With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1296256
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 BCBUSINESS 33 One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you don't have to follow somebody else's game plan for business success. You can go out and build an enterprise that addresses a meaningful market need, yes—but also one that meets your own personal goals. Lane Merrifield has been able to create just such a business—not once, but twice. The 40-year-old Kelowna native rose to prominence nearly 15 years ago with the creation of Club Penguin, an online gam- ing company that rejected advertising as a source of revenue in favour of paid sub- scriptions, a novel concept at the time. "We knew that the only way to truly keep our kids safe was to build a bit of a walled garden for them," says Merrifield, who for the past two years has served as one of the dragons on CBC's Dragons' Den. "When we say we originally built Club Penguin for our own kids, that's not just a nice story; it really is something we built with them in mind." Merrifield, along with business partners Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe, sold Club Penguin to Walt Disney Co. for US$350 million in 2007. After working for the L.A.-based conglomerate for sev- eral years, Merrifield decided it was time to return to his entrepreneurial roots. One of his more successful ventures, FreshGrade—an online learning platform that connects students, teachers and parents—was launched in 2011. It, too, hits that sweet spot of a business that addresses a market need but also his needs as a parent. Before COVID, Merrifield says, Fresh- Grade was simply a way to give parents a better idea of what was happening in the classroom. "Now, post-COVID, it's teachers outside of the quote-unquote / / / / b y M A T T O ' G R A D Y Over the past two decades, we've become increasingly tethered to digital devices– at work, at school and at home–which has had a profound impact on the way we live our lives. In the wake of COVID, some argue that we need to rethink our traditional relationship with technology–and create some healthier rules for coexisting with it For better or worse, COVID-19 has changed how British Columbians do their jobs, from where they work to what they value in an employer. How can companies navigate this new landscape —and where do top business leaders think things are headed?