For this special episode of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Ashif Mawji, the managing director of ScaleGood Fund LP. From his humble beginnings in Kenya, Ashif caught the entrepreneurial bug early on, watching his parents work their way up in their respective jobs. His dad was working on the shop floor at a Honda and moved up the ladder to become the managing director at Honda Africa, and his mother, who started out as a teacher, ended up running her own Montessori school. But having money doesn’t always make things easier, and after a tragedy showed his parents just how unsafe their living situation was, they decided it was time to leave Kenya – and everything they owned – behind and move to Canada to start over.
For his part, Ashif’s entrepreneurial journey started at the young age of 11 or 12, when he would travel to Nairobi to buy watches on consignment, where he would then sell at a local farmer’s markets on the weekend, making a percentage from each sale. That sales bug didn’t leave him on his move to Canada, though, and his first venture here was reselling Nintendos and Nintendo games. From there, he got into programming and would do consulting work on the side. Today, Ashif is the managing director at ScaleGood Fund, where he uses everything he’s learned over the years to help other entrepreneurs get a leg up in their respective businesses, through both investments as well as being a trusted advisor.
To learn more, visit https://scalegood.ca/ or connect with Ashif on his LinkedIn.
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00:00 - Into
00:49 - Can we talk a little bit about your background? I’d love to hear the story about how you arrived in Edmonton.
06:15 - What was your first entrepreneurial venture after moving to Canada?
07:04 - What were some of the biggest challenges you faced here in Canada?
08:40 - With ScaleGood Fund, what kind of companies do you find yourself drawn to invest in?
11:28 - Share a little bit about the Telus Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator that you chair.
15:13 - In all the companies you’ve funded or been a trusted advisor for, have you seen any commonalities in the challenges they face?
18:13 - Do you feel that the accelerator that you have created is a kind of ideal mix of all of the accelerator programs out there right now?
23:25 - What do you think is one of the most important challenges to tackle right now in terms of safety in Edmonton?
27:58 - What impact do you think AI is going to have on our society in general?
34:48 - What does success look like to you?
36:24 - If you could send your younger entrepreneurial self a letter, what advice you would give?
37:48 - If our audience wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?
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