The Genius of Creative Destruction Lab

Last Thursday night, I sat in a dining room in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, the eastern-most city in North America. On a jagged cliff overlooking the unforgiving Atlantic sea, a group of CEOs and investors from across Canada dined on moose (seriously) to celebrate the conclusion of two days of meetings. But we weren’t there to meet with each other. Everyone in the room had spent the past 48 hours focused on a shared goal: mentoring 30 of the most promising startups in Atlantic Canada.

Signal Hill, where Guglielmo Marconi received the world’s first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901

If you’re a founder in Canada — or are involved in the Canadian tech scene in any way, shape or form — then you’re familiar with the letters CDL.  The Creative Destruction Lab is more recognized across Canada than any other accelerator, save maybe Y Combinator. In 10 years, the program has helped create more than $19 Billion in equity value.  That’s right, $19 Billion.

And it costs founders nothing to participate. 🤯

Awkward selfie with Adam Keating, CEO of St. John’s-based CoLab (Panache portfolio company and CDL Atlantic graduate, who recently announced a $17M Series A)

CDL’s model - a cross between a traditional accelerator and Shark Tank – was dreamt up not by a serial entrepreneur or well-known investor, but by a business school professor who was pissed off that Canadian PhD students kept getting hired away by Silicon Valley companies. Ajay Agrawal was determined to change the status quo. His audacious experiment to create a “marketplace for judgement” has completely changed the Canadian tech landscape.

The “Main Room” at CDL Montreal

I first attended CDL in Toronto in 2017 while I was with 500 Startups. And like so many people before and after me, I was blown away by what I saw.  Billionaire CEOs, top investors and world-renowned subject matter experts sitting in a single room, laser focused on mentoring first-time founders.

Soon after, I found myself flying back and forth between San Francisco and Montreal for the CDL “AI Stream.” Two years later, I began adding regular trips to my hometown of Vancouver for CDL “Prime.” The year following, it was CDL-Atlantic, a rotating program held across Canada’s four maritime provinces. And my experience was far from unique.

Creative Destruction Lab’s approach to mentorship has tapped into a desire that many of us in business and tech have to do more. To make Canada better. Yes, many of the people involved in CDL find some manner of business value in participating (investors see deal flow, corporates meet potential vendors and everyone benefits from the networking), but that’s not the driving reason why so many CDL “Associates” fly across the country (and, increasingly, around the world) every 8 weeks.

As the program has continued to expand, so has the impressive list of CDL Fellows and Associates, which not only includes prominent CEOs and investors but also astronaut Chris Hadfield, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, economist Joshua Gans and many more.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield mentors a group of founders at CDL Toronto

And CDL’s ambitions haven’t stopped with startups. They’ve added a program specifically designed to get more high school girls into entrepreneurship, created streams for everything from space to cancer research, and expanded beyond Canada’s borders to the US, UK, France and Estonia. Of course, there have been some growing pains along the way, but the core mission of CDL — to “Build Something Massive” — continues to strike a chord with many across the Canadian ecosystem.

Being back in person for CDL after two years of Covid — two weeks ago in Montreal and last week in St. John’s — reminded me of how special Creative Destruction Lab really is and what a game-changer it’s been for Canada.

I can’t wait until next year.

Applications are currently open for CDL’s 2022/23 cohort. Click here to learn more and apply.