Welcome to the Program with Ashley Francisco

[Founder(s)]

Meet your fellow founders, startup teams and the Accelerator team! Learn everything you need to know about what's in store for the next 10 weeks!

OKRs Lab with Jason Scott

 [Founder(s) + Team] 

OKR Basics Training Webinar: History, Creating OKRs, OKR Success Factors.

• Definition and examples: Overview of OKRs basics including examples from our clients we can discuss as a group
• Characteristics of effective OKRs: Here we go deeper into both objectives and key results to ensure participants understand what makes for an effective OKR
• Generating alignment with OKRs: Both strategic (vertical) and horizontal (facilitating cross-functional collaboration)
• The OKRs creation process: 7-step method for creating OKRs

OKRs | Working session with Mentors

[Founder(s) + Team] 

Prepare a draft of your program OKRs with the help of your dedicated Google for Startups Accelerator mentors. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors for OKR drafting - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before feedback session.)

Meal Time! ( ft.Startup Showcases) with Ashley Francisco

[Founder(s)] 

Hear from six (6) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Canada founders and the companies they have built over a meal! 

Each presenting company will have 5-10 minutes to share an overview of their startup and 3 minutes for questions from the group. 

Presenters: AccessNow, Neurescence, ICwhatUC, Together, Visualping & Phelix AI 

OKR Office Hours & Feedback with Jason Scott, Ashley Francisco and Jeremy Neuner

 [Founder(s)] 

Breakout Group 1: Ashley Francisco, AccessNow, AVA, Homewise and ICwhatUC

Breakout Group 2: Jason Scott, Knockri, Neurescence, Orbiseed and PhelixAI

Breakout Group 3: Jeremy Neuner, Summatti, Together, Virtuo and Visualping

Breakout Structure (3:45 - 4:45 EST)

• In roundtable fashion, one team will present & review their OKRs (10mins max)
• Facilitator-led a peer review session and gather open feedback from the other founders (5mins max)
• The founder receiving feedback should take notes, ask clarifying questions, and incorporate feedback as needed
• Then the next team presents and reviews their OKRs, and the process repeats itself

OKR Presentations + What's Next with Ashley Francisco

 [Founder(s)] 

“If no one ever knew your OKRs, did they really happen?” We conclude the content of the week with a final presentation of program OKRs by each of our startups... because #accountability. Nominate a champion from your core team and share with the group.

We will then discuss the following 10 weeks of the program and how to ensure you and your team succeed in achieving your OKRs. 

Meal Time! (ft.Startup Showcases) with Ashley Francisco

[Founder(s)] 

Hear from six (6) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Canada founders and the companies they have built over a meal! 

Each presenting company will have 5-10 minutes to share an overview of their startup and 3 minutes for questions from the group. 

Presenters: Ava Technologies Inc., Virtuo, Knockri, Orbiseed, Summatti, Homewise  

[Optional] Community Building Activity - Life Paths with Ashley Francisco

[Founder(s)]

Learn about each founder's life path. Come prepared with asks and offers you’ll have for your fellow cohort members throughout the program and beyond! The template for this exercise can be found here; make a copy of slide 2 and build yours!

Product Labs: Roadmapping with Sam Legge

[Product Lead] 

Learnings from product roadmapping for a small and fast moving product team. How to embrace uncertainty while providing ongoing clarity to your teams.

Product Labs: Office Hours with Sam Legge & Shyam Sheth

[Optional] 

Want a little more time with our facilitators? Join us for Office Hours!

Design / UX Labs: Design Thinking for Startups with Jenn Pretti

 [Product Lead] 

"Focus on the user and all else will follow.” Building great products first requires getting a deep understanding of the people you are designing for and the challenges they face. Following a people-centered approach to design allows you to build empathy and find innovative and effective ways to meet the needs of your users. This session will teach you the principles of Design Thinking and Google’s approach to innovation.

Product Labs: Office Hours with our Design/UX Experts

[Optional] 

Want a little more time with our facilitators? Join us for Office Hours!

Product Labs: Byteboard "Taking Your MVP to the Next Level" with Nicole Hardson-Hurley

[Product Lead] 

Byteboard will share how their team went from a very scrappy MVP to a more scalable v2 and will discuss some the key product learnings they discovered along the way.

How To Become a Great Startup Storyteller with Leslie Fine & Rick Hartwig

[Founder(s)] 

Simply put, storytelling is an essential skill for any founder or CEO. A story is evocative and clear, blending passion and relevant information. It’s one that helps the listener understand how the world has shifted, the opportunity that has been created, and how we uniquely solve it.

Raising Your Next Fundraising Round with Lesley Ross & Leslie Fine

[Founder(s)] 

Raising capital is a discipline that, when mastered, can fuel a startup’s potential; and when ignored, can doom a venture before it starts. Contrary to most of what a young entrepreneur reads, there is a method to the madness of fundraising... and it involves a great deal more than just a pitch deck. Enjoy The Work has guided more than 100 fundraises totaling north of $350M of venture capital. Our group session will cover revealing topics such as the “the 28 questions all investors ask” and what represents a “minimum viable investor funnel.” We will discuss and provide the frameworks from which to construct a successful raise, no matter if your startup is barely off the ground or well beyond product-market-fit.

Leadership Lunch Series with Steve Woods [Founder(s)]

Steven Woods sharing his personal experience as a leader of a large technical organization in a casual, Ask-Me-Anything lunchtime session.

About Steve Woods

Steven Woods is Senior Engineering Director for Google Canada located in Google’s Engineering Headquarters in Kitchener-Waterloo. Since 2008, Steven has applied his entrepreneurial talents to building Google’s engineering and team building efforts across a wide array of products - Google in Canada now leads a range of worldwide Googler efforts, spans 5 major product areas and has grown from 20 to 1000 technical staff in KW. A serial entrepreneur before Google in both the US and Canada, Steven built companies in software services and infrastructure, in-game advertising, and consumer services.

Community Building Activity - Alumni Spotlight - Making the Most of your Accelerator Experience

[Founder(s)] 

Join us for a panel discussion and Ask Me Anything with some of our 2020 Accelerator Alumni. Hear about their experiences, learnings, best practices - and how to make the most of your Accelerator experience!

Guest Speakers: Julia Rivard (Eyeread), Vino Jeyapalan (Kabo), Jose Zea (Arkangel AI)

Tech Labs: GCP 101 + Cost Optimization with Alan Ranciato

[Technical Lead]

Overview of Google Cloud products and capabilities with a roadmap for startups.

Building Responsible AI Algorithms - Looking Beyond Datasets with Sara Hooker

[Product Lead / Technical Lead]

How can we explain how deep neural networks arrive at decisions or ensure reliable model behavior? Feature representation is complex and to the human eye opaque; instead a set of interpretability tools intuit what the model has learned by looking at what inputs it pays attention to. This talk will introduce some of the challenges associated with going beyond test-set accuracy in deployment settings and the implications of our model design choices. Sara will also discuss some of her recent work on ranking methods that automatically surface what examples humans should spend more time auditing.

Tech Labs: Privacy and Compliance in the Cloud With Almond Au 

[Technical Lead] 

"I think I already have enough security".... pretty much says no one ever in our complex world where cyber risks of many types exist. This workshop gives an overview of the tools and layered considerations for addressing the why, what, and how when it comes to privacy and compliance in the cloud.

Tech Labs: Introduction to Cloud AI/ML with Erik Saarenvirta & Almond Au

[Technical Lead] 

ML Labs introduce startup participants to a design-thinking approach to framing even the most complex machine learning problems facing their business / product. In this first session, we will explore Cloud AI Services: What they are and how to use them.

Tech Labs: Applying ML w/ Qwiklabs with Erik Saarenvirta & Almond Au

[Technical Leads] 

In our final session, we will combine hands on labs and group discussion to explore practical application of Cloud AI / ML technologies. 

[Optional] Product Breakout: Kubernetes and beyond with GKE with Mathieu Benoit

[Technical Lead] 

Join us for specialized Product Breakouts focused on Kubernetes and GKE. Come ready with questions related to all things Kubernetes and GKE!

[Optional] Product Breakout: Google Maps & API with Rawleigh Smith

[Technical Lead] 

In this session, we will cover a high level overview of the Google Maps Platform as well as answer questions around what was presented. 

[Optional] Product Breakout: Voice User Interface (VUI) Design & Actions on Google (AoG) with Kyle Paul

[Technical Lead] 

Voice is quickly becoming the new standard for search and most businesses are not ready for it. Using Actions on Google, developers are able to design, build, and distribute fully-customizable conversational applications.

Actions on Google is a developer platform that lets you create software to extend the functionality of the Google Assistant, Google’s virtual personal assistant, across more than 500 million devices, including smart speakers, phones, cars, TVs, headphones, watches, and much more.

In this session, you’ll learn the fundamentals needed for building Actions on Google, including Voice UI (VUI) & conversational design, what tools are available, some resources to get you started, and more! 

How to Win Demo Day - with Lesley Ross and Devan Batavia

[Founder(s)] 

You’ve dedicated yourself to learning as much as possible during your time in the accelerator. You’ve obsessed about the little stuff, the big stuff, and everything in between. You polished your business where you could and swept other parts out of the way for now. And, of course, you did this all with an eventual goal in mind - to court investors.

Welcome to Demo Day! Demo Day is a right of passage for any founding team. Show up well and it can serve as an accelerant for the months and years ahead. It's a prime time to meet investors, partners and new recruits. But show up unprepared and it could become a regret you’ll carry with you straight to the therapist’s couch.

 AI SharkTank with Peter Norvig - Director of AI Research, Google

[Technical Lead / Founder(s)] 

In “AI SharkTank", each founder / technical lead team will select one (1) representative to present a 3-5 min overview of their proposed AI/ML solution / use case - followed by 3-5 min of Q&A / feedback from Peter Norvig. Peter will focus his feedback on actionable insights from his experience and takeaways for each of our founding teams to refine their implementation of AI/ML.

About Peter Norvig

Peter Norvig is a Director of Research at Google; previously, he directed Google's core search algorithms group. He is co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field, and co-teacher of an Artificial Intelligence class that signed up 160,000 students, helping to kick off the current round of massive open online classes. He is a Fellow of AAAI, ACM, the California Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 

Fundamentals of Advertising on Google with Priya Verma

[Growth/Marketing Lead] 

This session is designed to help startups understand the fundamentals of advertising Google search, introducing them to upper funnel tactics and providing a guide to building organic content on YouTube.

Google Analytics with Riley Nelko & Jonny Silberman

[Growth/Marketing Lead]

You've invested countless hours in validating that your offering solves a problem for your customers. Learn how to continue that process with Google Analytics so that you can uncover how your customers are engaging with you, and how to more efficiently reach them.

Market Expansion & International Export with Kirsten Thibault

[Growth/Marketing Lead]  

Join us as we walk through a framework for international expansion including a walk-through of new Google tools, best practices and case studies. Opportunity for live Q&A following the content to answer any questions you may have about entering new markets.

Foundations of Brand Building with Jamie Gargatsougias

[Growth/Marketing Lead]  

This session is designed to give you the base fundamentals on how to build your brand, with specific examples to bring the concepts to life and actionable tips on how to get started through your most important digital channels.

GFS Sales Academy - with Accelerate Performance Sales Consulting Team

[Sales Lead]  

Google for Startups Sales Academy focuses on preparing your sales leadership for excellence. With sessions tailored to the Accelerator cohort, these sessions will focus on helping you to achieve your startup’s upcoming sales targets.

GFS Sales Academy - with Accelerate Performance Sales Consulting Team

[Sales Lead]  

Google for Startups Sales Academy focuses on preparing your sales leadership for excellence. With sessions tailored to the Accelerator cohort, these sessions will focus on helping you to achieve your startup’s upcoming sales targets.

Leadership Lunch Series with Sabrina Geremia

[Founder(s)] 

Sabrina Geremia sharing her personal experience as a leader of a large technical organization in a casual, Ask-Me-Anything lunchtime session.

About Sabrina Geremia 

As VP & Country Manager for Google in Canada, Sabrina leads the strategic direction of Google’s cross functional business strategy in Canada and Google’s Advertising business.

As the world moves increasingly online, Sabrina believes that the intersection of technology and digital skills is an economic and growth engine for Canada. Her team’s focus is to help Canadian businesses thrive in the digital economy where Google’s ad business drives $23B in economic value for Canada and 200,000 jobs.

Sabrina leads the relationship with the local innovation community & the C-suite of Canada’s largest companies. Her insights are based on over 25 years of international marketing, technology sales and include general management experience at Procter & Gamble where she managed the cosmetics P&L for Italy, Reckitt Benckiser where she drove the first global internet strategy based out of the UK and start up experience at both Ask Jeeves and a mobile startup called Incirco in the UK.

Community Building Activity - Happy Hour!

[Founder(s)] 

Kick back and relax. Join us for drinks and a casual brainstorm on how to foster culture and fun team engagement in a virtual environment.

Leaders Lab: Effective Founders with Annika Stephan

[Founder(s)] 

Leaders Lab helps founders explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.

What makes an effective founder? To kick off Leadership Week, Annika will lead a discussion on what we’ve learned in helping hundreds of the most promising startup founders across the world deal with their toughest people challenges.

Leaders Lab: Working Session

[Founder(s)] 

Blocking off time for you to complete some independent exercises and reflection before our Day 2 sessions.

Founders’ Circle: Hold Consistent Expectations of Co-Founders with Lucero Tagle

[Founder(s)]

Invisible and unmet expectations are at the heart of co-founder conflict. Our data suggests that founders tend to have a minimalist definition of their leadership role. Effective founders hold consistent expectations with themselves and co-founders.

Founders' Circle: Overcoming Discouragement with Lucero Tagle

[Founder(s)]

While most would expect self-confidence to grow as expertise develops, our data suggests that the most effective founders are not nearly as self-confident as the least effective. It's important to know how to ask for help and be vulnerable about weaknesses.

Leaders Lab: Actionable Ideas for Building Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with Dinesh Chahlia, Melisa Seah & Ilona Budapesti

 [Founder(s) + Team] 

This session walks you through a philosophy and action plan for creating inclusive teams and products.

Leadership Lunch Series with Hugo Larochelle

[Founder(s)] 

Hugo Larochelle sharing his personal experience as a thought leader in technology in a casual, Ask-Me-Anything lunchtime session.

About Hugo Larochelle 

Hugo Larochelle is a Research Scientist at Google Brain and lead of the Montreal Google Brain team. He is also a member of Yoshua Bengio's Mila and an Adjunct Professor at the Université de Montréal. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Sherbrooke. Larochelle also co-founded Whetlab, which was acquired in 2015 by Twitter, where he then worked as a Research Scientist in the Twitter Cortex group. From 2009 to 2011, he was also a member of the machine learning group at the University of Toronto, as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Geoffrey Hinton. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal, under the supervision of Yoshua Bengio. Finally, he has a popular online course on deep learning and neural networks, freely accessible on YouTube.

Community Building Activity - Startup Trivia

[Founder(s)] 

Remember startup showcases in week one? Well now it’s time to put your listening skills to the test! Join us as we play a game of Startup Trivia and try to recall facts about your fellow startups!

OKRs | Working Sessions with Mentors

[Founder(s) + Team] 

Grade your program OKRs with the help of your dedicated Google for Startups Accelerator mentors. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors for OKR grading - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before feedback session.)

Media Training 101 with Wendy Manton

 [Founder(s)] 

In this session, you'll get a general overview of the Canadian media landscape, learn the basics of succinctly delivering your company narrative and tips on interview techniques and how to work best with journalists.

OKRs: Presentation + Final Debriefing with Ashley Francisco

[Founder(s)] 

“If no one ever knew your OKRs, did they really happen?” We conclude the program with a final Debriefing & Retrospective of Program OKRs - Review Scoring, Assess Learnings, and Celebrating Wins.

Leadership Lunch Series with Stephen Lake

[Founder(s)] 

Stephen Lake, Co-Founder and CEO of North and now Senior Director of AR Devices at Google, sharing his personal experience as a Founder and leader of a large technical organization in a casual lunchtime session. 

About Stephen Lake 

Stephen Lake has recently joined Google as the Senior Director of Product, Devices & Services. Previously, he co-founded North (the Waterloo-based consumer technology company behind Focals smart glasses), growing the team from 3 to 450, and raising ~$200M in venture capital. Stephen studied mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo, and briefly worked in health technology, on HCI for surgical robotics (DLR) and image-guided intervention (at SickKids / Sentinelle Medical).

Virtual Demo Day Viewing Party

[Founder(s) + Team] 

We are excited to have you join us for our DEMO DAY VIEWING PARTY! No need to join if you'd prefer to watch on our own, but for those of us who'd like to enjoy watching the session together - let's tune in and enjoy a fun time behind the scenes together!

Graduation with Ashley Francisco

[Founder(s) + Team] 

And with that, the Google for Startups Accelerator Canada cohort 2 comes to a close! Join us for some final celebrations, well deserved callouts, and an overview of how you can stay connected with Google ongoing.