Small businesses, big ideas

This summer, three Dalhousie students are busy being their own bosses. Evan Price, Mitchell Lesbirel, and Akram Al-Otumi are forging their careers out of successful entrepreneurial pursuits.

Seeds of a venture

Commerce student Evan Price spent his early school years trying his hand at everything from bike repairs to portable dishwasher rentals. He’s since settled on farming as the proprietor of FiddleHop Farms.

Mr. Price’s 10-acre farm is located outside of Truro and provides fiddleheads for Halifax businesses such as The Wooden Monkey and Pete’s Frootique and organically grown hops for Garrison Brewery. An avid supporter of local businesses, Mr. Price is excited by what he believes to be “a strong stable partnership” with Garrison.

FiddleHop Farms started as a regional distribution company called Nova Gourmet Fiddleheads. Then, after extensively researching the 2005 international hops shortage, he decided to plant hops on the farm’s unused acreage.

With an abiding interest in sustainability, he has hired Dal’s first sustainability intern, Katerina Stein, to help with his hops growing project, where different organic fertilizers will be tested. The fourth-year finance major and the DSU’s Vice-President of Finance also hopes to pursue other sustainable projects in low-income housing and energy production.

Mr. Price believes every great business idea needs to be “well-researched and well-thought-out.” He was recently recognized for his diligence by Highflyers.ca which named him one of Nova Scotia’s top-10 entrepreneurs.

The next big thing

In December 2010, Dalhousie Management student Mitchell Lesbirel was chosen as a participant of the entrepreneurial program The Next 36. Billed as “Canada’s entrepreneurial leadership initiative,” The Next 36 aims to nurture future entrepreneurs by offering role models and practical experience to 36 innovative undergraduates from across the country.

Participants in The Next 36 are divided into teams and each group must “invent, launch and sell a product or service focused on the mobile environment.” Mr. Lesbirel’s team is working on a push notification app, named PushPal, which will provide students with notifications from universities and student-oriented businesses. Users will be able to filter which kinds of notifications they receive.

Mr. Lesbirel notes it can be “very difficult to think of novel ideas” in such a rapidly growing market. He adds The Next 36 has taught him “that the execution and follow through of an idea are as important as the initial idea.” The teams will be presenting their projects to investors throughout the summer, completing the course in August.

Mr. Lesbirel has always had green ideas, starting with the home-grown herbs and veggies he sold as a young kid. Now he’s interested in sustainable businesses, especially after studying renewable energy in Vancouver last summer. He wants to run a business that has a “value for society” and makes a difference for the environment and the economy.

The program’s international selection of guest lecturers has helped open Mr. Lesbirel to the possibility of having an international business. “You […] realize that doing big things is within your grasp,” he says. The entrepreneurship major is grateful for the “view-changing” experience that The Next 36 has offered, and he believes that a strong economy needs “great entrepreneurs that step up and challenge the status quo.”

By students for students

Akram Al-Otumi’s best advice for entrepreneurs is to “be consistent,” and Mr. Al-Otumi’s consistent hard work has definitely paid off. The fourth-year commerce student recently received the Sagewood Group Award for Entrepreneurship, after successfully launching his business Azal Student Agency. Mr. Al-Otumi, a participant in the Entrepreneur Skills Program, developed the Azal Student Agency during an entrepreneurial work term. It provides services to international students who are moving to Halifax for the first time, from finding accommodations to picking them up at the airport to helping them decipher Canadian culture.

“While the number of international students in Nova Scotia has doubled in the last decade, there has not been a large increase in the number of services available to them,” says Mr. Al-Otumi. An international student from Sana'a, Yemen, Mr. Al-Otumi saw the need for a service that facilitated an easy transition for students from more than 100 countries who study in Halifax.

The marketing major’s business plan was inspired by his experience as the president of the World University Service of Canada at Dalhousie and as a campus tour guide.

Named for an ancient city in Yemen where people from Africa, Europe, and India met to trade, Azal Student Agency began operation on May 2 and it’s been busy, “especially with the language students who are arriving for summer terms.”

Mr. Al-Otumi hopes to develop Azal to become “the number-one student services agency in Nova Scotia.” In the future, Mr. Al-Otumi would like to obtain a master's degree in e-commerce and own a multinational company. An avid volunteer, he would also like the opportunity to “support good causes in a business capacity.” Outside of his business, Mr. Al-Otumi is currently collaborating with two of his friends to found the Dalhousie Entrepreneurship Society.  

LINKS: Fiddlehop Farms | The Next 36 | Azal Student Agency