This is part of a year-long ‘Love for Local’ series called NB365: portraits of New Brunswick entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations. Huddle is a media partner with Love for Local. Today, we hear from Kathryn Lockhart of Propel.

AT PROPEL, FOUNDERS BECOME LEADERS. LEADERS WHO ARE DRIVEN TO BUILD BABY UNICORNS IN ATLANTIC CANADA. THEY ARRIVE EXCITED ABOUT THEIR TECHNOLOGY AND BY THE TIME THEY COMPLETE OUR PROGRAM, THEY ARE EXCITED ABOUT SOLVING THEIR CUSTOMERS’ PROBLEMS AND HAVE THE REVENUE TO PROVE IT!

Supported by world-class content and dedicated start-up coaches, founders build the skills, knowledge, and insights they need to successfully lead and scale their business.

Each founder is on a different journey, but the trends we see at the end of our program are leaders who now have clarity, their journey has been de-risked, and they are no longer improvising. They are in the driver’s seat of their future. We are completely virtual, enabling us to support founders in larger cities as well as those in our tiniest communities. Coaches are often described as the voices in the founder’s head as they guide, challenge and empower the evolution of these baby unicorns.

Community involvement has definitely been impacted these past months but Propel has always been an active participant in events hosted in the eco-system (BAI networking, pitch events). Our Startup Coaches have invested considerable time with the engineering program at UNBSJ and Propel has a partnership agreement with the UNBSJ MBA school. We maintain co-location space at Planet Hatch in Fredericton, providing visibility to startups in the region and our programming. We’ve also been active with B4C impact accelerator through the Pond Deshpande Center, with fireside chats, follow-up one on ones, as well as lunch and learns. It takes a village to support a founder’s journey and New Brunswick has excellent partners who are playing an important role in this. It’s a true community that rallies around founders.

Though Propel covers all four Atlantic Provinces, it was born in NB. In looking at our alumni list, we have definitely had an impact on the province. Since launching our virtual program in September 2018 we have admitted 57 NB-based founders into our program and have a graduation rate of 91%. We have 3 of our 10 team members based here as well as 4 of our 14 Board members. New Brunswick has all the right ingredients to change the profile of our region and Propel is excited to enable founders to lead that change.

Local businesses make a difference because they are our future.