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Today in class, we went through a very entertaining, interesting lectures with successful Sauder graduates. We were lucky to have Janice, the founder and the CEO of Energy Aware to come in and share to us her path to success.

Janice graduated from UBC Sauder School of Business in 2006. She majored in Marketing and took a special class called “New Venture Design”. New Venture Design is a 4th year class opened to Engineering and Commerce students. They are put into groups and are expected to design a new product and create a business plan for this product. From this class, she carried away the new technology that she and her group developed – the energy aware product – into her future plan after graduating from university.

Janice mentioned that the challenge into starting the business would be financial issues. Money is always the question to the start of a business. Young ones might say that bank will lend money out. Truth is, why would bank risk their money to invest in someone that is just starting a new business? Janice said that the opportunity to participate in the Business plan competition and winning the competition helped her with the start up cost of the product. Although at the start, she couldn’t pay her first engineer, she offered him a flight to Singapore to present in a Business Plan Competition. I’ve realized that the start of a business will be the biggest challenge if I ever plan to start a business.

Information From: Janice (class guest speaker)