My name's Cornelis Boertjens and I'm the Global Connector at the Village Square.
The Village Square is a marketing agency providing advocacy marketing services to large clients.
It basically means that I will help clients to find their advocates...
...of people that are really talking a lot 
 about their branded products and branded service.
I work with them to create either new products, create a new brand, 
 and really kind of help the marketing team on an ongoing basis.
So we got a $30,000 grant from the government...
...to develop our breakthrough technology.
And basically what we did was really...
Well, you know, we just followed the steps, worked 
 with Foundation for Research Science and Technology...
...which is now the Ministry of Science and innovation.
And, yeah, met a really great person from... Based on the North Shore.
He basically just showed us, you know, you have to work through these 
 steps to actually get the funding, which is what we did.
The funding was very important to the business...
...because being a kind of small, growing business, you basically 
 want to conserve any cash that you can.
So we... That funding allowed us to free up capital...
...and not only to debt but also invest more than we initially wanted...
...to in the end get a much bigger and much better product...
...and set up really powerfully for the global market.
I would recommend to any start-up to basically just talk to somebody from MSSI...
...and just... First of all get the conversation going...
...and really kind of test with them whether that idea that you have...
...whether that's viable for funding in the first place...
...and then once it is, it's just following the steps and 
 really just kind of going through to the funding application.
