Gowlings Monthly TON “Starting your Startup Series”, Announces a 2 Part Seminar Series on Business Plans.

Part 1 – The Business Plan You DON’T take to the Bank
Tuesday January 12th, 2010 - 5:30pm - 7:30pm

Many new start-ups write a business plan with the sole purpose of raising capital.  However, a good business plan can be very useful for other reasons. It can help your start-up to: bring together your ideas and research into a structured format; to clarify and communicate business purpose to staff; to predict and plan for future scenarios and to set overall business strategy such as marketing strategy; and targets and objectives, including sales and financial targets, so that you can monitor your start-up’s performance.

The first seminar in this 2 part series will focus on how a business plan can be used to help your Company to stay focused on primary business objectives and to operate more efficiently.  The 2nd part of the series (Tuesday, February 9, 2010) will focus on the role of the Business Plan when your start-up is raising Capital.

Gowlings is very pleased to host Starting Your Start-Up, The Ottawa Network monthly event stream that combines quality networking with practical advice and insights from industry leaders and subject matter experts.  Starting Your Start-Up focuses on the business basics that are the foundation for launching and building a successful start-up in these promising and challenging times including financing, team formation, business & product development, sales, and marketing.

This event is provided at no cost for members of The Ottawa Network. Click here for registration details.

Jason Flick - Co-Founder and President at YOUiLabs - Jason Flick is a successful serial entrepreneur, and the product visionary in the company. Jason brings 18 years of technical and business leadership to the role of President. His most recent success was Flick Software, a mobile solutions and products venture whose customers included Intel, Rogers Wireless, U.S. military, and Sybase. Prior to founding Flick Software in 2002, he was co-founder and CTO at N-able Technologies, where he architected one of the most scalable IT systems in the world, built and managed the engineering team. Prior to N-able Technologies, Jason was Director, Systems Integration with Eftia, a leading OSS vendor, where he owned a $23M P&L business unit. His other roles and adventures have included COO, Canadian Health Systems and Vice President Engineering, TouchNet.

Andrew Bailes - VP Finance and Planning at Cryptocard - Andrew has had a strong career in the telecommunications and IT industries - both inside and as a management consultant. He has extensive experience in business and commercial planning, budgeting, modelling and business strategy, holding a wide and varied set of positions. He negotiated the multi million-dollar purchase of a mobile phone operator in Ghana and carried out the business modelling for a £2.5bn PFI bid for road maintenance. He managed the quantitative business case that enabled WorldCom to bid more than £3bn for a 3G mobile license. Andrew holds a MA in Mathematics and Management Studies from Cambridge University and is currently completing his Masters in Business Administration at Queens and Cornell.

Glen Orsak - Glen Orsak is veteran business advisor and coach to business leaders, owners and entrepreneurs.  Glen recently left Deloitte after a 20-year consulting career, 10 as a partner and leader of the firm’s Strategy and Operations practice in Ottawa.   In this role, he sold and delivered projects ranging from small strategic interventions through to multi-year, multi-million dollar business planning and implementation engagements.  He is now working with small businesses in management support and advisory roles where he drives the development of strategies and plans to strengthen business fundamentals and to position companies for rapid growth.  In addition to his consulting heritage at Deloitte, Glen holds an MBA from the Ivey School of Business at UWO and a certificate in common sense from his days growing up on a farm in Manitoba.

This event is provided at no cost for members of The Ottawa Network.  Click here for registration details.

Starting your Startup - First Customer Traction

Tuesday Dec 8th, 2009 - 5:00pm - 7:00pm

If you attended previous sessions of the Gowlings Starting your Startup series, you heard over and over again the importance of first customers to your overall business and its growth. In this session we have a panel of experienced executives that can help you to identify, contact, and collaborate with potential customers. From a technical perspective our panel will help you understand how to integrate customers into your development process so that your offering becomes a “need to have” within your customers’ minds and budget priority list. You’ll also hear how a local company started and grew their business from day one leveraging key lead customers.

This event is provided at no cost for members of The Ottawa Network.  Click here for registration details.

Scott Annan - Scott has spent the last 10 years managing web-based software development projects first as an executive for a global fortune-500 company and more recently as an entrepreneur. Scott co-founded Mercury Grove (www.mercurygrove.com) 5 years ago and has built custom software solutions for industry leaders including Tempur-Pedic, Applebee’s, and Proctor & Gamble, and recently launched Network Hippo (www.networkhippo.com), a viral-growth network relationship management website. Scott’s unique and sometimes controversial views on software development, social media, and entrepreneurship has made him a popular speaker and contributor to numerous events and blogs.

Cuong Nguyen - Cuong has been in software and telecommunication product development industry for over 25 years. Since 1995, he has been holding senior management positions at various technology companies in the Ottawa area. At each company, he’s responsible for the product design and development and drives the product growth strategies. Throughout these years, Cuong comes to recognize that one of the key contributor to the success is to engage customers early in the product development life-cycle. The past two years have seen Cuong working on and leading the development of the SaaS enabling technology and products at Wrapped Apps Corp. Prior to Wrapped Apps, Cuong was VP of Product Development and Supports at FreeBalance, VP of Engineering at Watchfire, VP of Application Development and Professional Services at i4i, and VP of Engineering and CTO at Milkyway Networks.  Cuong graduated from the University of Waterloo with a bachelor degree in Mathemactics and Computer Science.

Randy Whitcroft - Randy is the founder of Ideas2Revenue, and the author of the “Building Sales Momentum Through Client Focused Development” program (www.firstcustomers.com) which is a simple step by step guide on how to identify, contact and integrate real world clients into your development and overall business processes.  Mr. Whitcroft has over 18 years sales and sales management experience within the technology sector. After leaving his successful career with companies including Rational Software (IBM), and Corel, he spent a number of years working as a virtual sales executive and sales consultant for a number of key local technology companies. During this time, he gained a great deal of experience and an inside view into a number of technology companies at various stages of growth,. His company offers a number or packaged services to help companies of all stages infuse customers into all aspects of their business.

This event is provided at no cost for members of The Ottawa Network.  Click here for registration details.

What is Founders & Funders?

Founders & Funders is a social event aimed at bringing together the people that start the next big successful company with the people that fund these companies in their earliest stages. The event is social. It is not a pitch fest. It is not a DemoCamp. It is an opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs and funders in your local community. The goal is to help facilitate opportunities for people to meet, share and build relationships that will grow into the NEXT BIG THING.

Founders and Funders is dedicated:

• to helping Canadian entrepreneurs to meet each other;
• meet potential funders: angel, VC or other money sources;
• to have fun;
• and see how we can help each other create the NEXT BIG successful company.

How do I get involved?

The event is “by invitation only’ and is limited in terms of availability. If you would like to attend, please send Allan Isfan allan.isfan@favequest.com or Rick O’Connor rickoco@theottawanetwork.com a note and let them know who you are and why you should participate.

TAKE NOTICE that the annual meeting of members of THE OTTAWA NETWORK (the “Corporation”) will be held at Brookstreet Hotel, 525 Legget Drive, Kanata, Ontario on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 5:00 o’clock (Ottawa time) in the afternoon for the purpose of:

1. receiving and considering the financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, together with the auditors’ report thereon;
2. setting the number of seats on the board of directors for the coming year;
3. electing directors;
4. appointing auditors and authorizing the board of directors to fix their remuneration; and
5. transacting such other business as may properly come before the meeting.

Members who will not be attending the meeting are requested to date, sign and return the following ottawa-network-notice-of-agm-2009 proxy using the label provided for that purpose.

Members in good standing are invited to register here, attend, participate and vote at the meeting.

DATED:  November 11, 2009.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Thomas J. Marlay, Secretary

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 5:00-7:00pm
Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP 555 Legget Drive, Tower B, Suite 740, Kanata

Starting your Start-Up

Using Blogs & Social Media to Become an

Internet Star!

Gowlings is very pleased to host Starting Your Start-Up, The Ottawa Network monthly event stream that combines quality networking with practical advice and insights from industry leaders and subject matter experts.  Starting Your Start-Up focuses on the business basics that are the foundation for launching and building a successful start-up in these promising and challenging times including financing, team formation, business & product development, sales, and marketing.

Thomas Prowse, a Gowlings Partner, will moderate an informal session at the Gowlings Kanata Technology Law Office with Erin Blaskie, a serial entrepreneur.  Erin will share her story on how she has used blogs and other forms of social medial to build businesses by becoming an internet celebrity!

Erin Blaskie - Internet Marketing Strategist

When you think of passionate love affairs, it’s not often that you also think about Internet Marketing.  However, when you meet Erin Blaskie, you realize that those two things meld together in a way that just makes sense.

Erin Blaskie started her first company at the age of 21.  After launching BSETC, a professional outsourcing team, she joined forces with some of the top Internet Marketers to support, build, grow and sell some amazing companies.  To date, Erin and her team have serviced over 300 entrepreneurs in countless countries around the world. Five years and a few more businesses later, Erin has put her hands on every style of business out there.

Always one to figure out how things on the Internet work, she has made it her livelihood to experiment with the latest technologies, ideas and to even create concepts that didn’t exist before. As a multi-faceted entrepreneur, Erin has been featured in three print books; honoured as Office Arrow’s 2008 Runner-Up Business Woman of the Year; interviewed by countless gurus and media personalities; featured in major news outlets such as ABC and CBC; and asked to speak at both national and international events.

While this event is free for members of The Ottawa Network, we ask that you register online here.

Complimentary refreshments provided by Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 4:00pm to 6:30pm Kanata Lakes Golf & Country Club

Ottawa Cleantech Retooling Initiative

“Bringing local clusters and initiatives together to focus the expertise of experienced management and engineering talents on emerging cleantech opportunities.”

We invite you to join the conversation.

Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Time: 4:00pm to 6:30pm
Location: Kanata Lakes Golf & Country Club 7000 Campeau Dr., Kanata, ON

Panelists:
Bill St. Arnaud, CANARIE
Tim Angus, ReGen Energy
Albert Behr, Behr & Associates

Brought to you By:
LaBarge Weinstein
Deloitte
The Ottawa Network

There is no cost to participate however pre-registration is required as seating is limited. Please click here to register.