David Crow

Canada

The local product design economy

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Update: I changed the verb acquiring to joining. A lot of the chatter has been about how this is not an acquisition. And I agree. It is not. As the post states at the top, TeehanLax is shutting down. It is reminiscent of the Smart Design closing (see Dan Safer’s post) and some of the reasoning behind the Adaptive Path acquisition by Capital One. It sucks. But I’m not planning on leaving Toronto, and I’m celebrating my friends like a wake and trying to understand the implications. 

TeehanLax is shutting down. This is getting a lot of coverage:

Why so much coverage? Well it is because TeehanLax was one of the best design firms around, if not the best in Canada. They designed 2 of my favourite apps: Prismatic and Medium. You could see the tension between the services side of their business and the desire/pull of being a product company.

BarCamp Toronto

I first met Jon and Geoff back in 2004. It was after the release of their PVR report comparing the user experiences of the Bell and Rogers PVRs to TiVO. They had an interesting approach, doing interesting work, just trying to build a different kind of company. That was evident when Jon agreed to host BarCamp Toronto in November 2005. It was a different approach than Sapient, ModemMedia, Scient, Viant, Razorfish or other agencies in Toronto were taking. It wasn’t a client development strategy, it wasn’t a recruiting strategy, it was an offer to participate in the conversation.

Photo by John Lam https://www.flickr.com/photos/john_lam/67605248

Photo by John Lam

The shutting down of a company that I described last week as a “building big, impactful [indie] company” is interesting. Jon, Geoff, David (Jeremy, Peter, Tamera and the entire team over the years) you built a company that I respected. And I am very happy that you’ve made the best decision for you and your families. It’s your company, you get to make the decisions, so don’t listen to the naysayers.

Photo by Tom Purves https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomaspurves/3328461206/

Photo by Tom Purves

Here are a couple of observations about one of my favourite design firms shutting down in Toronto.

  1. Short term: design talent availability
    There is a bunch of design and development talent that is available for other Toronto companies to hire. These people have been trained in one of the best design cultures in Canada.  They produced an environment that produced some of the best products in the world.  If anyone from the TeehanLax team needs connections to interesting companies please drop me a note and I will do my best to connect you.
  2. Short term: More people evaluating Toronto companies for acquisition
    This is the third Toronto design and development company acquired in the past 24 months. JetCooper acquired by Shopify. Xtreme Labs acquired by Pivotal. Now TeehanLax shutting down and joining Facebook. This is important. Toronto is a great place to acquire talent. Hopefully there is an equal respect for the design and development work being done here. (This excludes the amazing talent like Mike Beltzner, Mike Shaver, Scott Boms, Sam Ladner and others).
  3. Longer term: The loss of a gravity centre for design talent
    There are other places that are gravity centres. Pivotal Labs is a great place for engineers and designers to learn the power and efficiency of paired environment. Farhan and team are doing wonders to explore and implement a very powerful cultural tool. TeehanLax built a culture that produced great digital products and experiences.

    “We were happiest when the products we were creating reached our standards. We were happiest when we spent time thinking about how to create the conditions and circumstances for this to happen. We were happiest when we were working with our team members.”

    It will be interesting to see if the T+L diaspora can have an impact on the ecosystem like the Trilogy diaspora in Austin or IDEO diaspora in Palo Alto.

  4. Services firms are not destined to be huge companies
    The back of the napkin math I use to calculate a services business is approximately $200k in revenue per employee. Sold at under 5x EBITDA (given a 20-30% margin and averaged revenue of past 2 years plus forecast using error correction of previous forecast, lets say 1x revenue). There is great business, it’s just a hard business to scale nonlinearly. And when “someone slides a number across the table big enough that you just can’t say no”  a product company that is scaling like crazy is likely to be able to slide a bigger number than a services company. It feels like we’re seeing that ceiling being hit by XtremeLabs (sold to Pivotal), TeehanLax (joining Facebook), JetCooper (sold to Shopify), maybe BNotions (AK has departed for Gallop Labs).
  5. Opportunity in the product/design/user experience space
    TeehanLax was a design firm. It was a design firm that respected technology. There are other firms in Toronto that are a mix of product, design and technology including Normative, SayYeah, BoltMade, Nascent, TailoredUX among others (including those with a more technology focus Venn, Pivotal Labs, OK Grow!, Isle of Code, The Working Group, BNOTIONS, EndLoop Studios, Unspace, Rangle.io, People & Code, Digiflare, Functional Imperative, Metaware Labs).  TeehanLax showed that it was possible to build a world-class design shop in Toronto. I’m hoping someone realizes this is the combination of the caliber of the output, the process to build the culture and the requirement of building the business/revenue streams.

Interesting times in Toronto. Congratulations to Jon, Geoff and David. Thank you for being amazing. And the best of luck on your journey.

Building Media Empires

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Is it possible to build a new Canadian media empire?

I’m not even sure what a media empire looks like. People still want content. And content needs distribution. It feels like the majority of distribution in Canada is controlled by a small number of players:

  • Postmedia
  • Torstar Corporation
  • Rogers Media
  • Corus Entertainment
  • Astral Media
  • St. Joseph Media
  • Now Communications
  • Blue Ant Media
  • DHX Media (thanks @johntoryT0 for the correction)
  • plus more

I still don’t really understand the economics of distribution and monetization of traditional media. But this seems like a start to understanding about the Canadian landscape. In 2014, there was a lot of VC money (yes, yes, VC dollars is not the only metric of success) going into journalism companies (I  really like the CB Insights description of fat content companies): Buzzfeed, Vice, Huffington Post, First Look Media, Pando Daily, Vox and others. Canada seems to be stuck in the online properties of traditional media outlets.

We produce interesting/engaging content including YouTube stars:

I want to build a better understanding about content creation, distribution and monetization in Canada. Where should I start?

/me goes to spend more time consuming CANADALAND.

 

 

Questions for 2015

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Benedict Evans posted the questions he’d like answered in 2015 and in mobile with the platform wars over. Here are some of the questions I’d expect to see answered in 2015 for Canada and Canadian companies.

  1. What happens to Canadian companies in the mid-stage?
    Jim Orlando described a strong 2015 market in both early stage (local) and late stage capital (international) for technology startups. Are their enough Canadian funds that can invest >$15MM/company, i.e., >10% of their capital pool, to fund growth stage Canadian startups?
  2. Where will Kik land?
    Ted Livingston’s view of messaging as universal UI and the race to become the Wechat of the West feels like the right thing. It seems like figuring out how to operate profitably is not the most likely outcome, so it must be an exit. Facebook has already acquired Instagram and Whatsapp, so it seems like this is out (particularly given a teenagers view of social media apps).  Does a non-Google Android provider like Cyanogen or Xiaomi purchase Kik?
  3. When will a Canadian company report their first major cyberattack and breach? We’ve seen attacks and branches on the federal government it feels like only a matter of time until a financial institution or retail announces a major breach.
  4. How many narwhals will we see?
    There have been a number of US companies go to the public markets including Hubspot, Box and others. It feels like there are a number of Canadian companies that are on cusp. How many will forego the TSX and only go NASDAQ or NYSE?
  5. Will Shomi and CraveTV become true OTT competitors allowing non-cable subscribers access to compete with Netflix? Or do these offerings plus GameCentre Live and other live sports keep cable subscribers in Canada?
  6. Will Netflix be forced by content owners to cut down on grey market geofencing? What does this mean for services like Unblock-Us and TunnelBear? What does it mean for accessing foreign content like BBC iPlayer, Premier League Pass, NFL Game Pass? (p.s. where is my Internet access to Formula 1?)
  7. Will the Copyright Modernization Act changes that went live on Jan 1, 2015 impose additional fee increases because of management costs for independent ISPs?
  8. When will ApplePay launch in Canada? Will Apple be able to get mobile payments adoption than Suretap, Enstream, PayWave, PayPass, etc. that the carriers and banks have?
  9. Will one of the Canadian wearable companies begin rolling up others, that do not find product-market fit or a large enough audience, for the talent? Or will they be acquired by larger players like Under Armor?
  10. What impact for will the falling Canadian dollar and resource economy have on the tech ecosystem? We’ve already seen the rise of minimum app prices in the iOS store on Jan 9 to Cdn$1.19. Will a weaker Canadian dollar see a resurgence of the conversation and companies around near-shoring for larger US companies? Will this continue to build a stronger acquisition market for startups that struggle to find mid-stage growth capital?
  11. Do we need a Canada-based data centre for one of the larger hosting providers, i.e., Digital Ocean, AWS, Azure, Rackspace? IBM opened a SoftLayer data centre in Markham in 2014, with a few startups building on the infrastructure but all of the startups were still very small. Does data or computation sovereignty matter to Canadian startups?
  12. Is there a need for another startup conference in Toronto? There are great events in Montreal (Startup Festival), Vancouver (Grow Conference) and an investor focused event in Toronto (Canadian Innovation Exchange). But is there a need for more functional led events (design, growth hacking, CTOs, etc) like Warm Gun or Brooklyn Beta?
  13. Does one of the wireless carriers create a division or group with tools and pricing to support a strong IIoT ecosystem? We’ve seen Canadians like their oligopolistic carrier ecosystem, but there are segments like Wind Mobile users that are willing to compromise coverage or roaming for price. It is unclear if a 4th national carrier can survive on these customers alone, and the CRTC has determined that Telus cannot absorb Wind as their discount brand (like Fido or the MNVOs on Bell). Is there an alternate model where Wind or other carrier bets on the data carriage fees and the necessary tools to build a stronger IIoT ecosystem. The tools that mix RFID, cellular and Wifi?

Thanks Gideon Hayden for feedback and insight on the post.

ebooks, monopolies, monopsonies, DRM and me

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I was late last night reading. I had finished reading Evan Currie’s Valkyrie Burning (Warrior’s Wings Book Three) on Amazon. I went looking for new publications from Evan which included The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One. But there was a change in price, The Heart of the Matter is $7.99. Sure it’s not a lot of money. But I’ve previously bought 4 of Evan’s books (including the price I paid):

So from an average price of $3.49 to a new book of $7.99. A 229% price increase. I want my authors to get paid. I like them earning more and generating more and better content. But a 229% price increase, and it’s not just the popularity of authors but current events and my choice of operating system that have me paying more. So I support an author and they become “famous” or “popular”, and I’m am supposed to grin and bear it because I can. I’m all for paying for integrated services, I’m all for authors earning more, I’m all for a better experience. But seriously a 229% price increase, something doesn’t feel right.

Amazon Prime pricing for $0.00

But wait, I can get the book for $0.00 as a Prime member. I didn’t think Amazon Prime was available to me in Canada. I was on Amazon.com, but my credit card and my shipping address is Canadian. Maybe with hope that Amazon Prime was finally available in Canada. I don’t think so, Kindle Owner’ Lending Library is only available in the US. I was just being hopeful that perhaps another large company had decided to invest in the Canadian market, much like Netflix and take on the regional licensing restrictions. </sigh>

I am trying to better understand the implications of my choices, i.e, buying and consuming DRM books in a closed ecosystem (see Kindle SF). I like integrated services. I like unified experiences. But I don’t like being taken advantage of, or having freedoms taken away.

Distribution, Disintermediation, and Monopsony

I was trying to understand Amazon’s ebook strategy and what its implications mean for me as a consumer in Canada.

We’re use to monopolies, well really ogliopolies (wireless companies, banks, internet service providers, we’re good on this one) and monopsonies (Canadian Wheat Board that ended Aug 1, 2012) . But I was surprised in Charles Stross’ analysis of Amazon, was they were playing both sides of the monopoly/monopsony market equation.

“And the peculiar evil genius of Amazon is that Amazon seems to be trying to simultaneously establish a wholesale monopsony and a retail monopoly in the ebook sector.” Charles Stross

One explanation for the increase in kindle prices is predatory pricing. And it’s not like the DOJ is investigating Amazon, Apple and the big six publishers for predatory pricing of ebooks. This has disintermediated retailers and how consumers purchase and consume books. Next to disintermediate the publishers themselves, and Amazon with Kindle Direct Publishing has given authors a way to get large distribution and forego publishers. The ebook market is growing at 200 percent per year, and Amazon owns “70 to 80 percent of the [ebooks] market“.

 “By foolishly insisting on DRM, and then selling to Amazon on a wholesale basis, the publishers handed Amazon a monopoly on their customers—and thereby empowered a predatory monopsony.” Charles Stross

Crap, I fell for it. Other consumers fell for it. Publishers fell for it. What to do next?

“And the only viable Plan C, for breaking Amazon’s death-grip on the consumers, is to break DRM.” Charles Stross

O'Reilly eBooks Advantage - No DRM

This means changing my behaviour to support authors and publishers that publish DRM-free content. Thank you O’Reilly, all of the technical books I’ve purchased are available without DRM. It also means that I might consider removing the DRM from my existing Kindle purchases, oh wait, I can’t do that any more. It might violate the Terms of Service for Kindle, which you, like me, probably didn’t read. It’s too bad that I have bought a “limited license to use the product, rather than actual ownership of an object” with the ebooks (yah, it surprised Bruce Willis about his iTunes collection). It is why for a long time, I purchased movies on DVD rather than iTunes. At least, I could back them up.

But the goal isn’t to put the books back on my Kindle, but to have a back up copy that is future proofed.

Bill C-11 and Changes in Canada

But I can’t do that in Canada since Bill C-11 which passed in June 2012. It includes a digital locks provision that is “one of the most restrictive digital lock approaches in the world“. It seems that my worries in Dissident, Citizen were more about the Canadian government. And it seems that my worst nightmares about copyright and content are coming true.

I am going to have to rethink all of my media consumption behaviours. Ranging from ebooks to mp3s to DVDs.

I’m starting to really understand companies like Wattpad, Smashwords, CD Baby, O’Reilly and others that offer distribution, monetization and consumer choice related to DRM.

Additional Reading

Hacking Health

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Hacking Health, Oct 19-21, 2012 at MaRS in Toronto

A Hacking Health  event is happening October 19-21, 2012 in Toronto. The event focuses on bringing innovation to health care. It brings together clinicians with developers, designers, and entrepreneurs to look for real world solutions based on real clinical experience. It should be a very interesting event. The Montreal event has a 138 developers, 28 designers, 66 healthcare experts and 32 mentors. This signals a huge opportunity in the healthcare clinicians and practitioners for new tools and change. I wonder if the health care funding mechanisms/decision making will limit both the development and the adoption of any potential tools. It would be an interesting to discussion to have with others at the event.

Hacking Health Montreal Breakdown of Participants

 

The event in Montreal generated 19 projects, including:

  • HemoTrack – a mobile app that collects real time usage of Factor VIII, bleeding events and uploads that information to a web application accessed by physicians to monitor their patient’s health. This project included Dan McGrady
  • Kinect Burn Area App – Using the off-the-shelf Microsoft Kinect, the 3D depth sensor feature accurately and rapidly provides doctors measurements of total body surface area. The camera feature allows clinicians to visualize and accurately mark the area of the burn on screen and automatically calculate the % of body surface area burnt as well as fluid requirements of the patient.

I’m hoping to get out and participate (weekends are incredibly valuable, taking time away from kid activities and time means this really has to deliver value for my participation).