This is the first contribution to this blog by Associate Phil Newman, a London-based marketing and commercialization strategist for technology companies.
By Phil Newman
When the iPad was finally revealed in 2010, it took time for the market to know how to categorize the device; everyone settled on simply creating a new category. One year on, the lead that Apple has is a replay of its iPod-iPhone momentum, but Google’s Android caught up quickly. This year will be a truly fascinating one of winners and losers. Not interested? You should be. Media tablets have re-written the rules.
iPad. You can do everything you want on one really. If you’re a high-end originator of Photoshop masterpieces or an individual with particularly fat fingers, you might not be so convinced, but if you try one for a reasonable period of time you’ll start to get frustrated with the boot-up time of your old laptop, the lack of software apps to enhance your entertainment or productivity and the whole battery-cable-charger-airport-connectivity thing.
Give the human race 20 years and the laptops we all lug around will seem as ancient as the clay tablets the Assyrians used to record cuneiform lists of goats, gold and slaves. We’re witnessing the next evolution of computing and something on par with the mouse and graphical user interface computing milestones of the 1970s.
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By Linda Forrest
Francis kicked off the launch of this blog by listing to some of the more common objections made by technology companies about why they’re not investing in marketing. One of these straw man arguments, an all-too-common refrain, is a lack of budget. From that first post:
“Lack of budget is the next most common excuse for not engaging in marketing. This one has more legitimacy but it also betrays a failure by marketers. If we can’t get the funds we need to do the job we believe needs to be done, it’s because we have failed to adequately plot the line between cause and effect, between marketing outflow and revenue income. What rational person would decline to invest a second and third dollar into a marketing program that has proven that the first dollar actually produced the revenue we said it would?”
We’ve long said that marketing is an investment, rather than a cost centre, and that’s absolutely the case. A business that views marketing merely as an expenditure rather than a tool to increase market share and revenue is doomed to failure. Marketing requires investment of money, time and resources to be successful. To borrow a line from a Canadian bank’s advertising campaign, “you’re richer than you think” when it comes to having “budget” for marketing. And here’s why.
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This is the fourth article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In his book, Making Technology Happen, Denzil Doyle makes the valid point that “technology” is not found only in research laboratories or other establishments that form part of what is commonly known as the “knowledge industry.”
“A farmer who develops an add-on device for a piece of farm machinery is not only creating technology, but is advancing it along the innovation chain by turning it into a useful product,” Doyle wrote. “If a few neighbours buy it and they find it a useful product, it has been taken through the entire length of the innovation chain, from the idea stage to the distribution stage. The farmer has simply not formalized the innovation process by writing a proper business plan, raising some investment capital and starting a business.”
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As part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked entrepreneur and long-time angel investor Frank Peters to share some insights from his lengthy experience investing in startups.
By Frank Peters
With a nod to Garage Venture’s Guy Kawasaki and his Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists, I offer my Top 12 Lies Angels Tell. When I showed a draft to my angel friend Malcolm, he turned to me and said, “wow, this is really cynical!” So let me acknowledge that first.
1. “That was a good presentation!”
I have to say something positive, but you’re not getting me to write a cheque. The fact is, most funding pitches are terrible; they’re more product pitches with an appeal for money tacked on at the end. Passion, yes; every entrepreneur has heard by now they must show great enthusiasm for their endeavor, but show me how I can get my money back someday, too. Who will acquire you? Are you going to raise venture capital that will keep me in the deal for six, seven, eight, nine years? Or are you aware of the new trend towards early exits? Show me how I can get my money back in three to five years and even I’ll be saying, “That was a good presentation!”
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This is the third article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In our previous post, we explored the massive changes that have occurred in North America and Europe that have led to a contraction of traditional venture capital investment.
These long-term trends have left early-stage companies in a tight spot. They must become increasingly creative to shorten time to market, become more capital efficient and generally figure out how to do more with less. The cash-burn of years past is no longer an option, if it ever was.
Rise of the super angels
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By Phil Newman
