Entrepreneurs have long been considered high achievers who have built businesses from nothing, but today, with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), there is a new class of solo business person: solopreneurs, and training organization, Venture for Canada is looking to take those to the next level.

“The solopreneurship is coming to the surface in this new age with AI. It’s become possible for anyone to not have to wait to hire their engineer or a marketing person, or an accountant, for that very first stage of launching a business or a service,” Ren Kamal, manager, learning design and fellowship academy at Venture for Canada (VFC) said to PeopleNX in an interview.

The organization is now offering its inaugural training program that will provide people who are having trouble getting off the ground a pathway to a solid career.

“We focus on entrepreneurial skills such as sales and marketing, which is where solopreneurship comes in, because it gives a different pathway and opportunity for people to consider entrepreneurship in this changing landscape around what businesses look like; what entrepreneurs look like.”

Venture for Canada is a national charity that began in 2013 and was founded by Scott Stirrett. If has delivered more than 12,000 work-integrated placements, helping over 7,000 young Canadians and more than 2,400 startups and small businesses.

In 2022, the federal government gave $23.2 million to the organization. Overall, it has raised more than $80 million from government and other businesses.

Details of new program

For $499, participants will go through a six-week, hybrid program that begins with an in-person launch weekend, followed by an on-site graduation ceremony. Both sessions will be held at Toronto corporate event space StartWell.

There are four hours of virtual sessions each week that includes practice labs and workshops. It also includes eight to 10 hours of independent work between weekly sessions. Each cohort will include 50 fellows who are typically 18 to 35 years old.

The program runs from Oct. 3 through to Nov. 14.

Ideal participants are recent graduates or those with one to three years of work experience, according to VFC. They don’t need to have a proper business idea or plan but rather a skill or a service to offer.

Once complete, students will have a “90-day plan, a business model toolkit around positioning, a clear offer statement; going through workshops around selecting their revenue model that would best fit their service or product,” Kamal explained.

The role of AI as business tool

It will also focus heavily on deploying AI as a business tool. The program leaders will offer real-world ways to benefit from AI.

“You can ask AI a prompt around, ‘What should my daily method of operation look like? Because I’m a mom of two. I’m working full time, but I want to set out some time or tasks for my side business,’” Kamal said.

“AI can give you at least a template to follow.”

While it cannot make decisions, AI can help burgeoning business people with tasks like managing time, editing thoughts and documents, and will hopefully enable them to “think of it as the brainstorming whiteboard for you.”

“A solopreneur is someone who’s able to build a business on their own with key tools that can help them amplify certain elements of their business operations,” she said.

More solopreneurs needed today

For VFC, the time is right to empower the next generation. “It’s a very transformational period because our economy is calling for it: we need more entrepreneurs. We need more people to grow the economy, but in different facets and ways, and this is one of those ways that we could definitely equip young people.”

“Ultimately we’d love for more people to have access and not be afraid to take a chance on their ideas or their skills and their passions that they have,” Kamal said.

VFC also offers other specialized programs such as Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition and an Intrapreneurship Program, but the new solopreneurship learning “fills another bucket,” according to Kamal.

Participants who are “thinking about putting myself out there as an editor, and 'how do I set myself up as a consultant or that agent?' It’s complementary in the sense of entrepreneurship as a whole, and then equipping everybody who comes through our doors with AI fluency and skill sets in that element.”

Unlike startup incubators that focus on a particular nascent industry such as cleantech or edtech (educational technology), the solopreneurship program is “bringing an industry-agnostic approach to getting a bunch of entrepreneurial, hungry and eager and curious fellows together as a part of the program to learn and launch,” Kamal said.

“It’s anyone who has been sitting on a particular service that they wanted to provide, or they have a skill set that they are stuck in trying to figure out the plan on launching to find their first customer.”