League of Innovators has launched Edge, a high-performance and mental health program for young Canadian entrepreneurs. Through a partnership with GreenShield, Edge gives founders access to free therapy, alongside group coaching, peer support and performance training from LOI.

Edge is available to all LOI founders, and the therapy supports are available to LOI founders aged 29 and under.

Why we built Edge

Edge is a response to what we heard from our own community. In a needs assessment LOI conducted with workplace wellness firm WellIntel, 85% of LOI founders reported burnout, more than two-thirds said daily stress interferes with their work, and 58% said they have no coverage for mental health services.

The picture is similar nationally. Research by GreenShield, in partnership with Mental Health Research Canada, found that more than 1 million Canadian youth need mental health support every year and nearly 60% don’t get it, with cost and wait times the leading barriers.

“Our founders were telling us two things at once: they were carrying real weight - burnout, stress and isolation and they couldn’t afford the help that would lift it. We treat our founders like athletes. At this level, everyone is good. Edge is what supports the jump from good to great.”

Kyle Moore, Edge Program Lead and Director of Thrive Programming at LOI

What founders get

Edge treats wellbeing and sustainable performance as two parts of the same goal. Rather than positioning care as something to reach for only when things go wrong, it encourages founders to make their mental wellbeing part of how they lead and build for the long term. Through the GreenShield partnership and LOI’s broader programming, Edge gives founders:

• Five free therapy sessions and trusted resources through GreenShield’s Youth Mental Health Ecosystem, a centralized digital platform where youth can access timely, culturally relevant mental health supports.

• Group coaching and peer support with founders who understand the pressure without needing it explained.

• Performance literacy: practical, evidence-informed training in stress physiology, recovery and performing under pressure.

• Fast navigation to additional wellness services, cutting the time between reaching out and receiving care.

The program has clear goals: to improve founders’ daily functioning and ability to perform in their key roles, to shorten the time between reaching out and receiving care, and to show what LOI has believed from the start, that positive mental wellbeing is tied to positive venture outcomes and longer, more sustainable entrepreneurial careers.

GreenShield’s role

GreenShield is helping remove cost barriers to care by providing LOI founders aged 29 and under with access to therapy, care navigation and mental health support when they need it. As Canada’s only national non-profit health care and insurance organization, GreenShield reinvests its excess earnings through GreenShield Cares to improve access to care and advance health equity for underserved communities. The partnership builds on GreenShield’s broader work to improve youth mental health access across Canada, through investments in affordable care, community partnerships and research initiatives like the Youth Mental Health Data Hub.

“At GreenShield, we believe mental health care should be easy to access, affordable and designed around the realities young people face. Through our partnership with League of Innovators, we're helping remove barriers to care for young founders so they can focus on their wellbeing, their leadership and the ventures they're building.”

Mandy Mail, Executive Vice President, Head of GreenShield Cares

Why founder wellbeing matters

By building mental health and performance support directly into the founder journey, and making therapy free, Edge is designed to help young founders stay well while they build, and to keep building over the long term.

“It’s not enough to help someone just build a company; we want to be clear that helping young people, in uncertain times, become better and healthier entrepreneurs, leaders and people means sustained excellence for the businesses they build. They're the engine that makes this whole thing go; this is just the fine-tuning.”

Kyle Moore

Learn more

There is no cost or equity stake to join the LOI community, and all Canadian founders under 30 are encouraged to join. Our community connects 2,088 young founders across Canada whose ventures have created more than $1.8 billion in enterprise value. To the founder who has been pushing through alone: there’s a community built for you, and now there’s care built into it.

Learn more about Edge or join the LOI community.