Entrepreneurship 101 launches its sixth year

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Since its inception in 2005, Entrepreneurship 101 (sponsored by CIBC since 2006) has grown into one of the most popular free entrepreneurship education programs in Canada. With the sixth year of the program kicking off on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 5:30pm, it’s a good time to look at what’s in store for Ent 101 this year and to revisit some of our past participants.

What’s new for the course

In addition to the current lectures on the nuts and bolts of starting a business, we’ve added five new topics (bootstrapping, go-to-market strategy, marketing communications, distribution and developing an effective value proposition) to make the course even more comprehensive.

Our participants asked for more industry-specific info and networking opportunities so we created a new mini-series in the course. “Meet the Entrepreneurs” events will have panel sessions and networking opportunities in each sector.  This will enable us to discuss in greater depth the challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurs in four of the MaRS practice areas (cleantech, ICE, life sciences and social innovation) and to give entrepreneurs in each of those sectors the chance to meet each other.

For entrepreneurs on the go or outside the city, we are also launching the online learning program, Entrepreneurship 101 with video and slides for each topic building block (marketing, sales, HR, pitching and so on) plus additional resources like articles and case studies.  Stay tuned for more details.

The entrepreneurs

How are some of our former participants and their start-ups doing?  We took a look at two of our participants from past years, Vive Nano and CognoVision.

The three co-founders of Northern Nanotech, now Vive Nano, participated in Ent 101 three times. Darren Anderson, Jordan Dinglasan and Gwynn Curran-Sills had zero staff when they first took the course in 2005/06. Over the last four years, Vive Nano has grown from a local nanotechnology company with one full-time employee to an 18-person operation with clients around the world. In 2009, Vive Nano was selected one of Corporate Knights magazine’s Cleantech Next 10 Emerging Leaders and also received a Deloitte Technology Green 15 Award.

“Without the mentoring and educational services provided by MaRS, Northern Nanotechnologies likely never would have been founded,” says Anderson, Vive Nano’s founder and Chief Technology Officer. “The most useful aspect of CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 was the introduction to things we needed to think about when starting a company and the people who could help us navigate each of these issues.”

CognoVision’s Haroon Mirza completed Ent 101 in 2007/08. CognoVision’s business plan placed second in the 2008 Up-Start! Competition (the annual conclusion of Ent 101), which gave the company’s founders the confidence to move forward. CognoVision provides automated audience measurement and retail intelligence solutions. In early 2010, Intel and Microsoft announced a six-month effort toward a standards-based, interactive digital signage future and their prototype—which changes screen content in real time based on face detection and tracking technology—is powered by CognoVision’s technology.

Way to go Vive Nano and CognoVision!

Interested in joining CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101?  To learn more or register, visit www.marsdd.com/ent101.

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