BUS477

Jackson's Dragons Den

As your instructor, it's my role to assign you a grade for your final oral presentation for BUS477. 

I feel strongly that grades are only part of the learning experience, however.  To that end, I have called a few favors and tapped the heartstrings of several professionals from the Vancouver angel and venture capital community and assembled an expert advisory panel for our last class.

The intention of this panel is to provide you unbiased, real world feedback on your final pitches.  The panel members are all professionals who see lots of business ideas.  I've asked them to look at your presentations as if they were "professional" and give you the straight goods on they view your pitch.

While the feedback from this panel won't impact your grade, it will help you to improve your idea and your presentation.  I trust this will be very valuable for those of you who enter other business plan competitions.

The following business leaders have agreed to participate (pending availability):

Phil Calvin, CTO, Sitemasher

Roger Killen

Ric Carrick, President, iQuest Performance

Jaeger Mah, Small Business BC

Geoff Catherwood, Director, Venture Capital, Business Development Bank of Canada

Stephen Smith, President, Webnames.ca

Dr. Colleen Collins, Dean of SFU Business, will join our class to welcome our guests and to wish you success with your pitches.

Bios

Geoff Catherwood

Geoff is a registered professional engineer and has 14 years of experience in industrial automation and process control and 8 years of venture capital experience. Prior to joining BDC Venture Capital in 2001, he worked for Bailey Canada and Asea Brown Boveri -- large multi-national industrial process automation suppliers. He has diverse operational experience in the process automation industry, including field service, system commissioning, engineering, management, and sales.

Geoff administers BDC Venture Capital’s EEEM (Energy, Electronics, Energy and Materials) portfolio in Western Canada. He is active on the boards of a number of early stage companies, including D-Wave Systems Inc., Teradici Corporation and Sutus Inc. He also volunteers in a number of programs promoting entrepreneurship, including New Ventures B.C. – an annual business plan competition.

Geoff holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia and an Executive MBA from Simon Fraser University. He has also completed the Canadian Securities Course.

Contact:  geoff.catherwood (at) bdc.com

Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith has over twenty years of experience working in information technology.  Stephen is the CEO and founder of Webnames.ca and  founder of Flintbox which is an international database for marketing and distributing early stage research results.

Stephen has worked with UBC and technology transfer and is interested commercialization and  was involved in the formation of New Media BC in 1998, was a finalist for Ernst & Young's 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards for Information Technology in the Pacific Region,  was a recipient of Business in Vancouver`s Top 40 Under 40 Award for Outstanding Achievement (2005) and received an award for Exceptional Innovation by CIPA for Flintbox (2007). 

Contact:  Steve (at) webnames.ca

Roger Killen

Roger was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and received his university education at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He graduated with an honours degree in Business Studies and a single digit golf handicap in 1973 and immigrated to Canada in 1975.

Since 1980, Roger has either founded or held a senior position in six start-up businesses: on his watch, four were winners and two were losers. He has taken one company public and been an angel investor in seven businesses. He has directly assisted start-ups raise over $8,000,000 in early-stage equity and leveraged this equity with other sources of early-stage capital into a total of $14,000,000.

Roger’s professional vision is to boost British Columbia’s small business success rate. Since 2001 he has developed and delivered small business development and financing seminars to entrepreneurs and their advisors in British Columbia and the Yukon. These seminars include Investor Ready 101, How to Raise Early-Stage Capital, The First 99 Milestones and Build & Finance Your SME.

Roger’s hobbies are public speaking, cooking, ballroom dancing and day-trading futures contracts.

Contact:  rkillen (at) shaw.ca

Phil Calvin

CTO and co-founder of Sitemasher.com, a website development software-as-a-service company and serial entrepreneur.  Addicted to kiteboarding.  Loves to Mountain Bike and Ski.. General adrenaline junkie.  (Check out his video – top to bottom run in the Whistler Bike Park with a camera attached to his chest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7RHjSDtvbw)

Contact:  philc (at) sitemasher.com

Ric Carrick, President, iQuest Performance

Ric Carrick is a Pacific Canada Entrepreneur of the Year who has founded several successful business ventures over a thirty-year career.

In 1991 Ric founded InsulPro Industries Inc., a Surrey based company that grew to 40 N.A. locations, over 1200 employees and $150 million annualized revenues within a six-year period. Ric was President, C.E.O. and Chairman of this TSX company. For five consecutive years InsulPro was one of Canada’s 100 fastest growing companies before being acquired in 1998 in a $32 million transaction.

In 1999 Ric co-founded iZ Technology Inc., a Burnaby based company that quickly became a leader in the transformation of the music industry from analog to digital recording. Ric was responsible for strategic planning and worldwide sales and marketing of a revolutionary digital audio recorder that is used by many major recording artists and has recorded more #1 records than any other dedicated digital recorder.

In 2004 Ric founded iQuest Performance Centers, a Surrey based company that is developing a new model to deliver affordable, world-class training to athletes of all ages and abilities and development programs to less active youth. The company has aspirations to expand the model throughout North America.

Ric has competed in nine sports, four at the elite level, and has coached athletes that have won eleven national championships. Ric has lived with his wife June in south Surrey since 1978 and has three children and five grand children.

Ric was the subject of a class enterpreneur interview.

Contact:  riccarick (at) shaw.ca