David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

Canada

Radiant Core acquired

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Cross posted on StartupNorth

Radiant CoreRadiant Core has been acquired by Zerofootprint Software. Radiant Core was a Toronto-based web design and development shop led by Jay Goldman and Mike Glenn.  Zerofootprint is a Toronto-based company that “provides information, products and services for the global network of consumers and businesses who wish to reduce their environmental impact”. Radiant Core is best known for the visual design of Firefox 2, and has been recognized by Taschen as a leading web design agency. Jay and I have presented together at Web2Expo, FSOSS and Ignite. We’re also co-conspirators in this whole DemoCamp thing.

zerofootprintsoftwareZerofootprint has been a client of Radiant Core. Radiant Core designed, built and launched the Zerofootprint Calculator Facebook application (add the application). Zerofootprint has a laudable goal to empower people and change their collective footprint.

Our goal is to mobilize and empower large groups of individuals and organizations worldwide, to reduce their collective carbon and ecological footprint. We do this by harnessing the power of social networking, the Internet and software.

Why acquire a consulting firm? It’s a great acquisition method, Ron and the Zerofootprint team really managed their risk by engaging Radiant Core to evaluate capabilities, working styles, and the quality of team deliverables. In Radiant Core they get a world-class design firm with strong experience designing and building accessible web and social media applications. Radiant Core also has deep roots in participating and building vibrant, open creative communities. Jay and Mike have been involved with TorCamp, DemoCamp, TransitCamp, FacebookCamp/Facebook Developer Garage and other activities here in Toronto. The Zerofootprint team had the opportunity to evaluate the Radiant Core team and their ability to deliver on the design and development of the Zerofootprint Calculator Facebook application.  Zerofootprint and Radiant Core have worked together and can begin to have informed conversations about cultural compatibility and employee integration based on real experiences.

No financial details have been released.

What does this mean for Toronto?

  • One less world-class web design shop.
  • One more awesome software startup, now with world-class web development team!

It means that Zerofootprint just acquired one of the best web development shops in Canada to be their product team. Running a consulting business is a tough slog. It’s a linear growth business, i.e., you grow revenues by increasing the number of billable hours, increasing the billable rate, or increasing the number of people. It hopefully gives Jay and Mike an exit. It gives Zerofootprint a huge accelerator to continue to build products and services that will help to change the world.

Interested in what it really means, try calculating your footprint at http://toronto.zerofootprint.net/ and see how Zerofootprint is working with the City of Toronto to create a greener city.

FreshBooks – Agile Web Development Manager

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FreshBooks is a company that really believes in great customer service. We want our product to reflect that by shipping frequently, staying bug-free, and building exactly what our customers want and need.

The magic of web development is that you can do a lot with a few dedicated developers and designers. Do you really know how to do more with less? Have you been in the trenches? Have you learned first hand how to invest in your development team to keep delivering the highest quality code? Are you a proven manager who has led a team of web developers and is looking to step into an important leadership role here at FreshBooks?

You will:

Be a leader and manager of our product and our development team. You will work together with other business groups to drive product enhancements and new products to help grow the FreshBooks service and online community. You will be unafraid to ask the tough questions of both other managers as well as product developers. You know how to get the most out of people and have a keen sense of “what counts” when it comes to product and business decisions.

We need you to have:

  • Real-life experience developing web applications in the trenches
  • A strong desire to build a development team and optimize their performance
  • Technology, product, and market vision.
  • Zeal for agile development
  • Experience listening to users, translating their needs to the business owners, and helping the developers build the right thing.
  • A developer’s heart
  • An ability to teach, mentor, coach other people in the Tao of Development

How to apply

If you are a proven web development manager who is ready to lead the FreshBooks product into the future, and you’d like to work with a great team in our bright Toronto office, get your resume and cover letter in to us at [email protected] today!

Discovery08

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theblackswan OCE is hosting it’s Discovery conference again. I’m looking forward to hearing Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The rest of the schedule looks entertaining and includes Michael Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it) and The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth.

List on the Discovery08 web is:

New for 2008: Experience Discovery like never before. Test your pitch on venture capitalists and other business experts. Participate in exciting team challenges that pit your innovation skills against real-world problems. Take advantage of our expanded networking environment. See and hear what’s hot in Ontario’s critical sectors like Cleantech, Energy, Life Sciences, Digital Media and Manufacturing. And connect with some of the world’s best selling authors and pundits at keynote sessions.

The one thing I’m finding strange these days is the number of people mostly from government that are talking about an “innovation sector” and pitting your “innovation skills against real-world problems”. What the hell is the innovation sector? Aren’t companies typically innovative in the previously mentioned sectors (Cleantech, Energy, Life Sciences, Digital Media and Manufacturing)?

What is innovation? Dictionary.com has 6 definitions including “something new or different introduced; the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods”. I just confused by the marketing speak used by the OCE team in promoting Discovery08. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised when I read the gibberish on the Ministry of Research & Innovation web site:

Places that invest in innovation, that stroke the creativity of people, that market their ideas most effectively will become the home to the most rewarding jobs, to the strongest economies and to the best quality of life. We want Ontario to be that place where innovation is inevitable.

While government involvement in my life is a series of tradeoffs, it’s great to know that at a provincial level there is support for the creation and commercialization of new technologies and business models. MRI supports MaRS, OCE and other organizations that support entrepreneurs, researchers and students with awareness, funding and policy.

What: Discovery08
How do you ride a curve that is yet to emerge? Or prepare for risks that have no name? Or create the next big thing when nothing is certain? Find out at OCE’s Discovery 2008, Canada’s premiere innovation and commercialization event. Be inspired, challenged and emboldened by influential thought leaders, daring visionaries, and over 1,500 delegates from every aspect of the innovation sector.
When: Monday, May 12, 2008 5:00 PM to Tuesday, May 13, 2008 4:00 PM
Where: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

255 Front Street West
Toronto, Ontario M5V 2W6 Canada

Community Platforms

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Apparently I’m not alone in thinking about community platforms. Chris Prillo is talking about the tools available for community owners, operators, moderators and members. Adam Kalsey talks about the work on IMified, SacStarts and ActivityStream. Both are building on top of Drupal, which has generated support from Boris Mann of Raincity Studios. I haven’t done a lot of work on Drupal in recent years, I last evaluated it for a project in 2005. But the superb work of the Raincity Studios and Lullabot continues to blow me away.

But I started to wonder what other software platforms were available for building communities. Here is the list that I was able to come up with:

There are other tools like the Community Platform that powers http://expression.microsoft.com/ and TechNet and MSDN, that are not commercially available.

I’m starting to think about the tools that we’re missing to enable the Toronto community. The discussion has focused around the technical details of the platform:

  • OpenSocial
  • OpenID
  • OAuth

But it’s when Chris talks about the functionality and participation and discovery that I start to think about the potential and needs.

I don’t want a social network, I want a socially *RELEVANT* network (both on-site and beyond). I don’t want a community platform, I want a participation platform where members are rewarded and ranked appropriately. I don’t want a place where people can just blog, because I’m going well beyond the blog. It’s not just about hosting videos, audio files, or any piece of random media – it’s the discovery mechanisms between them that make them more relevant.

It’s discovery – no matter the community, no matter the type of content. Imagine coming to a site and not just reading about what other people are interested in, but what interests they SHARE with you! Imagine coming to a site and seeing how someone ranks in answers pertaining to your own questions! Oh, I’m confident you may have seen these features elsewhere – but what about for your own site, what about for your own community, what about for your own ideas?

It’s about the connections, the participation, and the discovery of relevant details. Time to think about this a little more.

MeshU looks awesome!

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Yes, I know that I’m technically responsible for the Microsoft Canada sponsorship of MeshU, but the lineup hadn’t been announced when we made the decision to find the sponsorship dollars. With great presenters like Avi Bryant, who gave one of my favourite DemoCamp presentations at DemoCampToronto5, will be presenting. If you haven’t seen the DabbleDB 8 Minute Demo I strongly recommend checking it out.

To top it off, MeshU registration is only $239 and in Toronto.

Rogers and the iPhone

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davidcrow kissing his iPhone

Jay Goldman and I picked up iPhones while at Mix08 and SxSWi. I think we have different experiences with the phones, but generally both are very positive and the key differentiator between a great experience and a good experience appears to be your dependency on Exchange support. Basically Jay runs iCal, Mail.app to connect to IMAP accounts and Google Calenders. I work at Microsoft and I rely on Exchange Server 2007 on my PCs, my Macs with Office 2008 and Entourage and on my Palm 750 on Rogers.

The question continues to come up as to why we haven’t seen the iPhone picked up by one of the Canadian carriers. The conversation can focus on the third world have cheaper data than Canada. It can be about the pricing of contracts or devices in Canada. It comes down to some very simple business considerations:

  • Cell phone market penetration is high
  • High fees and high ARPU
    • Canadians cell bills are double that of Americans
    • ARPU = Average Revenue Per User
    • Canadian Wireless providers in 2007 had an ARPU of $56 which is high when compared to other countries
  • Apple’s outrageous (good on ‘em) ARPU share
    • The relationship between AT&T and Apple has been described as an ”$18/month ARPU share)
    • Canadian non-voice ARPU is currently less than 10% of existing ARPU meaning Canadian wireless providers see this as an opportunity to increase the ARPU
    • Canadian non-voice services at 10% of ARPU is lower than the US non-voice ARPU which has been reported in the low to mid teens
  • AT&T plans are lower than most Canadian plans
    • AT&T plans start at $59.99/month and work up to a true unlimited plan at $119.99/month
    • As an example, my current Windows Mobile plan on Rogers is $80 for 500Mb + $25 for 250 minutes + $8 Every Call Value Pack includes Voice Mail and Call Display + $6.95 systems access fee = $119.95/month + taxes. And this doesn’t cover long distance across Canada, and it certainly doesn’t cover roaming or roaming data when I’m in the US.
    • Given the Canadian dollar is at parity, I’m paying approximately double for less service than the $59.99/month AT&T plan

So the market is saturated, or at least very close to being saturated in urban centres. Let’s make some assumptions that all of the high value long time customers already have data plans and long-term contracts. These users switch phones on a regular basis because they derive status from the latest, greatest device. They probably don’t need or want to switch carriers. Coupled with the ARPU is the highest in North America. Data and non-voice services are currently less than 10% of the ARPU number and expected to grow. What advantage would Rogers have for negotiating a deal with Apple?

Unlike AT&T with aggressive rates to entice and retain existing customer, Rogers and other Canadian carriers are entrenched. Churn rates are around 2% and I wonder what churn looks like in higher value, higher spend customers. Canadian carriers have the highest ARPU around. Apple has been insistent on changing the wireless model by removing hardware subsidies and driving rates down on necessary data services. What part makes you think that Rogers, Telus or Bell is going to give up $10-18/month of ARPU and drive the overall service costs down?

Particularly when people like me and Jay Goldman are just buying iPhones in the US and running ZiPhone and upping our plans to handle more data. Well we might see an iPhone in Canada, but it won’t be for a while, after the carriers have milked additional ARPU out of the current set of non-voice services.

It makes me wonder where the CRTC is in all of this?