrough innovations into market-ready ventures.
Over the past three months, our founders have challenged assumptions, validated market opportunities, developed and refined their minimum viable products (MVPs), strengthened their commercialization and intellectual property strategies, and collaborated with experienced mentors to bring their ventures to life.
Now, it's time to see what they've built.
What to Expect
🎤 Founder Pitches
Watch founders present their innovative technologies and ventures.
💡 Emerging Startups
Discover solutions addressing real-world challenges across a range of industries.
🤝 Networking Opportunities
Connect with founders, investors, researchers, industry leaders, and members of York University's innovation ecosystem.
🎉 Celebrate Innovation
Join us as we recognize the achievements of this year's Inventor to Founder Fellowship cohort.
Whether you're an investor, entrepreneur, researcher, industry partner, student, or simply passionate about innovation, this is an opportunity to discover promising ventures, connect with ambitious founders, and be part of a growing community of innovators.
We look forward to welcoming you to an afternoon of innovation, collaboration, and celebration.
About YSpace
YSpace is York University’s pan-university entrepreneurship and innovation hub supporting startups and entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors and communities. Our programming spans across scaling innovative technologies through customer and investor capital to scaling agri-food businesses into mass retail to diversity-focused initiatives like ELLA for women-led businesses and in partnership with Black Entrepreneurship Alliance (BEA) for Black-led businesses. We are also home to two physical hubs in the City of Markham and the Town of Georgina.
About IP Innovation Clinic
The IP Innovation Clinic is Canada’s largest, and the first-of-its-kind, pro bono intellectual property clinic and is based at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. The Clinic provides pro bono IP, innovation, and commercialization support to researchers at York University as well as across Ontario and Canada. The Clinic also provides Osgoode law student volunteers (“Clinic Fellows”) with experiential learning opportunities, as they work under the supervision of lawyers from partner law firms to provide one-to-one IP information and assistance to inventors, entrepreneurs, start-ups and small-and-medium sized enterprises. The Clinic was conceptualized and launched in 2010 by its Founding Director, the Honourable Guiseppina (Pina) D'Agostino, and has offset an estimated $2.6M in legal fees through 5,700 hours of pro bono assistance to date.