A Force For Good: How We’re Giving Back To Pre-Seed Canadian Startups
At Bain Public, we’re proud to offer free one-on-one sessions, discounted rates and lead pro-bono partnership efforts, donating company time to provide product-driven startups with expert advice and coaching about product management. In giving back, we’ve established a way to positively impact the Canadian startup ecosystem.
We’re humble that as an influential organization, we can share product leadership best practices and transform organizations through product-driven culture adoption when they’re in their infancy (pre-seed), helping them drive a path toward a clearer view of the bigger picture.
Giving back is something we’ve built into our business model, using our organization as a force for good. We’re proud to say that we’ve given over 900 hours of pro bono work since 2018 and take corporate responsibility very seriously. Not only that, but giving back requires active involvement and implementing solutions in response to product leadership challenges and Canadian startup ecosystem expectations.
As a business, we want to achieve success in ways that honour our ethical values as well as respect startups and accelerator communities. Read the rest of this article to find out more on why we believe in giving back, along with the many workshops and initiatives we have to offer that benefit the Montreal, Toronto and Western Canadian startups.
Why We Believe In Giving Back
We understand that running a startup isn’t easy work. They forgo stability in exchange for the promise of fast growth. The solutions aren’t obvious and success isn’t always guaranteed. That’s why in today’s world it’s more important than ever for organizations to make business decisions that contribute to a better world.
Pro bono work, as well as giving back to startup communities through other initiatives, is increasingly emerging as a helpful way to support Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, sharing value with other up-and-coming businesses.
Not only do discounted workshops, mentoring sessions and pro bono programs improve our company’s reputation and bolster employee morale, but it also helps startups and nonprofits grow and achieve their business mission.
At Bain Public, we care about user problems and how products fit into everyone’s lives, working together to solve real pain points and launch market-tested, innovative products that have the power to transform the world.
In taking on pro bono advisory work along with offering a number of other initiatives, we’re able to share our expertise of product leadership, product strategy and product development processes to resident startups.
To date, we’re thrilled to have been able to bring the ideas of product leadership, product strategy, and product management to products developed by Canadian startup entrepreneurs and business leaders. As advisors, we’ve contributed to the following through a number of workshops:
- Acceleprise
- Next AI
- Holt Accelerator
- Centech (Acceleration and Propulsion program)
- Zú Focus program
- FounderFuel
- Women’s Founder Project
- Techstars
- Cooperathon Open Innovation challenge
- <post> COVID initiative
- OSMO Innovation
Get 40% Off Our ‘SOAP™ Workshop Series’
Offering pro bono work is certainly something we believe in, but we’re also committed to offering workshops to product-centric pre-seed Canadian startups at a significantly discounted rate — helping them to navigate complex product management issues, all through our SOAP™methodology.
Our ‘SOAP™ Workshop Series’ helps us attract product-minded founders looking for ways to get a clear view of the bigger picture. We help put in place product-driven cultures when organizations are first getting their operations off the ground (pre-seed), taking their product culture from random and unpredictable to being product-led. Not only does it improve a startup’s standards of product roadmapping, but it also helps business leaders have their product team drive company growth.
This workshop series doesn’t just benefit pre-seed startups, it helps us at Bain Public too. There’s shared value. By joining us in the ‘SOAP™ Workshop Series’, you’re helping us to continually improve our existing methodologies, further broaden our network, give us the inspiration to build new services and products, as well as gain a greater understanding of your particular market and industry.
Does the ‘SOAP™ Workshop Series’ sound like something you’re interested in? Must be willing to take a tour to see SOAP™ in action.
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Book a SOAP™ demo and get 40% off →
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Other Initiatives We Offer To Help The Canadian Startup Ecosystem
How else does Bain Public have a positive effect on the Canadian startup ecosystem? To put it simply, we provide a number of different workshops and one-on-one sessions to startups — helping them create a vision and strategy as well as define tactical drivers and metrics. See below what more we can offer:
‘Leadership in Product, Connect & Explore’ workshops across Canadian Accelerators
This 3-hour virtual workshop helps you identify a ‘high level’ strategic baseline to achieve clarity and goal alignment. It’s designed and targeted to executives (i.e. Directors, VPs, C-level leaders) who are driving real results at fast-growing product companies such as startups and SMB organizations.
Free one-on-one coaching and mentoring with pre-seed Canadian startup leaders
These one-on-one sessions will help you roadmap your products, providing perspective on product-centric problems and the different ways that they can be solved.
Sign up for your free session here
Pro-bono SOAP™ Product Capability Building Program
We do this with selected startups incubated in Canadian technology hubs. In doing so, we believe we can have an impact on the Montreal business ecosystem. The hope is that startups will gain from our processes, framework, experience as well as our product know-how and ideas.
More About Our SOAP™Methodology
SOAP™ is a methodology that Bain Public created for product planning and roadmap prioritization based on principles of Product Strategy, Lean Startup, User-Centered Design, Data Science and more.
It breaks product innovation into three steps: Product Mission, Product Blueprint and Roadmap Pillars. This 12-week process covers the tactics, strategies and mindsets that underpin this three-step thinking. It’s an approach designed to help organizations create knowledge and build product strategies. When employed, it will help create new value, respect stakeholder opinion while getting buy-in, and optimize product delivery through iterative releases while validating and eliminating waste.
With SOAP™’s organizational models, operational tactics and online tools, you’ll shape harmonious collaborations, accentuate connections and ease information sharing.
Would you like to learn more about our SOAP™ process? Visit our Solutions page →
Bain Public offers consistent roadmap planning processes & tools for business leaders and product managers organized around what motivates, inspires and improves growth. We offer a variety of blog posts, e-books and approaches designed to help organizations understand their digital strategies, introduce elements of roadmapping and establish product-led change amongst the senior leaders and managers. Our approach, product, expert advice and coaching helps entangle complex technology, people and roadmap dynamics. For more information, visit bainpublic.com or call 514–442–8487.
Thanks to Loren O’Brien-Egesborg for contributing to this article as well as reading drafts and overseeing aspects of its publication. Also, if you have any feedback or criticism about this article, then shoot us an email info@bainpublic.com.
