Celebrating Women's Entrepreneurship Day with Borealis Wind Founder, Daniela Roeper

Today the United Nations celebrated Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, to recognize, empower, and support women in business. Velocity is home to many successful women-led startups, and we sat down with Daniela Roeper, founder of Borealis Wind to talk about her business, and her experience as a woman entrepreneur in the startup space.

Daniela’s company, Borealis Wind, is creating a solution that allows wind turbines to be reliable and efficient all year long, even in tough Canadian winters. The company created a retrofit de-icing system that wind farm operators can use to ensure that their turbines never shut down for an extended period of time, melting ice in only 90 minutes, and limiting lost revenue from icy wind turbines.

“Once wind turbines get ice on their blades, they shut down. It’s not safe to operate them. Right now, they don’t have anything to take the ice off the blades. They shut down until the ice melts on its own, which can take a few days, or it can take up to a month.” – Daniela Roeper, Founder of Borealis Wind

Daniela joined the Velocity Garage startup incubator after encouragement from her sister, Alexa, who is also an entrepreneur, and founder of Penta Medical. After working at Velocity for several months, Daniela took part in Communitech’s Fierce Founders Bootcamp, which culminated in a pitch competition where she won first prize and $40,000 in funding. She was then admitted to the Fierce Founders program, an intensive six-month accelerator for startups with female founders.

“Velocity and Fierce Founders have helped me a lot. Most importantly, these programs have taught me how to run a company.”

Daniela is pleased that she is starting to see changes as women founders are being encouraged by programs like Fierce Founders, and that issues on gender equality, and inclusion are being discussed more and more in the startup world to encourage more women to become entrepreneurs. “For me, the experience of being an entrepreneur has been great, and I’d love to see more women doing it.” When asked what advice she has for aspiring women entrepreneurs, she had a few words of wisdom to share:

“Take the risk. And go out there and own it, because I know you will.”