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Telegraph Journal - News - Event :: Business mentors help spark great ideas
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Irving Oil nears U.S. deal: analyst Radian6 payroll subsidies defended Examining the McKenna pipeline Business mentors help spark great ideas Launch36 startups to vie for new investors

Paula Morand , GoLead GREG AGNEW/TIMES & TRANSCRIPT

EVENT

BUSINESS MENTORS HELP SPARK GREAT IDEAS

BY VIOLA PRUSS TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF
26 JUN 2012 08:51AM

Sometimes the light of an idea can flash at the most unexpected times. For Erik Gingles, the little light bulb came on while following the World Junior Track and Field Championships in Moncton. Gingles thought hed liked to stream the games live from his phone. Now, a year and a half later, you can follow events across the globe with the click of a mouse button.
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Telegraph Journal - News - Event :: Business mentors help spark great ideas

Gingle.tv is an online world map displaying colourful circles with numbers. Green circles are live streams, yellow circles are past streams, and the numbers tell you the amount of videos available in a specific place on the map. Gingles said iPhone users can download an app and once they use their camera feature they can go live and show the world what they see. Its that sense of discovery. I love different cultures and seeing whats out there. Thats why I like the world map, he said. Its not his first business plan. Gingle already owns an advertising and marketing company based in Moncton called i communications. Like many business concepts, entering new territory comes with a lot of guess work. Gingles had an idea, but no way to make money of it. Thats when he joined the Launch36 group. Launch36 is the brainchild of PropelICT, a New Brunswick based group of entrepreneurs in the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) sector. Founded in 2005, the company wanted to see the industry grow and to provide mentorship to those lacking support. Over the next three years, the program looks to host 36 new entrepreneurs. And tomorrow, the first round of 11 business leaders is finishing their mentorship training. David Baxter, president of PropelICT, said the program strives to partner each entrepreneur with a number of experienced individuals in the industry from which they can choose the most appropriate one to mentor them over a five-month stretch. Typically, the founders of each company will reach out to many mentors, but they will reach out to those mentors where they believe theres a fit on what they try to do, he said. Peers can go to their mentor with specific questions and issues theyve encountered starting out In return, the mentors expect them to report on their weekly progress and give advice. Problem solutions can reach from leadership and business challenges, to narrowing down goals. If a particular mentor has no solution he can contact another mentor with the necessary expertise. Even groups of mentors can work on a particular challenge. Essentially, it all comes down to creating a network of ideas that can aid entrepreneurs across company lines. Baxter said much of the program is about collaboration between different companies, and helping to push the province forward in a global market. Thats the magic about the ICT sector here, that we all understand that if we are to have successful exports from New Brunswick, then we need to work together even though at times we do compete, he said. But we collaborate as much as we compete. We are all focused on the same thing whether its through entrepreneurship or whether its
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Telegraph Journal - News - Event :: Business mentors help spark great ideas

through involving ourselves. In the long-run, successfully mentored companies become part of PropelICT, and might one day mentor other start-out entrepreneurs. With the Maritime IT-sector growing, mentorship is much needed in a culture that works on a pay-forward basis, said PropelICT executive director Trevor MacAusland. You really cant do it alone. Atlantic Canada has phenomenal ideas and entrepreneurs but they often have to go alone, he said. And our mentors have been there and they have done that and they can tell you what obstacles to avoid and to provide overall general advice, but also to help find access to capital. Tuesday stages the final event of the first round of graduate entrepreneurs at Launch36. It is about to give them a final push, teaming them up with some of the best people in the industry through another mentoring program, Halifax based MentorCamp. Much like Launch36, MentorCamp is still a new project, and started unexpectedly. Permjot Valia made a career of investing in companies across the globe, his workplace stretching from London, England to Capetown, South Africa and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Last year, Valia was invited to work with Halifax-based company Compilr, taking the business to a New York based mentoring event called Seedcamp. When Compilr left the event as a winner, Valia was approached by government group ACOA to create a similar event in the Maritimes. The first MentorCamp featured seven entrepreneurs from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, who spent their afternoon with mentors from both local and international businesses. Valia said no one ever forces solutions, and mentors and companies can decide whether they will remain in touch after. At the end of the day, each company will have met with about 30 mentors a process that Valia calls speed mentoring. The event is based in Halifax to make it easier for people to fly in but theres no focus on Nova Scotia entrepreneurs. Valia said he wanted to connect Maritime companies with some brilliant brains across the world, to give both insiders and outsiders the opportunity to stick their heads together and help companies go global. If the world could see the great stuff going on in Atlantic Canada they would see this is a happening place and if you saw what other companies have done in terms of talent, I think theres some brilliant minds out there, he said. MentorCamp is held later in the year but Tuesdays final Launch36 event will bring in some of its mentors. A few peers are later picked to go to the Halifax MentorCamp. One of the companies hoping to move on to MentorCamp is Paula Morands Moncton-based business Jumpstart 720 International Inc. Morand is a professional leadership coach and said she wanted to look at how to develop technology for her company as a business
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Telegraph Journal - News - Event :: Business mentors help spark great ideas

growth strategy. One of the challenges she encountered was to develop a product and trying to get it on the market. They really help you find the fastest way from point A to point B. It would probably take me nine month longer to get to the market without the knowledge that I developed today, she said. Morand said the number of mentors available to her in the past five months was overwhelming and she never managed to meet all of them. Erik Gingles recently took a bus tour to Boston where he toured the office of a major incubator group a place that rents out cubicles to hundreds of companies in one large office complex where they can connect and share ideas. Gingles said while he was impressed with the space available to the entrepreneurs, the potential in Boston was the same as in New Brunswick. I remember thinking that if this is the place where things happen and these are the ideas people get funding for, compared to some of the guys and girls here, its no better or worse, he said. But you really have to make gravel to get some attention. Gingles said with more start-up companies appearing on the market investors want to see a real revenue model. For someone who worked in advertising all his life, he needed the mentorship to learn how to bring his product on the market. And having an established network with other entrepreneurs in the region makes it easier to bounce around ideas. You really got to be focused because when it comes right down to it, rightly so, everyone will ask you how will you make money and there wasnt a real revenue model, he said. The whole idea is based around ideas and how you make them work. If you work independently, technology moves so fast and you dont have the time to figure things out.
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