By Chris Arsenault
It was a good news day for Canadian entrepreneurs yesterday. The Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, and Minister of Finance, the honourable Jim Flaherty, were in Montreal to announce their “Venture Capital Action Plan.”
Under this plan, the federal government will put $400 million to work under the leadership of private-sector fund of funds and venture capital funds.
This is the 10th article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screach, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. 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 Leo Valiquette and John Hill
They say the world is more connected than it’s ever been. You can push software to a global audience with the tap of a key, and serve customers worldwide from a desk in your living room.
Of course, the trade-off is that it’s loud out there. You’re immediately competing with the world, and you’ve got to be disciplined, dedicated or clever to be heard. So how do you go about building a market in a new country when you haven’t got millions of dollars to throw at it?
By Leo Valiquette
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are TechCrunch, Polaris Venture Partners, Pando Daily, Gust and MarketingSherpa.
Median angel deal size rises as startups look for more runway amid a series A bottleneck
TechCrunch’s Kim-Mai Cutler writes about how the median size of angel deals rose to $640,000 in the third quarter of last year – a five-quarter high – as startups looked for more runway amid a bottleneck for Series A rounds. Silicon Valley Bank partnered with data company CB Insights and the Angel Resource Institute to survey different angel groups about activity in the fall of last year.
By Megan Totka
Traditionally, the work of social media-profile development has fallen on PR departments. Over time, social media efforts morphed into a department of its own in companies that could afford the manpower and saw the financial potential of a vast mobile following. Decision makers from companies of all sizes know the extreme value of a strong social media presence.
Beyond web platforms
In November, Flurry Analytics released some telling numbers on the ways Americans are spending time using electronic mediums. In 2011, Americans spent 72 minutes per day web browsing and 94 minutes per day using mobile applications. Both activities were dwarfed by television consumption, which came in at 168 minutes per day. Though the year is not quite over, the numbers for 2012 show stagnancy in web browsing and television watching, but a jump to 127 minutes per day in mobile application use.
Over the past two years, the number of events completed within mobile apps has increased tenfold to one trillion, or 1,000 billion. An event is an action completed by a user inside an app, such as completing a game level, making a restaurant reservation or tagging a song. While not all of these apps are social media based, these numbers should be sobering to all companies. Engagement with the marketplace through mobile apps is becoming increasingly important.
By Leo Valiquette
Though we took our usual holiday break in December, we still covered a lot of ground on the blog during the month. Scotland’s startup scene, the unintended consequences of Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit program, and practical pointers for handing off a content marketing program were among the many topics we covered.
In case you missed any of it, here is a handy recap of our posts, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
Dec. 5: It’s that time again to put life and work in perspective, by Leo Valiquette
Dec. 12: Don’t spit your PR effort into the wind, by Leo Valiquette
Dec. 6: SR&ED and the law of unintended consequences, by Francis Moran
Dec. 20: Is this my very last blog post?, by Francis Moran
Dec. 3: Lessons from Project Glass: Why embracing technology is not optional, by Megan Totka
Dec. 17: Commercializing research in Scotland, by Maurice Smith
Dec. 4: Top 10 questions every strategic communicator should ask, by Caroline Kealey
Dec. 10: Apple versus Samsung: Samsung’s ‘out’ to escape infringement, by David French
Dec. 11: A timely post about succession planning in content marketing, by Alexandra Reid
Dec. 13: Content is the sun around which all else revolves, by Francis Moran
Dec. 19: Businesses must think like publishers, says C.C. Chapman, by Alexandra Reid
Dec. 18: Data mining, DNA or otherwise, no substitute for real customer dialogue, by Leo Valiquette
