Sean Wise

Blessed to be working with and on some of the greatest ventures in the world!

I get to do what I love to do most. Which is help make entrepreneurs dreams come true. How cool is that?

I was born (at a very young age) to two high school drop outs (who both went on to be extremely successful entrepreneurs in their own right). Notwithstanding, education was foremost on their agenda, and mine. After eight years of higher learning (4 at Carleton in Engineering and Economics; and 4 at the University of Ottawa for Law and a MBA) I went off to practice law for Ernst & Young's law firm in Toronto, Canada.

But after realizing that the formula: number of hours * rate per hour = a RAT race

I moved over to Ernst & Young: Corporate Finance.

I was sent to NY during the first dot.com boom, and ended up working mostly for LiquidXS.com (which was the 5th startup I'd worked, the first at age 13). While that didn't prove to be a booming business after the bubble burst, I did learn a hell of a lot.

Returning to the Great White North (Canada) in 2000, I became a director in Ernst & Young's newly formed Venture Capital group, where I (and Dan Mothersill) launched what are now known as ENTREPRENEURIAL BOOTCAMPS (5 hours of interactive lectures to school entrepreneurs on the art of raising VC and Angel money).

Now 6 years and 75 Bootcamp later, I'm pleased that we have trained well over 2500 founders who have collectively gone on to raise more than $890M in capital.

In recent years, we left EY to form www.WiseMentorCapital.com which still offers the Bootcamp program, but now takes a much more hands on roll in helping startups go from great idea to global leader. Our portfolio has grown and with it so too have my desire to continue to help entrepreneurs succeed.

Wise Words (the national column in the Globe and Mail, the blog, the podcast) is my attempt to do just that.

One last thing, as if my life wasn't cool enough, I've just started work on a new business reality TV series called "THE DRAGON'S DEN", which will see entrepreneurs pitching 5 multimillionaires for the startup capital they need!