David Crow

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

Technology

A Golden Age for Indie Business

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“the mainstream startup narrative is owned by VC backed startups who’s success and ambition are often measured by the amount of capital they’ve raise. That’s a fine narrative, but not the only one.” – Bryce Roberts on Indie.vc

I have been focused on furthering the narrative of VC backed startups. From the start of DemoCamp almost 10 years ago, the goal was to find venture fundable companies. It also allowed the use of venture funding has become the default proxy for determining the success of companies and the health of the ecosystem. The more venture capital deployed the healthier the ecosystem with more jobs and greater impact. There are a strong number of Canadian venture funded companies:

Is venture funding the only narrative that matters? There are other companies in Canada that are participants and help define the ecosystem?

“there’s a cultural shift towards taking little to no VC investment, staying independent longer (or indefinitely) without sacrificing the ambition for building large, profitable and impactful businesses”
– Bryce Roberts

There are crazy entrepreneurs across Canada that are building big, impactful companies.

There are companies that are building outside of the narrative of venture capital and venture funding. They are defining their own rules leveraging distribution and monetization paths to companies outside of the venture narrative. These are important companies. I really like Bryce’s description of these businesses as “indie” and not “lifestyle”. Just like independent music, I think it better represents the ethos and motivations of these business owners.

“Can we provide the resources and networks founders would traditionally get taking VC money, without all the expectations and baggage that come with it? Would an early focus on cashflow and sustainability v. fundable milestones stunt growth or lay the foundation for a more scalable long-term culture? Is it possible to maintain and independent attitude and ethos with an outside investor on your cap table? And could these types of companies compete, and win, against their traditionally VC funded peers?”
–Bryce Roberts

It’s exciting to see a venture fund recognize the importance of these independent business. To look at the tools, milestones, connections and content around cashflow, sustainability, recruiting and culture.  Before the funding announcement in July 2014 it was easy to imagine FreshBooks remaining an independent. Mike McDerment has been a fixture in building and supporting independent companies and events like Mesh Conference for the past 10 years. The assumption is that FreshBooks was able to build strong culture and was able to raise financing at their own terms. This is a really interesting time, and it is amazing to see a group of independent technology businesses grow in to large, impactful companies.

As Bryce says, “we’re entering a golden age for Indie businesses”, and I can’t wait to see the companies that it brings.

Featured photo by Andrew Stephenson 

The Calendaring Land Grab

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There is a lot of chatter about calendar being the next native iOS application (much like Mailbox and Taskbox for Mail) that is set to be out replaced by a startup.

Atlas Scheduling Re-Invented - Today Feed - Events & TasksJust looking at my phone you’ll find:

I’m hopeful for Atlas because it has the potential to replace and improve on Tungle.me, ScheduleOnce, Doodle, Skedge and others (see Adam Popescu’s article on Mashable). I’m hopeful that it is as useful a calendar as Sunrise, but the advanced scheduling features are something I still crave post Zaplet (it’s funny, I remember building those screenshots back in late 1999).  The group scheduling application is feature, not a fully functional calendar.

I seem to struggle with  the business model for calendaring applications. I understand why companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft need to have applications that are engaging and functional for users on their respective platforms. But it feels like a user acquisition land grab. But one that is focused on engagement and not monetization. I guess a queue of >500,000 users can net you an acquisition around $100MM users.

Marketing Technology Landscape

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Marketing Technology Landscape by Scott Brinker @chiefmartec http://chiefmartec.com/

Scott Brinker provides a must read summary of the 5 meta-trends that underly most modern marketing.

  1. The great digital migration of marketing (and business).
  2. The convergence of paid, earned, and owned media.
  3. Customer experience as the core of marketing.
  4. Rise of the creative/marketing technologist.
  5. Agile marketing management.

The post lays forth a strong foundation for marketers and investors looking at understanding the competitive landscape of different offerings. Interestingly as a practitioner it also provides a great summary of the tools available to enable potential tactics. There are a few logos and companies I think are missing in the landscape, for example, Calls section is missing Twilio and Voxeo/Tropo. And the diagram is missing the entire SMS marketing enablement which are both part of the breakdown of VoIP and SMS through programmatic APIs. I am also trying to figure out where in the list to put Influitive, Custora, Totango, Spinnakr, Bloom Reach and a few others. It is an amazing list. There are a few new companies that I need to check out and learn more about.

Thanks Scott!

Mapping the next three decades of health tech

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Envisioning the Future of Health

The good folks at Fast Company sourced an interesting visualization from futurist Michell Zappa and the Envisioning Tech crew. Lots of science fiction, but it provides an interesting analysis based on the breaking down of information silos.

“This visualization is an exercise in speculating about which individual technologies are likely to affect the scenario of health in the coming decades. Arranged in six broad areas, the forecast covers a multitude of research and developments that are likely to disrupt the future of healthcare.”

The article provided interesting links to 2 other visualizations:

Kindle SF

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It has been 2 years since my Kindle arrived (September 2, 2010 to be exact). Sure not exactly an early adopter, it was more than 3 years after the initial launch of the device and part of the product and marketing blitz that allowed Kindle books to outsell print books in Q4 2010. And for the most part I have switched my consumption to digital books. Not including technical books (thank you O’Reilly), I have purchased and read 85 science fiction books on the Kindle (almost 1 book per week).

I started reading digital editions of Hugo and Nebula award winners. I started with John Scalzi’s
award winning Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale. These books are amazing, they are a great romp through crazy military and technology. I continued with The Evolutionary Void continuation of the Void Trilogy (which was part of Peter F Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga including Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained possibly 2 of my favorite books in the past 10 years). I was waiting for new new releases from Charles Stross, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan, Cory Doctorow and Orson Scott Card. While waiting I decided to switch strategies, I would try to find books that were $0.99-$2.99 in price. My reasoning, my engagement per book was just greater than 7 days, I figured like renting a movie (approximately $5.99 for 2 hours on iTunes HD) that would be my threshold. Unless a book was part of a series I had read previously, or an author I was following my limit was $2.99/book.

There are a lot of interesting books but here are my favorite series and authors. What are you reading?

Wool by Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey Wool Omnibus

This might be the best SF I have read in a long time. The Wool series is one of the most engaging dystopian futures I have read. I starting reading based on a tweet by John Lilly. It’s just an amazing series.

Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde

Another Canadian. This one living in Sudbury. Like many others I’m waiting Broadcasts 7 & 8. This incorporated a lot of future tech I have seen elsewhere but it is the characters and the story lines that make it worth the read.

Spinward Fringe - Broadcast 3: Triton

Prides of Sol by Rod Rogers

Vaughn Heppner

Invasion AlaskaVaughn Heppner is a Canadian living in California. Hoping this counts as Can-Con. The Doom Star series is a little out there – genetic engineering, cyborgs, space battles, subterranean cities. But it’s a fun read, the characters are relatable

Evan Currie


Another Canadian. Hmmm, I wonder if there is a trend. The Warrior’s Wings series is one of my recent favourites. It’s great romp of military science fiction.

BV Larson Follow @bvlarson

This is a strange series. I disliked BV Larson’s Mech series, I disliked the books so much that for the first time I did not finish the series. But I have enjoyed the expanding Star Force Series. The simplicity of programmed circuits and logic for a species is very interesting, particularly when matched against the less than binary humans.