Ryerson Alumni - 2018 Summer - 34

PROFILES

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S AT H I S H B A L A

Personal best
Serial entrepreneur shares
secrets to success

Ryerson University Magazine / Summer 2018

"BUSINESS HAS LOTS of obstacles, says
Sathish Bala, Computer Science '99, a serial
entrepreneur and mentor/innovator-in-residence at Ryerson's Science Discovery Zone
(SDZ). "You are going to hear 'no' 99 times
before you get a 'yes.' What is it about you
that will get you to the yes? A great idea is not
enough. You have to create a belief system
about yourself. I think that's what's missing

in the academic system and it's what Ryerson
is addressing with zone learning."
For Bala, being an entrepreneur is about
questioning who you are and what you want
to become, not by default but by design. It's a
journey of self-discovery he's travelled since
launching his first business (web company
Spyder Design) while in his fourth year at
Ryerson and with his two subsequent startups
(New Age Inc., a software developer turned
e-learning turned enterprise resource company, and BlueBand Digital, a digital marketing company he sold in 2016). He is working
to expand his not-for-profit (desiFEST) to a
social venture, focused on helping young
people break barriers and hurdles through
arts and music.
Becoming a successful entrepreneur has
allowed Bala to shed the early labels ascribed
to him growing up a creative in the academic-driven Singapore of the 1980s. "Being the
oldest son in a South-Asian family with a
high-achieving engineer father, I was already
behind the eight ball." When he was 14,
the family moved to Canada and settled in
Scarborough. School was now a place where
his creativity and passion were encouraged.
"That started my interest in finding out what
makes me who I am."
It was at Ryerson that he came to realize
his strength was in understanding how to
use technology to solve problems. A stint as
Computer Science Course Union president
helped him find his voice and confidence.
"When we graduated, my friends went on
to jobs with IBM and Imperial Oil. I didn't
want to go work for someone else," he says.
"With every new business opportunity, I was
changing for the positive. I had to learn how
to pitch, when to raise money, how to convince someone that I was the best option."
Now he's sharing those lessons and more.
"The SDZ is not a typical incubator. It allows
you to ask fundamentally different questions
about who you are. If you look at how we
are going to support startups, we have to be
building entrepreneurs up as people." -Mary
Teresa Bitti, Journalism '89

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALIA YOUSSEF, IMAGE ARTS '17

Mentor Sathish Bala is at
home in Ryerson zones
where students develop
their startup ideas.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ryerson Alumni - 2018 Summer