Host and interviewer - Perry Kinkaide

Werner Biegler

Co-Founder and CEO, Varafy Corporation. on-line learning support. Successfully exited to Chegg.

Start-up founder & CEO who has been spent his entire life in technology, from my early days in Corporate Finance, through to customer technical support, large enterprise sales and on to COO at a family run +$100 million IT company through to President of a publicly traded company and finally as entrepreneur co-founding and leading Varafy - the 2nd love of my life.

I'm a no bullshit entrepreneur, founder and product builder who tells it like it is.

Guests

Tony Briggs

Dr. Tony Briggs is an Executive Professor in the Department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management and the Executive Director of the Technology Commercialization Centre at the Alberta School of Business. Tony co-founded eHUB, the entrepreneurship centre for University of Alberta students, is the founding advisory board member for Threshold Impact Venture Mentoring Service and a founding board member of the Edmonton Screen Industries Office. 

Tony's commercialization experience includes patent licensing at Harvard Medical School, technology consulting with U.S. SBIR-grant companies and as a co-founder of early-stage platform companies in digital health and novel therapeutics. Tony's research interests are at the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship including pitching, deal making, patents, and innovation ecosystems. Tony holds a Doctorate in Information Systems from Boston University, an MS from MIT Sloan, an MBA in Finance from UBC and a B.Sc. Hons in Biochemistry from the University of Alberta.  

Debra Greig

Debra is a champion of life-long learning and has a passion for working with tech entrepreneurs to realize their business goals. As an entrepreneur and corporate manager for nearly four decades, she brings a fair amount of entrepreneurial and business expertise to her endeavours.

She has a BSc in Computer Science and an MBA, both from the University of Alberta.  In 2000, armed with the knowledge and experience she had gained, she launched her first technology company. ShirWin Knowledge & Learning Systems fused educational methods with gaming technologies to create simulated learning environments for post-secondary students in a number of professional domains. It was important work but it is her latest entrepreneurial endeavour that she feels she is finally able to marry her business experiences with her growing knowledge of how a business grows and succeeds. TransforMana uses a variety of software and face-to-face techniques to strengthen and improve business knowledge for the leaders of small technology-based companies.