While continuing to work as a product owner, I attended Lean Startup Machine Toronto which was a weekend where people would bring an idea and use customer development and lean startup to validate their idea with potential customers.
My idea was to create a dating app between employers and potential employees. That is, hiring for fit is more important than hiring for skills. It was called Hire Shark and our team won the competition by proving how we progressed though validated learning. We actually made $50 by selling our paper prototype during the weekend!
Shortly after that, I quit my job and started teaching lean startup at University of Waterloo for the MBET program and also started running public lean startup weekends through Silicon Halton.