08-01 New Technologies New Opportunities
It is 1996, and I am a member of a task force examining how the new Internet technologies can be used to better the lives of Canadians. The Chairman of the Task Force is David Johnston, who became the Governor General of Canada.There was enormous excitement around the possibilities of e-commerce and its implications for…
08-02 The Learning Institute for Small and Medium Enterprises
The original concept in 1997 was to create LISME as an arm of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business with the Board made up of the Executive Committee of CFIB’s Board. The Board not only bought the concept but provided three years of funding to get the organization off the ground.With LISME, our focus was…
08-03 Vubiz Ltd.
The Learning Institute for Small and Medium Enterprises, a not-for-profit, was converted to Vubiz Ltd, a for-profit for a simple reason. We needed to raise $2 million in equity to build a viable enterprise. And our new name, Vubiz, stood for Virtual University for Business. We had already figured it out. Focusing on the small…
08-04 ESOP
One of the significant challenges of our time is the number of small firms that face a succession crisis. And generally speaking, small firms do not handle this well, there is too much emotion around the future of family members and staff.At Vubiz we faced these conflicts as we tried to find an exit strategy…