Loc: Gatineau · Ottawa · Montréal
Role: Partner, Prosomo
Exp: 35+ yrs
Lang: EN / FR

Yves Besner

Over 35 years in marketing, mergers and acquisitions. Today, as a partner at Prosomo and founder of X-15 Copilot, I help entrepreneurs take their business to the next level.

Partner, Prosomo

Marketing, technology, finance and human resources under one roof. Over 100 full-time staff, in both official languages.

Founder, X-15 Copilot

The options trading platform I built for myself first, now open to Canadian traders.

My passion: flying

Airplanes and helicopters. A cockpit runs on checklists and discipline. So does a business that lasts.

I started at 19 and never really stopped

I grew up on a dairy farm in Eastern Ontario, where I was directing people twice my age before I was old enough to drive. That is where I learned what a decision actually costs.

Since then I have built and sold businesses, including one of Ottawa's top digital marketing agencies, which I led for over 8 years before selling it and helping merge the two cultures together.

What I do now comes out of all of that. Not theory. The things I wish someone had told me while I was in the middle of it.

Read the whole story

Yves Besner at the Prosomo offices in Gatineau

Partner at Prosomo

Prosomo is a bilingual firm with offices in Gatineau, Ottawa and Montreal, and one of the biggest marketing agencies in Eastern Ontario. Over 100 full-time staff bring marketing, technology, finance and human resources together under one roof — an unusual combination in Canada, and the reason it works.

Becoming a partner changed what I can offer. For most of my career, advice was where my involvement ended: I could tell you what to fix, then leave you to find someone to fix it. Now the strategy and the team that executes it sit in the same building. When a business needs a marketing plan, a CFO, a developer and an HR structure, that is not four vendors and four invoices anymore.

My role is the part I have always been best at: sitting with an owner, working out what is actually wrong, and being honest about it.

How I work with owners

Mach 6.7

Set by the North American X-15 in 1967. Nearly sixty years later, no crewed aircraft has beaten it. That is the standard the name refers to.

X-15 Copilot

I have traded options for over a decade. Every product I looked at wanted to sell me signals — someone else's conviction, delivered by text message, with no way to tell whether it was working.

So I built the opposite, for myself: a screener that finds defined setups instead of hunches, rules with gates that stop me entering a trade before the conditions are actually met, and a journal honest enough to show me when I was the problem. Then a full training curriculum, because I do not think anyone should be trading an instrument they cannot explain.

It is built for Canadians specifically — TFSA, RRSP and margin accounts, and straight comparisons of Canadian brokers, rather than a US platform with Canada bolted on at the end.

X-15 Copilot Visit x-15.ca

What people say

Yves and the Prosomo team were amazing at explaining thoroughly the details that would make a marketing strategy successful. He makes his clients feel understood and is always willing to work with them through any situation.
Graham Denomme, Project Manager, Business Development, First General Ottawa

Yves combines exemplary professionalism with marketing and business expertise well out of the ordinary. His sharp sense for market opportunities, together with his ability to turn ideas into concrete strategies, makes him an invaluable asset to any team or project.
Alan Horic, CEO & Business Strategist, Prosomo

Yves' wisdom and experience have made me a better and stronger CEO.
Thomas Poulin, CEO, Rank Up Academy

Yves has brought our brand and marketing to another level.
Patrick Richardson, CEO, Select Aviation