One of many interesting opportunities available to Laurier students is the entrepreneurship option, which offers utilities run by the Schlegel Centre like the Launchpad program — a service through the Communitech Hub, The Accelerator Centre and the Community Innovation Hub that allows Laurier students and alumni to use a workspace at no cost, to help accelerate their start-up businesses.
Two recent Laurier grads who have taken advantage of their resources are Tanner Walters and Erik Daroczi, with their company Dividere Stainless.
Walters and Daroczi met during frosh week at Laurier, but are not typical BBA grads who know the ins and outs of business and just happened to have an idea; in fact, Daroczi graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology in 2017.
“Tanner’s first idea was actually an app to track busses, but it kind of failed and now Google tracks buses so that wouldn’t have worked.” Daroczi said.
“We used to go out a lot and we would take flasks everywhere we went, but I would carry chase plus my liquor, so the idea was to combine them both into one classy item we could sneak into clubs like Phil’s.”
Dividere is still in the starting phases of their product, and as of Sept. 8 have surpassed their fundraising goal to create the Dividere Dual Chambered Flask.
The flask differs from others on the market for a variety of reasons: the dual-chambered flask was made not only to be able to store two products at once, but because they “enhance the sharability and versatility” according to their website.
The fundraising goal was $15,000, but the Kickstarter campaign currently sits at $16,620.
“We have a lot of other plans, but we really have to laser focus on this one thing so we can finish it and actually build it. We have to now, we passed our goal.”
What separates Dividere is also their approach to connect with their customers; each of their members has written several blog posts that tie into the theme of who they are; young adults who enjoy creating and some occasional liquor.
Blogs that have been released range from titles like “Top 5 Hidden Bars in Toronto” to “Whiskey Basics,” not only trying to reach their audience from a marketing perspective helping them learn more about spirits, but also the nightlife aspect of what their product is all about.
The whole concept of becoming a businessman while a science student came from Erik taking the course SC 200, Entrepreneurship in Science.
“Zach Weston was advertising to science classes something called Entrepreneurship in Science. I had business interests but I never had business class, like I was in science, right? I took his offer to join his class, and then after that I went on to Laurier Launchpad with the business idea. We used the flask idea in Launchpad.”
Since Erik was still in science and had to write his thesis, the business took a break while he was in his fourth year, but the business still blossomed with the help of Launchpad when they continued again in 2017.
“I had all these ideas, and I feel like a lot of other science students are in this position where they have a lot of ideas and ways they think they can change things, but the point is you don’t figure out how to execute. It’s the opposite in business — they teach you how to run a business and there is a little bit of less creativity there,” said Daroczi.
“When you come into Launchpad, they teach you how to validate it, how to make sure there’s a market for it. By the end of Laurier Launchpad, you should know if your product is marketable or not.”
Dividere’s Kickstarter campaign is now in its last 10 days, and now the execution of the product is going to be Tanner and Erik’s main focus.
“We have a lot of other plans, but we really have to laser focus on this one thing so we can finish it and actually build it. We have to now, we passed our goal,” Daroczi said.
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