Forty Under 40 judges look beyond obvious business success
Winners’ profiles can be found here.
Tasked with evaluating nearly 120 nominations for this year’s Forty under 40 Awards, judges all had different criteria for what it took to make a winner.
Just as they all had to apply high critical standards to the entries that came in, judges also kept their eyes open for nominees who might not have seemed like obvious choices for this type of business award.
Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Vancouver president David Katz said he was looking for someone who shared his strong devotion to social entrepreneurship and giving back to the community.
“I was looking at those applications not as the best entrepreneur of Vancouver but the best person in Vancouver,” he said. “When I looked at [the nominations], I said, ‘Who of these people best represents who we are?’”
Katz said the nominees who resonated with him the most were those who were able to build both a business as well as a life of meaning.
“And I looked for ones who had to overcome,” he added. “It’s inspirational to the rest of the community. I think that’s what needs to be shared. It’s not about money.”
When judging this year’s entries, Idea Rebel founder and president Jamie Garratt broke it down into three categories: where the nominees are in their careers, how much they’ve contributed to the community and the financial impact they’ve had on the Vancouver business scene.
“It didn’t necessarily mean that they had to be an entrepreneur and they were building a multimillion-dollar business, but there had to be some sort of bottom-line impact with their career or with what they were doing, whether that was revenue-wise, profitability or growth,” the former Forty under 40 winner said.
Garratt said community contributions are often overlooked or go without any critical examination.
“A lot of people will sign up for community involvement just to make it look good on paper, but I looked a little deeper to make sure they actually did something that was meaningful for the community,” he said. “It didn’t have to be raising money; it didn’t have to be donating time. But … it was creating something or building something with results in the community.”
Cybele Negris, co-founder and president of Webnames.ca, said her previous experience as a Forty under 40 winner made it very clear to her what she should be looking for when judging this year’s entries.
“Essentially I was looking for business/professional success,” she said in an email.
Negris added that revenue, profitability, number of employees, scale and performance of the nominees’ businesses were also very important.
“If the individual didn’t run a business, I looked at their level of responsibility and the scale of their work in their industry.”
Business in Vancouver editor-in-chief Fiona Anderson, who sat on the judges’ panel, said she had to constantly look for attributes that made nominees stand out, since all the submissions were amazing.
So she kept her eye on people who had clearly taken some sort of risk in their careers.
“It’s great to do well in a career, but it takes real courage to go beyond that, to step out of your comfort zone and try something new,” she said.
