Blogmatic

DemoCampOttawa is back and we are investigating a new venue, unforetunetly we have outgrown theClockTower which only has a capacity of 90. The search for a new location is on. We even have our first demo already signed up, spots go quickly so if you would like to attend or present please sign up.

When 26-May-2008

Where: ?

Time: 6:30pm (Networking), 7:00pm - 9:00pm

cheers,

Ian Graham

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Networking is an important aspect of any business. Doing it right will go a long way toward making your business successful. In my opinion one of the most important aspects of networking is providing referrals to your friends and colleges.

A couple of important points about referrals:

- Make sure the two parties you are hooking up will each benefit
- Provide meaningful connections, do it for the right reasons
- Timing is everything, is now the right time for the two to connect

The great thing about referrals is that if done properly, you have done two friends a favour at the same time. If your friends can come to count on your referrals as valuable then that will go a long way to helping solidify your relationship with that person.

Stephen Covey talks about relationships as being like an emotional bank account. Each time you give you make a deposit in your friends account; each time you take you make a withdrawal. In providing solid referrals you are depositing in two friends accounts at the same time. The natural tendency of your friends will be a desire to return the favour and provide good referrals for you.

Done in a genuine way with the intent of helping your friends referrals are an excellent way to expand your network.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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With the todays news of significant job losses at Dell has inspired me to create this post series. I am an advocate for the LSIF and think it is an important ingrediant in building knowledge based infrastructure. The cancellation of this fund by the provincial government in 2004 has devastated early stage knowledge based businesses in Ontario. Here is a summary of my LSIF post.

Return of the Funding Paradox (Part III)

LSIF - Sourcing

LSIF - What is all the fuss about  

LSIF - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

LSIF - When Bad is Good

LSIF is Beautiful

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I attended a meeting for a local organization a year or two ago where they where having a strategy session. One of the participants went into a bit of a rant regarding well we don’t do this and we don’t do that, … Anyway after a few minutes of this my frustration overcame me and I said “shouldn’t we be discussing what we DO?” Same deal on a blog I read just this week. The story went something like we don’t do this and we didn’t intend to do that, …

Frankly who gives a crap what you “don’t do” focus on what you “do”. Spinning your wheels saying all the things you don’t do is a big waste of energy and counterproductive. When you are explaining your business or idea explain what you do. Really, … who cares what you don’t do.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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The three most important things you should consider when buying real estate are; location, location and location.

The same principle applies to building a business, however the criteria is different. In business the two most important things you must do are; network and network. I came across this little gem on the weekend when I was searching the internet. There was this interview with Terry Mathews where he attributed a large part of his success to two things; networking and networking.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to attend the VC Round Table event. I liked Rick Segal’s approach to funding and respect anyone that prefers the fast NO to a long maybe, although a fast YES is still the preferred option. On that note the words of wisdom with respect to securing funding are that getting a deal in place will require at a minimum 3 months and on average 6 months. The legal aspect of putting a deal in place usually take at least 3 months, and the due diligence process is 1 month. If you are a start-up looking for funding make sure you have enough runway to get to funding take off.

Rick mentioned that the two most common errors made by would be entrepreneurs are; No exit strategy and quitting the day job too early. If you are going to approach Angels or VC for funding make sure you have an exit strategy which could be; IPO, acquisition or merger. Know your way to the door and that the exits are clearly marked. Quitting the day job to early is related to the point in the first paragraph about making sure you have enough runway for take off. 

I have a slightly different opinion than Rick on when you should approach a VC for funding. His advice would be to approach the VC at the napkin drawing stage. My advice would be to make sure your idea is protected in some way before shopping it around too much.

Will have a few more lessons learned in another post soon.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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You may have noticed the lack of Blogmatic posts last week. This is mainly the result of a long to do list for TheCodeFactory which has taken a considerable amount of time last week. On TheCodeFactory note, I have also started to post on TheCodeFactory Blog as well. With only so many hours in a day I will probably be reducing the number of posts to Blogamtic.

On a happier note, I did have the opportunity to attend two great events last week; Rick Segal’s VC Roundtable at the ClockTower and the second in Carleton Universities TIM Lecture series. Both were excellent events and worthy of a couple of blog posts. Will have a write up on the TIM event on TheCodeFactory Blog since it relates to Open Source software.

Tomorrow’s post will be my thoughts and lessons learned from the VC Roundtable.

cheers,

Ian Graham

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I use Google analytics to track stats on my website a very handy tool and one that I would certainly recommend. Recently a Google message appeared asking “would you like to share your web site statistics” or something like that. Then there is a big yellow accept button. I thought what the heck and pressed accept.

About two days later I started to notice hits on my site from this URL: www.keywordspy.com. Keyword spy is a tool for your competitors to track your internet marketing strategies? Is this the sort of company that Google plans to share my keyword information with, it would seem so.

If you are thinking about sharing your keyword information with Google make sure it is in your best interests. How sharing your internet marketing strategies (keywords) with your competitors is a benefit to anyone, other than the competitor, is beyond me. This sharing of information by Google is in my opinion straddling the boundary of ethical behaviour.

I have always held Google in the highest esteem and still do, however, this is the first sign in my humble opinion that as Google grows they will become more like Microsoft (I respect MS too) and start to show cracks in that culture of openness and creativity.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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I enjoyed the movie City Slickers with Jack Palance and Billy Crystal. There are a couple of lines from the movie that I thought were classic.

The first one is where Bill Crystal and Curly are riding along together on the range. Billy Crystal jokingly turns to Curly and says “Have you killed anyone today?”

Curly answers: “The day ain’t over yet”.

The second one is another exchange between Crystal and Curly regarding the meaning of life. Crystal says to Curly something to the effect of what is the meaning of life. In return Curly slowly turns to Crystal and shows him his index finger, “it this”.  Crystal replies “what a finger?”.  Curly goes on to explain that it is up to you to decide what that “one thing” in your life is that is most important to you. He adds it’s different for everyone and you are the one who has to decide, if you can’t figure it out no one is going to be able to explain it to you.

There is some wisdom in Curly’s logic although I believe that your meaning in life is probably made up of many fingers rather than just one.

Cheers and have a great weekend,
Ian Graham

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Certain industries are much slower than others to adapt to technology. My specific example for your perusal today is the payment system industry. You know that industry that provides credit and debit terminals for retailers and anyone who needs them. This industry has evolved from the major banks in Canada and there are a very limited number of companies to choose from. In terms of web presence this is an industry devoid of any sort of web savyness at all, in fact you might want to refer to it as being a web savant; really good as businesses, but real idiots at harnessing the power of the internet.

In trying to find companies that provide payment systems I started in my usual way with Googling a few search terms. I did find one company with an OK website that had used Google Adwords to generate the lead. Logged onto their site, filled out a long clunky form to get in contact and then nothing, no reply no follow up. Called their customer service number and the person indicated that they would follow up with me within 1 business day, 21 business days later  … nothing. The sad part about all of this is that the apparent technology leaders in the field were poorly using technology at best. The other companies that I did find on the web were manufacturers and had abysmal sites that looked like something the local high school class might have done in an introductory HTML course, but wait, … this comparison actually does a disservice to the high school students.

I finally did find a couple of companies in of all places the yellow pages. Not sure if you have used the yellow pages lately but, what a disaster. I predict a total collapse of yellow pages ad revenue within the next 5 years. The Yellow Pages web presence takes a horrible physical presence and uses the web to make it even worse, I digress. It takes a great deal of persistence to find the right category for what you are looking for. After half a dozen categories I did finally find my two companies. Called both, left a voice mail at one, call still not returned 2 business days later and chatted with a very helpful rep at the other.
Instead of using the web to generate leads these companies are creating lead deterrents.  I guess when there are only half a dozen choices and the majority of your business is referrals from the bank you don’t need a solid web presence and this is reflected in what the payment system companies provide in terms of Internet enabled lead generation.

Certainly room for improvement here.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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