By Francis Moran
Notwithstanding that I have an undergraduate degree in public relations, have worked in the industry for a good chunk of my adult life, and for nearly 14 years have operated a PR agency, I have never held the public relations business in terribly high regard.
My dim opinion of many PR practitioners is all the more acutely refined when I look at agencies.
Most PR agencies follow a well-established, widely accepted and tragically flawed business model. They are shaped like pyramids — and yes, any allusion to Ponzi schemes you might think I am making is wholly deliberate. At the top of the pyramid you generally find one or a few experienced, generally well-connected and usually well-rewarded agency owners or executives. Then the model drops rather swiftly through middle ranks to a thick layer at the bottom almost always comprised of thinly experienced and poorly paid youngsters who do virtually all the work. The top layer is all a prospect sees before retaining the agency; the bottom layer is pretty much all the client experiences once the retainer agreement has been signed.
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By Francis Moran
When the Canadian federal government announced in its April budget that it would be kicking up $400 million to help increase private sector investments in early-stage risk capital and to support the creation of large-scale venture capital funds led by the private sector, I figured it wouldn’t take long before someone stepped up to tell the feds what to do with the three quarters of that pot of money that wasn’t earmarked for the Business Development Bank of Canada.
First past the post with its recommendation was the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, or CATA Alliance, which this past week issued a well-reasoned report that examined and rejected three possible models for doling out the new money before making the case for Canada adopting what has generally become known as the Israeli, or “Yozma-inspired,” approach. The model would see the BDC — which is essentially the government’s own venture capital arm anyway — manage a competitive RFP process to select Canadian or international VC firms, or groups of firms, that would act as general partners for new funds. Those GPs would then recruit additional limited partners who would match or better the government’s contribution to create new funds of at least $200 million each.
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This is the seventh article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Alexandra Reid
Last time we checked in with Screenreach, the company was dealing with issues at the Apple application store to launch the new version of its Screach application. After coordinating efforts with external organizations and working through the problems at hand, the team managed to push through to launch. Following in the wake of this recent achievement, the team launched Screach’s sister product, Screach TV, at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May. CEO Paul Rawlings explains what he and Chief Strategy Officer David Weinfeld did at the event to gain favour with investors and media.
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By Francis Moran
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to facilitate a group discussion on the marketing of university technology transfer offices at a forum organised by the Technology Transfer Partnerships. The forum was held in conjunction with the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2012 conference in Toronto. It was my first time at the OCE Discovery conference, and I was hugely impressed by the calibre of the presentations, the far-larger-than-expected scope of the exhibition and the superb opportunity for networking. It was a very busy two days.
The keynote speaker at the TTF forum, though, gave one of the more interesting and provocative sessions. Melba Kurman is a consultant, author and speaker who spends most of her time thinking about how universities can better commercialise their technology. I loved her presentation because it challenged and ultimately rejected the notion that Canadian universities are doing a much poorer job at commercialisation than their counterparts in the United States. As I have written before, I am utterly tired of the hackneyed tropes that Canadians don’t innovate as well as Americans, don’t take risks like Americans, and aren’t as successful as Americans. Kurman had me hooked at the very outset of her presentation when she suggested that an American lens is the wrong perspective through which to view what’s happening on Canadian campuses. Canada is doing its own thing, Kurman said, and doing it rather well.
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By Francis Moran
My day yesterday? Twelve straight hours of startups, speakers, schmoozing and social media as I took in both FounderFuel’s second demo day and The C100’s AccelerateMTL. With what I am sure was more than a wee bit of coordination, one event followed the other in the beautiful and historic Monument-National theatre building at the very heart of this bustling city. The juxtaposition of a 120-year-old 
building with the youth and energy of the startup entrepreneurs was not the least bit jarring, although the canned pre-event PA announcement asking us all to turn off our pagers and cell phones was clearly meant far more for a theatre-going audience than for this crowd bent on tweeting every great line to the outside world.
And there were lots of great lines.
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Notwithstanding that I have an undergraduate degree in public relations, have worked in the industry for a good chunk of my adult life, and for nearly 14 years have operated a PR agency, I have never held the public relations business in terribly high regard.
