He was explaining why the group of several dozen of us were snugly gathered at the Queen's University's EMBA downtown facility, on a grey Wednesday morning in late November.
"These guys are being trained to be executives," said the man behind Ottawa's Lead To Win program, administered by Ontario's Talent First Network. The current phase of the program aims to guide a select group of fledgling technology companies through the initial development stages.
It's also meant to generate at least six knowledge-based jobs within each successful company within three years.
"For that, you have to be able to create a vision of the future and make sure everyone understands the vision's value," he said to the group. "So for six days we've forced participants to define what the value of what they're doing really is, for both customers and partners.
"We beat them to death," Mr. Bailetti happily continued. "We're teaching the basics of leadership skills."
Today was day six of the November session, and it showed. A group of dozens of applicants had already been carved down to a little more than 30 founders, most of whom sat and twitched at the back of the room. Many seemed relatively calm, though, considering the magnitude of the task facing them.
"It's been a rough week," reflected one of the participants, who asked not to be named, during a coffee break. "We've essentially taken an entire MBA in five days."
But the amount of blood, sweat and tears already shed by participants mattered little on this day. We were there to assess the business merits of each and were instructed to be brutal, if necessary.
We were soon broken up into six review groups and led to tiny rooms, where the entrepreneurs would soon do the pitching. It was all so exciting. I felt like a venture capitalist – minus the capital, but still.
My review group consisted of P2Peak's Ella Mar, Robert Wood from the angel investment outfit Purple Angels and Carleton University's David Hudson, a former Nortelite who now teaches in the school's MBA program.
"They're trying to put a dose of reality into (the participants), because it's very hard to get money right now," Mr. Wood explained to me afterward. "But I think this is really an important service for a lot of people, even though the death rate will probably be about 90 per cent.
"But if even around 10 per cent succeed, that's a great success rate."
Ms. Mar agreed. "This really is leveraging a lot of the experience within Ottawa's tech community," she said, adding most reviewers had already learned painful business lessons they could no doubt pass on to their youthful brethren.
"And I looked around as (Mr. Bailetti) was talking, and I couldn't help but notice how the participants were taking it all in. They were absorbing everything, like sponges."
Each company was graded on customer value, competitiveness, partner value, potential job creation, its financial plan, its foundation for future growth in the region and the strength of its core team. Most founders were in markets such as software, cloud services or content.
Reviewers then gave each founder a green, yellow or red light, depending on how ready they were for the next step. And while reviewers agreed many pitches weren't yet investment-ready – indeed, some business plans were only a few weeks old – others were quite the opposite, making for a heady mix of companies at various life stages.
But for Mr. Bailetti, half the battle was about leadership. "Many of the participants come from leadership positions inside a big company," he said. "And that's OK, but that's very different from being a business or entrepreneurial leader.
"So they have to mutate into business leaders."
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LEAD TO WIN PHASE III, BY THE NUMBERS:
101: Total number of founders (in 71 companies)
39: Number of founders from the May-June session
27: Number of founders from the July-August session
35: Number of founders from November session
