Business Review Canada recently interviewed Toronto-based entrepreneur Mike McDerment. McDerment is chief executive of the successful online bookkeeping service
Freshbooks. He is also the co-founder of Toronto's annual
Mesh Conference, the can't-miss-event for the city's online media and tech community. An excerpt from the interview:
"BRC: How's Freshbooks?"
"MM: Things are really good. We've continued to grow—like a weed. We're trying to hire a whole bunch of people and it's always hard to find the right people. We work really hard at that. We have our heads down trying to hire about ten people. We are only forty-some-odd people. Growth is good, which speaks to the pace of change and some of the things we're up to here."
"BRC: 5th anniversary of MESH… Did you envision it getting this big?"
"MM: No, absolutely not. We just wanted to do it for all the right reasons. When I say labour of love, I'm not kidding. We all have day jobs. We meet Wednesday nights throughout the year to pull it all together and send a whole heck of a lot of emails in between. The reason we all do it is the joy from five years ago, which is still alive. The story is… a bunch of guys get together and decide we should meet up and have a beer because we're all blogging in Toronto ,and it doesn't seem like anyone is getting together to talk about the stuff. We met, and two hours later we were gonna start a conference. Now, what can happen in a situation like that is absolutely nothing. Everyone goes home, sleeps on it, and nothing comes of it. In our case, a month later we had a website up. We were selling tickets a month later. Two months after that we sold out and were putting on the conference. It was a crazy ride, but we pulled it off. It's been rewarding. It's still very fun and exciting for us, the guys I organized MESH with. We finished off the conference this as excited and giddy as we were year one. To keep that going, it's not about the money, and if we were looking at this as a money thing there is no way we would have the love. Focusing on the stuff that matters keeps it alive. We are proud of what MESH has become and the role it is playing in the Toronto community."
read full story
here
original source Business Review Canada