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Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 1:19pm and last updated
Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 1:24pm.
OEN - Off the Record with a CEO - April
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Price: OEN Member Fee: $45.00 Non-member Fee (includes a one-year OEN Individual Membership): $144.00
Visit the OEN events page to register: http://www.memberservicecenter.org/irmweb/wc.dll/orporntw?id=orporntw&doc=events
Off the record with a CEO is an opportunity to visit two successful Oregon entrepreneurs in their place of business.
Participants will briefly tour the business facility, then spend about an hour and a half with the host entrepreneur, asking questions regarding lessons learned through their entrepreneurial experience. Attendees have benefited from frank discussions about the unique challenges the entrepreneurs faced during the growth phase as well as what challenges lie ahead. After they've completed the second visit, the tour ends at a pub for some networking.
The companies featured in the April's "Off the Record" are Castor & Pollux with CEO Brian Connolly and AboutUs with CEO Ray King.
Castor Pollux: Castor & Pollux Pet Works® is a leader in organic and natural products for pets. They are dedicated to uncompromised quality, they celebrate pets in people's lives, and are committed to feeding pets in need.
About us: AboutUs is a wiki for and about businesses, organizations, blogs, forums, and really anything or anyone that has a website. AboutUs aims to provide you with both an introduction to sites in the areas you care about as well as a way to share your knowledge of those websites.
Come learn how these CEOs are succeeding despite really challenging economic times.
Speakers Brian Connolly - Pack Leader, Castor & Pollux A 20-year veteran of the premium pet industry, Brian began his career as a Hong Kong distributor for Iams Company, expanding first to Taiwan and South Korea. In 1991, he began consulting to Iams to drive distribution in New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan.
In 1993, Brian and his wife and business partner Shelley Gunton acquired T&K Pet Products in Portland, building the business from $4 million in revenues to $26 million in 1999.
In 2000, he and Shelley launched Pet Appeal, Inc. d/b/a Castor & Pollux Pet Works. C&P produces Organix, the leading brand of dog and cat organic food and treats, the Natural Ultramix brand of natural food, and Cesar Milan's Dog Whisperer food line.
Brian lives in Portland with his wife and three children. He holds an MBA degree in international marketing from the University of Western Ontario.
Ray King is the CEO of Aboutus.orgRay has worked at four startups and enjoys the technical and business challenges that go along with birthing totally new ideas. In high school he and a friend launched "The Computer Workshop" to train students on the use of Apple II's and IBM PCs. This company was featured on EyeWitness news and the New York Times. Several years later, while in college at M.I.T., he wrote project management software for his father's architectural firm. This project turned into a company, Semaphore, Inc. and in 1990 had risen to be rated #1 among all of the competitors in the space (by ARCHITECTURE Magazine). By 2000, the company had over 2,500 clients, 100 employees and was acquired by Deltek.
Later that year, Ray moved to from New York City to Portland, Oregon to co-found SnapNames.com. Inventing several new ways for people to acquire domain names, the company eventually grew to over $49MM in revenue and was ultimately acquired by Oversee.net. His current venture, AboutUs.org has pioneered the idea of an "editable overlay" for the entire web. Serving over 8 Million unique visitors per month, the company profitably employs 30 people in both Portland and it's branch office in Lahore, Pakistan.