Reducing Barriers for Start-Ups in NL

LearnSphere’s Commercialization Consulting and Mentoring (CCM) Program, funded by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, helps businesses in the final stages of bringing a new product to market by giving them access to consulting, mentoring, and/or marketing expertise.   

But the program is not limited to SMEs!   

Entrepreneurship centres, incubators and accelerators are taking advantage of this funding to provide learning sessions and coaching for participants to:   

• Build their sales processes  
• Close their first customer 
• Achieve product-market fit 
• Improve their pitch 

Genesis Centre is a shining example of one such centre. Located in St. John’s, Genesis is an innovation hub, helping start-ups from ideation all the way to scaling their businesses.  

No stranger to CCM, this year Genesis applied and received CCM funding to provide group learning for their high growth-potential startups.   

The CCM program helped Genesis develop programming in the fields of inter-cultural communication, team development and negotiation – topics that our research had identified as barriers to inclusion, retention, supplier diversity, and business development. A number of sessions have been delivered and Genesis companies have already had the opportunity to put their new skills to use. ~ Lesley Galgay, Success Manager, Diversity at Genesis.    

At LearnSphere we believe in helping early-stage businesses access learning and coaching that they would not be able to fund on their own.   

As a university, community college, research institution, or non-profit organization, if you want to provide training to your stakeholders to help them build readiness for commercialization, find out more about this funding option by contacting info@learnsphere.ca.