Business Minor Spotlight: Aidan Heggerud
Building more than software: learning to decide under uncertainty
When Heggerud chose Computer Science at UTM, he knew he’d be trained to build. To complement his major, he paired it with the Minor in Business, Science and Entrepreneurship (“Business Minor”) offered at the Institute for Management & Innovation (IMI) which trained him on something just as important: how to decide—under pressure, with uncertainty and imperfect information, and in real-world contexts.
“The Computer Science program is fantastic, but it trains us to be builders and creators. IMI trained me to be a decision‑maker under pressure and uncertainty.”
He added the Business Minor early as he was determined not to be “a programmer his whole life,” but a technologist who wanted to understand both disciplines—to merge code with commercial value. IMI amplified this opportunity, as he wanted to take on more strategic roles in the future. As a child, he loved puzzles, problem solving and developing different skills. He did not want to be narrowly focused; he wanted to push boundaries.
From Theory to Traction: Why the Business Minor Matters and the IMI 400 Inflection Point
For Heggerud, the IMI Business Minor closed crucial gaps: how managers make tradeoffs, allocate capital, evaluate risk, how to communicate across disciplines, and how to lead when answers aren’t obvious.
“It’s not just solving a problem correctly—it’s understanding why the solution matters to the organization. The IMI program develops communication, leadership, and decision‑making.” He highlights that the structure of the courses, particularly mixing assigned and chosen teams, is a powerful driver of adaptability: “you learn to work with what and who you’ve got. That’s real life.”
Heggerud credits the IMI curriculum, and particularly IMI400, with transforming theory into tangible action.
“IMI400 had the biggest impact of any course I’ve taken. It funneled the hands‑on learning from earlier courses into something tangible. It taught us the difference between “wantrapreneurs” and entrepreneurs, and the importance of action—actually doing something, not just sitting on theory.” He describes the course as “the scientific method applied to business”, where hypotheses about customers and value propositions are tested, refined, and tested again—an approach that resonated with other science students from other disciplines.
Heggerud took the learning in stride, creating a landing page for his business, SectorOne, with paid advertisements across Meta platforms to gauge industry interest.
SectorOne: The Garage‑First Telemetry Platform
Heggerud is currently building SectorOne, a motorsport-focused data and analytics venture developing a garage-first telemetry data platform for race teams. The goal is to unify telemetry, video, GPS, and notes into a single, reliable workflow so teams can ingest, normalize, version, and analyze performance data faster. This cuts post-session debrief time and enables more informed engineering and driver-coaching decisions. The company is approaching the MVP (minimum viable product) stage, with validation work and pilot discussions underway.
“In motorsport, the bottleneck is rarely a lack of graphs or advanced analytics. It is workflow. In test sessions, massive amounts of telemetry are downloaded onto individual laptops, organized manually, renamed inconsistently, and passed around. Time is lost before analysis even begins…. the value is not in more dashboards; the value is in faster decisions and fewer mistakes. That transition—from building impressive features to optimizing the constraint that actually limits performance—is the mindset shift the Business Minor reinforced.”
The parallel track: Finance, Strategy, and AI
Heggerud got interested in motorsport at an early age and is an active team member of the University of Toronto Formula Racing team where he has worked in driver development and race engineering. The team designs, builds, and competes with a Formula-style electric race car in international Formula Student competitions.
Competing in New Hampshire, Michigan, and Hockenheimring Germany, he gained first-hand exposure to how racing teams operate under real competitive pressure. These competitions are multi-day, high-intensity environments where engineering design, vehicle reliability, driver performance, and operational execution are judged at a global standard.
Heggerud has built credibility in high-performance finance and technology environments. Across three summers at Cerberus Capital Management, he rotated through application development, financial modeling infrastructure, and the Strategic Opportunities investment team.
“These roles reinforced where I want to operate—the intersection of technical systems, capital allocation, and strategic decision‑making.”
Post‑graduation, he is targeting roles in investment, technology strategy, and AI‑driven finance—fields that rely on analytical rigor and decisions made under uncertainty. To increase his options, Heggerud has applied to the Master of Science in Applied Computing with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence at U of T. This is an intentional bridge to AI consulting and value creation, applicable to both motorsport and finance.
Aidan Heggerud’s long-term ambition is to compete in motorsport, ideally in a sponsored sports car program.
Where is Aidan Heggerud Now?
In Winter 2026, Heggerud has accepted a fantastic opportunity to be on student exchange at ETH Zurich. Immersed in one of the world’s most competitive, research‑driven Computer Science ecosystems, he’s pushing SectorOne forward through a startup incubator‑style course in addition to joining AMZ Racing, ETH’s Formula Student team that is ranked first globally. He is bringing his race engineering and driver-development work into this elite environment.
Look for a follow-up article once he returns back to Toronto!
To keep pace with Aidan Heggerud you can watch this track video he took in Cayuga, or you can connect with him on LinkedIn.
To learn more about the Minor in Business, Science and Entrepreneurship at IMI, please visit the website or contact imi.businessminor@utoronto.ca.
