CDL

Helping visionary innovators reduce the barriers that prevent their innovations from commercializing and having a massive impact.

CDL is for technical startup founders who leverage science and technology to solve critical industry challenges but lack thebusiness expertise to commercialize. They seek mentorship from accomplished mentors with a global perspective and aproven track record of success. CDL is an accelerator program that provides a methodology for setting and achievingclear, focused goals to propel innovations toward commercial success. Unlike traditional accelerators and mentorship programs, CDL curates highly specialized teams of mentors withextraordinary wisdom to help confront issues, develop plans, and grow your businesses in a supportive, objectives-basedenvironment. CDL also helps bolster technical teams by providing them access to industry and ecosystem partners and the greater CDLcommunity, including MBA students who provide hands-on support for founders’ top business objectives.

CDL-Rockies offers three streams:

AgriFood

The CDL-Rockies’ AgriFood stream is ideal for founders building scalable solutions that are applicable throughout the AgriFood value chain - from producer to plate. The stream focuses on new technologies with the potential to significantly impact or improve current operations across the industry.

Energy

Based in the heart of Canada's energy industry, the CDL-Rockies Energy stream connects early-stage founders shaping the future of energy with seasoned entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists from diverse backgrounds. We support ventures addressing energy security challenges and advancing the transition to a low-carbon future.

Prime

Industry-agnostic, the CDL-Rockies Prime stream offers an ideal platform for founders located in or pursuing operations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba who are pursuing state of the art technological innovations with potential for massive scalability across diverse industries.

CDL-Rockies mentors are extraordinary, accomplished entrepreneurs, scientists and active angel and venture investors with a global mindset. They are integral to the success of each CDL-Rockies program and are invested in finding and supporting innovations—and the visionary innovators behind them—that will solve problems. CDL-Rockies is proudly housed within the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. Because of this affiliation, many of CDL-Rockies' technical mentors are also part of the University, including:

Fluid Biomed

Fluid Biomed has developed a dissolving, flow-diverting brain stent to treat aneurysms with minimally invasive technology.

Possibility Neurotechnologies

Possibility Neurotechnologies has developed Think2Switch, which translates signals from brain-computer interface (BCI) technology with swift integration to effortlessly and intuitively control a wide range of everyday devices.

Syzygy Plasmonics

Syzygy Plasmonics is developing a next-generation photocatalytic reactor to produce ultra-low-cost hydrogen gas on-site at customer locations.

The CDL Course runs in partnership with CDL-Rockies and is offered to MBA and Executive MBA students from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary and the Alberta School of Business at the University of Alberta.

The course offers students a unique combination of in-class and experiential learning. Students are able to see firsthand how the concepts they’re taught in the classroom are put into practice as they work directly with CDL-Rockies ventures. Throughout the course, students become part of the team, providing support to help ventures meet their objectives while gaining experience and insights into entrepreneurship they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The course also allows students to deepen their understanding of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, interact with capital providers and connect with a global network of some of the most extraordinary and accomplished minds in business, science and technology.

Each year, CDL-Rockies welcomes a maximum of 60 ventures, approximately 20 ventures from each stream; Prime, Energy and AgriFood. CDL-Rockies will be seeking approximately 70 highly motivated MBA students to support the ventures in the program.

Applications for the 2025/26 CDL course are now open! Apply here.