In this colourful conversation Salimah, the co-founder of Artery, shares some unique experiences founding a 6 million member youth-led environmental network, working as a journalist in Africa, the Middle East (pre-Arab Spring),the US and more – all apparently leading towards co-founding her new company called Artery – a unique digital platform changing the way creative experiences are accessed, shared and supported globally.

An action-packed conversation with tons of great knowledge about Blockchain/Bitcoin, Crypto-Currency and more with the CEO and co-founder of ePic Blockchain, Scott Howard and StartWell's CEO, Qasim Virjee.

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Qasim Virjee 0:11

All right, welcome back to this the fifth episode of the start well podcast broadcasting from well, I guess broadcasting all over the world from servers, God knows where you're probably listening on iTunes, I don't know, most of the people around the world are, but we are re syndicated through other partners. But recorded I should say at start with Studios, which is the back of our second floor. Let's start well, Kayne West, our main incubator campus, that's about 17,000 square feet with over 30 companies doing all sorts of crazy stuff. One of those companies is epic blockchain, a hardware company that will hear a lot about and we'll hear perhaps some more general stuff to start off with, as I'm joined in the studio today with Scott Howard, if you could just introduce yourself and then I've got a bunch of very boring preliminary questions to ask you. Before we, you know, throw around some fun stories.

Scott Howard 1:02

I'll make the I'll make the answers entertaining. So I'm Scott Howard. I'm the co founder of epic blockchain Technologies. I'm involved in a few other projects in the blockchain space and been around the startup community here in Toronto for a while, almost a decade. I've done a lot of co working space start well is actually the best one. Oh, why thank you. Best community best setup. I love it. I am a big fan. Just make sure your five star review the podcast got to get that five star review in there. Absolutely. That's a puppet pods. I'm a big podcast addict. So

Qasim Virjee 1:29

yeah, no, it's true. We need advocates who are listening to rate us. Boom. Yeah, rate and tweet. Absolutely spread the love. It's all about the love the I love the

Scott Howard 1:39

show everybody stuff. It's part of the blockchain ethos you guys show?

Qasim Virjee 1:43

Well, I mean, okay, I gotta ask, I try and ask everyone who's on on this boat. What they like about Star? Well, you know, because because I agree with you, you know, this is why, you know, I'm in this business, I want to build the best environment for companies to thrive as they grow, and enjoy doing that. So what if there's just, you know, aspects of space, or service that you'd like about, you know, the campus

Scott Howard 2:05

both work really well. So that Billy for our team to spreads out and sprawls all over the place, which is great, we're not kind of in our office, per se, or in the lounges and using the different workspaces and the meeting spaces and not getting too wound up about booking space and all the kind of stuff using the open space. That's a that's a nice change. You know, if you kind of do the the we work type model, it's the you get nickeled and dimed every time you walk into a room and use it and touch the whiteboard, stuff like that. And you'll see a $50 bill in a heartbeat. So not having to worry about that is great. It gets more collaborative. So you get to talk to people hang out with people more often, which is always, you know, kind of that whole co working ethos that gets lost. A lot of times it does. Everyone, it just turns into an office space at the end of the day, but I think the community here is pretty good. And then the committee managers are doing a great job. Yeah, the coffee is good. Yeah, the beer is served cold. Most important for most important qualified care, the beer is cold.

Qasim Virjee 3:03

Absolutely. It's very important, especially as we say this, there's a cooling issue and on your floor. So

Scott Howard 3:09

there might be if I had a complaint, but I turned into positive, I get my sauna every day. There you g

An action-packed conversation with tons of great knowledge about Blockchain/Bitcoin, Crypto-Currency and more with the CEO and co-founder of ePic Blockchain, Scott Howard and StartWell’s CEO, Qasim Virjee.

This time our CEO Qasim Virjee is joined in the studio by Shane George - a consultant who helps SaaS companies develop Agile Sales methods.  Shane is also the Vice President of Sales at StartWell member company OnCall Health.

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Qasim Virjee 0:07

back once again for this the fourth episode of the StartWell Podcast. I'm Qasim and today I'm joined in StartWell studios at our King Street location in Toronto, Canada, with none other than Shane George, who wears one hat at a company called on call one of our members, that is a telemedicine platform. He'll tell us a little about not too much. Perhaps me too much. I don't know, we're going to sit down with your CEO, Nicolas in in I think a week or in a few days, definitely. And he'll perhaps tell us even more. But also, you know, Shane is an excellent sales guru. I don't know if that's a over speaking. But he'll explain why I might have said that in a second. And we're going to hear hopefully a little bit about sales technique, direct sales technique for SAS, and some things that that Shane is not only adept at, but but enjoys speaking about and writing about. And with that introduction, Shane, welcome you to the studio and let you introduce yourself.

Shane George 1:13

Geez. Yeah, that was quite the intro. I appreciate that. But yeah, thanks for having me.

Qasim Virjee 1:18

Pleasure.

Shane George 1:20

So I'm gonna just speak a bit more about the

Qasim Virjee 1:23

well let our listeners know firstly, who you are. What did I get your name, right? Yes. That's not a difficult one.

Shane George 1:28

It is also my real name Shane. George two first names. But yeah, I've essentially just been in tech sales for a couple years before that worked in a family business in sales. So Oh, what was the business? Sell Shanda? Leaders in a retail store in Oakville?

Qasim Virjee 1:43

Alright, you told me about this lighting? Yeah, all sorts of not just like, you know, crystal chandelier. It wasn't just Liberace all over the place. It was

Shane George 1:51

floor lamps, table lamps. So basically, from a really young age, it was like a group effort for a whole family. I remember being really young, and my dad saying, Hey, that guy over there, go sell on the light, being a little kid just be like, Hey, don't really want to talk to a stranger. But that was a great intro to sales and trying to figure out how to, I guess connect with people in a way to provide value. And overtime, kind of translate that into tech sales. So yeah, it's been a fun ride so far,

Qasim Virjee 2:24

how did that evolution happen in your career trajectory, like, you know, family business, a very kind of brick and mortar retail experience? Where did tech come into it? For you? Ah, so that's,

Shane George 2:37

I think the best answer is like is probably a lot of luck. Realistically, what happened was worked in that family business, what that really instilled is, what it takes to make it and how hard work is the constant that you need, in order to be successful at all. But I was just a high school kid didn't really know what he wanted to do, and took science and business in Waterloo. As my degree of choice, did a couple of co op terms. And it's, it was a science program. But all of my co op jobs were still in sales for tech companies. So I just kept going back.

Qasim Virjee 3:14

Was that out of choice? Or how does it work? Because I'm unfamiliar with club and maybe some of our listeners around the world. So it's worth explaining a little bit about how Co Op works.

Shane George 3:22

Yeah, so Waterloo, University of Waterloo is actually especially great for this. Essentially, the way it works is you do a, like a school term, normally at the school. And they provide a number of opportunities in the form of a job bank to work for four months while yo

This time our CEO Qasim Virjee is joined in the studio by Shane George – a consultant who helps SaaS companies develop Agile Sales methods.  Shane is also the Vice President of Sales at StartWell member company OnCall Health.

StartWell's CEO sits down with Brendan Philp and Troy Fawkes from Delta Growth, a full service digital marketing agency who take a transparent and flexible approach to driving growth for their clientele rather than simply pushing ads.

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Qasim Virjee 0:10

Once again for the start, well, podcast, this is the third edition coming from start well Studios, which is our podcasting suite at our King west campus. It's me Qasim, the CEO and founder of start rolling. Today I'm joined in the studio with two guests that are our members here on the same floor, second floor at the king West Campus. And I'll let them introduce themselves in a second, they both work for a company or they work at a company that they co own. I believe they'll correct me if I'm wrong in a second. That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. It's good to own a company, isn't it?

Brendan Philp 0:48

It's all it's a giant blurred line at some point about whether or not you feel like you're an owner or an employee or whatever. It changes every day.

Qasim Virjee 0:55

Absolutely. That's the hashtag the startup life right there.

Brendan Philp 0:58

Yeah, exactly.

Qasim Virjee 0:59

So delta growth is the name of your company. Let's jump into like the name. I mean, explain the name before you explain the service. Does that work?

Brendan Philp 1:09

But explain the name there. Yeah,

Troy Fawkes 1:11

so that's a toy thing. I was kind of hoping it would just get really catchy and nobody would really worry about it. But it's, it's an analytics term. So the idea that we're not just looking at your growth, for, for example, for this month, maybe you're you've grown 30% in revenue, compared to the previous month, but to actually show that you're performing better and growing as a company, it can't just be 30% 30% 30%. Every month, you have a delta growth every single month, you should be changing your growth. So 30% 35% 40% and 50%. And it kind of

Qasim Virjee 1:50

chirality. Exactly, yeah. And that's what you guys guarantee. Oh,

Troy Fawkes 1:55

definitely guaranteed. Contract. Yeah, you know, your money back and half of our company, you know, no, definitely no guarantee.

Qasim Virjee 2:05

Companies way over subscribe right now.

Brendan Philp 2:09

No, I mean, I think the the genesis of it was, is just the fact that it was meant to understand the growth of a company and needed to be more than just something that was linear, because linear growth is fairly easy to achieve with consistent investment. Whereas a change in growth is something that that shows that there's a dynamic shift, and then that ends of the company. And that's basically what we're trying to do. I think

Troy Fawkes 2:31

it also establishes when when someone comes to us and says, you know, we want to work together, one of the questions we ask is, can you handle significant growth. And even if you just look at the name, whenever you're having a conversation, we do work with some people for efficiencies, you know, they want to keep their marketing, budget stable, they want to keep their clients stable, they just want to make their budgets more efficient, we do that, but it's much more exciting to be able to say, hey, we double this company's revenue year over year,

Qasim Virjee 2:59

definitely, cuz that's where the gamification of this stuff really lies, or like, it's kind of fun to dig into the numbers and see how they can be tweaked to better communicate to the people looking for product or service. So okay, so would you call yourself search engine marketers? Is it about the search engine? Is it beyond the search engine,

Brendan Philp 3:18

I think that's, I think that's part of the toolbox. Essentially, what we specialize in is, is I guess, would be more on customer acquisition. And we have a large toolbox as a sort of associated with that. So

One of our Artists in Residence, Gurpreet Chana is an accomplished music producer, performer and educator who works with partners to develop new instrumentation grounded in tradition that uses cutting edge technology.  His innovative playing style and instrument creations have won awards and recently the Red Bull Music Academy invited him to perform as part of their 2018 showcase broadcast live on Facebook.

*Watch the video recording on Facebook.

StartWell's CEO sits down with Toby Savill, who is leading Canadian expansion for Airsorted - the world's largest single manager of AirBnB properties who recently raised £5M to fuel global expansion. Toby explains why Toronto's diversity has attracted the company to Canada and how StartWell is already contributing to his success.

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Qasim Virjee 0:01

Do This is the inaugural podcast episode from start well, broadcasting, you know, over the internet on iTunes and other syndicated partners from Toronto. For those of you tuning in that don't know about us start well is essentially a co working space but we add value and play this kind of role of an incubator. We've got a mixture of artistic organizations as well as high tech startups that all share the same roof at our campus on King Street, we've got another location that's a bit smaller up at St. Clair, which is a residential neighborhood in downtown Toronto. So for this inaugural episode of the stairwell podcast, I wanted to sit down with someone who I think represents a lot of or at least is living through the experience of a lot of our entrepreneurs, comes from outside of the city working on very interesting kind of product launch and new brand introduction into the Canadian market coming from, you know, established markets. And so my guest on this first podcast is Toby Savile, who I'll introduce shortly I'll let him introduce himself.

Qasim Virjee 1:20

And, and yeah, why don't you just jump into it, Toby, tell us a little bit about yourself where you came from. And we'll we'll dig into your story.

Toby Savill 1:27

I can do yes, my name is Toby, I come from London. As you can probably notice, my accent is slightly fighting a lot. I'm over in Toronto, I've only been here a month, maybe a little bit more now than a month. So only been a month. It's been crazy. It's rush by. I am part of an Airbnb management company called Air sorted, which is based in the UK. But we're in 15 cities globally. And essentially, we eradicate any of the hassle for anyone who owns a home. And we'd like to advertise via multiple platforms, holiday laps, but predominantly Airbnb, were a very tech focused bunch of guys and girls. And we really do focus on revenue management, as well as the service providing just to ensure we eradicate hassle, as well as generating as much possible income as we can for our hosts. So it's been a great start to the trip and Toronto, the hosts that we've already brought on are fantastic. The traction has been excellent. And I will elaborate in a second on how fantastic start will have been for the beginning of our journey.

Qasim Virjee 2:23

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, please do. Please elaborate. Well, actually, let's jump into that later. I'd love to dig in a little bit into some of the things you said. Firstly, you're the world's largest is IT management company for Airbnbs?

Toby Savill 2:36

We are Yes. So we've been running for three years. And as I said, London was HQ and we manage just under 1000 properties there. And we're up to 2000 in the excess of 2000. Globally, we received a wave of investment fairly recently, which has given us some some wriggle room to get around the world hence my being here

Qasim Virjee 2:56

is this. And can you talk about what that round entailed or

Toby Savill 3:00

Yeah, so it's VC investment. And we recently received five, 5 million pounds, so you can do the maths with dollars. And the focus is global domination, it always has been. We always keep a focused and detailed service in all of our various locations. We try and hire talent locally to keep the the local knowledge as well as bringing someone like myself who has the business knowledge, we team up and we try and replicate our model as much as we