The Techie

Age: 50
Company: Mariner Partners Inc., Saint John, N.B.
Business: Internet Protocol Television
2008 EOY Category: Technology

The classic Silicon Valley startup stories tell the tales of like-minded young guys investing their savings and working feverishly in a garage to move their product from conception to market. The only real differences with the Mariner Partners yarn is the setting (a condo basement in Saint John versus the California garage), the protagonists’ ages and experience (years of working together at NBTel and Aliant versus university-dropout wunderkinds), and the timing (on the leading edge of the dot-com boom versus a year after the bubble burst).

In 2003 Curtis Howe and his partners, Gerry Pond and Bub Justason, staked their savings on a niche market in the tech industry that was anything but a sure thing. Luckily, their gamble has paid off. The Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) business was worth $3.7 billion worldwide in 2007 and is forecast to grow to $23.2 billion in 2011. The number of subscribers is predicted to grow from 13.5 million to 72.6 million over the same period. Mariner Partners is already reaping the benefits: satellite offices in Calgary, Fredericton, Moncton, and Halifax; more than 100 employees; Fortune 500 clients; and revenues of $8.3 million in 2007. And they’ve even moved out of the condo basement.

Entrepreneurial Style

Defining moment: My partners and I founded Mariner in 2003 when the technology sector was still mired in the depths of the dot-com bust. The conditions were less than ideal for us to launch a technology startup, particularly here in Atlantic Canada. At the same time, my partners, who are very well known in the technology sector, had lucrative opportunities here and outside the Maritimes. So for them it was a choice between those opportunities and taking on a very challenging startup effort. But they wanted to create a business here, and it was a quick decision for them. Their decision to launch this company was all about making a contribution to this region—putting community above self interest. The values that shaped their decision are the foundation for this company today.
Biggest triumph: Partnering with an outstanding group of business executives who share a common passion and vision for building the business together.
Biggest mistake: I don’t spend much time thinking about my mistakes, but the biggest one was not doing a startup earlier. I passed on several opportunities to move from the corporate world into smaller companies before we created Mariner. But the bigger organizations treated me very well—top-notch training, great exposure to the global industry, and they had the cash flow to support a tremendous array of challenging projects.
Best thing about doing business here: The quality of life is outstanding. It’s great to be able to do leading edge work with global customers from here and enjoy this quality of life outside the office.
The toughest: By design, most of our customers are located in larger centres outside the region and country. When we meet a new customer in the U.S. or Europe, it’s a disadvantage to say we are from a place they have never heard of. We’d be credible more quickly with new customers if our offices were in a recognized technology centre like San Francisco, Raleigh, or Boston.
Financing nightmares: Most technology companies are financed with venture capital—either to finance R&D or expansion into new markets, or both. However, our experience is that venture capital firms usually invest with the expectation that their companies will eventually relocate to larger centres in central Canada, New England, or Silicon Valley. That’s a fundamental conflict with our goals for Mariner, so we’ve chosen to finance out of our own pockets and the profit we generate each year—in essence, we’ve excluded a primary source of finance in order to avoid a conflict over the future location of the headquarters. That means we have to be more efficient with our R&D and marketing, and to some degree it limits the speed of our growth. But we feel those are acceptable trade-offs. I would say financing has been a challenge, but having worked most of my career in publicly traded companies, I enjoy the added management control that comes from being privately financed.
Fears about losing everything: We’ve had some difficult periods, but we’ve been very focused on growing within our means since we started the business. We’ve been profitable every year since we started the company, and it is nearly debt free. At the same time, we’ve financed a significant R&D effort, built a very strong technical team, and now have amassed a strong body of intellectual property which positions the business for the next stage of growth.
Business mentor: I’ve been blessed to work with some exceptional mentors over the years: Gerry Pond, our chairman, and Bob Justason, our COO, have been wonderful mentors to me. I’m surrounded by a terrific management team here in Mariner, and I’m trying to learn as much as I can from them all.
Developing an entrepreneurial culture: The entrepreneurs who have been successful in this region have a critical role to play in developing the next generation of business builders. They are the evidence that businesses can be built here and compete internationally, so they are important role models. More than that, as mentors, they have invaluable experience and know-how that can make a huge difference for a new entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship should be taught: Entrepreneurship embodies a broad collection of skills and capabilities—communicating with people, managing product development, financial skills, marketing, etc. So there are elements of the entrepreneurial mix that can be introduced in high school and certainly there are some opportunities to broaden the content of undergraduate programs.
Progress is: We started with a pad board in a friend’s basement and now we have people on the ground in six cities from Halifax to Calgary. We’re winning repeat business with blue chip U.S. customers, and getting traction in Europe. That growth has created new opportunities for talented people and, on a personal level, that’s the best part.
How I’ve changed over the years: There is less room for error in a small company, especially a self-financed startup, so I pay a lot more attention to details now. I naturally like “big picture” problems, but in a small company, you need to be focused on the here and now, so that’s been the most significant change for me.
Regrets: Only that I didn’t get into a startup sooner. But you can’t go back, so...

Personally Speaking

As a kid I wanted to be: I liked history in school but didn’t have a clue how to make a living from it. I was undecided in my first year of university, but I had the good luck to study math and physics with a couple of “old-school” professors at Mount Allison who got me hooked on those subjects. Engineering gave me the chance to build a career around math and physics so it became an easy choice.
Personality type: I’m naturally an introvert, but I have gradually become more comfortable in a more extroverted skin.
Best strength: I like working on big conceptual problems, but it might not be my best strength. You’d really get a better answer from people who work with me.
Weakness: Left to my own devices, I tend to over-think issues. That’s the flip side of being a concept thinker, and I have some good managerial talent around me to balance that out.
First job: I worked in a dairy in Sussex, N.B. One of my customers was Frank McKenna’s dad. He was quite elderly then, but he still had his own herd of cows. He always brought his milk to the dairy himself, and he could out-work all of us young guys lifting those 80 lb cans of milk onto the loading dock.
I’m reading: James Michener. I’ve read pretty much all his work. And professionally, I think The Economist is a great source of insight into the forces that will shape our economy and our society over time.
Spare time: I just finished restoring a 1970 Camaro muscle car. I’ve picked up a couple more and I’d like to re-build one with my kids when they’re a bit older.
My ride: I’m driving a gas guzzler—a four-door pick-up I bought this summer in Texas. Great truck but I have to find a way to reduce my environmental footprint.
Most treasured possession: I never thought about that, but the most important person in my life is my wife, Theresa.
Never leave home without: It’s more what I don’t have when I leave home. In my personal life I never make lists and I like to figure it out as I go.
Words to live by: A great line from John Lennon’s song for his son: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

For more profiles on our other Entrepreneur's of the Year please following the links below

Click here for George Armoyan
Click here for Wadih Fares
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Click here for Harvey Stewart
Click here for Greg Roberts
Click here for Irving Schwartz