MaRS

Watch the video: Basic Nuts n Bolts

At last week’s CIBC presents Entrepreneurship 101, course organizers Jennifer White and I, as well as guest speaker Dan Bolger from the CIBC, talked about the network or ecosystem that every new company must plug into.

One aspect of that network is trade shows – places where companies and people in your sector (however that is defined) meet to exchange information, strike deals, check out the competition, etc. One question arises: If you have a new venture, with technology, software, or a business model that is innovative – but not yet protected – should you go to a trade show?

Watch the video: Different Types of Entrepreneurship

At last week’s CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 lecture, we talked about the various types of businesses, including the important differences between social purpose ventures (based on achieving a defined social goal as well as making money) and traditional strictly for-profit businesses.

This begs an interesting question – which model ultimately can achieve the most good?

A course for up-starts

MaRS launched the CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 lecture series for its fifth year last Wednesday. But every time we launch a new season I wonder: is entrepreneurship really teachable?

There are those who feel that it is really experiential – to borrow a phrase, just get out there and do it! There is some truth to that perspective – you never really understand what it is like to negotiate a term sheet with an investor until you have to sit down across the table and go eyeball to eyeball with them. Likewise there is no way to desribe the feeling of signing your first major customer.

Happy Birthday, John Evans

Today is the birthday of one of MaRS’ most treasured assets, Dr. John Evans, our Founding Chair and Chair Emeritus. It follows not long after another important milestone: the fourth birthday of the opening of the MaRS Centre (September 26th). As our CEO, Ilse Treurnicht quoted from one of her favourite old books, “the past is a far country, they do things differently there…”

Of course Dr. Evans tried to pretend his birthday was not happening, but we decided to have a staff BBQ, acknowledging this milestone in the life of a truly amazing MaRSian. What follows is the ode I wrote to mark this occasion.

Last week’s CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 class was treated to a bravura presentation by Mike Polonsky of the Equicom Group on how to give a presentation. Mike’s talk featured a number of key messages on how to effectively tell a story about your ideas, your company, your investment opportunity.

This raises for me an interesting question. Our education system increasingly relies on having teams of students “present” the results of some project (this seems to reach back as early as junior high school, but clearly continues up to the classic seminars of graduate school). But does anyone ever teach us in school how to give an effective presentation?