TORONTO — If it wasn’t for the University of Toronto, Eva and Allen Lau might never have met. Allen wouldn’t have snuck into Eva’s entrepreneurship classes, and he might not have gone on to start Wattpad, one of Canada’s biggest tech success stories, with his wife Eva by his side.

More than 30 years later, the University of Toronto engineering alumni are giving back to the school they credit for at least some of their personal and professional success. 

On Thursday, the Laus announced a $2-million donation to their alma mater designed to help researchers push promising ideas into the market. 

“We want to give back, but also support all these innovators to help them turn their inventions into investment-ready ventures,” Eva Lau said in an interview with The Logic.

The money will go toward two annual prizes of up to $80,000 each, one for students and faculty in the Arts & Science department and the other for a recipient in Applied Science & Engineering. The departments will match the funding, which will help pay for mentorship, workspace and access to testing and prototyping facilities for entrepreneurs working on semiconductors, AI, robotics and quantum computing projects. 

The University of Toronto has a strong record of generating innovative breakthroughs and successful entrepreneurs. In PitchBook’s global ranking of the top 100 undergraduate programs for entrepreneurs, U of T ranked 17th, with the school having produced 643 founders and 587 companies with a combined US$75.6 billion capital raised.

Taking an idea generated in a lab and turning it into a product people will buy, however, isn’t easy. It takes money, equipment and expertise that aren’t always available, said Lau. “Many researchers are doing groundbreaking work, but, unfortunately, get stalled before they reach the market,” she said.

It’s a common dilemma: Entrepreneurs need money to build out their product and test that it works, but investors won’t back them until they’ve validated their idea. “Speaking to a lot of these researchers, it’s clear they absolutely need that support,” said Lau. “For us to be able to do that, it certainly is a privilege.” 

Eva and Allen Lau made their fortune through storytelling platform Wattpad, which Allen co-founded with Ivan Yuen in 2006. The company’s US$600-million exit to South Korean conglomerate Naver in 2021 was one of the largest ever for a Canadian tech startup.

In 2014, the Laus launched Two Small Fish Ventures, an early-stage investment firm whose portfolio includes some of Canada’s most promising tech scaleups, including BenchSci, Skip and SRTX. 

Lau said funding innovation at the earliest stages could help expand the number of startups that Two Small Fish could potentially back. She hopes other philanthropists will build on their initiative and invest more in early-stage innovation at the university.