Wednesday October 8th 6:00-8:00pm
at the Code Factory, 246 Queen Street , between Bank and Kent

3 x 10

Seed Funding Part I

This is the second in a series of 3 x 10 sessions on financing options for early stage businesses in Ottawa. The criteria for the event are that the presenters have or are associated with active funding sources for early stage businesses in the Ottawa area. We are pleased to present at this week’s session; Shirley Speakman, from Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation, Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF); Matt Williams from IPeak commenting on the entrepreneurs perspective of the IAF and Paul Dawalibi from Garage Ventures in Montreal. This promises to be a great opportunity for early stage Ottawa start-ups interested in seed funding options.

Shirley Speakman, Investment Accelerator Fund

Shirley Speakman is an investment manager with the Investment Accelerator Fund, a $27.5M fund established by the Ontario government to invest in seed and early stage technology companies located in Ontario. Shirley has over ten years experience in the investment industry through her early work at Ernst & Young Corporate Finance, RBC Technology Ventures and through her own firm facilitating financings, mergers and acquisitions. Throughout her career she has worked on transactions worth in excess of $80M. She has an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo.

Matthew Williams, CTO and co-founder of IPeak Networks

Matthew Williams is CTO and co-founder of IPeak Networks, a privately held Ottawa company focused on improving the quality of Internet based applications and services. Previous to founding IPeak, Matthew held marketing and technical positions at Ciena, Akara, Alcatel and Newbridge Networks. Matthew has a Honours B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University.

Paul Dawalibi, Saint Lawrence Capital

Paul Dawalibi is a venture capitalist at Saint Lawrence Capital (formerly Garage Technology Ventures Canada), focusing on internet, software, and mobile investments. Paul currently serves on the board of Praized Media, the world’s first distributed local search platform. Paul also works closely with the management teams of Group IV Semiconductor (solid state lighting), ThermoCeramix (advanced heating materials), Step Labs (acoustic filtering software), and Inscape Software (talent management and assessment software). Paul frequently writes and speaks about startups and the venture capital industry. Some of his commentary can be found through his alter ego – the VC Whisperer (www.vcwhisperer.com). Prior to joining Saint Lawrence Capital in 2006, Paul was the founder and CEO of Cereal Technologies. Cereal was focused on the development of unique mobile applications. Previously, Paul worked in sales and marketing at IBM, American Express and Sun Microsystems. Mr. Dawalibi holds a Hon. B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

This is a free event made available by .

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