Unlocking the Secret to Startup Success:
The Technology Roadmap

Article
February 8, 2022

"The Foresight Deliver program helped us clarify our position along our tech development path and gave us concrete tools to work with in improving our business, our technology, and our scaling process. The one-on-one mentorship via the Entrepreneur in Residence was invaluable and our advisor continues to provide us with excellent insight and accountability." ZILA Works

Evan Bouchier,

Foresight is proud to offer the only Acceleration program in Canada specifically for technology leads at emerging ventures. More than 200 Chief Technology Officers and other technology leaders have taken part in our Deliver program since we launched it in 2019. 

Deliver is a six-week training program that gives participants the tools, basic understanding, and confidence to develop and deliver their technology development roadmap. Each participant is paired with an expert Executive in Residence (EIR) who has lived the experience of technology development, in both small and large companies.

Development of the program was led by Foresight’s VP Technology David Sanguinetti and iaconicDesign Founder Jean-Louis Iaconis. An engineer with experience in several startups, David identified a common pitfall for growing ventures: the technology advances without proper planning. In discussions with Foresight CEO Jeanette Jackson and several EIRs, there was consensus that startups frequently struggle for reasons related to technology, not business.

“The general assumption is that companies have invented the technology, so nobody needs to teach them about it,” David explains. “On the one hand that’s true - they understand their technology at a small scale. But they don’t have experience scaling their technology. The technology development roadmap helps them chart out how to take their brilliant idea and grow it into something that scales and can support a business.”

Having now worked with 11 cohorts of the Deliver program with ventures from eight provinces, David has discovered that the technology roadmapping techniques he used for process technologies is also applicable to technologies areas as diverse as software and mechanical equipment design. The challenge for many technology leads is to lift themselves out of today’s priorities and look at the big picture, to plan how they will scale their technology so it works at every stage of growth.

"The Foresight Deliver program was very helpful for Plantee as it talked about some very important issues such as technological risks, IP risks and communication risks a startup can face. The weekly meetings with the EIRs are very helpful as you can get one on one help about a variety of issues you are facing on a daily basis.”  Plantee Bioplastics.

Prashant Agrawal,

“What continues to be eye-opening for me is how broadly applicable the technology roadmap is,” says David. “Deliver helps CTOs recognize that they have to understand more than just how the technology works today.” 

The ventures that are the most successful are the ones who ask for the most help, he explains. “Our course content and the expertise of our EIRs are focused on accelerating the growth of cleantech ventures. We’ll help you develop a technology roadmap that will keep you on the right path as you scale.”

The Deliver Winter cohort, offered virtually, begins in March 2022. Apply by February 25th.