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.

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