Posts tagged SMB
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 »
Legal issues to think about for 2012
Jan 19th
by Monica Goyal
The beginning of the year is great time to do a legal check up. Consider the following as you go into the New Year.
Monica Goyal
1. Refresh your will – Revisiting your will, living will and power of attorney on an annual basis could save you or your family heartache down the road. Consider whether there has been any of the following changes in your life this past year: significant changes to the business, birth of a child, death in the family, a divorce, or you bought that something new that is worth bequeathing to someone. Something you may also wasn’t to consider, if you haven’t done so already, is access to electronic assets. Having your passwords to your computer, email, photos, or Facebook account in a document that is accessible to your heirs can save lots of time for them and can be extremely valuable. For example, if there are communications that have to be addressed, bills that are only received electronically that need attending to, or photos on flickr that you want your family to have access to, you should consider including information on how to access these accounts. If you are interested in learning more on how companies will treat your electronic assets on death, take a look at the Terms of Use of Apple, Google, or Yahoo. 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 »
There are more losers than winners with software patents
Dec 8th
by Monica Goyal
Today, it seems to be common rhetoric that if you are a successful software startup, you will eventually be sued. If you have conducted business in this industry for any length of time, you likely know of a company that has become the target of a software patent suit.
Monica Goyal
At times, the persons who come knocking on the door are those, whose only business assets are patents, where they don’t actually make any products. They usually seek some form of royalty from a legitimate business enterprise. Intellectual Ventures, for example, is reported to own 35,000 patents and earned $700M in revenue in royalties in 2010.
Another example can be seen with interactive television programme guides. Gemstar, acquired by Macrovision (now Rovi Corporation), holds the intellectual property rights for numerous interactive television programme guides, effectively controlling how millions of people find their favourite television shows. 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 can’t afford to have IT as bad as Service Canada’s EI system
Nov 11th
By Shane Schick
Mistakes tend to cost time, money or both. When a small mistake means unemployed Canadians face a month’s wait for income they need to live, however, the burden of error falls squarely on the government.
Shane Schick, editor-in-chief, IT World Canada
On Thursday the Globe and Mail reported that if anyone applying for employment insurance (EI) through Service Canada puts a date for their last day of work that doesn’t exactly match the record of employment they got at their last job, “the computer will churn for 28 days in search of a direct match.”
The applicant, meanwhile, is left wondering where their next meal is going to come from, or worse. This is an online system that was launched five years ago and was supposed to improve service delivery. In response, the federal department of Human Resources says more automation at Service Canada will solve the problem. It’s hard to imagine it getting much worse.
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.
