Building Entrepreneurship
Evidence-based approaches to entrepreneurial learning, decision-making, and growth. Deeply curious about how how AI is reshaping entrepreneurship education.
Entrepreneurship is growth — and managing growth — while navigating a dynamic environment, a busy personal life, and countless relationships. Founders who thrive do so by building themselves as they build their companies. I work with entrepreneurs, business schools, and accelerators to design and deliver evidence-based approaches to doing exactly that. After a decade of starting companies, I moved into researching and teaching entrepreneurship — and when generative AI arrived, I leaned into it hard.
I now design and run randomized controlled trials testing how AI-supported learning interventions affect founder decision-making, and I build the tools to go with them. That work sits at an unusual intersection: field experiments that generate real evidence, paired with software that puts those findings into practice. A through-line in everything I do is evaluation, helping programs, institutions, and organizations understand what actually works, not just what feels right.
I teach entrepreneurship at business schools and accelerators across Canada, and hold an adjunct faculty appointment at Dalhousie University, where I am the Academic Lead for AI2Market. I’m completing a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, where my dissertation focuses on how AI shapes entrepreneurial learning and decision-making.
Over the years I’ve coached dozens of founders on a recurring basis and taught over 1,000 more through university programs, national entreprneuerhsip events, and through AI-aided entrepreneurship education experiments.
What I work on:
- AI-powered learning tools for founders — built and tested through live RCTs with post-secondary institutions
- Entrepreneurship education — workshops, MBA courses, and accelerator programs across Canada
- Program evaluation — helping organizations understand what interventions move the needle for founders
- Coaching — for founders navigating growth, hard decisions, and the harder parts of the startup path
Client Testimonials:
“Your method of teaching is phenomenal. You ask the right questions, use the right amount of humour. Super engaging.“
“The Professor does a great job of assessing what we want to get out of the course and how the course can help meet those goals.”
“Best course I have taken at Dal to date”
“I think it was great, I think this was the first class in my whole degree of four years where I got to know so many of my classmates fairly well.”
“I love the environment of the class, it is very welcoming“
“Applied Entrepreneurship & Innovation was the most engaging and practical course I’ve taken at Dalhousie so far. We had the opportunity to learn from many different successful entrepreneurs (Including Prof DeCoste), participated in an atmosphere that made meaningful relationships, and learned applicable entrepreneurial skills. If you have any aspirations of being an entrepreneur or are interested at all in entrepreneurial ventures, this class is a must-take!”
Bio Highlights:
My work is informed by constant efforts to help founders develop, including:
Entrepreneur-turned-researcher who develops evidence-based, AI-enabled approaches to founder development.
As an entrepreneur, he has built, bought, and sold ventures, and is an alumnus of Techstars, the Creative Destruction Lab, and the Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference.
These experiences, coupled with teaching entrepreneurship at Dalhousie University, motivate his PhD research on using AI to train entrepreneurs. He works with members of the entrepreneurship ecosystem to build the next generation of founders and is currently collaborating with Dal Innovates to advance Lab2Market’s AI tools for founders and launch AI2Market.ca to upskill new founders in applying AI. Connect: linkedin.com/in/ldecoste
Co-Founding MindFrameconnect.com to develop the resilience of Founders and their teams at the country’s top accelerators.
Advising Founders as a board member, investor, entrepreneur-in-residence, and friend.
Researching entrepreneurial mindsets, and coaching as part of a Ph.D. in Positive Organizational Psychology with Claremont Graduate University.
Participating in Canada’s top leadership forms, including Co-Chairing a Study Tour of the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference.
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