Dana Stephenson, Co-founder & CEO of Riipen
Riipen is a Vancouver-based work-integrated learning (WIL) platform founded in 2013 with a mission to “eliminate underemployment.” The platform connects post-secondary institutions with employers so students complete real employer projects as part of their coursework. The goal is to create a scalable way to give students work-related experience when actual work experience opportunities do not match demand. Riipen currently has more than 700 academic partners and 50,000+ employer partners, and the platform has served more than 125,000 students. Earlier this month, Riipen launched Career Connected Campus, which is an enterprise solution that enables PSE institutions to embed WIL across their programs and courses rather than being restricted to a limited number of programs.
Riipen CEO Dana Stephenson, co-founded the company with Dave Savory (VP, Experiential Learning)l. Stephenson has led the company since founding. He holds a BCom from the University of Victoria. Importantly, Stephenson’s mission grew directly from his own student experience. Riipen began as a capstone entrepreneurship project at UVic, focusing on the problem that most students graduate without work experience because co-op spots are scarce and unevenly distributed. Stephenson is not a technical founder. His previous experience was in sales and marketing before starting Riipen. I see this as an advantage given that, especially at the start up stage, the CEO needs to be able to sell the company to investors and customers. I also found that Stephenson is a registered lobbyist in Canada, which I take as a sign that he recognizes that the political dynamics of education are just as important as the market forces.
Riipen’s team is a mix of technical and business people, as well as a Strategy Director with experience as both a university professor and a founder. Their board and advisors include education entrepreneurs, founders, experts in enterprise-level technical products, strategy experts, and a representative from one of their funders – the MaRS Discovery District. On Glassdoor, they have a higher-than-average rating of 3.8 and a CEO approval rating of 86%.
What inspires me about Riipen is that a non-technical founder tackled a problem of both personal and global significance and created a platform that addresses a persistent gap at a pivot point in people’s lives: the transition from paying for your education to getting paid to do what you’ve learned to do. In my work I see how difficult this transition is and how limited work experience opportunities make it harder still. That Stephenson et al have come up with a novel, scalable solution that has now been in business for more than 10 years is a hopeful sign that this and similar platforms can help to close important gaps that impact new graduates’ employment prospects.
Dana Stephenson is a good example of someone coming from a non-technical background to build a successful edtech venture. What makes him such a strong role model is that he didn’t just build a platform and go looking for a use case. He started with a problem he had experienced firsthand. By building a tool to solve a real, lived problem, he brought a practical element to the venture right away.
Another point to bring up is how he approaches the education system itself. Registering as a lobbyist acknowledges that schools are highly political environments, not just open commercial markets. I think Dana is a good reminder that understanding how the education market actually functions on the inside matters just as much as having a polished product.
Strong analysis and pick for a founder role model. What stands out to me is how well you’ve surfaced the non-obvious details that underpin Stephenson’s execution edge. The lobbyist registration paired with his sales and marketing background signals a founder who appreciates that education market access is as much a political and institutional challenge as a commercial one, giving him an edge in the customer acquisition and institutional buy-in that often determine whether a learning technology venture survives its early years.
Beyond that, Riipen’s demonstrated staying power, from capstone project to a decade-old platform with 700+ academic partners, makes him a particularly compelling role model for anyone in this cohort considering whether their own ideas have the legs to become real ventures.
I found it interesting that Stephenson was able to bring together universities and employers around a common problem. We often talk about the importance of hands-on experience for students, but creating those opportunities at scale seems like a significant challenge.
I don’t know much about the business side of things, but growing an idea from a university project into a platform that has been connecting students and employers for more than ten years is impressive. It makes me wonder how many conversations, partnerships, and obstacles were involved in getting something like this off the ground.