Entrepreneurship can be a long, arduous, and grueling journey, but if you ever wanted proof that there’s light at the end of the tunnel – look no further than Manny Padda.

Manny is an Entrepreneur, Educator, Angel Investor, and Philanthropist. He is the founder of New Avenue Capital as well as the Founder and Managing Director of PM Search Partners.

A self-made entrepreneur who built his first multi-million-dollar company at age 26, Manny is dedicated to providing education and mentorship to today’s youth. He is a co-founder of GradusOne, an organization that connects students and graduates with mentors and provides them with resources to help them refine their career path and achieve success.

Manny sits on a number of advisory boards in the education and not-for-profit sectors, and is an active Advisor and Angel Investor in Vancouver’s tech community, having invested in startups including Picatic, MyBestHelper, Change Heroes, ShareShed, Feeding Change, and GKup.

In this week’s episode of the #StartupCanadaPodcast, Rivers Corbett sits down with Manny Padda to help entrepreneurs understand how to stay in touch with their regular lives on this journey, and to learn to love the two-sided coin of flexibility and uncertainty that comes with the job.

The post Flexibility: Finding Time for Family as a Founder with Manny Padda – October 8th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

e-Commerce isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and it can help your business deliver the results you need as easily as boxes to your customers’ doors. Lindley Graham has spent five years at Canada Post moulding their e-Commerce Marketing strategies, and is a big supporter of small businesses using all the tools our online world has to offer.

“e-Commerce is such an incredibly fast paced and fast-moving industry in Canada. It’s where business is headed in Canada – it provides so much opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow their business and expand to new markets.”

Lindley is currently the director of Parcels and e-Commerce Marketing at Canada Post, where she leads a team that oversees the programs that provide Canadian e-Commerce merchants with insights and information to help them grow their businesses.

In this week’s episode of the #StartupCanadaPodcast Rivers Corbett sits down with Lindley Graham to help entrepreneurs get the most out of the tools they might not even know they have in their e-Commerce toolbox.

The post Delivering On Your eCommerce Essentials with Lindley Graham – September 24th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

Merlyn Recinos has been in the entrepreneur game a while – since the age of eight to be exact, selling fresh fruit and food in front of his house to members of his community. When he was 21 Merlyn moved to Nunavut, and through his and his partner Rhoda Angutimarik’s efforts Arctic Fresh was born.

Leveraging social platforms and partnerships with like-minded organizations, Arctic Fresh has been able to supply fresh, affordable, delicious, and nutritious food to thirteen isolated Northern communities.

Merlyn also works to build capacity in his community for entrepreneurs, and mentors an average of 500 hours per year helping people start businesses, gain employment, do personal taxes, and many, many more things in the community of Igloolik.

In this week’s episode of the #StartupPodcast Rivers Corbett sits down with Merlyn Recinos to help entrepreneurs understand the viability of social entrepreneurship, and how to build more than a business.

The post Nutritious and Delicious: Fresh Food in the North with Merlyn Recinos- September 24th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

During the fall of 2018, Rivers Corbett attended the Fireside Conference. Here are the stories of 14 leading Canadian entrepreneurs.

The post Fireside Conference X Startup Podcast with 14 Entrepreneurs – September 17th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

After witnessing the paint-points of being a freelancer first hand, Bobbie Racette was inspired to create a digital platform that supports freelancers to find meaningful work, and for clients to find virtual assistants for shorter contracts that work for them.

“After talking to entrepreneurs, they would tell me it would take 2-4 hours to go through each application for a virtual assistant. That’s where the idea came from – how can I make the experience good for the freelancer & the client.”

Bobbie is a Cree Metis woman entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of The Virtual Gurus, a Calgary-based startup company that connects their clients with trained, skilled Virtual Assistants.

She has created a platform that makes Canadian based Freelance Workers and Virtual Assistants accessible to businesses of any size. In addition to that- to add credibility to the workers she provides to businesses across North America, the Virtual Gurus Academy was recently launched allowing freelancers to diversify their skill set, making them more marketable to Virtual Gurus clients, but also more hireable across industry sectors.

In this week’s show, host Rivers Corbett talks to Bobbie about her journey in building a freelancer’s oasis and how she manages 17,000 virtual team members.

The post Virtual Assistants for Businesses Everywhere with Bobbie Jo Racette – September 10th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

Passionate about open innovation and employer branding, Aurelie Wen is the Managing Director of North America at Agorize. In 2017, Aurelie moved from Paris to Montreal and founded the North American office of Agorize, a platform that connects students, programmers, startups and entrepreneurs with companies worldwide.

“Large communities and potential clients are interested in the value of our community, first, but also in the platform itself. From all the platforms that exist in the country, there is no such platform that can manage a hackathon online as well as our platform.”

Specializing in innovation, recruitment and communication, Aurelie and her team have helped more than 60,000 students and innovators launch their startup and find jobs at companies which include TD National Bank of Canada, Desjardins, Aviva, Radio-Canada, L’Oreal, PepsiCo and more.

In this week’s show, Rivers talks to Aurelie about the future of work, recruitment in startups, and lessons in starting and scaling up.

The post Open Innovation is the New Black with Aurelie Wen – September 3rd 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

“We were able to match Canada’s entrepreneur spirit and volunteer culture together, and I think that is what makes Canada so strong.”

Victoria Lennox is the Co-Founder, President and former CEO of Startup Canada, the national rallying community supporting and giving a voice to Canada’s 3.5 million entrepreneurs. She is an innovation policy and program architect, ecosystem diplomat, and an angel investor passionate about fostering equality, hope, peace, and prosperity through entrepreneurship.

As one of Canada’s leading proponents of entrepreneurship and innovation, Victoria works alongside government, industry, and entrepreneurs to construct the nation’s entrepreneurship ecosystem and to ensure that the right policies, programs, and enabling frameworks and infrastructure are in place to compete and thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

As the co-founder for the US-based Startup Nations and as the founder of a UK-based charity supporting young entrepreneurs, Victoria supports the development of enterprise and social innovation organizations in more than 20 countries; provides advisory support to international organizations in the areas of entrepreneurship networks, education and policy development; and supports colleges and universities in enhancing their entrepreneurial activities.

In this week’s #StartupPodcast, Rivers sits down with Victoria to talk about her journey as a serial entrepreneur in the UK and Canada, how she’s grown a thriving non-profit, and what’s next for Canadian entrepreneurship.

The post Canada, The Place for Entrepreneurs with Victoria Lennox – August 27th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.”

Every day, entrepreneurs are faced with unique challenges in every facet of their business. Whether it’s adopting new technologies or dealing with a marketing issue, entrepreneurs are constantly thinking outside the box. That’s why Lyndon Johnson developed COMMS.BAR, a Toronto-based walk-in communications clinic where entrepreneurs can go for PR support.

Lyndon helps entrepreneurs to build, test, and measure relations and marketing to find commercially valuable strategies for their businesses. COMMS.BAR works like an Apple Genius bar – only providing strategic advice and guidance on public relations, marketing and publicity when entrepreneurs need it. Lyndon is also the inventor of the Lean Communications Methodology and the author of a soon-to-be-published book, The Lean Communications Playbook.

On this week’s #StartupPodcast, Lyndon shares his story with host Rivers Corbett and dives into the concepts behind COMMS.BAR and much more. Listen now at www.startupcan.ca/podcasts!

The post Creating out of the box comms with Lyndon Johnson – August 20th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

Adrian Salamunovic is a serial entrepreneur of several multi-million dollar Internet retailers, including CanvasPop.com. Adrian is an investor, public speaker, strategic advisor and also the co-author of Free PR, the book that helps entrepreneurs earn the media’s attention, for free.

The post Free PR Strategies for Startup Success with Adrian Salamunovic – August 13th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.

Shafin Diamond found entrepreneurship through watching his own father and uncle create and build their own businesses. Shafin Diamond is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Victory Square Labs, a venture builder that is committed to giving back to children and youth who face poverty. Venture Labs also builds startups in the web, mobile, gaming and film space. “I truly believe education is the best tool to break the cycle of poverty”. In this week’s episode, Rivers Corbett talks to Shafin about his journey in the entrepreneurship world and why giving back to the community and nonprofits hold a special place in his heart.

The post Building Ventures While Giving Back with Shafin Diamond – August 6th 2019 first appeared on Startup Canada.