Posts tagged SMBs
Small business confidence deserves closer analysis
Jan 5th
by Shane Schick
When things look bleak, we tend to say that “no news is good news.” When things start looking up, on the other hand, good news is sometimes treated as if it’s not news at all.
Shane Schick, editor-in-chief, IT World Canada
Consider the spate of perfunctory coverage devoted to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) recent Business Barometer Index, which showed more small businesses expressing confidence about their prospects in the months ahead. After some downward trending due to worries about foreign markets, the CFIB reported a return to “near normal” levels, meaning that overall, SMBs expect to see stronger performance for 2012. The mainstream media regurgitated the bare bones of the story, but it’s worth taking a closer look at where the confidence is coming from, and what the remaining challenges are.
Clouds of confusion
Nov 30th
by Elaine Mah
About a year ago, I wrote about cloud computing and how small businesses see the benefits of cloud but struggle with how to capitalize on those advantages.
- Elaine Mah
So fast forward 12 months and the concept of “cloud” is ubiquitous — or is it?
While I don’t think you can turn on the TV, flip through a magazine or read a business journal without seeing something about “the cloud”, earlier this year Eweek* surveyed small businesses in the US and found 71 per cent of respondents hadn’t even heard of cloud computing. Of those that had heard of the cloud, only 26 per cent could actually define it. These numbers surprised me and I don’t think you can ignore them.
At Intel we define cloud computing as services and data residing as shared resources accessible by any authenticated device over the Internet. An easy analogy is to think of these shared resources such as software and information being provided to computers, tablets and smartphones, as a utility, like electricity.
For most small businesses, cloud services tend to be software-based such as customer relationship management tools (CRM) and programs that automate business processes like inventory control and sales forecasting. Read the rest of this entry »
Are you standing between your tech start-up and success?
Mar 31st
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
“Nothing disheartens me more than meeting an entrepreneur in B.C. who says his ambition is to one day conquer the Ontario market,” Anthony Lee, general partner at Altos Ventures and co-founder of theC100, told us in an interview a few months back.
While building a globally competitive company may not be the right objective for everyone, Lee makes a key point. For any venture to succeed, its founders must have a vision that will stretch the boundaries of what they know and challenge what they believe is attainable.
But there is more to this business of entrepreneurship than being able to see, and seize, opportunity. Once a technology innovation worthy of exploitation has been identified, an entrepreneur’s success or failure will depend largely on how ready they are to take counsel and challenge their own assumptions and deeply held beliefs. In other words, are they coachable? Read the rest of this entry »
Will flow-through shares program help finance tech firms?
Mar 12th
During the past three or four decades, Canadian policy makers at both the federal and provincial levels have tried just about every trick in the book to finance technology companies, particularly those that are at an early stage in their development.
In the early 1980s, we had the Scientific Research Tax Credits (SRTCs) that allowed technology companies that were not yet profitable to predict in advance what their R&D expenditures were going to be during a certain year and then effectively sell those expenditures to taxable corporations and individuals for use as tax write-offs. The troubles came about when the companies were asked to verify their expenditure to the tax authorities. Many CEOs and CFOs ended up in jail or spent years dealing with aggressive tax auditors. Read the rest of this entry »
The new risk capital reality: What now?
Feb 18th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In our previous post, we explored the massive changes that have occurred in North America and Europe that have led to a contraction of traditional venture capital investment.
These long-term trends have left early-stage companies in a tight spot. They must become increasingly creative to shorten time to market, become more capital efficient and generally figure out how to do more with less. The cash-burn of years past is no longer an option, if it ever was.
Rise of the super angels
All is not bleak, however. While traditional VCs may have become easily spooked by the prospect of sinking cash into an unproven startup, many angel organizations have stepped up to fill the void. Ronald Weissman, chair of the Software Special Industry Group at one of Silicon Valley’s oldest angel organization, Band of Angels, said many angel organizations have come to act like early-stage VCs. Read the rest of this entry »
The new risk capital reality: What’s happened to VC?
Feb 11th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Sean Parker, the entrepreneur behind Napster and Facebook and himself a venture capital investor, provided a rather gloomy assessment of the VC industry and the future of U.S. innovation in general.
“The risk-reward doesn’t work out in favor of putting money into venture capital anymore,” he said.
And yes, again, to confirm, Parker is himself a VC investor. He went on to say that the contraction of the U.S. venture capital (VC) market means that “innovation could gradually grind to a halt or at least become less effective,” a trend that could serve to erode the ambition and vision of entrepreneurs.
“Ten years ago, venture capitalists would ask the question: Do you want to build a company and flip it or do you want to build a company and IPO it? It’s a trick question. The correct answer was always, ‘I want to build an incredibly valuable stand-alone business and maybe we get bought, maybe we go public but we’re going to build an incredibly valuable company,’” Parker said. “Now it’s actually not clear that that’s the right answer. There’s a lot of venture firms that are clearly interested in building something and selling it either to Facebook, Google, Microsoft.” Read the rest of this entry »
Social game revenues still 30 times less than console games
Jan 25th
Nestor Arellano
Last week, Vancouver-based game studio Propaganda Games laid-off 70 workers after the firm was shut down by parent Disney Interactive Studios. Prior to this, Propaganda already had to let go of 100 people last October when Disney decided to abandon development of a new console game based on its Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Increasingly, big studios have began focusing attention on social games which in the last two years have emerged as yet another segment of online gaming that threatens the reign of packaged and console based entertainment.
The two main factors that make social games attractive to investors, publishers and game developers is their relatively low cost of development and gigantic potential user base. Read the rest of this entry »
A case for ditching cell phone contracts
Dec 7th
The most detested words in the cell phone industry are “cell phone contract”. The word contract conjures up feelings of confinement, frustration and anger to name a few. 
So what do your choices look like if you don’t want to sign your business up on a new contract, should that contract be detested or does it make good financial sense to sign one?
First of all, we need to realize that today’s cell phones or smart phones are more powerful than computers of a few decades ago.
As a result, they aren’t cheap. I once heard my barber refer to buying a big screen TV or a smart phone and somehow the example just put things in perspective. Spending $600 or more to purchase a smart phone out right is a lot of money and if you are purchasing a fleet of devices for your company, certainly a sizable financial investment. Read the rest of this entry »
How professional service firms can become more valuable
Sep 7th
What is your firm’s value proposition? To effectively answer this question, begin by identifying where your firm falls on your industry’s value chain. To understand the changing dynamics of the value chain concept, observe what’s happened to the music business.
Tim Williams
Consumers are still spending roughly the same amount of money on music, but the money isn’t going to the record companies and music stores; it’s going to iTunes. The money in the music business value chain is still there—it just moved.
The same is happening in other rapidly evolving industries. Companies are spending, but they’re spending in new and different areas of the value chain.
Sneak peek: Burstn pics, mobile style
Aug 25th
Picture this: you’ve just snapped some great pictures on your smartphone and want to share them instantly with friends, colleagues, customers, or with your social networks on Twitter and/or Facebook. What’s the fastest and easiest way to do this? Try Burstn them.
Krista Napier
Toronto-based Burstn has launched an app that allows iPhone users (and hopefully soon, at least for my sake, BlackBerry and Android users), the ability to share photos in real time without any hassles around uploading or posting them to a website.
I had a chance to chat with Josh Davey and Dave Senior from Burstn recently. Here’s a sneak peak into our chat: Read the rest of this entry »
