Inside the Dragons' Den

How is having a baby similar to starting a business?

I had dinner last night with Ian Protsmouth, editor of Profit. We are both in Dryden, Ontario this week for the FIRE 2007 conference on entrepreneurship.  Ian's bringing his "Best Practices from the Profit 100" while I'm flogging my "Lessons from the Dragons' Den" lecture.

Over dinner we got caught up, discussed entrepreneurship in Canada but mostly riffed on how having a baby isn't that dissimilar to starting a new business. 

Here is what we came up with:

How is having a baby similar to starting a business?

1. both become your sole focus, requiring self sacrifice and focus
2. both rob you of sleep and leave you exhausted at the end of the day
3. both cost way more than you anticipate
4. no matter how much education and training you have prior, you are never fully ready for everything
5. both jobs can be thankless
6. no matter how much you plan, both seem to eventually take on a life of there own becoming more than you would have ever thought

I'm sure there were more points, but there's a start......

September a Go/Go

After a quiet summer, the fall is revving up strong with great entrepreneurial events going down on both sides of the border:

1. Office 2.0 goes Sept 5-7 down in San Fran and covers all the latest webtech for enterprises big and small;
2. Montreal hosts Red Herring Canada at the same time;
3. the Banff Venture Forum is hosting a bootcamp in Calgary on Sept 12th for those in Alberta looking to raise funding;
4. the week after in the North West Territories sees Prospects North hosting a Dragons' Den event; and
5. the month rounds out with FI:RE in Dryden Ontario going Sept 26/27.

All will be featuring my new book Wise Words: Lessons in Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital, so be sure swing by and say hi.

VenturePrize, a prize for the Den

Today I spent the day in Edmonton. It was the first annual Ventureprize conference. 

The keynote speaker was my good friend, Mr. Len Brody of NowPublic. But as much as I love listening to Len evangelize about entrepreneurship in Canada (which he rocks at), the real treat for me came in hearing the finalists do their elevator pitches. 

These were the best of the best, whittled down from hundreds of applications.  And you know what? they were truly the best of the best.  So much so that I've called back to big bosses at CBC to recommend we invite one or two to taping next week.

Stay tune for more....

Best of the North: Day 1

It is the first day of my 4 city Lessons from the Den tour of Northern Ontario.  First up was North Bay followed by Sudbury. I was taken aback by the quality of some of the companies I meet in 1on1 sessions following the lecture.  Funny enough, the best of the bunch was actually a company I meet last Friday in Silicon Valley.

Yes you read that right, I saw them last friday in the valley and then only days later in Sudbury.  In the valley they were presenting at Under the Radar Office 2.0, in Sudbury they were simply at home representing and showing that not all Web 2.0 compaines have to be Caolifornia.  The company is ConceptShare and not only are they part of a growing list of Enterprise 2.0 companies popping out on the net lately, they are definitely joining Cambrian House, NowPublic, FreshBoooks, b5 Media and Celtx on my list of BEST CANADIAN STARTUPS.

So what does conceptshare do?

According to me, ConceptShare is a Plaform for Online Asynchronous Visual Collaboration (POAVC, ok I need to work on that acronym some more) or in English, they help graphic designers, visual artists, webdesigners, storyboarders, toy makers and the like create a workspace where members of a team can provide feedback on their own time.

According to their website they:

ConceptShare makes capturing feedback easier and more accurate.

ConceptShare allows you to easily share designs inside Workspaces that contain designs related to a certain topic or project.

It’s easy to invite people into a workspace. Invite team members, managers, clients, and consultants to add and reply to comments, chat and markup designs.

People do not have to be in the workspace at the same time to contribute. Workspace members can log-in anytime to any workspace they are member. If members do happen to be in the workspace at the same time they can collaborate with real-time chat and real-time comment updates and concept updates

But take if from me, there is way more to this than meets the eye. So this site is a must try for anyone working on logos, websites, ad campaigns or any other visual representation. 

I demoed their product as a means of working through an infographic on a project I'm on.  Up until now the 5 people working on the project had to physically get together to discuss the illustration, which is hard since one is in Ottawa, two are in Calgary, and one is in London.  But with ConceptShare it was not only easy to solicit feedback, it was efficient.

So if you are working on a team that has visual outputs as part of its mandate, zip on over to ConceptShare and give it a try. You won't regret it, I sure don't.

Go North Young Man

At the end of March, the Northern Ontario Enterprise Gateway has me bringing our Lessons from the Dragons' Den tour to 4 cities in northern Ontario.  Amongst other things, we'll be talking about

• what it takes to raise Angel money
• what the Dragons are looking for in Season 2
• How to increase your chances of getting the funding you need to succeed.

For more info click over to: www.noeg.ca

Kids enter the Dragons' Den

This weekend I was in Edmonton, keynoting a conference for Junior Achievers entitled "Enter the Dragons' Den".  100+ high school students have come from Winnipeg, Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta to learn how to develop an investor pitch.  This is something I know more than a little about.  But what I didn't know....was just how amazing these "kids" were!

I was asked to give a keynote address and shared "Lessons from the Dragons Den" as well as judge the students entries.

In less than 48 hours, they had to develop a product (a peripheral for the ipod), build their pitch, develop their go to market strategy, determine the capital they would need, and sum it all up and deliver a 10 minute presentation.

And let me tell you, for kids who have no MBA, no "real world" experience, nor any history of pitching, they kick serious tushie!!!

I mean, I've now Cris-crossed the country for over 7 years teaching entrepreneurs how to raise capital, and these so called "junior achievers" put some of the CEOs I've met to shame.

Here's hoping they continue to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams....cuz if they do...watch out Google, YouTube and Dell.......

Attention Alberta Fans - DD coming to Alberta

High School Students enter the Den

Today, we took our "Lessons from the Dragons' Den: what entrepreneurs can learn from Reality TV" multimedia show to Glenforest Secondary School, where we shared clips, audio and key messages from the show with high school students with an interest in entrepreneurship. 

If you'd like to have us visit your school, group or organization just drop me a line at Sean@WiseMentorCaptial.com and no we don't do bar mitzvahs.....at least not yet :)

Lessons from the Den coming to Alberta

Thanks to Terry Ross and the fine folks at ICORE we will be bringing our 90 minute interactive multimedia keynote lecture to Edmonton and Calgary on Nov 27th and 28th respectively. The event which will be geared towards sharing entrepreneurial lessons with Alberta post secondary students (U of C, U of A, NAIT, SAIT, Grant MacEwan and Mount Royal) is open to the general public.

The sessions entitled "LESSONS FROM THE DRAGONS' DEN: What entrepreneurs can learn from reality tv" has received high praise from attendees to date for covering key topics including:

• how to tell if your idea is "big enough"
• deal terms to consider
• whats fundable today
• each Dragons' best advice
• the 10 biggest mistakes you can make when looking for capital
• how to craft your elevator pitch

If you'd like to attend, contact Terry @ rosstj@ucalgary.ca

Hope to see you there!

Dragons' Den teaches lessons to Small Business Owners

Last week, I gave the keynote at the London Small Business Conference.  At the end of the lecture, I was priviledged to be joined by none other than Jennifer McDonald from Cenabal Organics (the winner from episode 1) to answer questions from the floor.

Over the hour, we shared behind the stories, answered frequently asked questions and most of all shared LESSONS FROM THE DEN.

We are now in the process of booking other dates for this keynote, so email me (Sean@WiseMentorCapital.com) if you think you have a place you think we  should take our show.