Member Since December 2020
Skills
About
My life goals are to build positive world-changing businesses, learn constantly, support a great family, be surrounded by virtuous friends and colleagues, & give back to education. See below for the companies, boards, and investments I'm a part of. As always, feel free to reach out to me anytime. PRESIDENT, MAKO DESIGN + INVENT: I built Mako Design + Invent completely from the ground-up with no financing and no debt - It's truly an organically grown grass-roots company. Mako is now known as the center of physical product design nationally in the US and Canada, and well on our way in England and China. Simply put, we turn great product ideas into booming businesses. https://www.makodesign.com FELLOW, BROOKFIELD INSTITUTE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP: http://brookfieldinstitute.ca/kevin-mako-chief-executive-officer-mako-invent-fellow/ ADVISOR, NEXT 36: http://thenext36.ca/advisor/kevin-mako ADVISOR, SAGE CANADA: https://www.facebook.com/SAGECanada/posts/10154261588242148:0 MEMBER, RYERSON BLUE&GOLD SOCIETY: https://www.ryerson.ca/giving/celebrating-generosity/our-supporters/ PAST BOARD OF TRUSTEES, LAKEFIELD COLLEGE SCHOOL: https://www.lcs.on.ca/page/why-lcs/governance FOUNDER, GENERATION FUND CHARITY: A charity to support high-achieving high school students with some or all of the costs of post-secondary education. PRESIDENT, MAKO GROUP, INC: Investing in startup and scaling businesses. Portfolio includes Spiffy Inc., Flow Water Inc., Mako Property Corp., Hive Blockchain Technologies Inc. PRIVATE PILOT: Just for fun! To anyone reading this, feel free to send me a message anytime! I love hearing from new and old connections.
Kevin Mako
Published content
expert panel
With the U.S. alone exceeding $1 trillion in e-commerce sales in 2022, it’s no surprise that businesses are looking to innovate in the online shopping space. From more eco-friendly packaging options to implementing technology such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence, there are a number of growing trends that entrepreneurs and industry leaders are excited to see take off in the near future. To share their own insights into the world of e-commerce, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the top e-commerce trends or innovations they're excited about lately, as well as the impact they see those trends having on their businesses or other businesses in the future.
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Understanding how to get to market is simple: Develop your product, get to production and then sell units.
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Strategic, quality and methodical prototyping is the primary differentiator between a high-quality, successful product and a flop.
expert panel
Establishing a personal brand is something many professionals do to get noticed by the right people and make themselves available to the right opportunities. Unfortunately, with all the different information sources out there, it's easy to get confused about how exactly to do that. Where one source would advise you to do one thing, another article may recommend the complete opposite. Therefore, it's not uncommon to see people drawing conclusions about personal branding that are simply wrong. Below, nine contributors to Young Entrepreneur Council look at the most common mistakes you might make when it comes to developing your personal brand and how you can fix those errors before they have a significant impact.
expert panel
When doling out praise, leaders never expect it to have a negative effect on the team culture. But if a leader offers praise to one employee and not the others, those employees may begin to resent their teammate or even the leader themself. This envy can end up causing a negative domino effect that could impact the whole team. However, that’s not to say that excellent work should go unrecognized. To offer guidance on how to praise employees the “right” way, 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council weigh in on how leaders can showcase an employee's good work without eliciting resentment or generating feelings of favoritism among team members.
Company details
MAKO Design + Invent
Company bio
Kevin Mako is the Founder and President of MAKO Design + Invent, the pioneer firm for providing world-class end-to-end physical consumer product development tailored to inventors, product startups, and small manufacturers. Est 1999, Mako Design is a 30-person team with offices in Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto, has developed over 1,000 products for clients, and has earned over 30 awards including Red Dot, Inc5000, Entrepreneur360, Indigo Gold, Creative Pool Gold, Best Places to Work, Lux Magazine Best Design Firm in North America, and many others. Kevin lectures at the Masters of Engineering program at Ryerson University, sits on a number of entrepreneurship and education boards, invests in small service-based businesses, and holds the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award designation. Kevin has over 100,000 followers on social media, does keynote speaking all over the world for audiences between 100 and 1,500 people, and is the host of the Product Startup Podcast. In his spare time, Kevin is a loving Father and Husband and is a private pilot, hockey player, and piano player. Mako Design was started in high school, then incorporated in University where Kevin was section class president at Canada’s top business school, The Richard Ivey School of Business (Harvard’s sister school). Kevin then studied overseas at Hong Kong University for supply chain management and manufacturing. After graduating from both Universities, he went into the business full time in 2007 after turning down the pick of the litter job offers. Still, to today, Mako Design has no debt, no financing, and no shareholders - A true grassroots organic startup story.