Our mission is to help international students thrive beyond the classroom. We had been working on the Guide platform for a few months when the opportunity to enter the EPICentre program. The program gave us three invaluable things, structure, guidance, and funding, which accelerated the growth of our business over a three month period. All of which helped Xenia Education move closer to our goal of launching the platform this year.

Structure

Startup life is ambiguous. Like many founders, before coming into the program, we had a reasonably good understanding of our product but the number of moving variables involved in starting a business can be overwhelming.

The RBC EPIC Founders program gave us the structure and discipline needed to focus only on what was most important, given the time and resources available. That was important in accelerating the development of our platform, Guide.

Guidance

Good guidance is expensive. The mentorship we got during the Founders program was invaluable. We were able to lay out our roadmap and develop our business further because we had a reliable source of invaluable feedback.

Being in a program like this, with such a diverse cohort was important in helping us shape our thinking. Getting valuable feedback and brainstorming with this group as a resource within itself.

Funding

It is a privilege to give your full-time effort to your new business. The funding provided by the program allowed us to put all of our time and energy into understanding our users and customers and developing our product.

Finally, just a few weeks after finishing the program and winning the pitch competition, we are wrapping up our minimum viable product and will be launching soon.

The EPIC Founders Program has brought Xenia Education several potential business opportunities, and it gave us the resources to come farther in three months than we would have in six!

We are now on the right track to make a difference in the lives of international students and the people who serve them. We are excited to see how colleges and universities will use our tools to serve these students. We appreciate what the RBC EPICentre founders program did for our business. We highly encourage other entrepreneurs to connect with the team at the EPICentre to look into how this and other programs offered there can enhance their ventures.