EMERGING ENTREPRENEURS

Christine Robinson, founder of The Nesting Space,
the new champion of venture creation competition

By: ROSE SIMONE
KITCHENER (May 11, 2007)

Judges for this year's LaunchPad 50K Venture Creation Competition heard about cutting-edge technologies, such as a process for turning wheat straw into a plastic filler product.

But the champion of the competition, announced yesterday afternoon at Communitech's Tech Leadership Conference, is as low-tech as it gets.

Christine Robinson, founder of The Nesting Space, won $12,500 in cash and a similar amount in business services to help get her parent-and-child facility off the ground. She plans to open the first facility in Waterloo by early next year. It will offer a "coffee house" environment with education and wellness programs for parents, plus play areas and day care for children.

"I wondered if anyone would take this little parenting idea seriously . . . but what I discovered was that most of these folks are parents," Robinson said.

In LaunchPad, emerging entrepreneurs, including students from Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Waterloo, the University of Guelph and Conestoga College, pitch their plans to a panel of judges from the business and investment community.

The three top winners share $50,000 in money and in-kind services.

Robinson, a Laurier graduate, hopes to open two more facilities and then turn The Nesting Space into a franchise business with locations across the country.

She said the idea was born out of personal experience.

She went from being a high-energy management consultant who was having vibrant conversations with clients over coffee, to "a woman desperately seeking resources that would allow me to even finish a cup of coffee."

It was Robinson's well-researched and highly organized presentation that won the day during the final round of the competition this week.

For her market research, Robinson talked to about 300 new parents.

The first runner-up, HealthSpoke Inc., is an Internet portal geared to connecting wellness professionals and their clients. Dan Donovan and James Moncartz, who are about to graduate from UW's masters of business, entrepreneurship and technology program, hope to launch it this fall.

Another young entrepreneur, Paul Maxwell, was the second runner-up for his business, Maxwell's Music House.

Maxwell, 22, who is graduating from Laurier with a bachelor of business administration and music minor, will offer rehearsal space for musicians, as well as space for music lessons, workshops and concerts, in a leased facility on King Street, across from WLU.

"This is my passion, my vision, my dream," he told the judges.

The other two finalists, selected from the original 17 competitors, were Factortime, an Internet portal designed to help people rent unused office space, and Mcube Technologies, which hopes to set up a plant to turn wheat straw into plastic filler.