CDL-Rockies
Source: https://haskayne.ucalgary.ca/cdl-rockies Parent: https://haskayne.ucalgary.ca/
Powerful change needs powerful teams
Our vision
Transforming their world to transform the world
Every promising innovation gets its best chance at having a massive impact.
The world’s problems can’t be solved without innovation. However, too many innovations never make it out of the lab or off of the shelf. If they do, the chances of success are slim, with the vast majority of new technologies failing every year*. These innovations lack the resources and experience required to have a shot at having a real impact.
Innovators can’t do it alone, and they shouldn’t have to.
Our mission
Powerful change needs powerful teams
Matching visionary innovators with extraordinary, accomplished mentors to overcome the most important barriers to progress.
Our role in making this vision a reality is to reduce the barriers that prevent innovations from having an impact. A key path to success is through commercialization, but the right team is critical.
Finding, putting together, and working with the team best suited to identify, confront, and overcome barriers to progress takes time and is often impossible for founders to do alone.
That’s where CDL-Rockies comes in.
Our work
Maximum rigor for maximum readiness
Selecting, situating and stress-testing the best ideas with the best teams in the most proven programming.
We select a curated group of extraordinary, accomplished mentors who have a global mindset and are invested in finding and supporting innovations that will solve problems with visionary innovators who require the business expertise to commercialize.
We then situation these highly curated, newly formed teams in the CDL-Rockies program that best suits their needs – Nurture, CDL or ScaleUp. From there, the innovations are stress-tested in a structured, concentrated timeframe. This allows teams to iterate and improve their innovations without risking complete failure. This process prepares innovators to achieve funding, gain customers and partners, and other milestones needed to successfully commercialize.
Tamara Leigh
CEO & Co-Founder, EIO Diagnostics; Nurture participant and CDL alumni
"Building a community of support that understands entrepreneurship and early-stage companies is one of the best investments you can make with your time. The Nurture program is a great warm-up to CDL and prepares you to take that next step."
Ariel Torre
Co-founder & CEO, Impossible Sensing Energy (CDL-Rockies graduate)
"As a first-time entrepreneur, there are days that are really good, and there are others where I think nothing is going to work. Before CDL, I thought I was the only one who felt like this. But hearing from the mentors and other ventures in the program, I realized so many of us are going through this. That really helped in this journey."
Alicia Soulier
CEO, SalonScale Technology (ScaleUp participant)
"[ScaleUp] was, what I call, our 'TSN Turning Point.' It was the moment that really redefined who I was as a leader and it really created a foundation of trust."
About CDL-Rockies
CDL-Rockies helps visionary innovators reduce the barriers that prevent their innovations from commercializing and having a massive impact. This is achieved through a three-step process:
Step 1
Selecting extraordinary, accomplished mentors (incredibly successful entrepreneurs and renowned scientists who have a global mindset) and founders with innovations solving critical challenges – and intentionally curating them into teams.
Step 2
Situating these mentor/founder teams in the CDL-Rockies program that best suits the growth stage they're at – Nurture, CDL or Haskayne ScaleUp.
Step 3
Stress-testing these innovations in timed intervals through each program’s specific framework, building strong businesses that are ready and able to accelerate their growth.
Our programs
| Tech | Team | Financing stage | |
| Nurture | - Compelling technology but lacking clear use case - MVP in progress - Validated product/market fit | - Founder, not yet full-time - Team not yet formed | Early Formation/Pre-Seed |
| CDL | - Working prototype or MVP - Validating product/market fit | - Full-time founder - 1-10 employees | Pre-Seed/Seed Stage |
| ScaleUp | - Evidence of scale (capital, market traction, team, revenue) - Need to scale in the next 18-24 months & high growth ambition | Inexperienced CEO and executive team | Closed Series A or equivalent |
Thank you to all CDL-Rockies partners
CDL-Rockies is entirely supported by private donations and corporate support. Thank you to our partners for your continued support of our programming and operations.
Founding partners
- Alison Sunstrum
- Chen Fong
- Kanovsky Family (as represented by Michael Kanovsky)
- Mike Broadfoot
- Sharon Siebens
- Tang Family Foundation
CDL Global founding partners
- Threshold Impact (Ray Muzyka & Leona De Boer)
- John Harris
Government partners
Corporate partners
(Catalyst partner of the CDL AgriFood stream and Nurture program)
Community partner
University partners
(Founding CDL site)
(Site collaborator)
(Academic affiliate)
(Academic affiliate, AgriFood stream)
Contact us
Have more questions about CDL-Rockies?
Email us at cdl-rockies@creativedestructionlab.com.
Creative Destruction Lab™ founded at the Rotman School of Management
Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a nonprofit organization that delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies.