By Tony Bailetti
Entrepreneurs need access to the knowledge, approaches, methods, and tools they require to globalize their startups early and rapidly.
For the purpose of this series, globalization refers to the process by which a company meets the needs of a global market, one which integrates many formerly domestic markets including the company’s home market. A global market is the result of nation-states breaking down barriers to international trade, shifts to market economies, mobility of talent and capital, and advances in transportation, information, and communications technology.
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By Francis Moran
Former Canadian Olympic gold medalist and chef de mission Mark Tewksbury gave a keynote address at the National Angel Capital Organization‘s summit in Halifax in late October. In urging that Canadian business adopt the Olympic movement’s Own the Podium approach that sees athlete funding going disproportionately to those who show the best promise of winning a medal, Tewksbury said we have to move away from the old Canadian funding model. That approach, he said, sees government spread its limited funds across too many recipients, ensuring that nobody starves but also that nobody gets the resources they really need to succeed. As Tewksbury put it, funding before Own the Podium was “one for me, one for you,” ensuring “one for me-diocrity.”
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By Leo Valiquette
“This is the most manic depressive way you could possibly live life. You’re never having a good day. You’re either having the best day ever, or you are thinking you are about to die.”
So begins the trailer for The Startup Kids, a documentary about young web entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Europe. At a time when “anybody now with a laptop and a wi-fi connection can build anything,” the possibilities are near endless. Nonetheless, entrepreneurship is, as it has always been, a risky leap of faith coupled with levels of commitment and persistence that border on the obsessive.
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By Alexandra Reid
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, The New York Times, VentureBeat, Bloomberg Businessweek and Boston Magazine.
Should your startup go freemium?
Over the last several months, there has been an intense debate about the viability of freemium business models. For some, freemium is a costly trap, a business model that sacrifices revenues and forces a startup to support freeloaders who will never become paying customers. For others, freemium is the future of business, the logical conclusion for a world in which the cost of bandwidth, storage, and information processing approaches zero. Both sides agree that the model is extremely powerful. As Rob Walling of HitTail notes in a recent Wall Street Journal article, freemium is like a Samurai sword: “unless you’re a master at using it, you can cut your arm off.”
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By Fiona Campbell
Ryan Holmes, CEO and founder of HootSuite, gave an inspirational talk as part of the ignITE speaker series in the Okanagan about his journey as an entrepreneur, followed by a fireside chat and Q&A with Jeff Keen, CEO of Accelerate Okanagan.
Wynne Leung, a UX/UI designer from the Okanagan, attended the event and offered her perspective:
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By Tony Bailetti
