FirstDay

This summer, from August 3 to 7, I attended Western Ivey’s Summer Business Program, a five-day immersion at Ivey Business School where MBA mentors and faculty walk high schoolers through real venture-building: market research, financial modeling, pitching. We were placed in randomized teams of five and given a capstone brief: Find the barriers keeping youth from participating in local activities, organizations, and support systems, then design a solution.

Working through it, we kept landing on the same root cause: the programs themselves aren’t the problem, plenty already exist. What actually keeps teens and young people from joining a program, opportunity, or activity is one feeling: if nobody I know is going, I’m not going either. That was something every one of us on the team had personally felt, so my team built FirstDay to fix exactly that.

FirstDay gathers trial days and drop-in sessions, not just from sports teams and arts studios, but tutoring programs, community clubs, counseling and support groups, and plenty of other opportunities most teens never hear about, into a tailored, searchable place, displayed as a cumulative calendar. Users build an interest profile, get matched to nearby trial days ranked by relevance and transit distance, then RSVP solo or with friends, with parental consent built in for anyone under 16. This means trying something new doesn’t depend on already knowing someone on the inside.

Every listing shows what the activity is, where it is, the general age group, and how many new first-timers are attending.

“Nobody shows up alone on Firstday.”