Frank Bouchard joined Techopia Live to announce that the Wipebook CEO will become the inaugural executive director of the entrepreneurial group Fresh Founders.
Fresh Founders regularly brings together young, high-profile CEOs and founders from the Ottawa area for dinner, drinks, talks and networking. Bouchard told Techopia that the highlight of Fresh Founders is the casual, genuine conversation between like-minded entrepreneurs.
“You don’t get that typical slide-deck or pitch from these founders that they’d do to go get some money. You get the real stories from these real entrepreneurs and the roller coaster rides that they’ve been through,” he said.
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Until this point, it has been run more ad-hoc by the organization’s co-founders, a group that included local entrepreneurs Aydin Mirzaee and Paul Lem, but Bouchard says his goal is to bring more of a focus and organization to the regular event.
“It was time to really clean things up and make things into a real organization, a real non-profit, that supports this amazing network.”
Throughout the interview, Bouchard also discussed his own startup, Wipebook – which produces reusable whiteboard notebooks – including the company’s pivot into the education market.
He added a few thoughts on the state of crowdfunding. Bouchard used the financing model to launch Wipebook, but is now dismayed to see large corporations increasingly dominate the popular platforms that used to give exposure – and badly needed capital –to startups.
