By Leo Valiquette
“It’s all about the content, it’s not about the sizzle. You have to give investors the content they need to make an investing decision.”
So says Frank Erschen, pitch coach, angel investor and executive in residence at Communitech. While in Kitchener-Waterloo last week, I had the opportunity to sit in on his session with Erisvaldo Gadelha Saraiva Junior, executive director of Brazil’s Yupi Studios.
Yupi Studios is a startup focused on developing apps, games and other creative content for smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and social networks. While it is paying the bills as an app factory for hire, its goal is to raise the $500,000 to $1.5 million it needs to devote itself entirely to developing its educational gaming platform, Yupi Play. Here is a recap of Erschen’s counsel on how Yupi Studios and any other startup in search of capital should structure their pitch to make the most of that eight to 12-minute opportunity to woo an investor.
For Erschen, an effective presentation should include the following slides, to tell a single compelling story with a natural progression: Read More
By Bob Bailly
As a self professed science nerd my study of choice over the last decade has been neuroscience, so much so that I’ve built a consulting practice centered on a notion that we can improve our selling success by incorporating its scientific findings.
This field of study has been called neuromarketing, but others, like Robert Schiller, have also linked these concepts to their own fields of interest. He writes:
“Neuroscience – the science of how the brain, that physical organ inside one’s head, really works – is beginning to change the way we think about how people make decisions. These findings will inevitably change the way we think about how economies function. In short, we are at the dawn of ‘neuroeconomics.’
“Efforts to link neuroscience to economics have occurred mostly in just the last few years, and the growth of neuroeconomics is still in its early stages. But its nascence follows a pattern: revolutions in science tend to come from completely unexpected places. A field of science can turn barren if no fundamentally new approaches to research are on the horizon. Scholars can become so trapped in their methods – in the language and assumptions of the accepted approach to their discipline – that their research becomes repetitive or trivial.”
Whether you feel neuromarketing, neuroeconomic or even neuropolitical thought is appropriate, here are some ideas you might want consider if you’re in the business of selling technological products or services.
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By Leo Valiquette
Even casual readers of this blog will likely know we are great fans of the good work done from the Kitchener-Waterloo region by Communitech. I am writing this post from the Communitech Hub and have to admit this week marks my first visit.
Our Francis Moran is of course a frequent visitor. While I have in the past had the opportunity to interview Communitech CEO Iain Klugman and Tim Jackson from the region’s Accelerator Centre, and work with the team at Communitech’s national arm, the Canadian Digital Media Network, I had not yet made the trek myself.
It also marks my first visit to a regional economic development agency outside Ottawa. Kitchener-Waterloo is not characterized by the shadow of big government as Ottawa is, but the linkages between industry, academia and government are obvious from the outset.
Walking down the street, I was struck by the profound significance of seeing on the side of the same building, alongside Communitech’s, the logos for Google, a multinational tech titan that needs no introduction, and local company Desire2Learn, which last year bagged the single largest first round of venture capital ever by a Canadian software play (largely from a U.S. investor). These two companies alone house upwards of 1,000 people in the complex.
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By Francis Moran
One of the more thought-provoking presentations at last week’s International Startup Festival was by Randy Smerik, a serial entrepreneur who has lived through more than one startup, venture capital investment and eventual acquisition. His personal experience added a significant note of authenticity to his session, “Build 2B Bought,” but it was the statistics he presented that really got me thinking.
Let me summarise Smerik’s narrative.
- There is a 90 percent chance that the eventual liquidity event for a startup will be its acquisition by another company.
- The average merger-and-acquisition (M&A) exit is worth $20 million.
- A VC investing only $2 million into a company and acquiring 20 percent of its equity based on a $10-million post-money valuation will need to earn $20 million on that investment to get the minimum 10x return that VCs target from each investment. (Admittedly, Smerik did acknowledge that most funds get a 20x to 30x return from two out of every 10 investments they make, with the other eight returning little or nothing.)
- At a 20 percent ownership level by the VC, that means the company must sell for $100 million.
- But the average M&A deal is only $20 million.
As Smerik said, “Yikes! This is a problem.”
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By Peter Hanschke
We’re finally getting close to the end. I must say that although it has been fun, I’m looking forward to the end. Maybe because I’m thrilled to have an app in the store; or maybe because the long nights and weekends are getting to me; or maybe both. Not sure why, but I’ll be glad when it’s over. My last post talked about the importance of marketing your app and not relying on the app store to get the word out. Today we’ll talk about taking your app on the road and engaging others for the first time with your app …all in the name of testing it.
Whether you are developing for iOS (as I am), Android, windows8, or BlackBerry, there are a number of variants that you need to test. On the iOS platform you have iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and various generations of each device and the OS. At the outset you have to select which combination of devices and operating systems you want your app to run on; this defines the device section of your test plan. For my app, I narrowed the field down to iPhone and iPod Touch (fourth and fifth generations), running OS 6.x. With Apple cranking out new devices and new operating systems frequently AND (by witnessing lineups at Apple stores on launch days) users upgrading to have the latest, I figured that my narrow field is a significant enough market for me to tackle. Android, on the other hand, is different. Many versions of Android are still in play today, which makes the testing a more difficult and longer process.
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