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Fall Back Up with Jared Steeves

It’s not often you run into someone who began their career when they were six years old.

Jared at workBorn and raised in the tiny community of Berry Mills, New Brunswick, Jared Steeves started his training as an antique auctioneer literally at his father’s knee.

Starting his own business, Key Auctions at age 18, Jared has built it into one of Atlantic Canada’s top three auction houses.

During his career, Jared has uncovered some remarkable treasures in Maritime estates including the discovery of a painting by the early 20th-century American wildlife artist Carl Ruingas which sold for over 100,000 dollars.Jared ruingas

But his business tells only part of the story… now age 30, he’s already traveled to 67 counties and now is fully engaged in international humanitarian work on two continents.

I met with Jared in downtown Moncton…

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Fall Back Up with Gerry Pond

Gerry Pond is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Mariner Partners Inc. and the Co-Founder of East Valley Ventures. He was CEO of NBTel and president of its successor, Aliant Telecom before he moved into the tech startup field.

Gerry is perhaps best known for his successes in the tech world with two New Brunswick startups Q1 Labs and Radian6. Collectively, they sold for a billion dollars in 2011.

Following these successes, he co-created the industry group Propel ICT, which runs the Launch36 tech startup accelerator, and established the University of New Brunswick’s Pond-Deshpande Centre in 2011 with the help of “Desh” Deshpande, an American billionaire tech entrepreneur.

He has also co-founded a number of other successful ICT start-ups in Atlantic Canada, including iMagicTV, Brovada Technologies, Shift Energy and Cirrus9. He is a Director of Upside Foundation, the New Brunswick Business Council, and the National Angel Capital Organization.
Gerry Pond has received many honours, including the 2003 Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, Atlantic Business Magazine’s Top 50 CEO Award in Atlantic Canada in 2003 and 2005, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of New Brunswick, an Honorary Doctor of Commerce from Saint Mary’s University, and he was inducted into the New Brunswick Business Hall of Fame in October 2007.

He has been recognized with the 2017 EY Atlantic Lifetime Achievement Award, the prestigious Wolf Blass Lifetime Achievement Award and he was awarded the first-ever Business Development Bank of Canada Entrepreneurship Champion.

Most recently, Gerry was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. I met with Gerry at my office in downtown Halifax…

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Fall Back Up with Jeremy White

Jeremy White and his wife Melanie were looking for a summer retreat in Cape Breton after honeymooning in 2008. What they found were a new way of life and a successful small business.

Big Spruce Brewing sprung from a passion for craft beer and a serendipitous real estate buy in Nyanza.

Jeremy’s background was in international engineering and while living in Nicaragua, they stumbled upon an opportunity to relocate to Nova Scotia.

He had been a home brewer for years, and have wanted to scale his production up to a commercial level for a long time.

With favourable condition for growing hops and an industry that has been taking off in the region, they opened up Nova Scotia’s first certified organic on-farm brewery. Big Spruce quickly established itself as a local favourite.

Jeremy has made his views known broadly about the public policy challenges facing the craft beer industry publishing this open letter to the people of Nova Scotia.

In our wide-ranging conversation, we talk about the challenges of starting the brewery, his ongoing frustration with regulatory issues and his views on the future of craft brewing and the Atlantic Canadian economy.

I spoke with him in the brewery in the beautiful setting overlooking the Bras d’Or Lakes.

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