Socialight Conference Vancouver 2014

Date: June 7, 2014

Name: Socialight Conference Vancouver 2014

Presenters: Alano Edzerza, Noriki Tamura, Peter Dupuis, Sid Landolt, Darrell Kopke, Slow Jam Sundays, Panels, Graham Churchill, Theresa Lavrico, Taylor Conroy, and Miki Agrawal

Socialight aims to redefine all entrepreneurs to become socialite. The acronym of Socia”Light” is Leader, Impacting, Global, Humanity and Today. Socialight Conference is held in Vancouver for the first time and they invite local social entrepreneurs who believe “People, Plant, and Profit” as their leadership strategy for the community.

Alano Edzerza, Founder of Edzerza Art Works

Edzerza begins with a fancy job in BC, but he resigns due to the motivational impact from his family member. He sells all his processions and starts to work for himself. He creates Edzerza Art Works because of his passion.

“Work 16 hours for freedom, work for yourself, not other people”

He gives all his employees the tool they can use, and create the friendly work environment that promotes creativity. His product design inherits from his culture and attracts many occupations interests through social media. He takes up small community projects because he believes he can make a difference in the community.

Edzerza recommends entrepreneurs to seek mentors because he believes mentors can accelerate people’s potentials in different areas.

“Finding something you like, work hard and never work for someone again”

Noriki Tamura, Founder of Japadog

Tamura starts his dream of becoming an entrepreneur because of Richard Brandson. His business starts at 2005 and within 3 months, he opens up 7 locations in BC. His vision is to create the number 1 hotdog in the world and he demonstrates language is not a barrier.

Japadog means “Japanese Style Hotdog”. Japadog starts in Vancouver because Tamura believes Vancouver has a huge size of Japanese speaking community. He illustrates his role in Japadog is to solve daily simple problems. In Japadog, he is the quality control where he approves all the food on the menu. He suggests entrepreneurs not to focus on the mistake and try to understand the meaning behind the failure. He defines entrepreneurs as leaders who have the ability to get back up every time they face failures.

Tamura recommends future entrepreneurs should have a grand vision of what their successes. There is only one shot in life and they should do something they enjoy. The bigger the dream, more excitements will come. Grand vision will lead to actions that will lead to achievement.

Peter Dupuis and Sid Landolt, Founders of World Housing CCC Inc

World Housing is a company that provides one to one gifting housing model to the society. Dupuis and Landolt consider them as real estate adventurers. They emphasize instinct is one of the main ingredients that formulate his company. Instinct is built on knowledge and experience, so it is important to find the balance between knowledge and experience.

“Instinct relies on guts, and if there is instinct, act on it”

Social entrepreneurs create social change and they dare to dream. Dupuis and Landolt recommend future entrepreneurs to be prepared for any failure and create Plan B. They believe companies should have flexibility and be adaptable to the social changes. Companies with only one plan are equivalent to no plans at all.

World Housing forms its team based on culture. Dupuis and Landolt believe team with culture will create a direction through the mission and vision. Moreover, it is important to work with people have similarities (Engaging clients, Business partners, create leverage).

“If you want to be a good business entrepreneur, be with entrepreneurs.”

Dupuis and Landolt are considered as connectors who connect people. They believe connecting people is the ability of social entrepreneurs. It is essential to connect people with heart, not ego. If people are going through hell, people should continue. Dupuis and Landolt use “detaching” method, where people realize feeling pain and going forward are different.

Dupuis and Landolt never believe their work is done, and they believe there is no separation between work life and social life. If people do not take action, they will feel the feeling of “You should have”.

“Gesamtkunstwerk, the word that defines everything you done is the total work of art”

Darrell Kopeke, Founder & Skool Principal of Institute B

Kopeke starts his career life in a company that sells zipper in Hong Kong. During that time, Kopeke believe he never live up to 100% potential. He joins Lululemon and then creates Institute B. He believes self imposes limits where people restrict everything in life. People should learn the possibility and find ways to get over the barriers.

People tell stories and create labels about themselves. Words they use make up who they are in the society. People always blame others for mistakes; in fact, Kopeke believe social entrepreneurs blame themselves when problem occurs. People are responsible of their own life story.

People always complain about their lives because they do not have the valid reason to do something about it. Kopeke indicates people should take 100% responsibility.

“Change the story we tell ourselves. If it is not us, who is??”

“No Snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible”

Aaron, Marlon, Ariel and Pat, Founders of Slow Jam Sundays (SJS)

Members of the group are best friends since the grade 12. Every member in SJS has common interest of slow jam. SJS starts up with Facebook page that shows videos of 90s. Their marketing strategy is to keep it simple, such as putting stickers everywhere they go. Their mission is to create good times for the community who are in passion of slow jam. They do not feel work is work; in fact, they feel it is their duty to provide what the audience want.

SJS recommends future social entrepreneurs to always raise their bar and always raise their standard. Entrepreneurs should keep things simple and surround themselves with good teams because they will support them one step a time and the right people will come. Poor planning and over expectation of what you can do practically will lead to failure. Entrepreneurs should always give back to society.

“Concentrate, Maintaining, and then Elevate”

Panel:

Vanessa Dawson, Founder & CEO of Evry and Girls Raising

Daryl Hatton, Founder & CEO of Fundrazer

Paulina Cameron, Business Development Manager of Futurpreneur

Meredith Powell, Co-Founder of The Next Big Thing

Ray Walia, Executive Director of Launch Academy

The panel is moderated by Moe Somani, CEO of SHO Business Group. He mentions based on stats, 75% of companies have funding problems, and there are three ways to solve the problem:

1)     Sell some Shit

2)     Save some Shit

3)     Raise Funds

Crowd funding is one of the raise funds methods that use social media to tell story to the society.

The sweet spot of age for target market in crowd funding is between ages 18-29. Based on average, social entrepreneurs need five to fifteen thousand dollars to startup.Vancouver and Waterloo have a high percentage of people with high skill levels. All presenters believe it is time for Canadians to put themselves out in the market. Government provides refunds and programs, such as SR&ED (Scientific Research and Experimental Development), as incentives for startup companies.

Presenters encourage future social entrepreneurs to ask investors for advices. As investors know more about the business, they will have more confident to invest the business. Entrepreneurs need to demonstrate they are aggressive and confident with their ideas. Investors are looking for ideas that can become businesses. Sometimes investors will sell their ideas to their partners or peers to help business raise funds. Therefore, it is important for entrepreneurs to be prepared before the meeting with investors (Angel Investors, Equity Investors).

There is no portal for franchise fund-raising for Canada due to regulation.

Presenters believe mentor is important because mentor can lift startup companies. Vancouver has startup weekend meeting for entrepreneurs who have ideas but do not know what to do. Another suggestion is to create adviser group or meetup group. This will help people promote their idea with people around them.

Investors seek three factors at startup:

1)     People

2)     Product

3)     Pay

Investors will put people as the first priority, then product, and lastly pay.

Presenters suggest future entrepreneurs to look at National Research Council’s Concierge Research or Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) that helps entrepreneurs to filter government funding programs. Entrepreneurs need to ask compiling questions, do not wait for perfect timing, understand the cash flow, do not be prepared for “No”, and do not fear failure.

Graham Churchill, National Technical Executive of IBM

In the future of Innovation, Canada is facing a problem of not invest enough in technology. This will create startup slowdown.

Churchill believes there are four factors to entrepreneurs need to have to face the startup innovation economy: data, mobile, APIs, and things.

Data is the new oil of economy because it data breaks the current traditional procedures, especially in manufacturing model. Companies need to stream data by taking data from different places and put them together to create new patterns.

There is a total of 25 billion dollar size market in the mobile apps. The average people spend 2 hours per day on app. Entrepreneurs should consider mobile app as a new communication to the market.

APIs is business function as a service. It is free because the providers get incentives. The developers can get paid based on usage or transaction fee. Companies can take data, do analysis and sell it. The internet of things has the ability to identify where the problem is and when it needs it. It provides the solution that knows when and where the problem occurs. Precision agriculture is evolving in this generation.

Churchill mentions IBM Softlayer Cloud that helps entrepreneurs to store files at private or public clouds, BlueMix, which is a mobile app starter, and Cloud Market place, a place for entrepreneurs to host their APIs and apps.

“Let’s build a smarter planet”

Theresa Lavrico, CVO of Socialight

Lavrico believes people should ask themselves if they are currently doing things that worth their lives. Social entrepreneurs should understand that people are hungry for love, not food. Leadership is empowering other leaders. People need to combine things they love and things they are burning for.

Everyone has the opportunities to write a different future and it is important to focus on people, planet and then profit. The difference between business and social entrepreneurs is the idea of solving social problems. Moreover, there is always a connection between you, your business, the society and the world.

“I’m not telling you it is going to be easy, I am telling you it is going to be worth it”

“If you build it, it will come, so what is your legacy?”

Tayler Conray, Founder of Change Heroes

Conray believes he can make a difference in Ecuador. To help the community, he promotes the $100 young entrepreneur experiment to a local elementary school. He asks grade five students to use their creatively to use $100 and change to profit. The experiment raises from $1,800 to $18,000.

“Minga” means to drop everything and help with community project in Kenya. Conray is touched by the “Minga” spirit in Kenya and decides to help out the community. He creates a company named “Change Heroes” by helping the community to build school in Kenya. He uses the crowd funding technique to help children to have the education they deserve.

Miki Agrawal, Social Entrepreneur, author of “Do Cool Sh*t”

In this generation, there is no more guarantee out of college. Agrawal emphasizes the society today is created by people, and people have the power to create reality. “

“The mystery of life is when people never know when it will end”

Agrawal starts her social entrepreneur life when she figures out she could not continue her soccer career due to leg injury. She opens a restaurant called “Wild Las Vegas” and produces her own cooking show.

She believes the life span of children in this generation will be shorter than their parents due to lack of health awareness. Therefore, she creates a TV show called “Super Sprowtz” to promote vegetables for kids. Currently, she creates a business in feminine underwear industry called “Thinx” to help million girls around the world who dropped out of school because of her period. She publishes a book called “Do Cool Sh*t” about her own entrepreneurship.

Agrawal believes there are 5 things entrepreneurs want to know before startup

1)     You are as good as the 5 closest friends you keep

2)     Master a skill

3)     Solve a real problem

4)     Purpose is your best motivation

5)     Ask “How can I help you” vs “How can you help me”

“Leaders do not talk shit. Face people & you will face your own fears”

“Great people talk about ideas”