Marsha Druker

Great news for Northern Ontario: High-speed internet is coming to remote communities. $109 million in new funding from federal and provincial governments is making this a reality for a community in need. This investment will connect 18,600 homes, bringing a proven way to create real value for these communities. But it's not just about faster internet—it's about opening doors to new opportunities. Local businesses can reach wider markets. Students can access more educational resources from home. Healthcare becomes more accessible for everyone. At Sonar, we often talk about how connectivity brings people together and sparks positive change. It's fantastic to see these investments turning that vision into reality for Northern Ontario. Thanks for sharing Ella Pratti (Gemmell)! #Broadbandforall #digitaldivide

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Cheers to Dis"Mantle"ing equity-management challenges one local Canadian SaaS company at a time🔥🔥🔥 We’re BLESSED Y’all! 💥 Our little startup(Happly.Ai) has grown to 18 full-time employees and we're raking in 7-figures in annual revenue - not too shabby, eh? 🇨🇦 🤫The secret sauce? Good old-fashioned elbow grease & 1-on-1 client wooing. No big marketing blitz or sales team needed - just a bunch of awesome humans kicking butt and taking names. 🙌🏽We're proud to have earned the trust of startups, incubators, accelerators , corporations, non-profits, artists, municipalities, & researchers galore. Clearly, we're doing something right! 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼 👊🏽Now we're looking to accelerate even further, so our 1st seed round ever might be in our future. But first, we had to find the perfect tech partner. Enter a small, mighty team of Canadian badasses who believe in the power of diversity & inclusion. Sign. Us. Up. 👌🏽 Now let’s SCALE! 🚀 #Blessed #StartupLife Anyways, stay tuned! Big news coming up😉👍🏽! PS: Deveena Rocks! Sabena officially knows how to live her life and CoFounder Amit obviously understands the power of building relationships by showing the product himself. Bravo! 🖤 #LoveIt

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The Idea Suite has been awarded one of Canada's Top Growing Companies of 2024! It's the third time we've made the list, and it feels like a wonderful way to celebrate our 10th year. As a busy business owner, it's rare that I have time to reflect on accomplishments or truly take a deep breath to fully experience my gratitude. Given the rollercoaster of the entrepreneurial experience, I believe awards should be used as milestones that allow us to reflect on the journey and express that gratitude publicly. So here are a few thank you's infused with the most heartfelt gratitude: - thank you to Pete Bombaci for being my rock and my biggest supporter each and every day and to our son for putting up with a sometimes busy and distracted Mom - thanks to all of our amazing team members, interns, associates and freelancers, past and present who've helped us, pushed us, delivered exceptional work and been a joy to work with each and every day - thanks to all of our clients, for trusting us with their most important projects and coming back to work with us again and again - awards like this are a reflection of those deep relationships - thanks to our coaches, suppliers, supporters and friends - who make being in business feel like a community activity that's way more fun than it should be - finally - thanks to my business partner Fiona Stevenson - through successes, problems, pandemics and challenges, I wouldn't have done it with anyone else #topgrowing24 #canadastopgrowing #entrepreneurship #leadership #innovation #creativity

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We're five years into legal cannabis in Canada, and the Crown wholesalers still don't provide useful sales data to the LPs. It's no surprise so many brands are failing. Taxes are too high. Restrictions are too tight. Data is too hard to come by. When you don't know who exactly is buying your products, or why, it's really difficult to PLAN for growth. Especially if you're a flower forward brand, as Adam Coates mentions in this clip. But, here's the opportunity I see so many brands missing.... direct customer connections. When was the last time your brand interacted directly with a customer? Not a Budtender, an actual retail customer. If you decided you wanted to talk to 100 people who bought your product last month, which channels could you use to do so at scale? Unfortunately, if you're like most brands, your Instagram account is shadowbanned — if it's alive at all — your website reads more like an investor pitch deck, and you don't have a viable email list. So you're stuck, waiting for the OCS to get its act together, or buying disparate data from a handful of POS providers, trying to figure out what to make next. But, it doesn't have to be this way! There's so much opportunity to mine actual consumers for data on their preferences. People love talking about what they've bought, or want to try next. When you build owned communication channels you can connect with real shoppers, build brand affinity and test new product concepts in real time. v v v v v Stop waiting for more data. Start building conversations.

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So far we've helped small business owners in British Columbia receive over $15k in grant funding. Your business may also be eligible to recieve government grant funding of up to $2400 to improve your marketing. Every small business owner feels the stress of trying to stay on top of digital marketing AND run their business. These are things like email marketing, lead magnets, funnels, online sales and SEO. Marketing is more than an essential skill, it’s a business superpower to sell your products, programs and services. If you're a small business book a discovery call and let's see if you are eligble for funding!

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Last week I attended NEXT Canada's Venture Reveal event, where I was fortunate to witness some of Canada's most promising startups pitch their innovative companies to an audience of investors, academics, and fellow entrepreneurs. For those unfamiliar, NEXT is a powerhouse tech incubator committed to nurturing the next wave of impactful Canadian entrepreneurs. With an impressive track record of launching unicorns, facilitating over $2B in capital raises, and supporting countless entrepreneurs in their journey to improve Canada's competitiveness, they are highly valued in the early-stage tech community. Reflecting on the event, a few key insights resonated with me: -"There will be 100 problems in a startup, the ones who end up surprising us aren't always the ones who sparkle the most. They are the ones who keep crawling through." Ajay Agrawal's perspective on the nonlinear nature of startup challenges underscores the importance of resilience and adaptability. -As John Kelleher aptly put it, "The game of building successful tech startups is a game of outliers. Every year of the 130k businesses are started, 4,000 are capable of building and securing venture funding. Of those, 200 will raise funding from a top-tier VC and only 15 will generate almost all venture returns. -Despite Canada's GDP per capita experiencing a decline of 1/2% annually since 2020, it's imperative we foster an environment that cultivates high-growth ventures. Amidst these takeaways, I'm inspired by the resilience and dedication exhibited by entrepreneurs tackling real-world problems head-on, especially amidst today's challenging climate. Special kudos to my mentees, Nicole Baranowski at Hairstrong and Matthew Stevens & Mathew Chan at Tailwind, for their commitment to bringing their innovative offerings to market. Here's to celebrating the bold visionaries shaping Canada's entrepreneurial landscape. Onward and upward!!! #CDNtech #entrepreneurship #growth

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Returning from your annual leave to the news of a mass layoff is not easy, even if you have not been impacted directly. While I am sure this decision was not taken lightly and I could not agree more with what our CEO Dax said below about all the people we hired at Lightspeed over the past few years, it will take a while for those of us who are still here to go back to business as usual. Until then I need your support! This is where you all potentially come into play as my LinkedIn network: To my HR & Recruitment connections across EMEA & NOAM (Germany, Netherlands, UK, Belgium, France, USA & Canada) please email our talent directory [email protected] or reach out to me for more information if your company is hiring for various positions across most departments. As a recruiter, it is hard to see folks you hired and worked with being let go, and as a colleague even harder.... To my former colleagues who were impacted, if you need any support with your CV, need an intro email to someone I might be connected with who has an open position at their company or just want to chat, please reach out. ... also please remember you are so much more than your job!

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What’s giving me an extra spring in my step? Mentoring with Google for Startups. Over the past few months, I’ve met with startups across North America to coach and advise on solving their business problems. Their ability to identify a consumer need, and bring a solution to market, quickly, has been inspiring. What have I taken away? Build. Network. Learn. Pivot. Test. Repeat. Stay hungry. If you are a #canadian startup and are interested to learn more, keep an eye out for the next cohort.

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This is a big deal. It demonstrates that large brands like LG (along with 160 other brands over the past year!) can scale CTV investment based on a cost-per-outcome model. tvScientific delivers superior performance on CTV based on patented technology, radical transparency and the best partner team in the business. The future of TV is performance. And the future is here.

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I recently came across the Check My Ads Institute, a non-profit that intends to fight disinformation, hate speech, or other harmful content, by informing the advertisers who pay for it, who presumably don't want their brands associated with that content where it happens against their wishes. Interestingly, though the non-profit wants to work with marketers for better outcomes, their website echoes the ground truth that most consumers don't yet know: the same money that these brands spend on ads and ad-tech comes from our consumer pockets, in the form of higher prices for most of the products we buy. I think if people knew this, they'd opt for not paying this tax. The bigger long-term win, IMO, is making consumers more aware that we're funding the very crap we see online, and let's collectively stop it. In the US, we'll never over-regulate ad-content (1st amendment), but we can cut down on the associated exploitation for sure and dis-intermediate the ad-tech middlemen. Of course I came to that conclusion from the opposite direction: protecting our privacy and mental autonomy in the face of high-tech manipulations and exploitations. But we can all meet in the middle.

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As you *ALL* know, the insanely driven Maya Rozanes and I have been building a little community here in Montreal for marketing professionals (shockingly named Marketing MTL). 👋 The handful of events we've planned so far have all been done on Eventbrite. It's like $12 to post an event, the UX is clunky, but it feels like the more developed platform/marketplace for event discovery. 🤷‍♂️ We're planning our next few events for the year and looking to give Luma a try as an alternative... 😬 Question for the audience (especially you in the back), do you like or use one event platform more than the other? Do you go check for events on either of these? Am I totally just wasting my time asking this question? (time will tell) Thanks for your thoughts in advance. Interested in marketing in #Montreal? Sign up for updates: www.marketingmtl.com #MarketingMTL #eventbrite #luma #events #community

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I will be at Rob Beeler’s Beeler.Tech Day Camp in Toronto this Wednesday. I intend to get a better understanding of recent changes to the ad tech ecosystem. If you’ll be there as well, please drop me a line! Beeler.Tech #digitaldaycamp #adops #adtech #advertising #Toronto

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Today is World Mental Health Day, a reminder of the importance of prioritizing our mental well-being. We here at Snapchat 🇨🇦 have partnered with Kids Help Phone to ensure Snapchatters across Canada take, at the very least, a moment to check in with themselves and those around them. In any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians experiences a mental illness. By the time Canadians reach 40 years of age, 1 in 2 have – or have had – a mental illness (via CAMH) Remember, seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Together, we can break the stigma. Mental health matters. https://lnkd.in/gTE6YGAf #WorldMentalHealthDay #Snapchat Snap Inc. | Snap for Business

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My #goodread for Oct 18th is about the combined weight of all things made by humans compared to the mass of all living things on Earth. This infographic from Visual Capitalist appeared in my talk at the SMCC- Sponsorship Marketing Council Canada event on sustainability earlier this month. "Visualizing the Accumulation of Human-Made Mass on Earth" Article by Bruno Venditti; Graphics/Design by Mark Belan 🔬📊 🎨 https://lnkd.in/ga6BP9aN From my notes for that presentation: [1] "This image is really hard to forget once you’ve seen it. Today, human-made mass exceeds all biomass on Earth. It’s staggering to think of how much stuff us tiny creatures have created." [2] "At the bottom of the human-made mass side of the chart is the "Other" category, consisting of stuff made from wood, glass, and plastics. This might lead you to believe that stuff made from plastics isn't the problem since the "other" category is the smallest contributor to "anthropogenic" mass. In the fine print next to this category, however, the infographic points out that the mass of all human-made stuff from this category alone exceeds the weight of the entire animal kingdom combined." [3] "By the 2040s, the problem of human-made stuff is projected to be 3x greater than today. It’s an accelerating problem." [4] "But there’s hope. We can change our behaviour, our priorities, the status quo. We can do something about it" These points closely align to much of what I heard at the 1% for the Planet Global Summit this week. As a group, we took in how large, devastating, and urgent the human-made problems facing the planet are and we paired that stunning clarity with a commitment to do something about it. For this reason, “Visualizing the Accumulation of Human-Made Mass on Earth" will likely resonate with many of the new (and wonderful) connections I made at the 1% for the Planet Global Summit. I highly recommend clicking through to read the full article that accompanies the infographic below.

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Unpopular opinion: I like the hustle. To me, hard work is table stakes. It’s not everything, but it’s important. And lately, I've been wondering if the pendulum has swung too far away from the idea that hustle—and yes, even hustle culture—has its place. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for burnout or glorifying an always-on mentality. Rest is critical. Balance matters. And sustainability should always be the goal. But let’s be real—there are seasons where you need your foot on the gas to grow, to progress, and to build something meaningful. Especially earlier in your career or when you're building a business, when you’re proving yourself, establishing a foundation, and creating momentum. My two cents? Sustainable success requires periods of hustle. Those moments when you’re putting in extra hours, saying yes to the hard things, and stretching your limits. The key is recognizing these as seasons, not a lifestyle. Here’s what I’ve learned about hustle over the years: >> Hard work is a tool, not a trap. Use it intentionally. >> Growth doesn’t happen in the comfort zone. Sometimes, a sprint is necessary. >> Hustle is most effective when paired with rest and reflection. Without balance, it’s just a fast track to burnout. Has hustle played a role in your career or business journey? How do you strike the balance between going all-in and stepping back?

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𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻? 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗜𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 Does your nonprofit struggle to clearly communicate what you do? 😕 In 2024, a vague or misunderstood mission can lead to lost donations and missed opportunities. Clear, focused brand messaging can bridge the gap. ✨ Make sure your mission is front and centre in everything you do—your website, social media, and events. Use plain language, powerful visuals, and real-world examples to make your cause crystal clear to donors and supporters. 🔎 Want people to “get it”? Clarify your mission with Sodium & Co with branding that speaks volumes. 📲 Book your 30-minute call with Navi Aulkh , for a detailed discussion about your organisation, branding requirements, our prices and packages - and how to get the most out of working together https://lnkd.in/eiicQCJ2 #MissionClarity #BrandMessaging #NonProfitStorytelling #ClearCommunication #Charity2024 #NonProfitLeadership #BrandingWithPurpose

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Had SO much fun with the wonderful Leah Sarich and Jon Hagan discussing how using the power of storytelling can help to get more public involvement and buy-in surrounding the already amazing innovations happening in the Alberta Tech Ecosystem. 💎 I dropped a gem here - AEO is the future of SEO. If you’d like to learn more about it, I wrote a blog on it a while ago: https://lnkd.in/gVMuwDTK PS - Kasm Consulting can help you with AEO. 👀 Hit me with questions below if you’d like to learn more about AEO! #AnswerEngineOptimization #SearchEngineOptimization #AlbertaInnovates #AlbertaTechEcosystem #ABTech #Techstartup #marketingpodcast

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I have been brainstorming with Jan Christopher Arp for a new approach to Canadian startup data, enabling a federated system where different ecosystem developers can build applications to serve the needs of startups (and those who support them). The focus is first on the Canadian ecosystem, but this could be useful anywhere (call it the go-to-market). We are well aware of the different systems that have been developed in the past, from Raymond Luk's Hockeystick to Rob Darling's briefed.in to Québec Tech Radar. We can we learn from them? I know other projects were started/funded but AFAIK none of them were really successful. This is not about a shared database. It's about the value that can be built on top data and meta-data (let's say using AI, for example). We are trying to launch this new effort, code name COOL (Co-Operative for Open Linkages) to do this in a way that would benefit everyone joining, with a strong focus on data privacy and rules/processes for anonymized insights from the pool. With a mechanism to have contracts for data rights management (granting/revoking) and the right kind of governance and oversight board. We have had conversations with the Canadian Accelerator & Incubator Network - CAIN, Mouvement des accélérateurs d'innovation du Québec, and a few other regional organizations. I will be at the Startup Ecosystem Summit (spearheaded by Iain Klugman) on October 1st in Toronto and would love to continue these conversations. Maybe we can get Jesse Rodgers, David Crow, Sunil Sharma, Joanne Fedeyko, Michelle Peng Greenberg, Vicky Chang, Jennifer Lussier, Boris Mann and a few others in a room with a whiteboard to advance this project? Who else should we talk with? I'm not looping (too many) investors for now, but they are part of the mix. If you know of community-driven VCs (like Katy Yam, ICD.D and Alex Norman) that we should invite, let us know in the comments. I will also need a place for this to convening to materialize, at Highline Beta maybe (Lisa Partridge)?

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What DO greens powders do?? 👀🫶🏻🌳 UGC example I created for Senzu health! They absolutely LOVED the naysayer, skeptical approach as that relates to a lot of viewers! Check out more work: 📷 Shylynnesocial.ca Let’s chat about how I can help your brand: ✨ [email protected] #ugcexample #ugc #ugccreator #ugccontent #socialmedia #marketing #advertising #contentcreator

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