DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

University of Toronto

CSC454/2527S: The Business of Software

January-April 2003

Guest Entrepreneurs

Version of 25 March 2003

(Subject to change without notice)

13 January

Jo-Anne Raynes is Founder and President of Harbinger Ventures, a new seed-stage venture capital fund based in Toronto. Previously, as Vice President of Knowledge Based Business at CIBC, Jo-Anne founded and built the bank’s national high-tech financing practice. In 1999, she was nominated for an Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Notably, she is one of the few people in Canada to have built a technology financing practice with negligible losses. Jo-Anne is a member of the Executive and Commercialization Committees of the Ontario Science and Innovation Council and Vice-Chairman of SMART Toronto. She earned both her graduate degrees at McGill (MBA and MA Economics) and recently completed the Executive Management Program at Stanford University.

Slides: pdf

20 January

Robert Arn is Founder and CEO of Xaplica Networks, a Toronto-based start-up that is harnessing low-cost massively parallel computing to accelerate web services processing. Until recently, he was VP & CTO of Pervasive Software (NASDAQ NM: PVSV) the world leader in high-performance imbedded databases. Robert is known worldwide as a pioneer in SGML/HTML/XML and holds patents for encryption technology and laser holography. Early in his career, he built a successful venture by developing the world’s first complete portable digital production studio as well as a unique digital home satellite receiver system. As a Rhodes Scholar, Robert earned his M.A. at Oxford and his Ph.D. at Cambridge.

27 January

Dan Legault is Founder & former CEO of Opal Sky, a Toronto-based, world-leading travel industry-focussed customer relationship management application service provider (it’s less of a mouthful to say “CRM ASP”!) that was one of the many viable ventures -- in Philip’s opinion! -- that had its financing pulled by nervous investors in the dot com crash in 2001. Dan is a former Air Force rescue pilot who trained as a corporate lawyer (he articled at Stikeman Elliot, one of Canada's leading law firms) before he got involved in the travel industry, where (among other things) he ran a company generally regarded as the leader in high-end personalized packaged travel business.

Slides: pdf

10 February

Michael Lenaghan is Founder and CEO of Frogware Inc., a Toronto-based software developer.

17 March

Neil founded Mobile Signals Inc. in 2001.  MSI is a systems consulting firm focused on strategic consulting, project management and selected development projects.  Neil has broad technical skills (still current) and a strong business leadership background.  Neil is an entrepreneur, having founded his first business at age 26 and sold his second at age 37.  MSI is his third core business.  He has active interests in three other businesses (one centred on supply chain logistics, another on online time & expense management and the third focused on selling legal document templates online).  Neil is an engineer trained at Queen's University.

Slides: pdf