When Jaiya Varshney finished her commerce degree at the University of British Columbia in 2023, she did what most graduates are expected to do: she polished her CV and applied for roles in the sustainability sector. When no offer materialised, she took a different path entirely.
She joined forces with two UBC classmates to establish Tydra Labs, a Vancouver-headquartered biomaterials firm that has engineered a process for transforming food and agricultural waste into chitin — a naturally occurring polymer capable of substituting petroleum-derived ingredients in cosmetics, healthcare products and agricultural applications.
“At this point in my life, I thought I could afford to take the risk,” says Ms. Varshney, now 26. “I was living at home. I don’t have kids. I could fully commit.”
The gamble has paid off. Tydra Labs now employs eight people, recently completed pilot projects with its first customers, and secured $1.2-million in pre-seed financing through Spring Impact Capital. In June, the venture also claimed a Climate Solution Prize in Montreal.
A Bruising Labour Market Forces a Rethink
Ms. Varshney’s story is hardly unique. Across Canada, a growing cohort of young people, unable to secure the positions they trained for, are bypassing the traditional career ladder and founding companies instead. For them, entrepreneurship has effectively become the new entry-level role.
Several forces are converging. Canada’s jobs market remains tepid. Youth unemployment stood at 12.6 per cent in July, almost double the national rate of 6.4 per cent. That gap is pushing graduates to reconsider their options.
“Job prospects appear a lot bleaker for those graduating now,” observes Karen Greve Young, chief executive of Futurpreneur, a Toronto-based non-profit that provides financing and mentorship to entrepreneurs aged 18 to 39.
Futurpreneur’s own figures bear out the trend. Applications for its programmes climbed 15 per cent during the fiscal year ending in March. Since then, momentum has intensified: between April and June, applications surged 60 per cent compared with the same window a year earlier.
Ms. Greve Young has noticed a shift in mindset. In earlier downturns, graduates often accepted stopgap work in hospitality or retail while waiting for permanent hiring to recover. Today’s cohort, she argues, has absorbed a harder lesson about the modern economy.
“They have a sense that the world of work is changing and it’s a systemic change. Many feel it’s better to create a job for themselves.”
That sentiment is backed by polling. A Harris Poll conducted last year for TD Bank found that 73 per cent of Gen Z Canadians view the idea of starting a business as appealing — the highest share of any generation surveyed.
Building a Company Before a Career
Charlie Frise counts himself among the converts. Raised in Toronto, he spent his childhood constructing treehouses, and enrolled in architectural engineering at the University of Waterloo with a single objective: eventually to launch his own custom homebuilding firm.
His original timeline involved years of groundwork — employment at an architectural practice, perhaps a master’s degree, and then independence. “I thought I would need to take a longer route,” the now-26-year-old explains. “Maybe by 30, I’d have a business.”
The pandemic scrambled that plan. Confined at home, he began designing backyard offices and quickly realised he was absorbing as much from direct client work as he would in any conventional graduate programme. By the time his 2023 graduation arrived, he saw no reason to wait.
Alongside two collaborators, Mr. Frise co-founded Tinybox Systems, a Toronto-based venture producing modular home kits. The company bills its concept as “IKEA for housing.” Last year it began shipping 10-by-16-foot backyard rooms — known locally as bunkies — that can be assembled rapidly wherever extra space is required. The longer-term ambition is considerably more ambitious: full-sized homes that can be erected on site within a few days.
Mr. Frise concedes the sluggish jobs market is nudging graduates towards self-employment, but he identifies other accelerants too. Cheaper technology has lowered the cost of testing an idea. Social media, in particular, has become an unlikely business school. He credits much of his own knowledge of running a homebuilding company to the YouTube channel 30X40 Design Workshop, hosted by Maine-based architect Eric Reinholdt.
“I think a lot of younger people are thinking the same thing as me: It’s easier and easier to start your own business,” he says. So why wait?
Universities Adapt to a New Pipeline
Higher education, once a near-exclusive feeder into salaried employment, is recalibrating. Eric Morse, a professor of entrepreneurship at Western University’s Ivey Business School in London, Ontario, has watched the transformation up close.
“When I went to university in the 1980s, no one talked about entrepreneurship. You graduated and you got a job,” he recalls.
That began shifting in the late 1990s, as institutions rolled out entrepreneurship courses, startup programmes, pitch competitions and incubators. Prof. Morse has tracked a steady climb in graduate-founded ventures ever since, with the past two or three years showing a marked acceleration.
The anaemic hiring climate, he believes, is partly responsible. “Large companies are laying off, and the contract that says if you put your head down and work hard, you’ll be rewarded, doesn’t hold anymore. Students see that.”
The appetite is not confined to university graduates. A 2024 report from the Future Skills Centre found that more than 56 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 20 expressed interest in launching a business — the highest of any age group surveyed.
Madi Chilcott, founder of Multi Brand Sampling Co. in Vancouver, embodies the trend. In 2022, aged just 19, she was preparing to enrol in film school when she pivoted to pursue a concept she had been quietly developing.
Ms. Chilcott had grown up assisting her mother, who runs a small apple cider vinegar brand, with in-store sampling. She observed that demo programmes were prohibitively expensive for smaller labels. Her answer was straightforward: pool resources. Three food companies would share the cost of a single table and hand out samples together.
She drafted a business plan. Today the company runs events across British Columbia and Alberta, and recently pushed into Ontario. Ms. Chilcott, now 23, manages hundreds of contract workers — many older than herself — and regularly meets with marketing agencies representing major food brands.
“When I was just starting out, the biggest problem was being taken seriously because of my age,” she says. With more experience and a growing operation, that hurdle is easing.
Four years on, she has no regrets about forgoing university. “I really love what I’m doing. It doesn’t always feel like work,” she says.
The Realities Behind the Romance
For all the appeal, the founder’s path is rarely smooth. Ms. Varshney of Tydra Labs is candid about the turbulence. Among the high points, she lists hiring the company’s first employee and securing its inaugural investor. Among the low points: a lab reactor explosion, and anxious early months wondering whether the business would have enough cash to cover its bills.
Unlike many of her peers in conventional roles, she rarely leaves work at the office door. As Tydra Labs’ chief operating officer, her evenings and weekends are frequently consumed by the demands of the venture.
Still, she is convinced the unconventional start has accelerated her development. “I feel like I’ve had a crash course in marketing, legal, HR and accounting,” she says. “You have to make a lot of sacrifices running a company. But you also learn a lot very fast.”
Why it Matters
The rise of graduate entrepreneurship in Canada signals more than a clever workaround for a tough jobs market — it points to a structural reordering of how young people enter the workforce. With youth unemployment running at nearly twice the national average and traditional employers offering diminishing security, a generation is concluding that creating a job is more reliable than finding one. Universities, investors and policymakers will need to adapt quickly, as the pipeline that once channelled talent into established corporations increasingly flows towards self-built ventures whose success, or failure, will shape Canada’s economic landscape for decades to come.