The Sweeney Agency

About Sean Wise - Speaker on Entrepreneurship:

Sean Wise is an expert on venture capital. He uses this expertise in his various roles as mentor capitalist (mentor to young firms), international business speaker, business columnist, and was for five years the industry advisor for CBC on the mega hit venture reality show Dragons' Den (aka Shark Tank). Wise was formerly a director at Ernst and Young where he helped found their Canadian Venture Capital Advisory Group.

A graduate of Carleton University, Sean studied Aerospace Engineering and Economics. He holds an MBA from University of Ottawa, is a lawyer, a member of the Upper Canada Law Society, and chairs the boards of directors of several venture capital backed and publicly traded companies in Canada. He is currently finalizing his PhD at the University of Glasgow. The federal government of Canada recently granted Wise’s team $2.2 million dollars to train engineers to think like entrepreneurs.

Recently published in the Journal of Private Equity and the European Management Journal, Sean is the author of two books: Wise Words: Lessons in Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital (2007) and How to be a Business Supehero (2008). Wise’s third book, HOT OR NOT: how to know if your business idea will fail or fly! is due mid 2012.

Sean Wise is currently a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation for the Ryerson University Entrepreneurship Program. He was recently featured in a documentary from Sick Kids Hospital on overcoming learning disabilities.

What Sean Wise Talks About:

Lessons from The Dragons’ Den Ten Ideas that will help you Win
In his years swimming with the sharks and dancing with the dragons Prof. Wise has seen more than 10,000 unique sales pitches from more than 10,000 different salespeople, selling 10,000 different products. This highly interactive session will help attendees understand what it takes to swim not sink. What it takes to get Dragon gold; not Dragon fire.

During this multimedia interactive presentation, Professor Wise takes the audience through 10 presenters from the show. Each of their stories illustrates a lesson applicable to all. Including:
- The Power of the Pitch from ScribbleLive
- The Crow Epistemology or why not to pitch multiple products at once
- Why Kevin O’Leary really is the Merchant of Truth
- The squeaky wheel technique of closing a deal. Grow Zorb
- How to SWIPE innovation ethically from Saxx
- What I learned about Billionaires (the 80/20 rule).
- Why in the 21st Century it is Data not Donuts that close sales.

From Unemployed to Entrepreneur: How to turn this job crisis around!
America needs jobs! Heading for possible economic collapse, the United States needs new innovation. Millions are unemployed. Join Professor Sean Wise as he shows how to turn obstacle into opportunity in this inspired 45 minute keynote. Learn who else was fired to greatness. Learn how to use your downtime to start the adVENTURE of your lifetime. Be inspired by the likes of: Thomas Edison; Albert Edison; Donald Trump, Walt Disney & Henry Ford. Professor Wise will share educational and entertaining stories to help reframe unemployment into entrepreneurship! Entrepreneurs will save the economy, so get started.

Entrepreneurship for the Enterprise
YouTube, MySpace, Flickr and their sort have once again brought entrepreneurship to the forefront of the economy. Innovation and grass roots marketing have become the buzz words for big and small companies alike. But what can big business learn from the world of start-ups? What can large enterprise executives learn from fast growing entrepreneurs?

Hot or Not? How to know if your business idea $uck$
For ten years, Sean Wise has heard business ideas. In the venture capital industry, elevator pitching is high art, and the ability to tell the diamonds from the cubic zirconia is an art form. Wise should know, he has been in the venture capital industry for more than a decade, and has recently served five years at the Industry Advisor for the hit reality show, Dragons’ Den (aka Shark Tank). In total, Professor Wise has reviewed more than 10,000 business ideas, trained more than 3500 founders and most impressively the companies he has trained have raised more than $2 Billion in capital.

During this educational and entertaining keynote, Professor Wise shares multimedia clips from reality shows highlighting the key questions that need to be asked before: you quit your job? Drop out of school? Mortgage the family farm. Find out what makes some ideas fly while others fail. This keynote will be inspiring and instructive for anyone who has ever dreamed of changing the world or even just starting a business.