Introducing the Startup Women Advocacy Network 2023
Two years ago, we created the Startup Women Advocacy Network (SWAN), a network of 11 early stage, woman-identifying founders from each province and territory to champion the needs of women entrepreneurs across the country.
SWAN members have the opportunity to amplify their business across our platforms, are given a seat at important government roundtables aimed at policy creation and decision-making, and are invited to be speakers and panelists at key entrepreneurial events such as Startup Canada Tour to showcase their stories.
This is just the beginning. The hope behind SWAN is to create an ever-growing network of champions in each Canadian province and territory to ultimately increase the visibility and voices of early-stage, woman-identifying entrepreneurs.
In the spirit of amplifying women entrepreneurs, we sat down with each of our SWAN members to learn more about their founder journeys. Our first interview is with Conor Phillips, Founder and CEO of Pathfinder365 from Saskatchewan.
Meet Conor Phillips, our Saskatchewan SWAN Member
Conor Phillips is the Founder and CEO of Pathfinder365, a digital community marketplace that effectively connects tourism businesses with tourism seekers. Pathfinder365 is bringing the entire Canadian tourism industry onto a single platform, with no popularity or financially influenced algorithms to interfere with those journeys. Pathfinder will allow small to medium-sized tourism businesses to promote and market their businesses, making it substantially easier for travellers to explore and discover new activities.
We’d love to learn a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey in founding Pathfinder365.
After working in the tourism industry for several years, I recognized that something was missing from how small businesses promoted their products and services and how travellers discovered the activities, events, festivals, and accommodations around them. Particularly the tourism they didn’t know existed. It’s fragmented, controlled by popularity and financially influenced algorithms, and deeply flawed. In June 2020, I conceptualized Pathfinder365, a better way to promote and discover tourism. I began my journey of planning, networking, connecting, and peeling the layers of the startup world…and saying “yes” to everything.
Pathfinder365 is a digital tourism community marketplace where the needs of small tourism businesses and tourism-seeking customers are at its core, offering a full suite of professional marketing and promotional tools for our business partners and a full suite of exploration tools for our travellers. Unlike other platforms, which are designed only to popularize a select few vendors and monetize, Pathfinder supports all small to medium-sized tourism businesses.
What has been the most challenging obstacle for you in starting your business? And how did you overcome it?
The journey of an entrepreneur comes with a diverse set of challenges. The primary challenges revolve around three areas: money, hiring, and product development. As an early stage entrepreneur, it is difficult to raise capital. However, you need that capital to invest in growing your business. Hiring also becomes a challenge when you aren’t able to afford the salaries and benefits required to attract top talent. Lastly, product development becomes a challenge when you’re constantly iterating and pivoting in order to satisfy your customers.
Over time, I’ve realized that with startups, the moment you feel you’ve overcome one challenge, another one appears. One of your overarching goals as a founder ends up being getting your business to a place where you can hire people to hand off micro-challenges and then eventually hand off macro challenges. That’s when you’re really winning.
What brings you the most joy or excitement in working in your business?
Succinctly, the challenges, the potential, and the leadership bring me the most joy.
Challenges are invigorating because I grow as a person and professional every time I overcome them. As a forever learner, I truly value this. If you hold steadfast through an entrepreneurial journey, the amount of grit, hustle, and critical thinking you’ll develop will surpass almost any other career path.
Potential inspires the hopefulness that we all start and end every day with as an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, there is so much uncertainty, but we’re fueled by hope to seek out all of the ‘what ifs and ‘maybe’s’ that lie ahead. The potential is all out of reach, but the journey is how we discover just how far out of reach it is and what challenges we need to overcome to bring the potential closer or actually grasp it.
Leadership is in reference to the fact that as the conductor of this journey, we need to own every aspect of it, whether it’s failure or success. We must make the right decisions at the right times with little to no information, capitalize on lucky moments, and embrace opportunities for pivots and iterations, or disregard them and hold steadfast on our roadmap.
What do the next few years look like for Pathfinder365?
As a young startup, our major milestones in the next 12 months are working towards positive and thriving revenue. In the long term, we hope to establish partnerships with ITAC, TIAC, Destination Canada, and every DMO across Canada. We’re working towards the strategy of being the technology partner for every Canadian tourism industry organization. We also wish to create social and economic impact by supporting Indigenous and cultural tourism, enhancing rural and remote tourism, and growing local, provincial, and national GDPs.
What does being a part of the Startup Women Advocacy Network mean to you?
I had been following Startup Canada for a while before I was invited to join SWAN. I enjoy how they position themselves as an advocate and resource for startups across Canada. They also seem to have a genuine love for the Canadian startup ecosystem and truly want entrepreneurs to thrive. So I opted to join SWAN in the spirit of saying yes to as much as possible. Over the years, I’ve been a part of a few different entrepreneurial-focused networks and gained knowledge about different aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Now as a member of SWAN, I hope to share my knowledge and give back to earlier stage founders as well.
In the spirit of advocacy, is there a woman-identifying, early-stage entrepreneur in Saskatchewan that you admire or are following along their entrepreneurial journey?
There are so many women that I admire, and that inspire me. A few off the top of my head are Katrina German, Serese Selanders, Annika Mang, Michelle Beckett, Fateme Naderpour, Jessica McNaughton, Kira Kelsie, Monique Simair, Veronique Loewen, Karen Chovan, Anne Ballantyne, Jolene Watson, Alicia Soulier, Katherine Regnier…and I could go on.
When founders talk about their journey and their business, they often talk about their “why” – why they do what they do. So, we’re interested to know – what is your “why”?
My personal and professional “why” is that I can add a lot more value, diversity, and control to my life as an entrepreneur rather than an employee. I also believe Pathfinder365 can add a ton of value to every aspect of the tourism ecosystem in Canada.
Thank you for joining us! If someone wants to connect with you, where is the best place for them to go?
Reach out to me on LinkedIn or visit our website at https://pathfinder365.com/.
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You can learn more about our 2023 Startup Women Advocacy Network at https://www.startupcan.ca/startup-women-advocacy-network-2023/