Canada's #1 Podcast for Entrepreneurs 
Canada's #1 Podcast for EntrepreneursRobin Smith Co-Owner and Co-Founder of VL OMNI – which he has built over the past twenty-five years. He is also founder of genealogyman.com. VL OMNI provides a platform for agile and scalable iPaaS ecommerce integration. It is used by global multichannel to move data seamlessly through their infrastructure as they grow, expand, and accelerate their business. VL OMNI is headquartered in Oakville and has offices in the UK as well.
Emilee-Mae Feely, 26, began teaching piano in Waterloo four years ago to earn cash on the side. She went on to develop a web-based business called Feely Piano School that lets you book a piano teacher to come to your home. In 2014 Emilee-Mae founded Feely Music, which has been called the “Uber of Music Lessons.” Since then, it has grown from a small startup to a three-province, 10-city enterprise. Currently, Feely, a “self-taught entrepreneur,” is associated with three incubators at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Sheridan College, and Carleton University, which are helping support her journey. Lately, she has been focusing on the business side of the company and is no longer teaching. Over 10 cities in Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia are served by Feely Piano School.
Michael Koral leads customer acquisition and operations at Needls. He is a sales and marketing expert who has excelled both as an employee and an entrepreneur. As an Account Executive with Xerox, Michael gained valuable skills that helped him close deals with small business owners and C-level executives alike. Michael parlayed his experience at Xerox to establish and lead the sales team at online advertising startup Menu Palace. In his own words on Twitter he likes long walks on the beach, a glass of champagne… but he fronts that by being an analytics junkie that loves data!
Justin Hartzman is a born entrepreneur, motivated, hard working, ambitious and high level thinker are a few words that describe Justin and his passion for business.
Justin is a graduate from one of Canada’s premier business and economic program at the University of Western Ontario. Coming from a long line of entrepreneurs and investors, from an early age Justin worked retail in his family’s businesses, rising to managerial and buying positions. Understanding sales, forecasting, team management, and learning from others are what continue to drive him. Justin is an avid traveler, investor, knowledge seeker and a family man. He is also a Scotch enthusiast.
Justin with his team owns and manages a large portfolio of websites and businesses. These fall into the B2B, B2C, and consumer content spaces.
With his extreme knowledge of everything internet and past experience in start-ups to exits, Justin’s current focus as his mature business flourish is taking the leap back into start up culture with Needls.com.
Mark Evans spent 10+ years as a technology reporter with two of Canada’s largest newspapers and has four startups under his belt. Mark brings his unique brand storytelling approach to high growth emerging companies that need to create a leadership position.
Mark provides strategic and tactical guidance to develop effective content marketing and regularly speaks and workshops in various locations. In this podcast Mark talks about marketing that resonates with prospects, customers, partners, and investors – everything from Websites, videos, and infographics to eBooks, blog posts, and pitch decks.
Since 2013, Ron Spreeuwenberg has been the Co-Founder & CEO of HiMama based in Toronto, where he leads all aspects of a business that facilitates information sharing between child care programs and parents. The HiMama application aims to save child care and early learning programs time and money, while significantly enhancing family engagement through real-time sharing of digital media. Ron has an MBA from Harvard specializing in International Business and Entrepreneurship and a degree in Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Pierre Séguin is a dynamic technology leader, innovator and product manager with almost two decades of experience creating, developing and implementing solutions for customers ranging from the biggest of multinationals to the smallest of children. He currently is working on a number of projects including being Expert in Residence for the Semaphore Research Cluster at University of Toronto. Semaphore is a research cluster at the iSchool, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, dedicated to inclusive design in the area of mobile and pervasive computing.
When I first met Pierre, he was /and still is founder of Brili, an application that relieves families of stress by helping kids succeed in their daily routines. With Brilli, parents set up the activities their kids need to do when getting ready for school, after school or bedtime. These then come to life as a game on a mobile device. Parents can monitor in real-time from their own device while kids stay on task and earn rewards. Brili builds on the proven practice of using visual schedules to give kids structure and consistency, while making them more fun and easier to use.
Mallory McKewen founded and currently serves as President & CEO of BridesMade.ca, an e-commerce business focused on improving the bridesmaid dress shopping experience. BridesMade was born as an idea early in 2016 and has now serviced over 1000 bridesmaids Canada-wide, employing a team of 10. Before diving into entrepreneurship, Mallory completed both a BBA and MBA degree at Laurier and had worked in Sales & Corporate Finance.
Reema Duggal is a strategic IT professional and technology entrepreneur with significant experience in the global IT industry where she helps companies build revenues and profitability via expansion of their digital business channels.
Reema is a seasoned tech leader with a strong blend of revenue generation experience – Strategy, Marketing, Portfolio Management, and Delivery Management experience – Practice Leadership as well as Program and Project Management.
She is the President of the Sitaran Group, helping manufacturers, distributors, and tech companies build digital online sales channels. She is also a co-founder of Silicon Halton which started up nine years ago -and is where I met Reema. Now with over 1500 members Silicon Halton is a real hub of technology entrepreneurs in Halton – which includes Burlington, Oakville and Milton – a population base of 1 million plus and a real entrepreneurial hub in the GTHA economy.
Andrew Novak is an Entrepreneur from Hamilton. Andrew founded his own digital marketing company after a career in the Financial Services industry. Andrew is a passionate innovator, digital marketer, entrepreneur, and expert in search engine optimization. He is President of Thinkr Digital the new digital division of Hamilton Ontario’s largest full-service marketing agency, Thinkr Marketing. Thinkr Digital focuses on high-performing digital marketing campaigns that are fully integrated into the larger marketing plans of medium to large size companies across North America. Prior to this he was Founder of Nova Digital Marketing which specialized in Search Engine Optimization – Search Engine Marketing – Display & Video Marketing – Social Media Marketing – Email Marketing (CASL Compliant) – Mobile App Marketing – Content Creation.
