Manitoba Has Ideas. It’s Time to Ramp Them Up.

By Kristine Derksen, Director of Marketing & Communications, North Forge™️

There is a good chance someone in Manitoba is sitting on a great business idea right now.

Maybe it came to them while trying to solve a frustrating problem at work.

Maybe it is something they have been talking about with friends for years.

Maybe it is scribbled in a notebook, sitting in their phone or has become one of those ideas they keep saying they will do “one day.”

The challenge is that turning “I have an idea” into “I am building a business” can feel like a very big leap.

Where do you start? Who do you talk to? Do you need a business plan? A co-founder? Money? A prototype? What if someone else has already thought of it? And perhaps the biggest question of all: is this idea actually any good?

Those questions stop a lot of people before they ever begin.

I think Manitoba has an opportunity to change that.

On November 13 and 14, North Forge is launching RampUp Lite, a new two-day entrepreneurship challenge at our Innovation Hub at the University of Manitoba Smartpark. Inspired by North Forge’s flagship event, RampUp Weekend, which takes place each spring, RampUp Lite is a condensed version of the experience, created to give more Manitobans an accessible way to explore entrepreneurship and put an idea to the test.

The premise is deliberately simple: bring together people with ideas and people with skills, give them guidance and support from the North Forge team and see what they can build in just over a day. It captures the pitching, team building and rapid validation that make RampUp Weekend so impactful, but packages it into a shorter, lower-barrier experience for people who may be taking their first step into entrepreneurship.

You do not need a company. You do not need a business plan. You do not need a polished pitch.

In fact, you do not even need an idea.

That last point is important because when we talk about entrepreneurship, we often focus almost exclusively on the founder. But successful companies are rarely built by one person who happens to know how to do everything.

Someone may understand the problem but need a developer to help build the solution. A talented engineer may need someone who understands marketing. A designer might see something about the customer experience that everyone else missed. Someone with a background in finance, sales or operations might ask the question that completely changes the direction of an idea.

RampUp Lite is designed to put those people in the same room.

If you have an idea you want to test, the first step is submitting a casual 60-second video by 5 p.m. on November 9. Tell us what the idea is, what problem it solves and why you believe it has potential.

No professional video required. No fancy editing. No pitch deck.

Just tell us the idea.

Selected participants will take the stage Friday night and have 60 seconds to pitch it to the room. The audience will then vote, with 10 ideas moving forward.

That is when things get interesting.

Everyone forms teams around those ideas, including people whose own pitches did not advance and participants who came without an idea at all.

Then they build.

Throughout Saturday, teams will work with support from North Forge staff to figure out whether the problem they are trying to solve is real, who their customers might be, whether people would actually pay for the solution and what would need to happen to turn the concept into a viable business.

Some ideas will get stronger. Some will change completely. Others may discover that the original idea does not work.

That is not failure. That is entrepreneurship.

It is far better to discover in two days that your assumptions were wrong than spend two years and your savings figuring it out.

By Saturday evening, the teams will pitch what they have built. One will receive $1,000, acceptance into North Forge’s four-stage Founders Program at the Pathfinder level and direct entry into the Top 10 at RampUp Weekend 2027.

But the bigger opportunity is what can happen after everyone goes home.

We have seen it before.

North Forge’s flagship RampUp Weekend has helped launch and accelerate ideas that went on to become real Manitoba businesses. Companies such as Permission Click, Go Oil and Taiv have roots in RampUp. What began as early ideas surrounded by a team of people willing to test them became businesses that grew well beyond a single weekend.

Earlier this year, approximately 200 people participated in RampUp Weekend. We saw dozens of ideas come forward and watched strangers become teammates over the course of a weekend.

That demand told us something.

There are more people in Manitoba who want to explore entrepreneurship than there are people who necessarily know how to enter the ecosystem.

We need more doors in.

RampUp Lite is one of them.

For $10, participants get two days of networking, team building, guidance from the North Forge team and hands-on experience developing a business concept.

More importantly, they get permission to start before they feel ready.

I believe that matters for Manitoba.

If we want more successful companies headquartered here, more jobs created here and more innovations developed here, we need to increase the number of people who believe entrepreneurship is something they can actually participate in.

That means making the first step easier.

Not everyone walking into RampUp Lite will become a founder. They do not need to.

Someone may discover they love working with startups. Someone may meet a future business partner. Someone may realize their skill set is exactly what another founder needs. Someone may finally test the idea they have been thinking about for five years.

And maybe someone walks in Friday night with nothing more than a 60-second pitch and walks out Saturday realizing they have the beginning of a real company.

That is the point.

Manitoba does not need to wait for the next great company to arrive.

There are people here capable of building it.

Sometimes they just need a place to start.

RampUp Lite takes place November 13 and 14 at North Forge’s Innovation Hub, 100 Innovation Drive in Winnipeg. Participation is $10, and anyone wishing to pitch an idea must submit their 60-second video by 5 p.m. on November 9. Learn more at northforge.ca/rampuplite.