“I was raised with a respect for education, public service, and commerce. To leave the world a better place. To contribute to society in politics or business or literature. To make a difference.”

Education: Harvard MBA, Wharton School of Business Investment Analyst Program

Core strengths

• Holds close ties to local, provincial and federal governments in Canada, one of the world’s most stable and entrepreneurial business environments
• Identifies trends and opportunities well ahead of the mainstream
• Successfully commercializes undervalued businesses and products
• Develops niche strategies to allow B2B companies to dominate their industry
• Possesses considerable experience in navigating diverse industries and volatile markets

Background

Family and roots matter greatly. The de Gaspé Beaubien clan has over 400 years of developing business and contributing to society in both Canada and the United States. De Gaspé Beaubiens were not only among the earliest inhabitants of Quebec City and Montreal, they were also present at the founding of Detroit and Chicago, with others extending the family name to the Midwest and down to New Mexico.

Successive generations of the family have started diverse businesses, while also serving social causes through philanthropic endeavors. Philippe’s mother Nan-b has served as director for a number of large corporations, and is a family enterprise expert. His father, Philippe II, has held a number of high-profile roles, including as the Operations Director behind the hugely successful Expo 67 in Montreal, still considered one of the greatest world fairs.

Connections

As President and CEO of the de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation, and through his travels and participation in various global organizations, Philippe has developed an extensive network of families, foundations and private trusts around the world – gaining access and partnerships for his companies in new markets around the world.
He has close ties to the local, provincial and federal governments in Canada. Obtaining financial and political support is one of his key strengths. His family obtained the first cellular license for Canada and the cellular company they created subsequently became the largest in the country. They also acquired the first satellite broadcasting license to distribute content to Canadian communities, and 10 years later received 1G of spectrum for commercial development, the largest amount of spectrum ever given to the private sector.

Vision

Starting or acquiring companies before they become mainstream, Philippe has had a direct hand in areas as diverse as cellular phones and towers, radio station consolidation, broadband wireless expansion, spirits, data mining and anti-aging products companies. His investments span these industries and more, including Zoom, Biomod, Nannette de Gaspé, SonoFit, EERS, PUR, Starlink, Jobbook, and TechTown. <add hyperlinks to each, but not if this will only appear as a paper document.

He develops niche strategies for B2B companies that allow them to dominate their industry, with added forays into the B2C market where attractive opportunities exist.

Instincts

Philippe is an accomplished entrepreneur and has been involved in 15 start-ups and turn-arounds over the past 20 years. He understands entrepreneurs, embraces technology, and is highly aware of the need for sufficient funding at the growth stage. He is accomplished at finding companies that possess a key product but have not been able to commercialize it effectively.

He rates these areas of the Canadian business environment as being particularly attractive for growth and investment potential: Pharma, ICT, Wellcare, FinTech, Agri-Food and Cleantech.

Experience

On top of his many successful ventures, Philippe has lived through several significant industry collapses in the last 17 years. He navigated his investments through the dotcom and telecom collapses of the early 2000’s and the debt crisis of 2008-09, suffering inevitable losses but also managing to multiply his ROI on a number of occasions.

Notable successes include his move to privatize Telemedia, a multimedia company, producing a 15X ROI, and his founding of Redline, a telecom company now operating in 60 countries and considerable upside.

 

 

Uri Levine (http://urilevine.com/) is a passionate serial entrepreneur and disruptor. He co-founded Waze, the world’s largest community based driving traffic and navigation app, with more than 250M drivers around the globe, which was acquired by Google on June 2013 for more than $1.1 billion.

Since then, he pursues his dream to create great value for large audiences, through the series of startups he founded. His vision is specifically intended to disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services, with focus on solving “BIG problems” and saving consumers time and money, while empowering them and changing the world for the better.

Levine is Co-Founder, Chairman or Board Member in several startups with the agenda of ‘doing good and doing well’:  FeeX, Moovit, HERE, Engie, FairFly, ZeeK, Roomer, WeTrip, Seetree, Refundit & Lifecare. He is always working on his next idea.

Uri has been in the high-tech business for the last 30 years, half of them in the startup scene, and has seen everything ranging from failure, middle success and extreme success.

He is also a world-class speaker on entrepreneurship, disruption, evolution vs. revolutions of markets, mobility and startups. Motivated to encourage the next generation of thinkers and innovators he also leads an academic workshop entitled “How to Build a Startup”, aimed at undergraduate and graduate level business students.

 

List of startups Levine is Co-Founder, Chairman or Board Member, with the agenda of ‘doing good and doing well’:

– Co-founder and active chairman at FeeX, which addresses the biggest secret in the world, $600B of financial fees that no-one knows they are paying. FeeX helps bring transparency and increase consumers’ retirement savings and long-term investment plans in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

- Chairman and first Investor at Zeek, a marketplace for unused store credit. Addressing $100B of loss store credits every year.

– Godfounder of Roomer, a marketplace for non-refundable hotel reservations, a $20B annual loss.

– Founder, Chairman and 1^st investor at FairFly, which addresses the biggest secret in the travel industry. What happened to airfare AFTER the booking. FairFly monitors the airfare of your own itinerary after you made reservation and allows you to rebook the same flight or a better flight once price drops.

- 1^st Member of the board of Moovit, which is like Waze but for public transportation, and today, serves more than 150M passengers in more than 2,000 cities around the globe.

- Founder, Chairman and the 1^st investor at Engie, which deals with our frustration and helplessness at the mechanics, with an app that connects to the car computer, running diagnostic before and gathers quotation before we go to the mechanic, and empowers the driver.

– Member of the supervisory board at HERE Technology, location cloud company, which enables digital mapping and real-time location applications for consumers, vehicles, enterprises and cities.

- Co-Founder & Chairman, Refundit, an advanced fully automated service for VAT refund for tourists, which will save them the bureaucracy and hassle at the airport and get their money back in a fast and easy way.

– Investor and Board Member at SeeTree, which responds to the particularly devastating challenges in permanent crop farming such as crop losses, epidemics etc. Seetree provides a unique intelligence platform for tree-farmers fusing AI/ML, IoT multi-sensorics data and other advanced technologies to enable them to best manage their permanent crops.

– Co-Founder & Chairman at LiveCare, the first smart medical alert device for the elderly population, combining innovation with compliance to up-to-date regulatory requirements. Livecare is a wearable device that detects emergency situations such as falls and integrates a two-way communications portal for instant help indoors and out.

– Investor in WeTrip which provides a platform to enable these Generation -Y travelers to easily plan and book concept holidays together. WeTrip focuses on selling tailor-made holiday packages in two specific areas: winter ski vacations and summer festival holidays.