Ryan Holmes

“As social is where consumers' eyeballs are, businesses must take ownership of their online company profiles. By providing their customers with a place to share content, social media managers can monitor and track content which directly relates to their brand.”

“Although social media is a relatively new form of communication, it has become the primary way retailers and customers are interfacing.”

“Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.”

“I don't know how many times I've turned to Twitter and Facebook to commiserate and celebrate, bounce ideas off of friends, colleagues and other entrepreneurs, and just connect with the wider world outside my office.”

“As an entrepreneur, the pressures of a startup can be enormous, but it's rarely life or death.”

“The decision to leave a company you founded and move on to a new project is never an easy one.”

“As technology has improved, our digital lives have only grown more tangled and cluttered.”

“Everybody getting a significant exit creates a legacy and creates something that you can pay forward and bootstrap an industry in a substantial way.”

“Tech companies have a finite lifespan: For the successful ones, an IPO or exit is never more than a few years off. But by recruiting locally and developing homegrown talent, companies can build something that remains after they're gone. People, skills and a culture of innovation persist.”

“Pizza made me who I am. In the summer of 1998, I dropped out of college and started a pizza restaurant called Growlies in my hometown in rural Canada. My seed money: a credit card with a $20,000 limit.”

“Providing better computer science education in public schools to kids, and encouraging girls to participate, is the only way to rewrite stereotypes about tech and really break open the old-boys' club.”

“Payfirma has revolutionized the payment process, consolidating mobile, e-commerce and in-store payments under a single solution, much like HootSuite did for social media.”

“Facebook, Twitter and Google have all opened offices in Brazil, recognizing the importance of localizing their products and customer service efforts.”

“Early in my career, I was involved with engineer-led projects, where designers came in late in the game and were expected to put lipstick on an existing code base. This almost never works.”

“Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools.”

“I think that Vancouver as well as Canada needs a boot camp for young entrepreneurs. We have already seen tens if not hundreds of people put their names forward to be involved in the program, and we just think this is an amazing way to accelerate what they're doing.”

“Email is familiar. It's comfortable. It's easy to use. But it might just be the biggest killer of time and productivity in the office today.”

“The point is that instead of a monolithic brick of printed content - delivered more or less unchanged to all subscribers - social media offers news that is personalized and nimble.”

“As an entrepreneur, one of the biggest challenges you will face will be building your brand. The ultimate goal is to set your company and your brand apart from the crowd. If you form a strategy without doing the research, your brand will barely float - and at the speed industries move at today, brands sink fast.”

“Virtual currencies, used to buy digital goods inside online games, have become an integral part of the Internet landscape.”