We are YQQ: 2015 Speaker Series

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Monday, March 23rd, 2015

March 23 – 24 Boris Mann

Punching Above Our Weight:
Working Together, Competing Globally

3 events: evening presentation on March 23 at 7pm; daytime workshop on March 24 11am-3pm; individual coaching available Monday afternoon and Tuesday after workshop (contact hpm for costs and to book times).

Evening presentation Mar 23 7pm

A public event at the Comox Valley Art Gallery.

Small towns have the advantage of being tight knit communities where everyone knows everyone. On the flip side, there are a finite number of internal resources available — people, customers, money, etc. How do you leverage local community and connect it with global opportunities?

Boris knows about the need to “punch above his weight.” He’s been part of Vancouver’s tech startup community since its emergence, and has built large online communities (Drupal, early blogging & social media) as well as local “in person” communities, such as the nearly 3000 strong PixelCrafters tech community in Vancouver. He also grew up on Bowen Island, a tiny bedroom community next to Vancouver, and went to school in Victoria. He still carries a bit of island time with him wherever he goes.

Some questions and food for thought that we’ll cover. This is a complex problem, not merely a complicated one, so there isn’t one answer.

• What experiments are you doing as a community to see what works and what doesn’t, and how are you measuring success?


• How are you working together as a local ecoystem? How do work together to share resources locally?


• How are you individually and jointly “competing globally”?


• When you decide to do something, how do you gather support to do it as a group?


• How do you decide between spending / investing locally and spending / investing elsewhere?

Working On Your Business vs. In Your Business: How to invest in yourself and your company to grow the business you want

March 24 workshop 11-3pm

Who is this for? Freelancers, entrepreneurs, retail store owners, startups, and artists – we’re all business owners. And we all need to balance getting work done with thinking strategically about what kind of business we want to run over time. We need to balance the big question of “what do I want to do?” with the direction of our business overall. We also need to balance our big question with the tasks within the business that we want to continue to do, vs. hiring staff or outsourcing.

Some of the topics we’ll cover:

• “Productizing” your services – do you have a repeatable process or packages that potential customers can say yes to, or are you just selling hours?


• Return on investment (ROI) – your time, money, and attention are all valuable. Where are you investing them, and what kind of return are you getting?


• Budget models – learn to love (or at least not be afraid) of Excel and think through budgets and planning


• Tracking & Testing — for yourself and your business. How do you measure success? What marketing or sales experiments are your running?


• Tooling – Online apps can help you work smarter not hard. CRM, Invoicing, Billing, and more.


• Extending the team – not everything has an app for it. How do you lean on other professionals? accountants and lawyers, designers, marketers, and more — to keep you focused on what you’re good at and enjoy

The format will be a presentation. All the slides will be provided for you.

Workshop preparation:

• Please come with questions. We’ll cover them live in a group around each segment, and also learn from each other.


• Come with a description of your business to share with the group.


• You’ll also need a notepad or digital device for note taking.


• Be prepared to spend an afternoon working ON your business!

(Not required, but bring a laptop if you want to work on some templates and Excel spreadsheets.)

Coaching

Boris is available for several hours on Monday afternoon, and for 1 hour on Tuesday, for 1-1 coaching. Please contact hpm directly to make arrangements.

Who is Boris Mann?

Boris Mann runs HUMAN, a product design consultancy that helps companies design, build, and improve new and existing products, especially around emerging technologies such as wearables and virtual reality.

For the past 2 years, Boris ran Full Stack, an angel investment firm that works with and funds early stage technology companies. He continues to be passionate about improving the private capital ecosystem in Canada.

Boris has been active in the Vancouver startup ecosystem for over a decade. His first local startup was Bryght, the first commercial Drupal company. He then went on to co-found Bootup Labs, the first startup accelerator in Canada.

Boris holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Victoria, where he went after a coin flip made him choose between university and becoming a professional chef.

March 24 (11am-3pm daytime workshop at Prime Chophouse, light lunch included)

For more information or to register for these events, visit:
http://weareyqq.ca/2015-speaker-series/