Alumni Spotlights
Basil Peters invests in people
Passion for mentoring began at UBC
Basil Peters (EECE '77, PhD '82) developed some of the most important relationships of his career and found his passion for entrepreneurship during his studies in UBC Engineering.
While he has been busy founding, financing, mentoring and selling technology companies for over two decades, he has made time to stay in touch with many of his former classmates along the way.
"Collaborating and networking with peers means a lot to me—after all that is how I met my first business partner Peter van der Gracht in first-year engineering," explains Peters. As graduate students they founded Nexus Engineering and together grew it into seven companies with international operations, one of which became the world's second largest manufacturer of cable television headends.
Demonstrating his desire to work collectively, Peters participated in numerous projects and teams at UBC. "Leading over 50 students in the 1974 Electric Vehicle Project taught me how to design and build prototypes and, equally important, how to manage teams of people," he says. These are skills that have since earned him tremendous success in his entrepreneurial career.
"Mentorship is also important to me; I credit much of my early success to my many great mentors," he acknowledges. "I am grateful for the invaluable lessons they taught me."
An accomplished entrepreneur with an outstanding list of accolades to his credit, including being named 1991's Entrepreneur of the Year by BC Business Magazine and a Silver medal in Entrepreneurship from Canada's Awards for Business Excellence.
Today Peters is giving back to young entrepreneurs. He is currently Board Chairman of Parasun Technologies and Backbone Systems. For the past 10 years, he has been an active angel investor in early-stage technology companies. However, he has since turned to supporting start-ups through such fund initiatives as the BC Advantage Funds.
"I remain committed to angel investing and mentoring," says Peters. Indeed, he is CEO and Portfolio Manager of the angel fund Fundamental Technologies II; he writes a blog on best practices for angel investors and entrepreneurs at AngelBlog.net; and he is a regular contributor to the Angel Journal.
"I appreciate the formal engineering education I received at UBC as well as the successful career I have enjoyed as an entrepreneur within the technology community," says Peters. He goes on to acknowledge UBC as the genesis of some of the province’s most successful knowledge-based companies, such as QLT, Creo, MDA—and, of course, Nexus!
He concludes with these words of wisdom: "with the belief that our province's greatest resource is the intelligence of our people, I encourage today's engineering students to consider opportunities to create and build companies from the knowledge and relationships they are building at UBC—it worked for me!"
