Maine Startup & Create Week Releases 2015 Event Schedule

(Portland, Maine – May 21, 2015) Maine Startup & Create Week (MSCW) – a national conference and celebration of innovators, entrepreneurs and startups – has released its schedule of events and keynote speakers. Presented by Norton Insurance & Financial and Blackstone Accelerates Growth, MSCW will take place in Portland, Maine from June 22-28, 2015, with the aim of showcasing Maine’s vibrant, growing startup eco-system to the wider Maine community and attendees from around the country.

Beginning on Monday, June 22, MSCW will host three to four sessions each morning, that are focused on three tracks – Small Business, Food Innovation, Scale & Growth; while very afternoon there will be a featured keynote speaker:

MONDAY, June 22

  • What Growth Looks Like in Maine – Learn how entrepreneurs decided to grow and not to grow their businesses.
  • Trends in Financing for Growth – Discussion of trends in financing for companies looking to grow quickly.
  • Innovate with Freelancers – Global Knowledge to Grow Your Enterprise, Right Here in Maine: Learn how to leverage this talent, plus tap into their global knowledge base and skills to grow your enterprise, business or latest innovation.
  • Stretching the Seasons: Discussion on how high-tech greenhouses, biodigesters and other innovations are increasing efficiency, intensity, and sustainably for farmers.
  • Getting Your Food Product Ready for Retail – A panel of regional and national retail buyers and distributors discuss the details of getting into regional and national chains.
  • Crafting Your Message: Make sure your brand is sending the right message to your consumers – A discussion on the ways in which to create the right brand message.
  • Donato Tramuto: Keynote Speaker

Tuesday, June 23

  • New Grocery Model: From Farmer’s Markets to national chains – how we look ahead to food trends to better serve our customers and ourselves.
  • Rapid Prototyping: Learn how to expediently and efficiently prototype to ensure scaling quickly.
  • Craft Spirits in America – A panel will explore the craft spirits space by looking at challenges associated with this growth category as well as favorable trends among distillers and consumers.
  • Managing Conflict – How co-founders and partners manage conflict and come out on top of their business
  • Stories of Successful Pivots: A panel discussion of successful pivots in the face of adversity – Discussion on successful pivots, in the face of: (1) changes in company culture, (2) product development issues, design issues, (3) user experience feedback / customer research.
  • Market Share versus Consumer Share: The pros and cons of going after larger portions of your existing market or vertically integrating new products into your existing customer base.
  • New News Media: Staying relevant in the evolving face of news media.
  • Your Early Hires – A panel discusses finding your skills gaps and hiring growth drivers before they get expensive, and learning to assess ROI and whether to hire at all.
  • Customers Acquisition – A panel discusses the first 100 customers to the next 10,000.
  • From the Kitchen Stove to the Marketplace: Discussion on early problems of starting a food business, how they were solved, and how to avoid many before they happen.
  • Jules Piere: Keynote Speaker

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24

  • Farm to Fork 2.0: How connective software can improve farming, distributing and marketing about local food.
  • Owner-Operator Syndrome: Learn how to delegate your business process to ease bottleneck and promote growth.
  • Coding, the New Literacy: Why and how communities and companies are building the workforce of the future.
  • Food Company Sustainability: A 360 Degree View:  panel discusses how to be a truly sustainably food company and explores the balancing act of staying true to your mission and staying profitable at the same time.
  • Equity versus Debt Financing for Small Business – Understand how equity versus debt financing works so that you can make the best decision for your small business.
  • Aquaculture for Growth
  • Crowdfunding Sales: How can small businesses use crowd funding to fuel business growth at the local level?
  • Ad Tech & Big Data: How big data and ad tech are evolving to create new advertising opportunities.
  • Brand Building for Growth in the Digital Age: What is your brand? Building and managing your brand in the digital age.
  • Reinvigorating and Innovating Traditional Crops: Learn how you can get value from your harvest, moving beyond a commodity sale by telling the story of your harvest, sustainability and relationship with the source.
  • Cheryl Heller: Keynote Speaker

THURSDAY, JUNE 25

  • Food Distribution: A panel will cover different distribution types and provide insights on challenges of distributors working with different types of growing companies.
  • Social Media – Great When it Works: Learn from panelists who have built their businesses around social media, as well as entrepreneurs who use social media to drive non-sales indicators for their businesses.
  • Stories of Failure: Hear personal stories about failure from people who overcame it.
  • Food Distribution: Learn how a food entrepreneur start and how to grow successful partnerships with distributors:
  • Agile Manufacturing: How do you plan for manufacturing growth in an innovation economy: A discussion on planning for growth in economy, how to find manufacturers, and how manufacturers can help fill skills gap.
  • Valuation Narrative: Entrepreneurial tales of valuation and exit strategies
  • Design Accelerant: The role of art and design in value creation, differentiation and scale are discussed.
  • Financing Food Ventures: A panel of artists who are leading fast paced startups and prominent national companies discuss the role of art in design.
  • The Art of Sales: Discussion on why sales people are the most important people in organizations and explain the recruitment, training and incentivizing of sales people.
  • Market Research, Lean Development: How to evaluate a market opportunity, and use the basic market research and market testing tools to fail fast and fail cheap even before the prototyping stage.
  • Steven Kotler: Keynote Speaker

FRIDAY, JUNE 26

  • Food Branding, Design and Marketing: How to tell your story while staying true to your brand and finding the right audience.
  • Legacy Business Model Innovation: How entrepreneurs are financing and changing the growth of legacy businesses.
  • The Abundance Cycle: Jay Friedlander discusses how he is helping sustainable companies reign supreme through an innovative and holistic framework.
  • Food Incubator Models: A panel will discuss what food incubators are, citing some examples from around the country.
  • When to Innovate: A discussion on when it makes sense for small companies to take on the risk and overhead to introduce product innovation.
  • Build a Killer Team: A panel will discuss how industry leaders are recruiting and managing talent that they need to beat the competition.
  • Scalable Restaurant Opportunities: How can you grow your restaurant to be a scalable business with retail, multiple locations and franchising?
  • Building Culture: A discussion on the way people use space to enhance culture.
  • East versus West: Why someone should start a business in Maine versus Silicon Valley or Boston.
  • John Gosier: Keynote Speaker

SATURDAY, JUNE 27

  • Product Innovation Maine: An inside look at how great Maine companies are at positioning their products.
  • How to Live Well and Make A Living in Portland: A look at how transplant employees and their employers are solving the trailing spouse issue.

For additional information with regard to Maine Startup & Create Week, or to sign up for particular workshop, visit http://www.mainestartupandcreateweek.com/.

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