imYEG is a program designed to facilitate the launch of successful post-secondary institution-driven and inventor-led innovations.
imYEG wants to:
The innovators will have direct access to highly experienced mentors (Council of Founders) to guide the innovators through the commercialization process. Those mentors will provide advise in regard to business, intellectual property strategy, financing, regulatory, and other areas that a typical innovation requires for a successful launch.
imYEG was designed by Brass Dome Ventures Inc. in collaboration with the University of Alberta. It is operated and run by Brass Dome Ventures Ltd.
imYEG is not an accelerator program. It is an industry-led early industry foundry, focusing on advancing academic and research-based innovations. Through the Council of Founders, which is composed of industry leaders with proven track records of success, the imYEG program provide experience-based mentorship, support, and links to other resources.
imYEG is a free service to innovators from participating postsecondary institutions.
imYEG is open to innovations either discovered at or being worked on at participating post-secondary institutions. Innovations are assessed for fit to ensure that they will benefit from enrolling into the program.
To be eligible for the imYEG program, your innovation needs to meet all of the following criteria:
Include at least one Innovator who is currently associated to a participating post secondary institution in one of the following capacities:
The imYEG Program is currently accepting Innovations from the following institutions:
We plan on partnering with other postsecondary institutions. For more on that, please contact us at info@imyeg.com.
No, imYEG supports innovators from all disciplines.
Yes!
We encourage you to apply to the imYEG program and we can assess your technology's fit within the program.
For consideration into the imYEG Program, please head to this page and sign up to complete an Expression of Interest form. Once we receive your Expression of Interest, we will evaluate your innovation's fit into the program and inform you of that decision.
Once we receive your Expression of Interest, we will evaluate your innovation's fit into the program and inform you of that decision. If the innovation is a fit, you will be asked to complete a Secondary Application Form to supply additional information.
We will be setting up a meeting with you to go through our Readiness Assessment Radar.
For any questions regarding your application, please contact us at info@imyeg.com.
No.
imYEG is an advisory and management program. imYEG does not, on its own, provide innovators with investments, but may help innovators with introductions to investors who may be interested in the innovation.
imYEG will facilitate meetings between innovators and members of the Council of Founders, who will in turn provide advise and recommendations that may assist with commercializing the innovators' technologies. The responsibility of commercialization falls on the innovator.
The Council of Founders (CoF) is a highly prestigious group of key opinion leaders from a diverse range of industries, who mentor imYEG innovators. By setting strict criteria and ensuring the right cultural fit, these mentors enable imYEG to be the place where ideas meet experience.
During each imYEG session, innovations are presented to the Council of Founders. Innovators are then asked to leave the room and Founders get to express interest in mentoring the presented innovation. Based on that, one or multiple Founders are assigned to the innovation, mentoring the innovator(s) until the next session, where the same process occurs.
It depends! During each session, Founders indicate their interest in mentoring the innovator(s). They are assigned to that innovation until the next session. Then, the same Founder(s) may choose to continue mentoring the innovator(s), or new Founders may indicate their interest.
In the case that no Founder volunteers to mentor your innovation, a discussion will be held by the Founders to highlight some of the gaps that are needed to be filled for the innovation to be mentor-ready. These points will be shared with the innovator(s), who will have the opportunity to work on advancing their innovation for the upcoming imYEG session. In the upcoming session, if no Founder(s) volunteer to mentor the innovation due to lack of progress, a vote will be held in the Council of Founders to determine whether or not the innovation should be given another opportunity to advance to the next session, or if it is deemed in the best interest of the innovator(s) to exit the program at this time to continue working on advancing their innovation to be ready for the commercialization process.
Innovations are accepted year-round. The goal of the program is for innovations to show marked commercialization advancement over the course of their involvement with imYEG. If an innovator wishes to exit the program, a one-month notice prior to the upcoming imYEG session should be provided to allow the team to prepare for the exit presentation.