Meet the people behind the great programs and services offered at Ometz! Our colleague Katherine Korakakis discusses the Ometz PME program, and how our team provides guidance and support on how to launch a start-up, and helps established businesses through a mentorship program.

What is your work position and how long have you been working at Ometz?

I’m in charge of entrepreneurship and run the PME program. I have been doing this for 4 years.

What are your day-to-day activities?

Every day is so different! I could be working on somebody’s business plan, going to visit their business location, coaching people, working with mentors, interviewing mentees, I could be handing out 50k checks, I could be doing due diligence, I could be on committees! There’s so much stuff! Every day is different and no two days are the same, so that’s what makes my job super interesting and fun. But I guess the essence of what I do is to help people follow their dreams by creating their own businesses.

For example, last week you went to the StartUpFest, how was that?

The StartUpFest was amazing! I do a lot of events like that. I go to C2 Montreal, Conference of the Americas etc. So these types of events are great because you become inspired by the speakers, you learn things that you can teach your entrepreneurs, its knowledge that you can share. But also you meet a lot of people who are looking to start their business and you can connect with them and see how you can work together.

What can aspiring entrepreneurs expect from the PME program?

So, what’s interesting about the PME program is that it’s not a one size fits all. Rather, it’s a tailored accelerator program. So depending on your needs is how we’ll help you. For sure we do the stuff like giving you a mentor, helping you with your business plan, financing, but if you are at a super early stage and you have all these ideas but you’re not sure which idea to choose, well I can sit with you and we can see, based on north American economic situation, what is the best idea to pursue. If you need a mentor that’s really specialized we can help you look for that, we also help startups access financing.

The other thing that we do, because our approach is to help the person and not necessarily fill some sort of quota, is we’ll connect them to resources outside, to different partners of the PME program - for example: PME Montreal, Montreal Inc., Femmessor, Futurpreneur, SAJE, Montreal International, Notman House, Fond Mosaique, in fact we work with everybody. So whatever is best for the person, that’s what we’ll recommend. If what is best for the entrepreneurs is not to work with us, then that’s great. Go where you need to go and get the help you need to get. There is no cookie cutter approach to what we do.

What should an entrepreneur do if they want a meeting with you?

They should email me their pitch deck. They should also take note of the next funding round deadline (October 16th 2017) and not wait to contact me. The closer it gets the less time I will have to work with them.

To find out more about the PME program, click here.