Incubation in Action: Borrowland

How Borrowland leveraged the Empowered Startups methodology, mentorship, and industry connections to advance its startup and make its first hire in Canada.

Borrowland, a venture in incubation at Empowered Startups, is a platform for lending and borrowing cryptocurrency online. Its marketplace model connects bitcoin holders wishing to take out a loan to secure capital from credible, backed lenders. Founder Khashayar Maleki developed his start-up idea and conducted initial market validation during the Empowered Startups Global Startup Accelerator (GSA). After completion, he entered the Empowered Startups Incubator program in June 2022 to continue exploring his business opportunity in Canada.

The incubator program helped Borrowland connect with local collaborators to establish key brand assets such as a website and social media pages. In working with his startup leader, Khashayar was able to set up and leverage Google Analytics to gather feedback on his digital experiments to test value propositions and market positioning, which gave him insight into his early adopter market in Canada prior to the official product launch. Most recently, Empowered Startups supported Borrowland to make its first hire by leveraging its network to find a pool of great candidates. The new hire, serving as Marketing Manager, is having an impact by growing overall brand awareness and building up a list of qualified leads and email subscribers. This has freed up Khashayar to focus on final product development and testing with a developer team.

Borrowland will be launching its official online lending platform in Q2 of 2023. In collaboration with their startup leader, the Borrowland team is actively recruiting users for the first round of beta testing with qualified early adopters to gather feedback and make the final product iterations prior to the official launch.

About Empowered Startups
Empowered Startups is an Innovative Startup Incubator and foundry headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. With offices in Canada, France, and Portugal, we train/mentor/ and network entrepreneurs to successfully launch new businesses in diverse markets. As a foundry we also conceive, build and launch our own products and solutions. Empowered Startups is recognized by the Canadian Government as a designated start-up business incubator and is known internationally for growing ideas into sustainable businesses using both a virtual and on-site model. Our training tools and mentorship are used and recognized by leading global university labs, Startup incubators, and innovation hubs. Apply for our programs online at empoweredstartups.com

Photo by RODNAE Productions