Building Your Dream Team: Startup Hiring, Co Founders, and Scaling Strategy

Hiring the right people can make or break your startup.

Whether you are a solo founder looking for a co-founder, an early stage startup making your first hires, or a growing business struggling to scale, this interactive workshop will help you build the right team at the right time.

Drawing from lessons learned building three startups and working with hundreds of founders, this session breaks down what actually works when it comes to hiring, team structure, and scaling.

No fluff. Just real world insights you can use immediately.

In this interactive workshop, we will cover:

✅ How to choose the right co-founder and the critical questions to ask
✅ Who your first three hires should be and when to hire tech, operations, or marketing
✅ Common hiring mistakes founders make and how to avoid them
✅ How to restructure your team to scale without burning cash
✅ Leveraging free and low cost tools, community, and tech resources
✅ Building inclusive teams from Day 1
✅ How platforms like BReady.ai can support smarter, values driven hiring

Expect practical examples, open discussion, and actionable takeaways.

This workshop is ideal for:

• Solo founders and first time entrepreneurs
• Early stage startup teams
• Scaling startups preparing to hire or restructure
• Incubator and accelerator cohorts
• Community based founders and underrepresented entrepreneurs

Any startup, at any stage, will gain value.

Usha Srinivasan is the Founder and CEO of BReady.ai, an AI enabled talent platform connecting newcomers and underrepresented communities to meaningful employment.

She previously led the Brampton Venture Zone at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she launched and ran the incubator for five years. Usha has held senior leadership roles at MaRS Discovery District and Elevate Tech Fest.

She has co founded ventures in foodtech, retail, and music, and is an angel investor and LP at Flair Ventures.

Usha holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences, a BSc from the University of Bristol, and completed executive business education at the Stanford LEAD Corporate Innovation Program.

You do not need more hiring theory.
You need clarity, structure, and better decisions.

This session helps you avoid costly mistakes and build a team that grows with your business.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Innovate Niagara