-
Subscribe
-
Recent Posts
- Reflecting on 2012 and looking forward to the year ahead
- Facebook’s inability to stay focused and be original
- Achieving exponential user growth: Marketing in the new age
- Twitter’s walls are going up! And soon.
- Technology Trends and Disruptions in 2012
- The Social Enterprise is here in full force! Profiling 3 Toronto startups in the space
- Reminder on why Business Blogging is essential
- The iPad2 and my Top 5 native iPad apps
Archives
Categories
Category Archives: Startups
Facebook’s inability to stay focused and be original
As the Randi Zuckerberg story continues to blow up on the interwebs, I suddenly realized that in fact the bigger story lay in that Facebook was about the release a massive feature/ app called Poke. I say massive – because … 
Posted in Media, Social, Startups
Tagged facebook, mark zuckerberg, poke, randi zuckerberg, snapchat, social software, startup
Leave a comment
Achieving exponential user growth: Marketing in the new age
When I first read Andrew Chen’s essay on how the VP of Marketing role is changing into a role best described as ‘Growth Hacker’, I was sold after the first paragraph. While I disagree with some parts of his post …
Posted in Marketing, Product, Startups
Tagged AirBnB, APIs, Craigslist, facebook, go to market strategy, growth hacker, startup, user growth, VP Marketing
1 Comment
Technology Trends and Disruptions in 2012
In this video blog post I talk about technology trends and disruptions I see coming in 2012. Some key themes include — enterprise software making a comeback, how there is a true globalization of startups and VC money, how social is changing for the better and lastly how reading and education are being disrupted.
Whats funny though is that I recorded this video over the weekend and Apple’s iBooks 2.0 and iTunes University announcements came out on Jan 19th (yesterday) and focused exactly on the last point I make — about education, learning and reading needing to be disrupted.
In any case, you must watch the recorded live stream of the Apple educational event if you haven’t already. Do it for your kids if not for yourself, because it will be their new reality very soon.
In a nutshell, Apple is first in line (and likely soon to become the leader) to completely changing the face of education by allowing students to access textbooks on their iPad, textbooks that are a lot more fun, interactive and engaging. And probably more impactful, by partnerning up with more schools than ever to release even more free classes on iTunes University from leading educational institutes like Stanford, Harvard, MIT etc. These free classes while intended for students and teachers in those schools and programs, can also be accesses for free by anybody with an iTunes account.
Almost unbelievable. I mean who wouldn’t want to take a 2 hour class at Stanford, for FREE, while sitting in their living room, right?
Posted in Funding, Innovation, Media, Social, Startups
Tagged apple, deal flow, dealflow, disrupt, education, enterprise software, iBooks, iTunes U, learning, pay it forward, reading, social media, startups, technology, trends, venture capital
3 Comments
The Social Enterprise is here in full force! Profiling 3 Toronto startups in the space
Weaving a social context into your business is quickly becoming a prerequisite for success.
Fortune 500 companies are already investing in what is now known as the ‘Social Enterprise’, wherein employees easily collaborate with one another and use social media to connect with partners and customers like never before.
The Social Enterprise promises to connect companies with their customers and employees in a whole new way. In this post, I talk about what it means for a business to be social.
I also profile three Toronto startups – Viafoura, realSociable and Rypple – that are shaping the Social Enterprise pie, one slice at a time.
There are many aspects of a business that social enterprise technology can serve, and numerous software companies have emerged in the last few years to solve these problems.
Salesforce.com, one of the front-runners in bringing Social Enterprise technology to its clients, believes that:
85% of companies use social media to engage customers
64% of users are more likely to purchase from a company that helps them via social media
27% of companies active in social media report higher profit margins
Posted in Profiles, Social, Startups
Tagged founders, innovation, social enterprise, startups, Toronto
6 Comments
The Emotional Aspects of ‘Life in a Startup’
Sure, there’s all the obvious stuff about how you won’t get any sleep when you are working on a startup, how you might end up neglecting your family, friends, girlfriend or boyfriend, how you will need to develop an unimaginable tolerance for risk, how you will have to learn to live in a shoebox or worse – with your co-founder, only to work through nights while eating left over pizza slices… and many more along the same lines.
Even though we know all this; it is always the emotional aspect of startup entrepreneurship that always gets us.
Learning to deal with this early on and being prepared for some low-blows while you build, iterate and make connections, will help you get there faster while saving you some stressful moments. Hopefully.
Posted in Funding, Innovation, Marketing, Startups
6 Comments
Response to Robert Scoble’s post on Angry Birds as the next Identity player
This is a video response to Robert Scoble’s recent blog post on how Angry Birds could be the next major identity player.
Watch and let me know if you agree or disagree.
Oh by the way, mad props to Kik Messenger in advance. I’ve talked about them a little in this video as well.
Creativity and Innovation Go Hand in Hand
What do creativity, music and innovation have in common?
I recently watched a TED talk by researcher and musician Charles Limb, who conducted a bunch of experiments on jazz musicians and rappers – highly creative people – to see if the functional MRI scans of their brain activity was similar. He wanted to try and determine (and tap into) the secrets of the creative mind.
Google Whale Swallows Up Several Nifty Companies
A running list of all the companies acquired by Google in 2010. techkik describes the amount of each acquisition and Google’s rationale behind it.
Posted in Innovation, Startups
Tagged aardvark, blindtype, bumptop, google, Google acquisitions, jambool, metaweb, slide, socialdeck, zetawire
9 Comments
Discover People On Your Commute with Submate!
As the name may suggest, Submate is an application that allows you to discover and connect with new people as well as find fun things to do in your areas, before and after your commute. Currently launched in New York, …
Groupon rejects Google’s hand in marriage and shuns $6 Billion
Google has quietly slipped from being the #1 most visited site in the world to handing Facebook the throne. Twitter isn’t far behind either. Today it is #2 most searched site and Google is panicking. It has already struggled for …