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It has been a while since I have done a product lifecycle post and some of the tweaks Microsoft has made to Office 2007 have inspired this post. From the user perspective the inspiration is one of frustration and how could they do this to the community. Putting on my business 101 cap the forcing users to upgrade tack is brilliant or is it?

In Office 2007 Microsoft has removed the “Save As” function from what used to be the file menu. As a user I find this totally annoying because I used to use “Save As” all the time when copy documents. The lack of a “Save As function has caused me, as a user, some grief. The Control key work around is as follows:

Control A – Selects All
Control C – Copies all the files
Control N – Opens a NEW document
Control V – Pastes the contents
Control S – Saves the document 
These five control keys form a “Save As” work around. Most Annoying.

Now let us put on our Microsoft Product Manager hat. I managed a mature product line at Alcatel (equivalent to an MS Windows or Office) and one of the greatest challenges you had was getting customers to do anything new or more specifically change.  Removing the “save as” function is one way for Microsoft to help, in a forceful kind of way, migrate their customers to a newer release. I have sent out a couple of documents today that people with Office 2003 could not read because they were in 2007 format. When you try to save the files in a format that 2003 can read it is difficult. Eventually what will happen is the majority of users will be on Office 2007 and the 2003 users will essentially be forced to migrate. The removal of the “Save AS” function and a couple of other tweaks are purposely designed to migrate users to the newer releases.
Careless oversight doomed to failure or engineered migration brilliance that will accelerate revenue.
Cheers,
Ian Graham
PS, Google does not show up as a spelling mistake in Office 2007!

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On the other side of the coin from my favorite MAC and PC guy there are two ads (somewhat older) that I found totally abysmal.

- The original Vonage TV ads
- I like to Cheetah

The Vonage ads in Canada were a disaster and are one of my two top picks because they were totally off target. They were speaking techese to a mainstream market with cartoon characters making V’s with their fingers and saying VoIP. What a wasted campaign with Vonages revenues speaking to the effectiveness of the ads.

However, the all time worst ad award has to go to Cheetah energy drink. You know the one with the CEO and Ben Johnson on an interview show with Ben saying “I like to Cheetah”. What were they thinking when they created this ad and what sort of brand were they trying to build? We may never know and probably don’t want to. This is the worst ad because it is so bad in so many ways.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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I enjoy critiquing ads on TV because it is a whole lot of fun and commercials are often the best part of TV.

My all time favourite ads right now are the Mac and PC guy ads being run on TV by Apple. In my opinion these ads are on target, brilliantly done and some of the best on air right now. I have a good chuckle every time I see a new ad. It will be interesting to see if Apple can gain back some of that PC market share. As a side note I see many Apple computers in funky and trendy TV shows and also out’n’about at local coffee shops.

Interesting side note. My son bought me a new computer on the weekend loaded mith Microsoft Vista. This replaced the vintage home machine that I had been using for the past 8 years on Windows 98. Getting the new machine up, running, files transfered and networked was actually reasonably straight forward. I even kind of like Vista, always a pain to learn something new, but I must say Vista is quite intuitive.

Anyway my son and his friend were there chatting as we downloaded and configured. We talked about how great the MAC – PC ads were. I remarked, yes those ads are great. My sons friend replied yes, but you bought a PC anyway.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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This is the third post in the “Funding Paradox” series.

I have put on my pondering toque over the weekend to apply some thought to the Funding Paradox and here is what I have come up with. If the formula for funding is:

Great Idea + Good Business Plan + Available Funding = SUCCESSFUL FUNDING

I believe that the current Ottawa funding formula is based on the following:

Great Idea + Bad Business Plan + Available Funding = NO FUNDING

There are a lot of great ideas and there is funding if you know where to look and how to articulate your idea. The problem then is that many of the great ideas have wrapped around them insufficient due diligence or a bad business plan. This series of observations is consistent with most if not all of the perspectives presented to date.

What gives with the bad business plans? Well .. I think that there are a number of factors at work here. First and foremost is the entrepreneurs (particularly those technically inclined individuals) ability to speak only one language. Many Entrepreneurs speak only techese. There is nothing wrong with speaking techese, however, most investors, customers and banks have their own language. If you pitch to an investor speaking techese and they want to hear angelese or investorese the mismatch will come across as these guys have a bad business plan and cannot articulate their idea.

Here are some questions to ask yourself in the pursuit of funding.

Do I really need funding? Why do you need the money and how are you going to use it. Would your time be better spent pursuing customers and boot strapping.

Assuming you do really need funding.  Are you being turned down for funding because of the idea or because of your ability to articulate the idea? If the people you are pitching to understand the idea and just aren’t interested you might want to think about a new idea. If the people you are pitching to do not understand the idea, why is that?

The point of this post is that you need to be able to speak to your audience in their native language not yours. Are you capable and comfortable speaking in the language of your audience? You need to do an honest assessment of your abilities. If you are pitching to an investor can you frame the idea in a way that they understand it? If the answer is no you may want to think about finding someone that can speak the language to help you prepare your due diligence.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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We are making progress on the Code Factory and lining up a number of ducks. In fact one of the ducks we are trying to line up is to quantify the level of interest from the community.

Therefore we have drafted a MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) that can serve as an expression of interest. If you are considering trying out The Code Factory have a look at the MOU and send back to me indicating how you would like to participate. It is that simple.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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My post from last week introduced the “Funding Paradox” concept. The Funding Paradox is where the investment community (in Ottawa, possibly broader) believes that there are very few good business plans worth funding and plenty of money available, while the entrepreneur or start-up perspective is that there are many great ideas and few sources of funding.

If you break the paradox down into its components what you have is:

- ideas
- business plans
- funding

The formula for funding is:

Good Idea + Good Business Plan + Available Capital = Funding

There are many more factors and the formula has plenty of derivatives, but one could assume that this is the foundation formula for funding. Lets start with some context setting to get understand the definitions of the formula.

Good ideas
I believe there are plenty of good ideas out there in fact there are quite a few that have shown up at democamp and a number have received funding.

Business Plan
David Luxton mentioned the relatively few good business plans at “the Buddy why should I give you a million” event. A business plan is much more than 5 - 50 pages that list your marketing plan, financials and such. A business plan is really the due diligence process that the entrepreneurs and start-ups go through to articulate their idea and pitch the concept.

Available Capital
Ready sources of cash available to fund a venture or start-up.

Funding
This is the reward at the end of the due diligence (business plan) process. I tend to agree with the investment panel that there is funding out there to be had but you need to know where to look. I also believe that the funds that are out there are much more challenging to secure and locate than because of the rigor that investors are currently applying.

Therefore one might question that if there are lots of good ideas and that funding is available then why are there so few deals being funded? My next post will delve a little deeper into the topic.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Is that Mark Knopfler playing Industrial Disease I hear in the background? You know the one with the line about “two men say their Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”

I am beginning to think that Ottawa is a city of paradoxes. Last night at the “Buddy why should I give you a million” event the funding paradox emerged.

What is this “Funding Paradox” you speak of?

The funding paradox is made up of two opposite points of view, that of the investment community and that of potential entrepreneurs. The investment community perspective is that there is plenty of money available and very few good business plans worth investing in. The entrepreneur’s point of view is that there are plenty of great ideas worth funding and very little money available. Interesting.

If you think of a fundable opportunity it is probably made of two components; an idea and a business plan. Here is a summary of how the opportunity combinations play out.

Good Idea + Good Business Plan
These are the opportunities that are being funded today. Judging by the announced funding in town this is a rare combination.

Good Idea + Bad Business Plan
There are likely a considerable number of these, which could get funding with the appropriate due diligence and a good plan.

Bad Idea + Good Business Plan
I will speculate that there were a number of these opportunities funded just prior to and after the bubble burst as everyone was caught up in a state of irrational exuberance. The symptom is exits that fail to appear and the result is VC funds tied up waiting for IPO that may or may not appear.

Bad Idea and Bad Business Plan
Hopefully Darwin is in effect and the demise of these opportunities plays out their natural course.

So what does all this mean?

I will have some thoughts for my next post.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Hats off to the organizers and sponsors of the 2007 Technology Venture Challenge. What a great event!!

I was super impressed with the quality of the teams that presented their ideas on Monday night. A dedicated audience of about 150 passed on the first two periods of the Sens versus Buffalo game to attend and it was well worth it.

The first team to present was ARPOM. This team had an idea for a revolutionary insulin pump that used natural materials to deliver insulin to the patient. The materials would be in the blood stream and work in much the same way as the bodies natural insulin system. The idea was well thought out and presented and certainly a contender for the $10,000 first place prize.

The Second team to present was Lock and Roll SoCCOM. This was in my opinion (and that of the judges as well because they won) the most polished and well thought out idea. In fact the team was already well on their way to succeeding and had received their friends and family rounds, but not from friends and family sources. Their product is a revolutionary new wireless device used for measuring radiation dosage during cancer treatments. The product also has several other applications. Their presentation flowed well and the team was able to answer the questions that the judges provided with solid responses.

The third team to present was Gloriel. This team seemed to have a ways to go to catch up to the other two entrants in my opinion. Their product was a skin whitening cream to be marketed in other parts of the world. I found the team’s market research was very well done and was surprised to learn that skin-whitening products had such a broad appeal and multi-billion dollar market. The team stumbled a bit when asked a very fundamental question from the judges regarding how they planned to license their technology. Neat idea and well researched market, but the execution plan needs some work.

All in all a great event. These presentations are all knowledge based and from a variety of different sources; medical, engineering and biology, very cool. I would say that judging by the size of the markets involved all entrants would also be VC fundable if they opted to go that way.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message.”

I must admit that I never did quite get what McLuhan was talking about. There are two stories, sayings, or what have you that have always troubled me. “The medium is the message” is one and the story of the Prodigal Son from the bible is another. More on the prodigal son at a later date, maybe…

Back to “the medium is the message”. In my linear brain the medium and the message are two different yet interrelated things. Saying the medium is the message in my point of view is wrong. The medium isn’t the message merely the conduit for the message to the intended audience. The message is your content and call to action that is carried over the medium. How can you possibly say the two are the same?

Marketing or at least good marketing is all about matching the message to the medium and vice versa. For example for a brand new widget that appeals to the early adopter crowd you would advertise in specialty and nerdy magazines that early adopters read. If you wanted to advertise to upwardly mobile senior executives an ad in the airline magazine that has a life of one month in the in flight pocket in the back of the seat of an airplane is a good choice. There are all kinds of ways to match medium and message.

The medium, however, is NOT the message.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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One of the top “to do’s” on our list when starting up The Code Factory was to find a board of advisors. Thus far I think we have been very successful in this department. We have an experienced team of 4 very successful Ottawa entrepreneurs on board and are in discussions with two others. Eventually we hope to have a board of from 7 - 9 at the most. In the short term we will have a board of 5 growing to 9 when circumstance warrants.

The number of people on the board is very important. Some organizations have boards with 20 - 25 advisors. Personally I question how valuable a board of that size would be. You would never reach consensus and I suspect many of the advisors would not be fully engaged. A larger board may be of value to certain charities and not for profits but in my opinion a large board is not well suited to a for profit organization.

A smaller board of 5 - 9 in my opinion is ideal. The board of advisors would actually be able to know one another and probably be more committed to the undertaking because they have a direct and vested interest in the project.

The purpose of the board of advisors is multi-faceted:

- First and foremost we wanted subject matter experts,
- Second we wanted experienced successful team to add to our credibility,
- Finally and probably most importantly we wanted a team that were not afraid to offer their frank and honest expertise when asked for advice.

The composition of the board of advisors is also important. We were aiming for diversity in terms of expertise when we approached our advisors. Our plan was to have a mix of skills that included legal, technology, business and investment expertise. Our board encompasses all these areas of domain expertise.

We hope to have our board of advisors finalized in the next two weeks and a blog post shortly afterwards.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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