In today’s world, we, the youth, cannot wait to inherit leadership; we’re shaping it, we’re building it, we are it. We are Start The Wave. Dreamers and Doers.
As young individuals, it often feels like we’re treading in the waters of “the hustle culture.” Shiny LinkedIn updates make rest feel like a weakness, and life feels like it’s a race without a finish line. It feels heavy. As if you need constant progress and achievement to survive. In a world obsessed with visible achievement, failure feels like the end. At its core, failure is defined as a lack of success, which can be deceiving when we look at it practically. Failure makes us capable of that success. It forces us out of our shells more aggressively than comfort ever could. It tells us what a polished feed never would. Every time you get hit by a failure, you’re reminded that the path you envision to be straight and simple doesn’t exist. There are loops and stumbles, and barricades, and pivots, and just so much redirection! All this will give you a trait that flows through the veins of every entrepreneur: resilience. When the “perfect, laid-out path” disappears, plans crumble, and investments fail, resilience, the hidden gift of failure, gives us the strength to swim back up to the shore with any amount of weights tied to our ankles.
I am Radhika Garg, and I want to talk to you about how we can change the preexisting norms. I am the founder of TheNextWave, a youth-led organization dedicated to empowering young and future entrepreneurs. In collaboration with The Times of Canada, Geetanjali Sharma and I built
“Start The Wave”. We’re creating a movement that continues to grow with every story and voice we bring forward.
– The Editorial Board
A dedicated group of young voices comes together to form an editorial team, contributing to original articles, interviews, opinion pieces, and content that brings the fresh and new perspective we need to light.
– Entrepreneurship Teams
As a part of the STW Entrepreneurship Team, groups of youth aged 14-25 come together to design, lead, and start businesses (D2C, NGO, eCommerce, SaaS tools, etc.). These teams have access to mentorship and media support as a part of The Times of Canada and get the opportunity to unleash their limitless potential, building real ventures. They also get to pitch their business at the summit for the opportunity to earn an award, recognition, and grants.
– Volunteer Community
Alongside, our volunteer network is a growing community of 250+ changemakers of all ages across the Lower Mainland. We don’t just support Start The Wave’s events; we are there for the community: local fundraisers, community events, creative initiatives, anything.
– The Summits
The Entrepreneurship Teams, Editorial Board, and other high school students come together for in-person events to network with peers, industry leaders, local startup founders, university students, and experienced individuals. The summits feature workshops, panel discussions, and keynote speakers, while the teams pitch their businesses for the award, recognition, and grant. Perfectly curated to fuel the next wave of unlimited potential.
Join the movement today! https://linktr.ee/start.the.wave
Here are the interview features for this article:
Forest Richter – LaunchX
https://www.linkedin.com/in/forestrichter
“Try stuff. Your risk tolerance is exceedingly high. You can always bounce back. Just do stuff. Do cool things.”
Leading one of the world’s recognized high school entrepreneurship programs with over 2500 alumni across the globe, Forest Richter is the president of LaunchX. It brings together ambitious young entrepreneurs from around the globe to build a startup team of peer founders. Students spend the intense weeks of the program working with industry experts to launch a real business. As a LaunchX alumna myself, being a Launchie feels like stepping into a startup accelerator, global innovation summit, a hands-on internship, and the most fun summer all at once.
Before taking on LaunchX, Forest had been through a whirlwind of the fast-moving world of startups. As one of the first 20 employees at a D2C wine company, he helped it scale to about 1.3 million in monthly revenue, where he discovered his love for being in the early stage of startups. Then, as employee number 2 at a men’s footwear brand, he set up its supply chain, growing it to over a million in revenue there. After years of working on these ventures, he stepped into consulting, eventually launching his own company: a two-sided marketplace in the venture capital ecosystem, trying to connect women and BIPOC entrepreneurs with investors. His company was later acquired by a group in Toronto. This led him to go back to consulting for a while, then take over a battery and fintech company for a while before ultimately finding his dream job as the President of LaunchX just over a year ago.
His advice for young entrepreneurs is that self-care is a business principle. A company can survive if you take a weekend off, but it won’t survive if you burn out for thirty days straight. More than a personal move, protecting your well-being is also strategic. About failure, it’s inevitable. The only way you truly fail is if you stop trying. He hopes that all LaunchX students take away at least the mindset of knowing that failure is okay. Just try stuff. As young entrepreneurs, you have a unique advantage of having an exceedingly high risk tolerance. You can have something completely blow up, without the ramifications being too severe. There is so much opportunity to bounce back. Just do cool things. Don’t be scared, get familiar with it.
Swish Goswami – Boardy.ai
https://www.linkedin.com/in/swishgoswami
“Trust your team. You’re not in it alone. You don’t have to solve every problem by yourself.”
Entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, content creator, and speaker, Swish Goswami has worn many hats. He is currently the Head of Growth at Boardy, an AI superconnector designed to foster human connection and help you meet the right people at the right time. He was previously the Head of Growth at Parallel Studios, raising close to $100 million, and the co-founder of Surf (acquired by Datacy). Alongside, Swish co-hosts the Track Limits podcast, focused on telling in-depth stories of various personalities of Formula 1. He is the author of the invaluable book The Young Entrepreneur, encouraging students worldwide to build businesses. He currently sits on the Next Gen Council for Covenant House Toronto and is the Board Chair for the League of Innovators. Through his angel fund AGEX Capital, Swish is an investor in companies like FaZe Clan, Othership, Wombo, and Upstream. Swish has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice with over 200M content views and was one of the creators of the LinkedInLocal movement. For his entrepreneurial and philanthropic achievements, Swish was inducted into Bay Street Bull’s 30 under 30, recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice, and awarded Startup Canada’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year award and the United Nations’ Outstanding Youth Leadership award. Swish’s passion for public speaking has led him to give four TEDx talks, speak at North America’s prestigious bureau Speakers Spotlight, and at over 300 events around the world, including at Harvard University, Wall Street Journal, STAPLES Center, World Business Dialogue, American Express, IIT Bombay, and the United Nations.
Swish’s advice for youth is not to sweat the small stuff. You are going to come across so many problems as a young entrepreneur, and even in life, that you can’t fixate on one. If you dwell on one failure, you won’t be ready for the next. Know that in the grand scheme of life, the problem you’re stressed about doesn’t really mean much. Five or ten years down the road, you’ll either laugh at it or not even think about it. This long-term perspective and zooming out a bit is very important to grow as a young entrepreneur. Remember that if you have a team, you are not in it alone. Trust your team, trust your co-founder, you don’t need to take everything upon yourself.
Roman Lakhnyuk – CareerHound.io & RezPass.com
“The way you build resilience is by doing, by running at what intimidates you. Most people walk away. You want to run at it.”
The founder of Career Hound, Roman Lakhnyuk, started this company straight out of frustration with automated systems often blocking resumes from ever reaching the employer. Born in Ukraine and moved to Canada at 12, he has always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Starting off, he hustled through door-to-door sales in college, freelanced in marketing, and co-founded a Ukrainian kitchen, selling frozen food, catering, and delivering food as his first business. After this, he took a backpacking trip to South America and Europe, coming home ready to build again. He and a friend saw that on platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed, resumes very often got filtered out before reaching employers. That is when RezPass began as a free product. With a solution-focused idea, they wanted to build a tool that lets applicants bypass those systems and apply directly to the source by Normal resumes miss the keywords or formatting that those systems look for, but by running 36 validation checks, extracting keywords from job descriptions, and tailoring each resume, they solved this.
For young entrepreneurs, Roman says a lot of entrepreneurship is about emotional resilience. You can read every book about marketing and business, get the best degree in the world, but if you can’t tolerate the insane amount of ups and downs, it’ll get really hard for you to actually apply all the things you learned to do. So, doing anything you can to build that resilience will take you places. Stuff that scares you, doing it anyway, even if you mess up, is what will build
resilience. Run at what intimidates you; most people walk away. You need to run at it. When you do this repetitively, that is when you become resilient. In his social media journey, he’s often seen that people are just afraid to hit post or record a video, which can be really intimidating for them. His advice is, when making videos, if you find yourself taking multiple takes and overthinking, stop, record it with mistakes without stopping the video. After that, don’t even watch the video, just post it and let it sit there. Post it with the stutters, bad angles, and bad video quality. Stop overestimating how bad things can go. Normalize not liking it in the beginning when trying something new, because you are doing something that takes a lot of mental energy. Sometimes, when a task seems too daunting, focus on the mechanics over the feelings. If you have a lot of things to get done, instead of trying to get yourself motivated and hyped enough, focus on the physical mechanics of it. Very often, it’s just fear. Follow your intuition, because it works much quicker than reasoning. You don’t need to follow someone else’s path; just do exactly what you want to do.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/romanlakhnyuk
Han Yue – OHME! Foods
“Finding your community is very important. Not only does it give you insights and resources, but it also reminds you that you’re not alone.”
Han Yue and Jenny Yue are the co-founders of OHME! Foods, a Vancouver-based company creating healthy, freeze-dried snacks that are both yummy and nutritious. They have a freeze-dried fruit selection and yogurt crunches. Their products have no sugar, and through the freeze-drying technology, they lock up 90% of the nutrients. Starting almost a year ago, they saw a gap in the market for something tasty and healthy, one of which ends up being compromised. They were either “healthy but bland” or “tasty but filled with additives.” Despite facing all types of challenges in their business journey, they are dedicated to sharing their love for freeze-dried products.
Han’s advice for young entrepreneurs is that when you’re starting off, you’re dedicated and want to go all in, but it is very important to find a balance. If you crash mentally or physically, you can’t keep going. You have to realize how important it is to prioritize yourself. Finding your community is very important because not only do they provide insights, but they also support you when you may feel the loneliest as an entrepreneur, which is completely normal. Dedication matters, but so do you and your health. Be the best version of yourself, try your best, and if things don’t work out, that’s okay. Take a moment to reflect on your journey and how far you’ve come. Take that space. There’s no one way to success. Everyone has a different journey. You can always start over and always ask for help. Having that mindset is very important, even though it may feel like the end of the world, it isn’t.
