The Startup Spirit: How Mayer Elharar Used Glendon as His Entrepreneurial Training Ground

Mayer Elharar, BA’09 Business Economics

Everybody strives to find their passion. Mayer Elharar is one of the lucky ones who identified his at an early age.

“I always loved checking out the latest gadgets and reading about cool scientific theories of black holes and string theory,” Elharar says. “But I had a cool habit of identifying flaws in systems and I was passionate about making things better by trying to solve these problems.”

Eager to develop this talent further, he pursued a Business Economics degree at Glendon. He later earned a master’s degree in Economics, as well. While at Glendon, he transitioned the lessons from class projects in marketing and corporate finance to school initiatives like starting a used book selling program and organizing a wine tasting. In his second year, Elharar founded the Entrepreneurial Club.

“I saw the impact of my actions, whether in clubs or committees, to bring change and improvements to the Glendon community. It inspired me to do more which eventually led me to becoming an entrepreneur.”

At present, Elharar is a serial entrepreneur. He is Head of Product Innovation at ResQ, a mobile platform that offers restaurant maintenance on demand as well as an advisor for early stage, hi-tech startups. He’s also working on a startup that’s currently in stealth mode.

In recent years, the mindset for university graduates has shifted from “I have to get a job at a big company” to “It would be cool to start my own company”. While ambition and big ideas are important, it takes a tremendous amount of work to launch a successful startup, and it can be hard to find mentors to offer guidance.

Elharar’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to just get started. More specifically, he advises ambitious startup founders to have three things in addition to a big idea: passion, a great team, and a willingness to fail.

“Failing is good because you can learn from it and be better the next time. So embrace failure and have it trigger the passion within to make the necessary changes to your original plan.”

But what about those graduates with a lot of ambition or few ideas? How can people go about identifying worthwhile market opportunities?

Elharar’s advice? Pay attention, observe challenges in your current job, and talk to people who work in the fields you’re passionate about. Ultimately, his advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur circles back to his childhood talent for problem-solving.

“If you look hard enough at a specific process, big or small, you’ll be able to identify how to make it better.”

Neya Abdi, BA’16 International Studies
Published in February 2018