When Ali Shahid and Hira Malik entered IDEA Mississauga’s Step-Up Program last year, their corporate catering tech platform, Food Mamba, was a year-old startup still figuring out how to scale.
Six months later, after the program helped the husband-and-wife founders secure grants, enter pitch competitions, and connect with industry experts and legal support, Food Mamba crossed the $1-million revenue mark, according to IDEA Mississauga, the city’s business and innovation hub. The company now serves more than 300 corporate clients, works with 200 restaurant vendors and employs a full-time staff of five in Canada and four in Pakistan.
“We have a highly educated talent pool in Mississauga. We want to make sure we’re tapping into that.”
Donna Heslin, IDEA
That kind of growth is exactly what the Step-Up Program is designed to support. It’s aimed at early-traction companies entering a more structured phase of growth, when founders shift from building a product to pulling together the strategies, teams, and processes that support it. Often called the “messy middle,” this is where leadership and discipline are put to the test, and where startups are most likely to stall without the right foundation in place.
That’s why Step-Up focuses on foundational company practices like fundraising, strategy, sales, and hiring.
“Sometimes [founders] have a sense of what they need, but it’s very high level. They haven’t really drilled down into what it actually takes to get there,” said Alieu Jallow, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Specialist at IDEA Mississauga and Step-Up program lead.
“It’s not about advising them. It’s working with the companies to fix their systems.”
A boutique model
Step-Up runs as an accelerator and venture studio hybrid,built to support companies as they move beyond early traction. It focuses on revenue-generating, mostly pre-seed companies in the $100,000 to $2-million range across life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and tech sectors—sectors where the city has an established ecosystem but also ones where companies often need extra backing to reach the next level.
“The city had programs for first-time entrepreneurs and for later-stage scale-ups, but little for what came in between. Over time, that gap became harder to ignore,” said Donna Heslin, Manager of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Innovation at IDEA.
Founders were leaving for Toronto, Waterloo, or the United States to find the next level of support. “We were losing companies,” she said.
Step-Up launched five years ago. The program is deliberately small, with cohorts of about 10 to 12 companies, and is designed to feel less like a classroom and more like a working session with founders sharing experiences and insights.
“It’s not workshops. I call them conversations,” said Jallow.
There’s also a more hands-on layer. Through its Executives-in-Residence program, Step-Up brings in senior leaders to work directly inside the businesses, helping founders build out key areas like financials, sales, and hiring. Mentors are brought in as needed, depending on what founders are working through, and founders are connected to investors through introductions and sessions designed to give a clearer view into funding decisions. In total, participating companies can access up to $200,000 in resources, support and perks through the program.
In some cases, that work leads founders in a different direction than they expected. Jallow points to a founder focused on event-based drone services who came to the program through IDEA’s partnership with the Black Entrepreneurs Alliance. She had the technical skills and certifications, but her business was stuck: growth was tied to how many events she could book. Through conversations and strategy work, she pivoted into defence and advanced manufacturing, with Sheridan College’s Centre for Intelligent Manufacturing now piloting her autonomous drone prototype.
Jallow said the first conversation with a new cohort member often starts with a basic but clarifying question: “Tell me what your goal is. How do you want to scale in the next six months?”
A startup showcase
The latest Step-Up cohort is set to wrap up in June with a Pitch and Showcase, where founders will present the companies they’ve spent the past six months sharpening to investors, partners, and the broader business community.
For founders in the room, it’s a real milestone. For IDEA Mississauga, it’s also a measure of how the program is evolving.
Step-Up alumni have collectively raised about $15 million over the past two years, and each cohort has arrived stronger than the last.
“We’re getting higher-quality companies coming in, the engagement in the cohort is stronger, and the type of support we can pull together is getting better, too,” said Jallow.
For Heslin, progress is also about keeping those companies, and the jobs they create, anchored in Ontario and Canada. As they grow, she sees Mississauga as well-positioned to supply the talent and innovation they’ll need.
“We have a highly educated talent pool in Mississauga, with so many newcomers in the region, over 50 percent born outside of Canada,” she said. “We want to make sure we’re tapping into that.”
“Invest Mississauga’s Path to Prosperity 2030 charts a bold course for a globally competitive, inclusive and future-ready economy, and Step-Up is a clear example of that vision in action,” said Christina Kakaflikas, Director of Economic Development, City of Mississauga.
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Presented by IDEA, powered by Invest Mississauga. Attend the IDEA Step-Up Pitch & Showcase: From Momentum to Millions and explore how the program supports founders on the path to true scale readiness.
Feature image courtesy IDEA Mississauga.