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Kayli is the co-founder and CEO at Friendlier, a high-growth venture on a mission to eliminate single-use packaging waste. She founded Friendlier after graduating from UWaterloo Chemical Engineering in 2020 to combine her passion for technology, sustainability, and entrepreneurship. Friendlier has already diverted over a million packages from landfill, and Kayli was recently honoured on Forbes 30 Under 30 for Social Impact.

Eric has founded two Velocity companies, Kenota Health and Samos Insurance, both of which attended YCombinator. He has a PhD in chemical engineering from UWaterloo. Eric is passionate about helping early stage startups navigate the earliest challenges of getting a company off the ground.

John is the Director of Velocity Campus. He leads Velocity programming on the University of Waterloo campus and develops strategic initiatives that serve to inspire, train and support entrepreneurs.

Before joining Velocity, John was a cofounder and CSO of Nicoya for 7 years. As co-founder, he worked on IP creation and prototype development while supporting pitching and early business development activities. As CSO he led its R&D efforts, early product development and customer support through his experience in nanotechnology-based sensor development.

A staunch believer in the impact of data driven technologies in healthcare, Moazam
found Curiato in 2015, a digital healthcare platform that analysis and predicts hospital acquired conditions directly from the surface of the bed with a smart bed cover. Moazam grew the company from inception (right here at Velocity) to revenue, from raising capital, executing clinical trials, developing international partnerships, receiving regulatory confirmations, and scaling a brilliant team across 3 continents.

Alongside growing Curiato, Moazam helped developed a micro-VC fund in San Jose, where he served as EIR and guided early-stage companies on Go-to-Market strategy, fundraising and scaling. Moazam has also spent some time in consulting in the Pharmaceutical and SaaS industries.

Ross has spent his entire career building and supporting early-stage companies. He started his first company at the Velocity Incubator in 2010, as a third year CS student. While that first venture failed, he took the lessons learned and started Tinker (YC ’14), a cryptocurrency market maker. He went on to be Director of Product at security startup Bannerman, where he led design and engineering. Ross began his VC career as an application reviewer for YCombinator, screening more than 12k companies before returning to UW to help guide the next generation of entrepreneurs. He served as a business advisor, fund lead and interim director at Velocity. Over the last 2 years, he has led 30 new investments and has advised 70+ companies as they scale from pre-seed through to Series A.

Eric has founded two Velocity companies, Kenota Health and Samos Insurance, both of which attended YCombinator. He has a PhD in chemical engineering from UWaterloo. Eric is passionate about helping early stage startups navigate the earliest challenges of getting a company off the ground.

Alroy’s goal is to make Canada the global leader in Deep Tech. Waterloo Region in particular has the talent to build strong businesses underpinned by extremely challenging technologies – materials science, robotics, computer science, photonics. Breakthroughs in these technologies demand more resources and time for development and commercialization compared to other businesses. Alroy is building out programming and partnerships to support and accelerate these companies. He also enjoys calling on his prior experience to advise startups.

Previously, Alroy was CEO and Co-founder of Voltera where he worked with a world class team to revolutionize electronics. They reduced traditional circuit board manufacturing time from weeks to hours and introduced scalable manufacturing processes for circuits that are flexible, stretchable, moldable, biodegradable, and biocompatible – features that will forever change how we all interact with the devices around us. Alroy was a frequent speaker at industry events and continues on the board of directors of Canada’s printed electronics industry association.

Alroy’s goal is to make Canada the global leader in Deep Tech. Waterloo Region in particular has the talent to build strong businesses underpinned by extremely challenging technologies – materials science, robotics, computer science, photonics. Breakthroughs in these technologies demand more resources and time for development and commercialization compared to other businesses. Alroy is building out programming and partnerships to support and accelerate these companies. He also enjoys calling on his prior experience to advise startups.

Previously, Alroy was CEO and Co-founder of Voltera where he worked with a world class team to revolutionize electronics. They reduced traditional circuit board manufacturing time from weeks to hours and introduced scalable manufacturing processes for circuits that are flexible, stretchable, moldable, biodegradable, and biocompatible – features that will forever change how we all interact with the devices around us. Alroy was a frequent speaker at industry events and continues on the board of directors of Canada’s printed electronics industry association.

Krysta is the Senior Manager of Velocity Science, a creator space and program for science innovation at the University of Waterloo campus. She supports early-stage teams with both their business and technical development in the Velocity Science lab. Krysta believes in making entrepreneurship accessible to everyone, and that the most successful founders can be those who never even considered it as a path. In 2016, she co-founded BrightGuide, a software company working to support persons living with dementia and their family caregivers with activities of daily living. Having three years’ experience as an early-stage startup founder has given Krysta a wealth of experience to draw on when coaching teams. Afterwards, she helped small businesses with their digital marketing and online presence through the pandemic via her consulting company Weave Digital. Her combination of working in software, deeptech and local industries gives her a unique perspective on entrepreneurship. Krysta holds a BSc in Chemistry and an MBET from the University of Waterloo.

Alroy’s goal is to make Canada the global leader in Deep Tech. Waterloo Region in particular has the talent to build strong businesses underpinned by extremely challenging technologies – materials science, robotics, computer science, photonics. Breakthroughs in these technologies demand more resources and time for development and commercialization compared to other businesses. Alroy is building out programming and partnerships to support and accelerate these companies. He also enjoys calling on his prior experience to advise startups.

Previously, Alroy was CEO and Co-founder of Voltera where he worked with a world class team to revolutionize electronics. They reduced traditional circuit board manufacturing time from weeks to hours and introduced scalable manufacturing processes for circuits that are flexible, stretchable, moldable, biodegradable, and biocompatible – features that will forever change how we all interact with the devices around us. Alroy was a frequent speaker at industry events and continues on the board of directors of Canada’s printed electronics industry association.

Eric has founded two Velocity companies, Kenota Health and Samos Insurance, both of which attended YCombinator. He has a PhD in chemical engineering from UWaterloo. Eric is passionate about helping early stage startups navigate the earliest challenges of getting a company off the ground.

Akash is a General Partner at Velocity Fund, where he invests in pre-seed and seed stage companies across verticals. While studying at UWaterloo, he founded Sensassure, which was acquired in 2016. He has been an engineer at Apple, a data scientist and team lead at Palantir, and Director of Technology at Safari AI. He is passionate about helping early stage companies in the UWaterloo ecosystem, where he began his founder journey 12 years ago.