Government Operations committee  As an entrepreneur, one of the things that drives you is making sure that you know your competitive landscape really well and you live in fear of your competitors catching you. I tell my team--my CTO is here--that I want the “catch me if you can” features. That's how you drive th

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about the naval procurement process.

Government Operations committee  I'll keep it short. From my opening remarks, you know that my first company filed 18 patents. This one now has 12 patents. We're known as an extremely innovative company that's really on the leading edge. That's our history. We have a tremendous team with experience from places

Government Operations committee  My other experience in selling into the larger enterprises would have had to come in once Entrust bought our company. Entrust is considered an SME because they have below 500 people. We sold to large banks, the U.S. government, the Canadian government, etc. They have a way of dea

Government Operations committee  I promise that I will keep this short. IRAP is fantastic. I would rather that the government, instead of creating a pot of money for BDC, give half to IRAP and maybe half to OSME to create champions for SMEs--or CICP.

Government Operations committee  BDC does not get it. Honestly, I worked through the bubble for 13 years as a technology entrepreneur. They do not understand it. They do not get it. They will not invest in risk unless you're at a million dollars in revenues. You don't get to a million in revenues unless you buil

Government Operations committee  It's early for us, because we just signed the contract on September 15. We pre-announced because we had a big trade show in the U.S. Where it has been very helpful is that because we announced at this U.S. trade show we were just at that we are working with a Government of Canada

Government Operations committee  They're different for me. I can speak French, if you prefer.

Government Operations committee  The Government of Canada's procurement system is like a rat's nest. I agree with my colleague John that it has to be simplified. It's getting worse and worse.

Government Operations committee  One suggestion I would make with respect to improving the procurement process for an SME would be to take a little bit of a different strategy. I believe the reason that IRAP is so successful working with SMEs and getting the money that you want to get deployed out to SMEs is t

Government Operations committee  I'll start; I have the letters a and b in my name. Certainly, I think stretch goals are always excellent. In business, the way you incent salespeople to make sales is usually to dangle carrots in front of them, right? So from the point of view of trying to get a small business

Government Operations committee  Oh, BDC is the dinosaur of venture capital in this country--

Government Operations committee  --and I don't mind saying that very publicly. I think it would be a huge mistake for the Government of Canada to rely on an entity.... As an entrepreneur for 13 years, I've had a lot of experience with financing. This is not a good solution.

Government Operations committee  Sorry.

Government Operations committee  I think on one side they are, but I must admit that I didn't know about OSME. I started my second company in 2007. We only met up with OSME at about the same time as the CICP hit, or maybe a month before, in October 2010, and I think we went to the course in November 2010. The l