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.