Canadian entrepreneur Michele Romanow was the main attraction on day 2 of the Ontario South West tourism conference that was held at the London Convention Centre where many people in the tourism and entrepreneurship industry attended to see the keynote.
Romanow, aged 31, is a successful tech entrepreneur and television personality on the hit reality show, Dragon’s Den, who has a net worth of 150 million dollars and is considered one of the most powerful women in the country. Romanow says that the experience of being on Dragon’s Den is great and loves to see what new innovations are out there, ” It’s fun, I get to see 200 companies in 3 and half weeks. It’s actually what I do in my day to day life for the last 10 years I have been evalutating ideas and testing them out so it’s fun to use that same process on television.”
After all, she founded 3 companies before the age of 28 and has succeeded through hard work, innovation, and how she still continues on getting started. Romanow highlighted during the keynote about graduating from Queen’s University in engineering to starting up a caviar business to creating a successful company SnapSaves which she later sold in 2014 to an American company. Romanow explained that being an entrepreneur requires the process of trying things and learning through experiments.
With it being International Women’s Day, Romanow shared the honour of being a role model to other women out there, ” There just has been so many opportunites of people that have gone before me. I grown up with an ambitious mind that I can study engineering and build companies. International Women’s Day is about remembering that your in debt to all those women before you that changed that mark and hopefully I can be a role model to the next generation to come.”
Romanow’s advice to all those in attendance was that building a company can be messy and that things are not always working as an innovator but great insights come from trying and that failure leads to success.
