The MBET Experience

I found an interesting post on Guy Kawasaki’s website today, Is a Business Plan Necessary? He cites a study performed which “found no statistical difference in success between those businesses started with formal written plans and those without them…”. This was interesting, because it is hammered into us that we need a business plan. A […]

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It has been a little over a week since the pitch contest, so I thought I’d better post a follow up. There were about 40 teams, and nine teams made the finals. James delivered the pitch for us (I did the contest that last year, so thought I’d sit out this year), nailed the first […]

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One thing I have learned this year is that being able to clearly and succinctly explain a business concept is a valuable skill that takes some work. A great way to practice this is the 90-second “Elevator Pitch”. We had to develop one of these during the fall semester for class, now it’s time to […]

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Semester Two started off well today with a great sales session delivered by Rod Foster. Rod is the CEO of Covarity , a startup software company located in Kitchener. Rod has an interesting background, with over 20 years of sales experience. He has grown a number of organizations from the ground up, to sales of […]

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It is back to class this morning… nothing like a nice snowstorm for my drive in. We start off today with a nice 8-hour day of class. Three and a half ours of sales training this morning, followed by marketing and tax class this afternoon. This morning’s session seems like it will be interesting. We […]

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Wow… what a couple of weeks its been. Since my last post, on December 8th, I’ve managed to finish off four projects and write an accounting exam. Here’s how it went down: December 11th – Marketing: Market Assessment The goal of this project was to select a potential opportunity, and do the research necessary to […]

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A few weeks ago, I went to a session called “Do You Have a Personal Brand”, put on by the Greater KW Chamber of Commerce, with Shirley Lichti from Marketing Magic. This was something I was interested in, and kind of had in mind when I launched my dandonovan.ca website. There were a number of […]

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Check out this happy bunch!! Do we look relieved to have the pitch finished? To follow up on Tuesday’s post, our team didn’t win the pitch contest. We actually didn’t even make the top three. It’s too bad, because despite the grilling the teams took from the panel (made up of a couple real-life VC’s), […]

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Well, we just finished our last group presentation. This one was actually pretty cool, we had an opportunity to pitch a fictional product to some real venture capitalist’s. Despite the fact that no one really loved the product, MBET brought in a couple angel investor’s from Toronto to be part of the judging panel. It […]

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Back while I was still working, I came across a great website, ChangeThis. I have found this site to be the source of some great reading, including: 1) The Bootstrapper’s Bible, by Seth Godin 2) The Art of the Start (Chapter 1 only) by Guy Kawasaki 3) 100 Ways to Help You Succeed by Tom […]

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