.png)
Sepehr (Sep) Assadian doesn’t like the spotlight, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming one of the foundational pillars behind ventureLAB’s growth. If you ask him, he’ll say he’s “just part of the team” but speak to anyone at ventureLAB, and they’ll tell you about the colleague who helped build the programs, the systems, the teams, and most importantly, the culture that defines the organization today.
His journey started humbly: as a new immigrant to Canada, volunteering his time to check tickets at a pitch event. At the time, ventureLAB had a lean team of about a dozen people. Today, it’s grown to over 60, with an extended network of 75+ advisors, many of whom Sep hired, trained, or worked alongside to build new departments, processes, and support systems for Ontario’s most promising tech founders.
“ventureLAB wasn’t just a job,” Sep says. “It was where I built my life. I bought my home while I worked here. I shared the news of becoming a father with my colleagues at the same time I shared it with my parents. That’s how close this place is to me.”
Over the past eight years, Sep’s fingerprints have touched nearly every part of the organization, from rebuilding internal operations and launching data systems to creating and scaling founder programs that didn’t exist before. His early days saw him stepping into a volunteer coordinator role, showing up in a one size too small branded ventureLAB t-shirt, manning booths, and introducing the team to IBM executives, despite barely knowing what ventureLAB was himself at the time.
That sense of initiative never left. Within a year, Sep was promoted twice, and eventually began leading teams, building departments from scratch, and shaping the direction of ventureLAB’s services. Sep has always taken the long view: build things that last, with people at the core.
“I always tell new hires: ventureLAB is a place where you can learn and make mistakes. We treat it as a learning journey,” he explains. “If you build trust in your team, and they trust you back, you can accomplish anything because people feel safe to take risks.”
That mindset has helped him lead a multigenerational, multidisciplinary team that spans everyone from Gen Z coordinators to veteran industry advisors with decades of experience. His leadership philosophy is simple: trust and respect are non-negotiable, and it’s okay not to be friends with everyone, but the team has to believe in one another.
Outside of work, Sep’s roles don’t stop. He’s a father of two, a storyteller in his daughters' school, and a self-declared “real job from 5 to 9 as a dad and a fun job from 9 to 5”. He’s the dad who cooks elaborate breakfast plates with pancakes, string cheese, fruits arranged in fun shapes, and French toast made to order. He’s also a passionate home chef with dreams of becoming a professional one day, so much so that he once picked up early-morning shifts at Starbucks while still holding a VP title at ventureLAB, just for the love of it!
“Cooking is my therapy,” he says, “just like crime dramas are my escape.” (If you ever want to discuss Criminal Minds, Law & Order, or Bloomberg radio before 9 a.m., Sep is your guy.)
What makes Sep stand out isn’t just his work ethic or how deeply embedded he is in ventureLAB’s evolution. It’s that he leads with heart. The kind of leader who celebrates team wins more than his own, who builds quietly and lets others shine. Ask him what he’s most proud of, and he’ll tell you it’s his daughters and everything else he builds is for them.
When you look at ventureLAB today, you’ll see high-growth companies, cutting-edge programs, and an ever-expanding innovation ecosystem. But behind much of it is Sep always thinking, always building, always quietly moving the organization forward.
