Our History

The Ottawa Network:

• Was formed in 2001;
• As a grass roots, community-based, volunteer organization;
• To stimulate new opportunities in Ottawa’s hi-tech community;
• Funded by sponsors typically from the service industry.

Our Mission

To stimulate new opportunities in Ottawa’s hi-tech community by:

• Helping individuals to meet, interact, learn and share ideas;
• Connecting inventors (new entrepreneurs and wannabes) with mentors (veteran entrepreneurs and practitioners);
• And stimulating hi-tech management team formation.

Benefits of the Organization Structure

The benefit of the Ottawa Network’s organization structure to the community is that it is:

• Grassroots, community organized, for the people - by the people;
• And non-bureaucratic, independent, non-affiliated, non-biased.

Our Team and Sponsors

The Ottawa Network is made possible by:

• A dedicated and passionate team of volunteers devoting their time to help their community;
• And the financial support of our kind sponsors who believe in the benefits of a strong and innovative hi-tech industry.

Target Market

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The Ottawa Network’s target market is a segment of ~6000 employees in the cross section of companies 0-9 years old and 1-99 employees. This cross section represents the employees of the smaller younger companies that typically have the attributes of:

• faster growing;
• in dynamic marketplaces;
• requiring constant corporate adaptation;
• and requiring good inexpensive consultation.

This target market is deemed to be the future of Ottawa hi-tech

Service Offering

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Business Networking and Education Events

The logistics of the events are:

• They are typically free;
• They are held after work starting around 5:30pm;
• Held weekly;
• Approximately 40 events from September to June;
• Held at a venue conducive to mingling and presenting such as BitHeads, the Clocktower, the CodeFactory, a sponsor’s office and/or one of the Universities.

The events typically consist of a moderated two hour session:

• 30 minute of networking;
• 30 minute business education presentation from multiple industry experts including entrepreneurs, veterans, lawyers, accountants, consultants, bankers, VCs and angels;
• Questions, answers and dialog;
• Attendees can choose to come for the networking and/or the presentations.

The content of the events is continuously planned by our team via the Event Agenda wiki which is a living document.

Every effort is made to collaborate, co-host and co-market with other organizations that have overlapping objectives such as TiE, The Code Factory, OttawaCamps, the OCRI Ottawa Clustors and/or other similiar organizations.

The Business Review Panel

The BRP is comprised of industry experts providing impartial third-party review and feedback of a company’s next key business presentation such as for the purposes of securing a first customer or finding funding.