Written by Ian Weng
About the Author
Current Position: Co-Founder and CEO of SPATULA Foods
Education: Bachelor of Accounting and Financial Management (UW), Masters of Accounting (UW), Masters of Business Administration (INSEAD)
ACE Consulting Group Involvement: Co-Founder and CEO (2009 - 2010)
What were the top three highlights of your student life at the University of Waterloo?
Being a part of ACE was definitely one of the top highlights of my time at Waterloo. It was an amazing experience working with some of the brightest minds of the class building a new venture together from scratch. Creating something from nothing was such an exhilarating experience, and knowing that we were making a difference in the university community gave us our drive to push forward.
Professionally, I really enjoyed my 4 co-op terms at KPMG. I joined the firm’s Financial Institutions Audit practice where I worked largely on assurance engagements for large banks. I found the co-op experience invaluable for my professional and academic development as it allowed me to integrate the two worlds as I walked through my 4 years in AFM. KPMG was a great place to learn, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to start my career with great people at the firm. I was able to return to the firm as a Senior after graduation, and transferred into the firm’s Advisory practice shortly after.
However, I think the most important thing that I took away from Waterloo was the lifelong friendships that I built there. Whether it was my roommates or my classmates, I met some of my best friends at Waterloo. In fact, one of my roommates was the best man at my wedding. Although the university experience is about academics and career, it is also about the personal connections and relationships you develop throughout the Waterloo journey.
How has being a part of ACE impacted your professional life and/or career trajectory?
ACE had a transformational impact on my career.
First, it gave me the opportunity to practice both hard and soft business skill sets early on in my university career. Of course working with clients allowed me to put accounting, budgeting, and financial analysis skills learned in the classroom into practice, but what I found more important was the soft skills that I could apply during my time at ACE. This included selling to student clubs and organizations, org design as we built out ACE’s org structure, and negotiations with campus faculty on what ACE was and what role it could play within the SAF environment.
Second, it set me up well for the co-op interview process as these transferable skills were what the employers were looking for. Interviewers were fascinated by the opportunities and experiences I took on with ACE, and helped them cement in their minds that I was the right person for the role.
Third, and most importantly, building ACE from scratch gave me the confidence to build new ventures later in my career. Building an organization such as ACE at Waterloo was a fantastic way to learn how to build something from nothing within the safe environment of a university. This mock-version of business-building gave me both the skills and confidence to take on new ventures several years into my career. So far, I’ve built a start-up that helps underutilized restaurants attract customers to their establishment, and am currently building SPATULA, a chef-to-consumer frozen food marketplace.
Can you tell us more about your experience as a founder/co-founder of a start-up? What advice would you give your past self or to other start-up founders, and what was the biggest lesson you learned?
After 4 years at KPMG, I decided to jump into the world of tech startups. Together with my co-founders, we built an application called ChopChop, that allowed restaurants to push promotions during off-peak hours, and for customers to digitally find the best live deals around them. We joined the Founders Institute accelerator, launched our app, and acquired thousands of early users. However, we found it difficult to retain our customers, as our application wasn’t solving a big enough problem for it to be sticky. Ultimately, we had to dissolve the company because we weren’t able to find product market fit to secure external capital. My co-founders and I had an extremely rewarding experience bringing our idea into reality, and learning along the way.
The most important lesson I learned was that prior to building a company, an application, or a solution, founders should do deep diligence around the problem that they are solving to validate that it is a big enough problem that needs solving. Further, founders need to spend time testing their solution and validating your solution before they spend time and money to actually build it. This can be done through various “hacks” and experiments, and most importantly should test a customer’s actual willingness to pay for the solution they are offering.
Another important lesson I learned from building ChopChop was realizing that I still had a ton to learn in order to build a successful business in the future. As such, I spent the next 4 years at Uber Eats building the Canadian business, and another year at INSEAD to ready myself for my next venture.
Now that I’m back from INSEAD, I’m building my newest venture, SPATULA, and am super pumped about it! My team and I are on a mission to reinvent frozen food for US & Canada. Spending a year in France, we were amazed by the quality of gourmet frozen food in France. We think that this is a white space in the Canadian market, and we think that there’s massive potential to bring Canadians high quality gourmet frozen meals with all the convenience that comes with it. Make sure to check us out!
How did you get involved with Uber Eats Canada? Can you elaborate on your role? What was your favourite part of the job?
It’s true what people say about the power of a strong network. I was referred to Uber Eats from my friend and previous AFM Learning-Living Community mentor! Uber Eats was only about a year old globally when I joined the business. There were a ton of fascinating problems to solve, and it was an amazing place to learn how to build and scale a tech driven business.
I had the pleasure of working on countless interesting projects across several functions during my time at Uber - this included Courier Operations, Marketplace Operations, Cities Operations, and most recently as Head of the Strategy & Planning team. One of my favourite projects that I worked on during my time at Eats was getting the opportunity to architect, build, launch a new process that manages marketplace supply and demand during adverse weather for all of US and Canada. This project took me to our Uber offices in Ireland, Philippines, and Singapore, and I had the opportunity to work with brilliant colleagues across our global offices.
In my most recent role as Head of Strategy & Planning for Canada, I lead the Strategy, Planning, Finance, and New Verticals functions of the business. This was a particularly impactful role as I got to see the business from a bird’s eye view, and make a large impact on the growth and profitability of the Canadian business.
My favourite part of the job was definitely the people I got to work with Uber. Everyone in the Canadian office brought so much energy and passion to their work that it was very contagious. Our teams had a builders’ and owners’ mindset, and I felt privileged to get to work with such amazing people day in and day out building a great product for Canadians.