Nearly a decade ago, our Technical Director, co-founder, and Chief Joker, Nicolas, was a software engineering student at Polytechnique Montreal. Required to complete an internship in a professional environment during his university studies, Nicolas decided to combine business with pleasure by requesting the opportunity to work on his own startup—a project he had launched with his longtime friend Pierre-Étienne, who is now the company's president. It was the first time the staff at Polytechnique had received such a request.

Believing in the entrepreneurial potential of their students, they quickly agreed to support Nicolas in what turned out to be the university's very first entrepreneurial internship program.

Since that day, Polytechnique has developed, structured, and supervised a program that supports student entrepreneurs in developing their personal business projects. Students are guided through the process of creating a business model, practicing the all-important sales pitch, and exploring other concepts related to the business world.

We are more than grateful to Polytechnique and their flexibility, which allowed Nicolas to work on this project and lay the foundations of today's Thirdbridge. As a gesture of recognition and support for the program built since then, we decided to partner with Polytechnique to encourage students who, like us, work in a field and on projects they are passionate about. Thus, on April 9th, the very first Thirdbridge scholarship of $8,000 was awarded to a team whose values, ideas, and ambitions won us over during the Entrepreneurial Internship Scholarship awards ceremony.

Nadine, Sarah, and Chayma are the very first recipients of the Thirdbridge scholarship. They were a favorite of our team thanks to their project related to one of Thirdbridge's strongest values: innovation.

The three young women have developed an idea that will revolutionize scientific education for our youth. They offer educational robotics kits that include all the necessary parts for building robots, as well as instructions to achieve this and, in more advanced cases, to program them. The kits are adapted for all ages and levels and are the ideal solution for conducting such workshops—even during lockdowns.

The Thirdbridge scholarship will allow these three young entrepreneurs to realize their project on a larger scale and conduct the necessary market studies so that the product best meets existing needs and demand. Pierre-Étienne will even act as a mentor throughout the summer to guide the winners in the world of entrepreneurship.

Thirdbridge is more than proud to support a project and individuals full of promise.