Posts tagged ITB
Canada lags behind U.S. in supporting small businesses
Feb 10th
by Christine Wong
We Canadians tend to get our backs up when people assume we’re exactly the same as Americans, but with different accents, eh?
For proof of just how different we are, take a look at how the two countries are using legislation to support startups.
Christine Wong
In the U.S., President Barack Obama is making his Startup America initiative a centerpiece of his campaign. Hit with charges that he hasn’t done enough to get the U.S. out of its economic sinkhole, he’s flogging the following legislative changes under the Startup America banner in the hope of winning a second term: Read the rest of this entry »
Small biz acquisition as a tech talent raid strategy
Feb 7th
by Nestor E. Arellano
There’s usually a lot of media hoopla, happy dances and high fives following announcements of a big biz acquisition of a promising tech industry startup.
The general perception is that a company that has struggled to develop its product and get it to market is finally getting the recognition, backing and mega bucks it deserves to get its game to the next level. In many cases, the reality is a business to which an entrepreneur had poured his heart and soul to, is most likely being closed down.
For many large conglomerates acquisition is not so much about getting its hands on technology as it is about a tech talent grab.
Nestor Arellano
Take the case of Summify, the Vancouver-based social summarizing tool purchased by Twitter last month. Summify is cool. It connected all your social networking feeds such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Then it automatically summarizes which content and updates are most relevant to you.
When Twitter bought the company they actually bought the team behind it. Co-founders Mircea Pasoi and Christian Strat and three engineers were reported to be on their way to San Franciscoto work at Twitter’s head office. Read the rest of this entry »
Organizing your home office: Staying screen savvy
Feb 7th
by Clare Kumar
Whether you work with a laptop or desktop, interaction with the screen is an important part of workstation safety.
Clare Kumar
Avoid neck strain by keeping your neck in a neutral position by having the top of the monitor no higher than your eyes. There is some evidence that having the monitor at slightly lower levels provides more comfort. Read the rest of this entry »
Canadian startups cashing chips way too early?
Jan 25th
by Christine Wong
Assessing the debris of the Research in Motiondebacle – longtime co-CEOs swept aside, stock price in shambles, failed PlayBook launch and customer confidence rocked by service outages – it’s easy to forget this fallen giant was once a Canadian IT startup.
Christine Wong
While founder Mike Lazaridis and his former co-CEO Jim Balsillie took heat for occupying the top jobs at RIM for far too long (27 and 19 years respectively), today’s startup founders seem to be hanging up their entrepreneur’s hats way earlier. There are no outlets that officially track tech startup M&A deals. But according to an unofficial count by Techvibes, there were 35 Canadian startups acquired in 2011, up from 27 in 2010.
Why are so many Canadian tech startups cashing in their chips early instead of soldiering on to grow and develop their companies into the next RIM (pre-meltdown, of course)? Read the rest of this entry »
2011 showed us what Canadian startups are really made of
Dec 23rd
by Christine Wong
Forgive me for stealing from Charles Dickens but it is the holiday season after all: was 2011 the best of times or the worst of times for startups?
- Christine Wong
There were some incredible highs and lows for tech entrepreneurs this year.
On the positive side, there were numerous Canadian startups (34 according to an informal count by Techvibes.com) that made successful exits through being acquired: Rypple, Radian6 (both by Salesforce.com), Flock, Five Mobile (both by Zynga), PostRank (by Google) and Back Type (by Twitter).
One of those deals even involved a resurrection of sorts (okay, now I’m leaving the Christmas motif and veering into Easter territory) as Sprouter, just weeks after declaring it was shutting down due to lack of capital, was snapped up by Postmedia Network Inc. Read the rest of this entry »
Why do startups hate agreements?
Dec 19th
by Monica Goyal
I recently considered entering a business relationship with a startup. These conversations always seem to end with the same awkwardness around signing an agreement. My response, as always, was: I’ll certainly look it over; sometimes I might suggest a revision, and then I may sign it.
Monica Goyal
For some reason, this attention to contracts surprises some. It’s as if contracts are seen as a necessary evil, a nice to have, rather than an important part of solid business partnerships. I totally understand. Most new businesses are most concerned with becoming profitable as quickly as possible, not spending a lot time revising contracts. Read the rest of this entry »
How HoHoTO turned crowdsourcing into a cause
Dec 14th
By Shane Schick
Startups know what it means to be hungry. They tend to be launched by people who work extremely hard for what are sometimes small dividends, at least initially. They have to be very efficient with their expenses and other resources. They know they need to lean on each other for support occasionally, just to survive. They still have it a lot better than the many people in Toronto who go hungry every day — not hungry for success but for actual food. That’s probably why so many of them contribute to HohoTO.
Although it’s a holiday fundraiser rather than an actual company, after three years HoHoTO.ca already looks like more of a well-oiled machine than many other young Toronto tech firms vying for investors and customers. Launched by a group of friends in the local IT scene to help the Daily Bread Food Bank through the Christmas season, the project grew large part through word-of-Web, with the efforts of bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users tapping into their networks to solicit donations, team members or both. This year’s event will take place on Thursday, Dec. 15 at the Mod Club on College Street. ITBusiness.ca is proud to be among the many sponsors. Read the rest of this entry »
Why ‘Small Business Saturday’ would make no sense
Dec 1st
If Canadian small and medium-sized businesses really think that having a day dedicated to them will boost sales, they must worry about competing with Santa Claus for revenue, too.
Shane Schick, editor-in-chief, IT World Canada
The hysteria around Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping periods in the U.S. calendar, has been rivaled only the increased attention paid to so-called Cyber Monday, when online retail also reaches an American Thanksgiving-induced fever pitch. In both cases, it’s the Wal-marts and other giants of the shopping industry that seem to benefit the most. SMBs, often independently operated and unable to compete with the steep margin discounts offered by the big box stores, don’t necessarily see this particular rising tide as lifting all boats. That’s the rationale for “Small Business Saturday,” one of the more desperate marketing ploys I’ve come across in a long time. Read the rest of this entry »
SMBs actually hate social media
Nov 11th
Christine Wong
by Christine Wong
Time for a social media reality check, kids.
The myth: All companies are happily, constantly tweeting, posting and linking up a storm on social media, to their hearts’ delight and their bottom lines’ benefit.
The truth: … not so much.
The reality, based on a few new studies and a roomful of collective gaspers (I’ll get to them later), is that many SMBseither still haven’t jumped wholeheartedly onto the social media train – or the ones that have are struggling with how to use, manage and afford it.
Exhibit A: a surprising 49 per cent – yes, that’s half – of SMBs who responded to our ITB/Dell State of the Canadian SMB survey last year said they weren’t even using social media at all in their businesses. When we asked them why in this year’s survey, the top reason (cited by 35 per cent) was lack of time and resources. Another 16 per cent say they figure it’s just not worth investing in. Read the rest of this entry »
Who needs a Quad-Core mobile device for work?
Nov 10th
by Joseph Fieber
Nvidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core processor powers many of the phones and tablets on the market, and it’s similar to the one found in Apple’s iPad 2. That could change soon, as Nvidia has announced its Tegra 3 quad-core processor, which makes its debut in Asustek Computer’s Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet. Generally, more is better, but does your company really need a quad-core mobile device?
Eee Pad Transformer Prime
The specs
With a design based on the ARM Cortex-A9 processor, the Tegra 3, code-named “Project Kal-El”, boosts by up to three times the graphics performance and five times the overall performance of its Tegra 2 predecessor. The graphics boost is largely due to a 12-core Nvidia GeForce GPU, which lends itself to dynamic rendering of textures and lighting in high-resolution 3D environments, and also makes possible 1080p high-profile video at 40 Mbps. Running at up to 1.3GHz, the extra horsepower comes primarily from the additional two cores, but is also helped by improving the memory bandwidth by three times and doubling the speed of the image signal processor.
