Feb 27, 2009 GATE House

(Employee Recruitment) Matthew Maynard will be officially joining GATE as of Monday morning, fully 2 months earlier than the plan called for. The main reason for this change is that neither of the potential Chief Operations Officer wanted to join, though both did seriously consider it and believe that GATE will be a success, they each had their reasons for turning the offer down and, though I'm disappointed, I support them both in their decisions! Thus, the search for COO is postponed and a different approach will be sought. That is mainly why Matthew will join early, I need help and I know I can trust him and without the COO salary, I can afford to be flexible.

I'm working with a recruiter friend of mine hoping to find the web developer, web designer and web master roles I require, if I can get the right team in place then it makes sense to hire them early as virtually 100% of their salary will qualify for Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Credits (aka SR*ED) which is a very lucrative grant structure that should return upwards of 60% of their salary and expenses in tax credits. I love Canada!

My big ticket items for March for Employee Recruitment are to find appropriate accounting and legal help. Both are not at all easy tasks, they require both trust and competency and unfortunately are both areas outside my expertise. Time is my enemy here ... so if you know a corporate lawyer or an experienced CGA in the KW region (I really want a local person if possible, I'm not going to be comfortable with a remote accountant at this stage (I can tell :-)) -- not so concerned about the lawyer, however, they can certainly be remote.