Experience Ventures
A nation-wide collaboration between students, ventures, and post-secondary schools
Students
Grow beyond the classroom, become a changemaker, and make an impact alongside real-world innovators.
Ventures
Find early-stage talent, recruit students to your local innovation network, and benefit from their multi-disciplinary ideas and perspectives.
Schools
Cultivate multi-dimensional innovation networks and foster entrepreneurial thinking within your community.
Become a Changemaker
Experience Ventures, powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the Áù¾ÅÉ«ÌÃ, enables college and university students to make an impact alongside real-world innovators through entrepreneurial thinking placements.
Entrepreneurial thinking serves as our north star — the Experience Ventures program strives to advance entrepreneurial thinking and help students across the country build career ready skills as they enter the innovation economy.
Funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative.
We offer five different types of placements
An entrepreneurial thinking placement is a structured, short-term opportunity (with honorarium) with a startup or social venture that has partnered with a student’s school. Placements are flexible, part-time, and mostly remote. They are for up to 80 hours of work over 12 weeks and students are compensated $825.
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Hackathons
A one- to two-day event in which ventures present students with real world challenges and ask them to provide innovative solutions.
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Challenges
Taking place over several weeks, these require students to build out more complete solutions to social, business, design or community challenges.
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Projects
Ventures present students with a specific project, and the school matches it to talent from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.
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Student-in-Residence
Students selected by the incubator receive unique opportunities to work with several ventures over the course of a term.
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Interdisciplinary Team Projects
Incubators create teams of students from more than one discipline and provide them with a project for a venture or group of ventures.
What is Solutions Lab?
The Experience Ventures Solutions Lab, powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking, is a unique future-skills building program that invites UCalgary students to participate in developing innovative solutions to a local or regional challenge.
Running from October 14 to December 2, 2025, students will spend a maximum of 40 hours working on their solutions and pitches. Students will be placed in teams to create pitches no longer than five minutes.
Fall 2025 Solutions Lab
Experience Ventures Solutions Lab is coming up and this year you'll be tackling one of Canada’s most pressing social innovation issues today: the Buy Canadian movement.
Join a multidisciplinary team to design innovative solutions that reduce Canada’s reliance on foreign goods and services while supporting our national economy. Your ideas will directly contribute to the Buy Canadian movement and you will earn an honorarium for your work!
Why Join?
✔ Gain hands-on experience outside the classroom
✔ Build entrepreneurial thinking skills that employers value
✔ Expand your network with industry mentors
✔ Make an impact on one of Canada’s most relevant issues today
✔ Part-time commitment (40 hours over 7 weeks)
✔ Open to undergrads from any discipline
Important Dates
Frequently Asked Questions
Entrepreneurial thinking is being creative in finding innovative solutions. It’s about taking initiative and exchanging knowledge across disciplines. It is essential to enriching lives and advancing society.
Experience Ventures, powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the Áù¾ÅÉ«ÌÃ, enables college and university students to make an impact alongside real-world innovators through entrepreneurial thinking placements.
Become a change-maker
Experience Ventures creates paid entrepreneurial thinking placements for college and university students with innovative companies in Canada. Our goal is to inspire your creativity, resiliency and future vision – so you can seize your future with the right skill set.
To learn more, visit .
Any eligible UCalgary undergraduate student who is eager to explore entrepreneurial thinking, build future ready skills they can bring into their respective careers, and expand on existing ideas are encouraged to apply for the program.
The challenge kick-off will be held in-person on the 4th floor of the Hunter Student Commons. Workshops and Mentor "Office Hours" will be conducted online via Zoom. Students are free to meet with their teams in person or online. The finale will be held in-person on December 2nd.
No. Participants are not able to register as a team.
The challenge will kick off with a keynote speaker who works in this space and students will be provided with additional information and resources to support their work. Teams will be provided an opportunity to attend drop-in sessions with mentors to support their progress and work.
You will be provided with contact details to connect with event organizers. If you experience any problems during the challenge, we encourage you to get in touch with us.
Each team will be asked to submit a final project proposal that aligns with the scoring rubric. The submission will include a five minute video and 1 page project brief guidelines for which will be provided at the same time as a copy of the scoring rubric.
Winners will be selected by a panel of judges who will score student submissions against the evaluation criteria.
Previous Solutions Labs
Hunter Hub Solutions Lab: Sustainable Campus challenges students to create impactful sustainability solutions for their campus, culminating in a finale where winning teams are recognized.
Hunter Hub Solutions Lab: Addressing social isolation in the Calgary area challenges students to create impactful solutions, with winning teams recognized at the finale.
Hunter Hub Solutions Lab: Climate change solutions for Southern Alberta challenges students to develop and present impactful projects addressing climate change.
Hunter Hub Solutions Lab: Resilient Food Systems Challenge invites UCalgary students to develop innovative, sustainability-focused solutions for a community challenge unveiled at the start of the event.
Students were invited to propose feasible and impactful solutions, connecting with fellow students to aid UCalgary in achieving its ambitious goal of becoming a zero waste campus by 2030.
