Program Overview
Download a copy of your Program Overview here!
FOUNDER(S): This is you and any / all of your co-founders.
FOUNDER(S) + TEAM: This is you and anyone from your team for which the session is relevant and / or interesting!
PRODUCT LEAD | TECHNICAL LEAD | GROWTH/MARKETING LEAD | SALES LEADS : These are members of your team who make key product, technical, or growth decisions for the company.
OPTIONAL: This is anyone on your team for whom the content is relevant.
Week 1: Welcome & OKRs
12:00PM - 1:30PM ET
Welcome to the Program! with Iran Karimian and Alice Kawka
[Founder(s) + Team]
Meet your fellow founders, startup teams and the Accelerator team! Learn everything you need to know about what's in store for the next 10 weeks.
2:00PM - 2:30PM ET
[Mandatory] How to Schedule Office Hours with Alice Kawka
[Founder(s) + Team]
This program gives you access to dozens of Google mentors with various subject matter expertise. Learn how to schedule office hours with them and get familiar with the Google for Startups Accelerator: Canada - Advocu Platform.
3:00PM - 4:00PM ET
OKRs Lab with Jason Scott
[Founder(s) + Team]
OKR Basics Training Webinar: History, Creating OKRs, OKR Success Factors
Definition and examples: Overview of OKRs basics including examples from our clients we can discuss as a group
Characteristics of effective OKRs: Here we go deeper into both objectives and key results to ensure participants understand what makes for an effective OKR
Generating alignment with OKRs: Both strategic (vertical) and horizontal (facilitating cross-functional collaboration)
The OKRs creation process: 7-step method for creating OKRs
Meal Time! (ft.Startup Showcases) with Iran Karimian
[Founder(s)]
Hear from six (6) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Canada founders and the companies they have built over a meal! Each presenting company will have 5-10 minutes to share an overview of their startup and 3 minutes for questions from the group
Presenters: Gryd, My Choice, ShareWares, Bidmii, TrojAI, SalonScale
1:30PM - 3:00PM ET
OKR Office Hours & Feedback with Google Experts
[Founder(s)]
Want a little more time with our facilitators? Join our Google Experts for Office Hours!
Note: This is a HOLD for OKR Office Hours & Feedback
Please visit the calendar hold for details on how to book office hours.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
OKRs | Working session with Mentors
[Founder(s) + Team]
Prepare a draft of your program OKRs with the help of your dedicated Google for Startups Accelerator mentors. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors for OKR drafting - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before Thursday's feedback session.)
12:00PM - 1:30PM ET
Meal Time! (ft.Startup Showcases) with Iran Karimian
[Founder(s)]
Hear from six (6) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Canada founders and the companies they have built over a meal! Each presenting company will have 5-10 minutes to share an overview of their startup and 3 minutes for questions from the group
Presenters: Moves, Chimoney, Clavis, Tablz, Morpheus.Network, Foqus Technologies
1:30PM - 3:00PM ET
OKR Office Hours & Feedback with Google Experts
[Founder(s)]
Want a little more time with our facilitators? Join our Google Experts for Office Hours!
Note: This is a HOLD for OKR Office Hours & Feedback
Please visit the calendar hold for details on how to book office hours.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
OKR Presentations + What's Next with Iran Karimian
[Founder(s)]
“If no one ever knew your OKRs, did they really happen?” We conclude the content of the week with a final presentation of program OKRs by each of our startups... because #accountability.
We will then discuss the following 10 weeks of the program and how to ensure you and your team success in achieving your OKRs.
Week 2: Product, Design & UX
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Design / UX Labs: Design Thinking for Startups with Jenn Pretti
[Product Lead]
"Focus on the user and all else will follow.” Building great products first requires getting a deep understanding of the people you are designing for and the challenges they face. Following a people-centered approach to design allows you to build empathy and find innovative and effective ways to meet the needs of your users. This session will teach you the principles of Design Thinking and Google’s approach to innovation.
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM ET
Product Labs: Prototyping with Tobias Toft
[Product Lead]
Prototyping delivers knowledge, but we often don’t define exactly what knowledge is truly needed. There are three questions - and a few other tips - that can help your team get the best results from your prototyping efforts.
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Product Labs: Roadmapping with Sam Legge
[Product Lead]
Learnings from product roadmapping for a small and fast moving product team. How to embrace uncertainty while providing ongoing clarity to your teams.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Design Labs: Journey Mapping with Ruchi Mahajan & Aparna Satoor
[Product Lead]
Journey mapping articulates user goals and needs in the context of the broader ecosystem and helps identify opportunities. During the workshop, we will go through the process of mapping a customer’s journey for a sample problem.
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Fundraising is Much More Than A Pitch Deck with Enjoy The Work
[Founder(s)]
Raising capital is a discipline that, when mastered, can fuel a startup’s potential; and when ignored, can doom a venture before it starts. Contrary to most of what a young entrepreneur reads, there is a method to the madness of fundraising... and it involves a great deal more than just a pitch deck.
3:30PM - 4:30PM ET
[Optional] Community Building Activity with Iran Karimian
[Founder(s)]
Learn about each founder's life path. Come prepared with asks and offers you’ll have for your fellow cohort members throughout the program and beyond! The template for this exercise can be found here; make a copy of slide 2 and build yours!
Week 3: Breakout Week & Office Hours
Mentorship is an integral part of the Accelerator program to help guide you and open opportunities to dive deeper into your specific question and needs. During Breakout Weeks startups can work with their dedicated mentors to reserve office hour slots for invaluable one-on-one sessions with Google experts across a variety of topics - from technical areas like App Engine, Kubernetes, Cloud through to growth strategy, Google Ads, digital marketing, YouTube best practices and more!
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Life's a Pitch with the Long Story Short Team
[Founder(s)]
Life’s a Pitch – How to write and deliver persuasive presentations. Crafting and delivering an engaging pitch is no easy feat; throw technology into the mix and you’re really asking for trouble.
This workshop aims to educate you on how to write, build and deliver persuasive presentations. We’ll address key pitch challenges you have faced to date, before exploring narrative and structure, and how to best communicate your offering. This includes discussing best practices for messaging and keeping audiences engaged both in-person and online.
We’ll round out the session by participating in a mix of exercises designed to help you overcome any fears, nerves, or anxiety when it comes time to present. This includes direct feedback and coaching on body language, pitch, and tone to help deliver your presentation in a confident and impactful way.
1:30PM - 2:30PM ET
Leadership Lunch Series with Sam Sebastian
[Founder(s)]
Sam Sebastian sharing his personal experience as the Vice President, Google Cloud Canada in a casual, Ask-Me-Anything lunchtime session.
Week 4: Tech/Machine Learning
3:00PM - 4:00PM ET
Tech Labs: GCP 101 for AWS and Azure Users with Padmalatha Ragunathan
[Technical Lead]
GCP 101 for AWS and Azure users introduces important concepts and terminology for working with Google Cloud for beginners. This session presents and compares many of Google Cloud's computing and storage services, along with key benefits of using Google Cloud.
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Tech Labs: GCP 201 - Infrastructure Track with Osmond Ng
[Technical Lead]
In this session, we will discuss what are the offerings on the Infrastructure areas, Compute Options (VM, VMWare, BareMetal, Serverless, Container), storage options, network connectivities and more. We will illustrate common use cases for those options. Additionally, we will discuss cost optimization while balancing performance and flexibility.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Tech Labs: GCP 201 - AI / ML Vertex AI with Aaron Davis
[Technical Lead]
This session will provide an overview of Vertex AI, Google's platform for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. We will discuss the different components of Vertex AI and how they can be used to build and deploy machine learning models using Vertex Pipelines. We will also provide a demo of Vertex AI, showing how it can be used to build and deploy models.
12:00PM - 2:00PM ET
GCP Onboarding Workshops with Technical Mentors
[Founder(s) / Technical Lead]
Dedicated Mentors will be facilitating 1:few GCP Onboarding workshops supporting startups with GCP onboarding following the Google Cloud setup checklist. Sign up for a session here!
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Tech Labs: Getting Started on GCP & Cost Optimization with Geoff Anderson
[Technical Lead]
Are you thinking about spinning up your first VM to handle a stateful workload? Thinking about moving your containerized apps over to GKE and planning for your first cluster? - GCP offers compute in traditional ways like VM but there is also the managed aspect of GKE which offers Autopilot etc. and there is CloudRun as well. All require advance planning before deployment to best position yourself for the most cost-effective usage of compute on GCP. This course will provide an overview of the options and key decision spots where you can best set yourself up to take advantage of cost optimization tools to ensure future success.
Week 5: Tech / Machine Learning
12:30PM - 1:30PM ET
Tech Labs: Learning Paths with Alan Ranciato
[Technical Lead]
Google Cloud training offering for Startups. Will cover the recommended courses, learning paths, labs and certifications to get started and learn the platform as well as where to look for additional training. Will include a demo the training tool (Cloud Skills Boost)
3:00PM - 4:00PM ET
[Optional] Mid-Program OKR Check In with Iran Karimian
[Founder(s)]
Mid-program OKR check in... because #accountability. Let’s walk through an effective way to think about checking in and grading OKRs mid-cycle.
12:00PM - 1:00PM ET
[Optional] Product Breakout: Security / Compliance with Inderdeep Matharoo
[Technical Lead]
This session will provide an overview of Google Cloud Security & Compliance. Specifically, we will discuss Google Cloud's Security & Privacy commitment, how security is continuously tested at scale, and the 3 fundamental pillars of Google Cloud Security - Protection, Control, and Compliance. This session is designed for a variety of personas, ranging from business/technical analysts to CXOs.
1:00PM - 2:00PM ET
[Optional] Product Breakout: Serverless with Farrukh Ijaz
[Technical Lead]
Serverless is an expansive, fast growing, innovative area for Google Cloud. Our serverless is purpose built to accelerate time-to-value for application teams on Google Cloud by creating solutions that operate themselves. Serverless Compute helps Google Cloud customers build and run software without provisioning, managing or maintaining physical or virtual machines. In this session, we will go over Google Cloud Serverless product portfolio and discuss use cases.
2:00PM - 3:00PM ET
[Optional] Product Breakout: Looker & Big Query with Aditya Dhekney
[Technical Lead]
This session will provide an overview of Google BigQuery and Looker, two powerful tools that can help you get more value from your data. We will discuss how to use BigQuery to store and analyze large amounts of data, and how to use Looker to build interactive dashboards and reports that are easy to understand and share. We will also discuss how to build custom applications that help you make better decisions.
3:00PM - 4:00PM ET
[Optional] Product Breakout: Ingestion & Data with Adam Muise
[Technical Lead]
Google Data Cloud offers a fully-managed cloud native platform to ingest and manage your data. We will cover the various data ingestion, data processing, and data management tools in Google Cloud. To help new companies start out with Google Cloud we will present a opinionated approach to using Google Cloud data services that allows for maximum flexibility and a rapid return on value.
12:30PM - 1:30PM ET
CTO Roundtable: Alumni Spotlight and Workshop (bring your challenges!)
[Founder(s) + Tech Leads]
Join us for a panel discussion with Accelerator alumni CTO’s Varun Sharma, Brett Popkey, and Krystian Olszanski, as they speak to how you can make the most of your time in the accelerator! Let’s harness the brain power in the room to share frustrations and tackle some of your tech challenges!
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Tech Labs: Responsible AI - Putting Values into Practice with Philip Parham & Taylor Roper
[Technical Lead/Product Lead]
This interactive talk will focus on key learnings and best practices related to responsible AI development. It will provide an overview of how Google has put its AI Principles into practice and what our approach is to responsible AI.
Week 6: Breakout Week
Startups will be recording Demo Day pitches during their scheduled time slot in week 6. Working with our seasoned AV team, you’ll create a 5 minute video to showcase the impact of your business and share your inspiring successes with our virtual Demo Day audience.
1:30PM - 2:30PM ET
Investor Roundtable
[Founder(s)]
In this panel discussion, our goal is to allow our Canada accelerator founders to ask questions on the current fundraising climate, where the industry is headed, and what should be top of mind as you head into any upcoming fundraisers. So come with questions for our experts!
Week 7: Growth & Business
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Fundamentals of Advertising on Google with Juana Mahadik
[Growth/Marketing Lead]
This session is designed to help startups understand the fundamentals of advertising Google search, introducing them to upper funnel tactics and providing a guide to building organic content on YouTube.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Google Analytics with Kyle Blanchette & Claudia Bertuccini
[Growth/Marketing Lead]
You've invested countless hours in validating that your offering solves a problem for your customers. Learn how to continue that process with Google Analytics so that you can uncover how your customers are engaging with you, and how to more efficiently reach them.
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Market Expansion & International Export with Sudeep Singh
[Growth/Marketing Lead]
Join us as we walk through a framework for international expansion including a walk-through of new Google tools, best practices and case studies. Opportunity for live Q&A following the content to answer any questions you may have about entering new markets.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Building your Brand through Digital Marketing with Peter Hand
[Growth/Marketing Lead]
We will share several tips and guidance on how to effectively build your brand through your most important channel: digital. We will go through the different aspects of brand guidelines and how to adapt these to the different digital platforms and media in order to keep a strong, unified online storytelling.
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
GFS Sales Academy Session #1 with Accelerate Performance Sales Consulting Team
[Sales Lead]
Google for Startups Sales Academy Sesion #1 focuses on preparing your sales leadership for excellence. With sessions tailored to the Accelerator cohort, these sessions will focus on helping you to achieve your startup’s upcoming sales targets.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
GFS Sales Academy Session #2 with Accelerate Performance Sales Consulting Team
[Sales Lead]
Google for Startups Sales Academy Session #2 focuses on preparing your sales leadership for excellence. With sessions tailored to the Accelerator cohort, these sessions will focus on helping you to achieve your startup’s upcoming sales targets.
Week 8: People & Leadership
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Leaders Lab: Effective Founders with Jason Scott
[Founder(s)]
Leaders Lab helps founders explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.
What makes an effective founder? To kick off Leadership Week, Annika will lead a discussion on what we’ve learned in helping hundreds of the most promising startup founders across the world deal with their toughest people challenges.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Leaders Lab: Working Session
[Founder(s)]
Blocking off time for you to complete some independent exercises and reflection before our Day 2 sessions.
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Leaders Lab: Deep Dive 1 - Invite Disagreement with Jason Scott
[Founder(s)]
Leaders Lab helps founders explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
Leaders Lab: Deep Dive 2 - Overcoming Discouragement with Jason Scott
[Founder(s)]
Leaders Lab helps founders explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.
12:30PM - 1:30PM ET
Building for Billions with Liane Aihara
[Founder(s) + Team]
Product Inclusion is the practice of bringing an inclusive lens throughout the entire development and design process to build products for the world. Come learn about the business case for inclusion and actionable steps you can take to bring an inclusive and equitable lens to your work.
2:00PM - 4:00PM ET
AI Pitches with Peter Norvig
[Technical Lead / Founder(s)]
In “AI Pitches", each founder / technical lead team will select one (1) representative to present a 3-5 min overview of their proposed AI/ML solution / use case - followed by 3-5 min of Q&A / feedback from Peter Norvig. Peter will focus his feedback on actionable insights from his experience and takeaways for each of our founding teams to refine their implementation of AI/ML.
Week 9: Breakout Week
Mentorship is an integral part of the Accelerator program to help guide you and open opportunities to dive deeper into your specific question and needs. During Breakout Weeks startups can work with their dedicated mentors to reserve office hour slots for invaluable one-on-one sessions with Google experts across a variety of topics - from technical areas like App Engine, Kubernetes, Cloud through to growth strategy, Google Ads, digital marketing, YouTube best practices and more!
1:00PM - 2:00PM ET
Media Training 101 with Hibaq Ali
[Founder(s)]
In this session, you'll get a general overview of the Canadian media landscape, learn the basics of succinctly delivering your company narrative and tips on interview techniques and how to work best with journalists.
12:30PM - 1:30PM ET
Leadership Lunch Series with Michele Romanow
[Founder(s)]
Michele Romanow sharing her personal experience as a Canadian tech entrepreneur, in a casual, Ask-Me-Anything lunchtime session.
Week 10: Graduation & Demo Day
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
OKRs | Working Sessions with Mentors
[Founder(s)]
Prepare a draft of your program OKRs with the help of your Google for Startups Accelerator: Canada mentors. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors for OKR drafting - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before feedback session.)
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
OKRs | Working Session to Finalize OKR Wins with Mentors
[Founder(s)]
With the help of your Google for Startups Accelerator Canada mentors, use this time to finalize your OKR Wins prior to Thursday’s OKR presentation and final debriefing. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors to prepare for your OKR presentation - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before feedback session on Thursday.)
12:30PM - 2:00PM ET
Virtual Demo Day Viewing Party
[Founder(s) + Team]
We are excited to have you join us for our DEMO DAY VIEWING PARTY! No need to join if you'd prefer to watch on our own, but for those of us who'd like to enjoy watching the session together - let's tune in and enjoy a fun time behind the scenes together!
3:00PM - 4:30PM ET
OKRs: Presentation + Final Debriefing & Graduation with Iran Karimian and Alice Kawka
[Founder(s) + Team]
“If no one ever knew your OKRs, did they really happen?” We conclude the program with a final Debriefing & Retrospective of Program OKRs - Review Scoring, Assess Learnings, and Celebrating Wins.
…And with that, the third cohort of the Google for Startups Accelerator Canada comes to a close! Join us for some final celebrations, well deserved callouts, and an overview of how you can stay connected with Google ongoing.
