Entrepreneurship

Local rental property website ready to take on the big boys

Rowser — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:13:37 -0300

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John Pollack

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Telegraph Journal, Published Monday June 29th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/713019

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Jason Richard, owner of Prop2Go, has recently hired eight new people for the company's sales and marketing departments. Photo by: Noel Chenier/Telegraph-Journal

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Prop2Go triples staff as it battles Craigslist and Kijiji

In 18 months Jason Richard, owner of Prop2Go, hopes to be running the leading apartment listings service in most major Canadian cities.

"I want to become the name to know if you're going to find rental property," Richard says.

In preparation, the 30-year-old recently tripled his staff by hiring eight new sales and marketing people. The new team will be helping develop and implement a plan to break into the Ottawa and Toronto markets before moving west to Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver in about six to 12 months time. Richard plans to target landlords with more than 100 units.

The Saint John-based online listings business, which launched in January 2007, has done well in the Port City, Fredericton, Moncton and Halifax, now getting 200,000 to 300,000 hits per month.

But with an aggressive marketing campaign planned for the expansion, Prop2Go, which had $180,000 in revenue last year, is looking to raise between $250,000 and $500,000 by selling shares of the privately held company.

"We were profitable last year," Richard says.

"Which is saying a lot that we were profitable in year two."

He wouldn't reveal the firm's operating cost for 2008.

Kerry Munro, a Toronto-based digital marketing consultant and former managing director of Yahoo in Canada, says locally focused websites are growing.

But with plenty of competition for apartment listings, Munro says Prop2Go will have get enough listings from landlords to make the site interesting for renters.

"In order for them to be successful they're going to have to"¦ find some value proposition that others don't provide," Munro says.

"The faster they can build their scale and quality the more success they will have in the long run."

Richard says because Prop2Go is aimed specifically at rental listings, it provides a better service than free classified websites such as Kijiji or Craigslist.

The site can filter apartments based on 14 different features. Prop2Go users can also set up alerts, and the site keeps all information on file for landlords' convenience the next time the apartment is on the market.

Richard, a software developer by trade, is working on a nine-month research and development project aimed to make the site more user friendly.

On Kijiji and Craigslist, posts can be buried within hours since listings get bumped down as others come in. But Richard says Prop2Go is going to be different.

"They're still going to be able to find you (even if the listing is buried) because their going to have the tools on there that make it easy to search for property online," he says.

To get landlords and renters interested Richard's marketing campaign will be mainly online, including a heavy social media component.

But he also plans to use radio and print ads to get the word out, as well as attend events and meet with large landlords.

Richard says he will likely hire sales and marketing people in the targeted cities in the coming months.

A case for entrepreneurship

Rowser — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:49:47 -0300

Author

Rebecca Penty

Source

Telegraph Journal, Published Monday June 29th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/712991

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Nicolas LeBlanc, the founder of Etch Media Group, has worked in Mexico, Paris and New York City but chose to set up shop in Moncton, in part because of the business supports in place. The entrepreneur is focused on creating and sourcing content for digital signs in elevators, which his company is gearing up to sell to business building property owners. Photo by: Rebecca Penty/Telegraph-Journal

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Ad firm owner wants province's leaders to grow industry and attract skilled workers

Nicolas LeBlanc has worked in Mexico City, Paris and New York City but the entrepreneur chose Moncton to launch his first startup.

LeBlanc said the supports in place here have put his advertising company - Etch Media Group - in place to roll out its business plan.

Two years ago, LeBlanc began building his firm around creating and sourcing news, arts advertising and other content for digital signs, which his company is gearing up to install in elevators for two property owners with whom the firm has contracts inked.

A music producer by trade, he needed advice on finding capital and developing his plan to penetrate the market, so he approached Enterprise Greater Moncton - a local economic development agency.

"They helped me with refining the business plan but also how to finance the business," LeBlanc said in an interview in his second-floor downtown Moncton office.

"They don't give you the capital but they showed me what options were there and how to get it," he said, adding that his advisor at the agency helped him remain "realistic" about forecasted revenues and expenses.

"When you start a new business and you don't have that experience, you do have that feeling that you're flying solo," LeBlanc said.

The firm employs three others besides LeBlanc - a business development specialist and two graphic designers.

Etch Media is also among the latest additions to PropelICT's business accelerator program, for which the tech association matches entrepreneurs with industry veterans who help set milestones the company should reach and form an action plan to meet them.

Through Enterprise Greater Moncton, LeBlanc met this week with local contacts in the property management, real estate and advertising industries - as well as other business advisors - while also participating in a conference call with PropelICT mentors.

"You have a lot of people there that really know what they're doing," LeBlanc said of the mentors.

In exchange for the help, companies contribute a percentage of their royalties back to the association under a scheme that sees no charges during the first year and five per cent after year one with five-per-cent increases on the charges annually that cap at 15 per cent after the third year.

Jeff Roach, the executive director of PropelICT, said the accelerator program is based on "experienced, high-level people donating their time."

Roach is challenging the province's business and political leaders to get behind entrepreneurship in a bigger way to grow industry and attract skilled workers to the province.

"We can't really expect to grow any creative sectors, technology sectors at all, without focusing on entrepreneurship," he said.

"The future of our economy is very bleak if you hang your hat on attracting businesses from away."

LeBlanc, who as a music producer worked on contract in the advertising industry in several jurisdictions, said the creative minds of today are attracted to cities by "project" opportunities; if there is a critical mass of industry opportunity, he argues they will stay once their project is complete.

Adding more startups to the mix will help attract "smart people," he said.

"It basically helps develop the region," LeBlanc said.

Remsoft divides CEO responsibilities

Rowser — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:35:10 -0300

Author

Brett Bundale

Source

Telegraph Journal, Published Monday June 22nd, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/706561

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Andrea Feunekes and Steve Palmer share chief executive responsibilities at Fredericton-based Remsoft Inc. They see it as a more efficient way to do business. Photo by: Brett Bundale/Telegraph-Journal

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Pair says having two chief executives makes company more efficient, profitable

For some companies, two chiefs are better than one.

From Research in Motion Ltd. to Motorola, Inc., the top executives of trend-setting tech firms are sharing the role of CEO.

Fredericton-based Remsoft Inc. has joined the co-chief bandwagon. Andrea Feunekes and Steve Palmer say having two CEOs has made the software company more efficient and profitable.

"We bring a complimentary skill-set to the table," says Feunekes, who along with Palmer is the co-CEO of Remsoft. "We have different areas of expertise and strengths and it benefits our business."

Feunekes co-founded the advanced analytics software firm in 1992 with her husband Ugo Feunekes, now the chief technology officer. Under her watch, Remsoft grew from a start-up with a small handful of key clients to a leading developer of software for environment, infrastructure and transportation management.

Palmer, who spent two decades with NBTel and holds an MBA from Dalhousie University, joined the helm of Remsoft 18 months ago to help oversee the company's rapid growth.

"If you had co-CEOs with the exact same abilities or whose personalities clashed it wouldn't work," he says. "We keep our eye on what is best for the business. And based on our individual skills and strengths, we divide up tasks pretty easily."

The two leaders have carved out areas of expertise within the company, with Palmer focused on transportation and infrastructure asset management and Feunekes focused on natural resources and the environment.

"Remsoft comes up with high-value solutions for big messy complex problems," Feunekes says. "These are the problems that keep you awake at night.

"Whether the problem is with forestry or infrastructure," she adds, "advanced analytics can help sort through data and make the best choices."

Although there is no job description for each CEO, Palmer tends to be stronger on the "finance side" and developing an organizational structure for rapid growth, Feunekes says.

"I tend to have an affinity for marketing and strategic planning," she says. "But even though we have our strengths we still share many tasks."

Since Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to see whose name would come first in naming the electronics manufacturing enterprise that later became the Hewlett-Packard Company, more and more start-ups and tech firms are being helmed by a duo.

Like Remsoft, companies are blending the skills and personalities of co-chief executives to benefit of the bottom line.

"We've been profitable every year," Feunekes says. "We just make sure that all of our decisions match our business objectives and add to our bottom line."

As much as the combined know-how of Feunekes and Palmer may be complimentary, companies with dual CEOs can be plagued by ego conflicts and jealousies.

In fact, more than 85 percent of 1,377 chief executives felt co-CEOs were less effective than single ones, according to a survey by Burson-Marsteller, a New York-based global consulting firm.

"If you've got a lot of ego or you're a real turf protector it might not work," Feunekes admits.

"Your focus has to be on the business, not on yourself."

With bright blue and orange walls, the stylish Remsoft headquarters in downtown Fredericton has 17 employees. But the firm plans to add six more to the team by the end of the year.

Remsoft is also looking to expand its client base, which currently hovers around 125. The firm's software is already being used by governments and companies for infrastructure and natural resource asset management across North America, Brazil, Uruguay, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

"Our clients can have a preconceived idea about the best way forward but because our software can evaluate millions of alternatives at once we can show them things that may surprise them," Palmer says.

"For example in forestry," Feunekes says, "it's not necessarily the best thing to cut the oldest tree first from an economic standpoint. In fact cutting the younger trees first may make sense because it produces more profits."

Palmer adds that managing New Brunswick's 200 year-old infrastructure is similar to managing natural resources.

"They are both huge and complex tasks and our software allows you to combine millions of variables to decide on the best solution."

Junior Achievement returns to region

Jeff Roach — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:28:33 -0300

Author

Greg Weston

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Times & Transcript, Published Thursday June 18th, 2009

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http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/rss/article/703267

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Gilberte Godin from School District 1, David Hawkins, committee chairman for the Moncton Junior Achievement Company Program, and Karen Branscombe, superintendent of School District 2, were all smiles yesterday at the official launch of the program at Moncton City Hall.

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After a three-year hiatus, the Junior Achievement Company Program will again be up and running for southeastern New Brunswick high school students this fall.

The return of the hands-on entrepreneurial initiative was announced at a press conference at Moncton City Hall yesterday morning, with members of the business community, school superintendents and Mayor George LeBlanc in attendance.

"Moncton is really a very entrepreneurial community and we had a great opportunity here," says David Hawkins, president of CouleurNB and a corporate sponsor of the program. "It just feels so much like the right thing and so much like the right place to do this and to do it really well."

The extra-curricular activity gives high school students the opportunity to conceive and implement a business plan, under the stewardship of a volunteer from the local business community. Offered free of charge to interested students, the 18-week-long program will begin in October. Also running in other areas of the province, it had been cancelled in this region about three years ago.

"Basically, Junior Achievement took a hiatus for a period of time from delivering the Company Program, because we didn't have the students coming into high school that were familiar with the program," says Britt Dysart, chairman of the Junior Achievement New Brunswick Board of Governors. "The main reason was, about three years ago, we noticed a decline in our in-school programs to the point where we were only reached about 100 to 150 students in the southeast."

During the past three years, such classroom activities in the lower grades have grown to involve more than 2,000 students, Dysart says, which should create more interest in Junior Achievement among the region's high school students. Their goal is to have three groups, one working in French and two bilingual, of about 15 to 20 students each. Junior Achievement is also looking for volunteers to act as mentors.

"It's a program that the Moncton business community and the two school districts, anglophone and francophone, have been really hoping that we'd be able to reintroduce in the south-east region. This has been a Moncton community effort to present the case that there is the critical mass and there is the interest to make the relaunch successful," Dysart says. "I think it's a great day for Moncton students that we're able to bring it back. The volunteers get as much out of it as the kids."

David Savoie, now a partner and project manager at Acadian Construction Ltd. in Dieppe, participated in the Company Program as a high school student in 1992. He says the experience was rewarding and he is excited that Acadian will now be acting as a sponsor.

"For me, it opened up the entrepreneurship and business world to my eyes. When you're in high school, you're not always thinking of that kind of stuff. It gelled everything together for me to go through the program," he says of his school group, which created a company that sold reusable cloth lunch bags. "I think it allows the students to get tied to the business world in an easy an accessible way and it gives the business people a way to give back."

Hawkins says the hands-on experience helps develop students' business skills and gives them a chance to see if a career in business is right for them.

"They get some teamwork skills and I think that's a very important dimension of it," as well as teaching leadership, planning and financial responsibility, he says. "They get a lot of exposure to all of those things on a very small and intense basis. It would be awful easy to become a 21-year-old and have none of that experience."

More ideas will generate more capital

Jeff Roach — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:33:34 -0300

Author

John Pollack

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Wednesday May 27th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/679971

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Marcel LeBrun, chief executive of Radian6, a New Brunswick company that has become a global leader in social media monitoring, says attracting large companies to the province won’t likely create the human capital necessary for developing a cluster of new innovative businesses. LeBrun says the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market. ‘I’m a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come.’

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Technology Executive favours attracting entrepreneurs to province, not big companies

New Brunswick needs to stop promoting the province as a place to do business if it wants to encourage new innovative startups, a leading technology executive says.

"If they're setting up here because they can get access to low cost call centre workers than no, it's not going to do anything for the tech sector," LeBrun said of a large technology company hypothetically opening operations here. "If they move their research and development here that would be a different thing, but I don't think that's what's being sold to them at the moment."

He said idea generation is usually kept close to the leadership of a company that won't likely move its headquarters here.

LeBrun will be the keynote speaker at Propel ICT's annual general meeting today in Saint John. His speech to the technology association crowd will focus on how web 2.0, particularly social media, provides new opportunities for businesses and further breaks down geographic borders.

Though the Internet has connected people around the world for about 20 years, LeBrun said in an interview, he will argue in his speech that the more recent popularity of the social web makes virtual proximity more important than physical proximity thereby eliminating geography as a factor for many businesses.

LeBrun said attracting companies to New Brunswick may make sense on an economic development agenda, and acknowledged discouraging the job creation efforts is controversial, but he, like many others involved with Propel ICT, feel the province needs to have a strong focus on entrepreneurship.

LeBrun sees value in inspiring creative home-grown business ideas that can use new Internet tools to compete in a world-wide market.

"It's a global world and we need to build globally minded companies," he said. "When you're in a flat world where geography doesn't matter you can't take your geography and use it as a differentiator."

He wants to see New Brunswick develop a technology cluster that will breed creativity, such as in California's Silicon Valley. Similarly to the popularity of a sport, LeBrun said a successful regional industry will come from people seeing it done and wanting to give it a try.

"If you come to bat enough times you're eventually going to hit something," LeBrun said. "I think the number of times we swing our bat is the key metric we need to be focused on."

Though New Brunswick doesn't have the population or money that Silicon Valley does, he said the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market.

"I'm a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come," he said.

LeBrun argues consumers don't care where a product or service is from - if it is interesting and stands out enough to generate discussion online it will likely sell.

"If you're a little jewelry company in Fredericton and you've got a product that's remarkable, that people will talk about, there's no reason why you can't really figure out how to grow that business," he said.

Advising budding business brains

Rowser — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:53:55 -0300

Author

John Shmuel

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Telegraph Journal, Published Tuesday May 19th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/671112

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‘There’s a ton of support for entrepreneurs in New Brunswick. What I think is missing is the bridge,’ says Nancy Mathis, executive director of the Wallace McCain Institute at the University of New Brunswick. Photo by: Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal

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Entrepreneurs' Forum, a Nova Scotia-based organization, connects entrepreneurs with corresponding professionals

When home organizing entrepreneurs Kim Eagles and Elaine Shannon first sat down with seasoned professionals as part of Entrepreneurs' Forum, a program that connects entrepreneurs with industry experts, they were bluntly told that their business model wasn't working.

"They basically told us that our baby was ugly. Which wasn't easy to hear," said Shannon, empress of inspiration - an innovative title for president - of web-based Organizing Connection Inc. The company offers the benefits of home organizing, which usually involves individuals coming to a house and organizing rooms, through downloadable videos online.

Eagles and Shannon didn't despair after hearing they needed a new business model. Instead, they took the advice, and redesigned their website.

Their hard work eventually paid off. At a home organizing conference in Orlando, Fla., earlier this year, industry veterans told them that their web-based organizing videos were the type of innovation that was setting the benchmark for the industry.

Eagles and Shannon's success is an example of what Entrepreneurs' Forum, a Nova Scotia-based organization that opened in New Brunswick this month, can do for business mavericks looking for sound advice. The organization has been operating for more than 15 years and has offices in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.

"There's a ton of support for entrepreneurs in New Brunswick. What I think is missing is the bridge," said Nancy Mathis, executive director of the Wallace McCain Institute at the University of New Brunswick, which is administering the program in the province. "Entrepreneurs' Forum basically helps people get the services that help entrepreneurs get connected to the wealth of support that is out there."

The service is free and open to companies at any stage of business. Once entrepreneurs register, a dinner is set up with experienced business moguls for feedback and advice. Advisers, as the professionals are called, are partnered with budding entrepreneurs based on their corresponding industries.

According to Mathis, the service helps prevent the kind of incompatibility that can happen when entrepreneurs seek out professionals not particularly suited to their type of business.

"What if there's no chemistry in a situation like that? It's like a bad date. A bad blind date," she said.

The advisers are hired onas volunteers, comprising a pool of nearly 600 business professionals throughout Atlantic Canada. There are no real criteria for what industry they work in. Rather, advisers represent a broad field from lawyers to venture capital investors according to Deborah Hashey, executive director of Entrepreneurs' Forum.

"Essentially, whatever type of field you're involved in, we can more than likely connect you with a corresponding professional," said Hashey.

Advisers who choose to join Entrepreneurs' Forum don't have an obligation to continue mentoring once a dinner meeting takes place. However, in many cases, the meetings are so successful that a business relationship emerges soon afterward.

For Eagles and Shannon, the professionals they met have now become part of their company's unofficial board of advisers.

"It wasn't 'We're just going to sit around this table and that's it'," said Shannon. "We've had lunch, we've had extensive meetings and we've had several of them review our business plan based on their suggestions. They're like having a big brother and a big sister."

Entrepreneurs' Forum has already done several previous sessions in the province before it formally opened here this month. Companies interested in using their services should get into contact with the Wallace McCain Institute at UNB.

New idea would make paper receipts obsolete

Rowser — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:04:33 -0300

Author

John Pollack

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Telegraph Journal, Published Monday May 18th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/670119

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From left, Salahuddin Belal, Alex Scott, Jason Richard and Matt Doherty have started a company that would allow consumers to check their purchase receipts online rather than worry about keeping paper copies. Photo by: Matthew Sherwood/Telegraph-Journal

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eCeipts would file electronic receipts to website where consumers could track spending

At a time when consumers are purchasing more products online, a Port City start-up wants to add receipts for items people buy in person to that list.

eCeipts plans to sell a service to retailers that the company founders hope could one day eliminate the paper receipt and replace it with an electronic receipt filed to a website that consumers could check later to track their spending.

Alex Scott, a University of New Brunswick business student, came up with the idea with a friend. He hopes the service will reduce paper use from receipt machines and help a business and people more easily track their spending. But he realizes for this to work, eCeipts has to be widespread in retail locations.

"It's not a small project that's for sure. It's a game changer, it's something that you can introduce and it changes the foundation of commerce," he says. "But go big or go home I guess."

He and his four partners plan to start in Saint John focusing on local and regional businesses, before expanding to the rest of the province and region.

The service hasn't been installed in any stores yet because the company only formed a little over a week ago and has yet to incorporate. It was one of four businesses that emerged from 54 Hours, an event held May 8 to 10 aimed to take business ideas and turn the best of them into reality over the weekend. That's were Scott met his four partners: Matt Doherty, owner of IT equipment and services company Direct 2 Market Solutions; Christina Taylor, owner of Focal Point; Jason Richard owner of Prop2Go; and software engineer Sal Belal.

Michael Wilcott, the organizer of the event, says that when the eCeipts idea was put forward it grabbed everyone's attention in the room.

"Everybody realized how powerful a concept it is," he says. "I think it kind of has limitless potential. I think there are a lot of challenges to make it work, technical challenges, but the value proposition is unquestionable."

Doherty says the electronic receipt service would save retailers money.

Though he recognizes receipts are a fairly marginal cost for most stores, he says a large retail chains could possibly be spending $1 million a year on receipts.

"If they can eliminate that by half they save $500,000," Doherty says. "For every receipt you do not have to print there is a benefit."

For consumers he says they don't have to worry about storing or losing receipts if they are trying to track their finances.

"There's the benefit of not having a George Costanza wallet," Doherty says referring to the sitcom show Seinfeld character whose wallet was inches thick with receipts.

eCeipts would also make the returning process easier and more secure, Doherty says.

"You get a gift or you lose a receipt, how do you make a return if you need that," he says.

The website where consumers would check their purchases, could have a money management application built in, or could be compatible with existing desktop base accounting systems.

Doherty believes this would be very useful for businesses.

"I have to submit expense reports and I have folders filled with receipts that I need to expense. If there was some way I could just do it electronically that would be amazing," he said repeating what a friend told him.

But Doherty recognizes eCeipts wouldn't likely be able to completely replace paper receipts for a very long time.

"Of course there's a group of people who would want the regular receipt," he says. "Just like there's still a group of people that refuse to use the ATMs."

"I think there needs to be a gradual acceptance of this just like there was a gradual acceptance of ATMs," Doherty says.

"But even today they cannot eliminate the tellers inside."

54Hour StartUp Weekend Launches 3 New ICT Companies

Jeff Roach — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:20:42 -0300

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Saint John, NB, May 13, 2009: On May 8th, 9th, and 10th local developers, designers and entrepreneurs gathered together for a community building startup event in the uptown of Saint John, NB. “We intended the event to be a networking opportunity for the local software development community, and hoped that we might be in position to launch one new software a company by the end of the weekend,” says Michael Wilcott, one of the organizers of the event, “But we have managed to exceed that goal”.

Three different teams, which formed during the course of the event, are now in the process of incorporating in order to continue the development and marketing of the ideas that brought them together starting on Friday night.

GeoCure is a product that seeks to leverage the tremendous growth in adoption of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to track and present infection rates for many communicable diseases. “Young people like me don’t watch the news, read a paper, or even visit online new sources like CNN to get our information.” said Robert Foley, who pitched the idea of GeoCure, “We get all of our information from social media, a form of news which is more immediate and less filtered than traditional sources.” GeoCure seeks to collect content from various social media sources and use it to track the spread of infections in order to assist consumers in evaluating their risks. “We also think that there are potential applications for various public health organizations, as well as private enterprises that are in the health care space” stated Robert.

Another product that caught participants attention was ‘eCeipts’, an electronic receipt system that holds the potential to completely transform the way people shop and buy goods. “After every transaction at any retailer the final step in the process is for the cash register to print a paper receipt.” says Alex Scott who presented the eCeipts idea at the event, “Most of us simply throw the paper receipts away, or we lose them. For those who need to keep their receipts for the purposes of tracking expenses, losing them is a major hassle”. eCeipts looks to save consumers these hassles by capturing the information from traditional paper receipts and instead sending it to a database that sits behind a website. The website can be used to store and organize an individual’s receipts in a convenient and powerful format. The eCeipts team is in the process of incorporating and has launched a website at www.eceipts.ca as the first step toward building their eCeipts solution.

The final group that is moving toward incorporation is working on a web-based game called ‘Karmundi’. “We all believe we have an idea that creates a whole new genre of game that we call Progressive Social Gaming”, says Michael Wilcott, spokesman for the six member team that launched www.karmundi.com as part of the 54Hours weekend event. “I’d describe it as part Pokémon, part scavenger hunt, and part social networking” said Wilcott. “We are targeting families who are looking for fun activities that they can do together, that also allows parents to teach positive social values to their children while leveraging the tremendous power of the web to create communities”. The Karmundi team, whose slogan is “Karma. For The World”, is looking to launch a pilot of their new service by September of this year.

Jeff Roach of propel said the event is a perfect activity for stimulating entrepreneurship and new business formation at a grassroots level. “Many people have good ideas but very few are able to visualize what that idea looks like as a business.” says Roach. “This weekend event allows people to have fun expanding their ideas and having others share in building on their idea and growing a team of shared interests. We appreciate the efforts and enthusiasm of Jason Richard and Michael Wilcott who organized this event and are proud to sponsor this and future weekend events”. Roach said the propel Accelerator supports startup companies like these to help them grow rapidly to maturity and profitability with the support of a broad provincial network and hopes to see companies enter the program from events like this.

As to the 54Hours event itself, Matt Doherty, who joined the eCeipts team, summed it up this way, “…54hours was an experience akin to throwing a handful of seeds in a garden and seeing what grew. To have such a talented cross-section of people come together and create three businesses with actual opportunities is such a great outcome. Everyone who attended brought something different and being surrounded by these people showed me how myopic we can become in our day to day life. It was refreshing to be able to learn from and to interact with such a varied group. If I had to
pick one word to describe the weekend, it would be 'intense'”.

Organizers of New Brunswick’s first 54Hours event have already been approached to hold additional events in both Fredericton and Moncton over the coming year. For updates regarding these events and other 54Hour activities visit www.54hours.com and www.propelict.com.

Media Inquires:
Michael Wilcott, (506) 647-3269
Jeff Roach – (506) 642-9029

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Aliant Business Plan Competition

Rowser — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:25:10 -0300

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Want to do what you love? Why not explore entrepreneurship. Write a business plan. Win $4000.

If you are interested in learning more about developing a business plan or receive an information package on the competition, please contact Sarah Jones at sjones@enterprisessj.com. The winner of the Aliant Business Plan Competition receives $4,000.

Visit http://www.eesj.ca/cms/events for more information.

*Please note that this competition is open to those under 35 only.

Deadline for submission: Friday, May 29, 2009

Youth Entrepreneurship Summer Camp 2009

johnsgunn — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:22:16 -0300

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Youth Entrepreneurship Summer Camp is Back!

Youth Entrepreneurship Camp is a 5-day camp that teaches youth about starting their own business by helping them open, operate and close their own company for a day. Campers learn how to develop an idea, plan and organize their thoughts into a business plan, how to make their product and then have the opportunity to sell their products to the public in a marketplace at the end of the week.

Youth Entrepreneurship Camp gives all campers a start up loan (maximum $20 per company) to purchase the materials and supplies they need to make their product. At the end of the marketplace, students will pay back the loan anything beyond that is pure profit for the camper!

To download the Youth Entrepreneurship Summer Camp schedule or a registration form click here

Contact Enterprise Fredericton for more information at 444-4686 or online at Enterprise Fredericton.