Dylan Rietze, ArtSci ’26 and now a master’s student in the Smith School of Business, isn’t afraid to pursue difficult problems.
Originally from Sudbury, Rietze came to Queen’s to study Life Sciences, but his experiences outside the classroom led him down the path of entrepreneurship.
Rietze founded his first company NorCH, short for Northern Ontario Connect Hub, as an undergraduate, which aims to connect entrepreneurs to funding opportunities in the North and strengthen the local innovation ecosystem.
He recently co-founded a new startup called Maajii while working as an Industry Liaison Officer at Laurentian University and completing his Master of Management Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MMIE) at the Smith School of Business.
As a first-generation student, Rietze chose Queen’s for its strong Indigenous community and programming, he told The Journal in an interview.
“In my start of my second year, I met this one organization at Queens called STEMInA. What they did is they gave Indigenous students the opportunity to get involved in research, and that was when my world kind of opened at Queens,” he said.
The STEM Indigenous Academics (STEMInA) Research Experience Program pairs up undergraduates with labs to work on a research project for a year.
Rietze worked with Professors Ting Hu and Christian Muise in the School of Computing, analyzing the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD) to find new ways to fight antibiotic resistance.
Attending the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) Conference in Vancouver led to an opportunity to work at the Nobel-prize winning SNOLAB and Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) in his hometown that summer.
In his third year, he joined a local biotechnology innovation nonprofit, where he saw the difficulties nonprofits and startups face in securing funding and support. This experience inspired NorCH.
Rietze was accepted into the Queen’s Founders and Innovators Initiative (QFII), a part-time training and mentorship program for aspiring entrepreneurs, at the Dunin-Deshpande Innovation Centre at Queen’s University (DDQIC).
At the DDQIC, he met Evan Shvetsov, ArtSci ’27, with whom he founded Maajii, meaning “to start” or “to grow” in Ojibwe.
Maajii connects startup founders with angel investors through a “relational lens,” allowing investors to “see the team and the founders they’re working with, as opposed to the company,” Rietze explained.
Founders can upload proof of progress like a signed pilot agreement or their first month’s invoice, which allows investors to make more informed decisions.
Shvetsov received a $10,000 stipend to work on Maajii this summer from the DDQIC, where it currently has an office. It has four founders on the platform already and is exploring a pilot with one of Ontario’s largest angel networks, he said.
Rietze began his current position as an Industry Liaison Officer in June, combining his passion for business and research.
He described it as “being a researcher, seeing what we have going on, and then trying to go out there in industry […] and saying, ‘What are the challenges you guys are having? Would you benefit from working with the university?’”
Rietze is the youngest in his MMIE cohort, which has given him access to mentors and connections with established businesses across the world.
“Incredible people have gone through Queens, and they really help you get connected and grow your own professional network, which as youth or as young adults, we really need to do,” he said.
The program is his first “formal business training,” prompting him to revise his approach to business.
“I’ve been learning so much more about doing the proper research, doing the proper due diligence,” he said. “You hear things going into startups […] you got to use these frameworks, use these tools. But MMIE really put it all into perspective.”
The biggest takeaway he’s learned from his experience founding two companies is to “be in love with the problem and not necessarily your solution,” he said.
Corrections
A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Rietze’s company, Maajii.
The story also claimed that Rietze presented at the AISES conference. In fact, he only attended.
The Journal regrets the error
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to eic@queensjournal.ca.