Christian Darbyshire, left, and Andy McCreath, Partners, tinePublic Inc., Calgary.
Each year, Caldwell Partners International chooses 40 Canadians who were under 40 in the past year to honour for their outstanding achievements. Click here to learn more about the program, and find more winners in the list below.
Their business began - as all good business concepts are said to - with an idea scrawled on a paper napkin. In this case, it was at a table in a Toronto Chinatown restaurant and the scribblers were Andy McCreath and Christian Darbyshire. "We wanted to produce events for young professionals," says Mr. McCreath. "The people who were producing events, a lot of time it was dinners that cost $300 or $400, which priced young people out of the market."
Friends since the age of 12, the pair started off in 2005 with a conference for young entrepreneurs in their hometown of Calgary. With speakers as diverse as hockey player Kelly Hrudey, politician Peter MacKay and Donald Rancic - the first winner of Donald Trump's popular show, The Apprentice - their newly minted company, tinePublic Inc., sold 1,800 tickets.
Since then, they've continued to draw huge crowds to high-profile events across Canada -- more than 200,000 spectators in total, says Mr. McCreath. Some of their biggest 'gets' include former United States president George W. Bush - making his first public appearance after leaving office - as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin and, most recently, former governor of California and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom they had been pursuing for years.
They not only set up an event in 2009 featuring the two former presidents, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, that attracted more than 6,000 attendees, but another, more intimate gathering with both the latter and his father, former U.S. president George H. W. Bush, the following year.
Part of their success lies in being the first to bring such luminaries to Canada, yet the fact that the pair do everything themselves keeps overhead low and profits high. "We had done about a dozen events with Clinton and they thought we had a staff of about 15 people," says Mr. McCreath, "and we were like, 'No, it's just the two of us.'"
More winners:
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Karen Bakker, 39 -
Keith Bilous, 39 -
Leonard Brody, 39 -
Naman Budhdeo, 38 -
Michael Burns, 39 -
Craig Campbell, 34 -
Norie Campbell, 39 -
Jody Campeau, 39 -
Cody Church, 39 -
Brian Coombes, 36 -
Matthew Corrin, 29 -
Frederick Dryden, 39 -
Dominic Giroux, 35 -
Deirdre Horgan, 38 -
Kyle Jeworski, 36 -
Nicholas Johnson, 38 -
Dr. Kirsten Johnson, 39 -
Kevin Li, 39 -
Stewart Lyons, 37 -
Muhammad Mamdani, 39 -
Andy McCreath, 35, and Christian Darbyshire, 35 -
Calvin McDonald, 39 -
Duke McKenzie, 35 -
Glori Meldrum, 37 -
Michele Mosca, 39 -
Suresh Narine, 39 -
Sean O'Reilly, 36 -
John Poulos, 36 -
Andrew Reid, 34 -
Gregory Roberts, 38 -
Angela Santiago, 39 -
Bradley Schwartz, 39 -
Leerom Segal, 31 -
Som Seif, 34 -
Natasha Sharpe, 39 -
Andrew Smith, 38 -
Steve Sousa, 39 -
Marie-Pier St-Hilaire, 33 -
David Vocadlo, 37 -
Nolan Watson, 31