Ottawa startup leaders talk resilience at TiECON Canada

The following preview is taken from the Ottawa Business Journal

Resilience is a word that pops up everywhere these days, but for good reason given the times.

On Thursday, David Gaylord, CEO of Bushbalm Skincare, took to the stage with Pierce Ujjainwalla, co-founder and CEO of Knak, Noibu co-founder and president Kailin Noivo, Trexity CEO and co-founder Alok Ahuja and Fellow.app CEO and co-founder Aydin Mirzaee to participate in the Top Ottawa Startups to Watch discussion, moderated by Rick Norland, CEO of Malaika Vx Inc.

The conversation inevitably turned to the conference theme: “In It To Win It: Resilient Entrepreneurship”, providing panelists with an opportunity to touch on their own challenging times.

“When I think ‘resilience’ I think ‘rejection’, and lots of it,” said Ahuja, who had the tough job of trying to raise capital during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I had to do it through a (computer) screen. They couldn’t see my body language. They couldn’t feel the emotion behind what we were building.

“I reached out to over 1,300 VCs and got rejected every single day by multiple VCs. It was tough, and there were days when I didn’t want to keep going.”

“When I think ‘resilience’, it was pushing through all of that noise, all of that rejection,” said Ahuja. “As a company, we believed in what we were doing. We were listening to the impact we were having on the local economies that we were servicing across Canada.”

Trexity, founded in 2019, is a same-day on demand local delivery platform. Earlier this year, it successfully completed a $5M seed round led by TELUS Ventures. 

Visit Ottawa Business Journal for full article.