About YEC
The Young Entrepreneurs Conference
What is the YEC?
The Young Entrepreneurs Conference (YEC) started in 2012 as a platform to launch the spearhead for creating an opportunity for young professionals to engage in meaningful discussions about business, technology, and entrepreneurship. Since then, the conference has grown from its young roots at UofT and has seen increasing attendance year over year due to its curation of quality and experience.
Commitment to Quality
The YEC brings in high-profile speakers like Michael Hyatt (Dragon's Den, Blue Cat Networks, Top 40 Under 40), Bobby Umar (4 Times TEDx Speaker, Huffington Post Writer), Kal Mokhtarzada (Pixel Dreams), Alkarim Nasser (Bnotions) and Heather Payne (Ladies Learning Code). Further to that, the YEC also brings out several companies that not only show off their latest innovations and technology but also recruit students out of the conference for internships, contracts and full-time jobs.
Interdisciplinary
The YEC also gives an opportunity for interdisciplinary endeavours. Currently, the YEC is the only known conference to host a significant percentage of young design students & professionals. In recent years we've hosted design competitions with Google, Deloitte Digital, HP and Cisco where young professionals competed with the best from all over the GTA in order to take home big prize money and direct job opportunities from those companies. We understand and believe that business, innovation and entrepreneurship is not a single-track endeavour, it takes all kinds of minds coming together to create something amazing.
The Main Goal: Building Relationships
The main goal and biggest tenet of YEC that has remained throughout the years is the conference's ability to bring like-minded and motivated individuals together, creating meaningful and long-lasting relationships. We believe that true success only happens together, not alone. We made YEC to manifest that notion.