8 Mar 2016
Go East Young Startup!
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” “千里之行，始於足下” Laozi c.580 BCE Building on 19th Century US westward expansion (“Go West Young Man”), much of the current innovation in technology has been West Coast focused, particularly in California’s Silicon Valley, which has for more than 50 years been an intellectual epicentre of the technology world. Source: Wall Street Pit Over my long tenure in the vanguard of technology trends, I have witnessed a tectonic shift in this comfortable, yet outdated, world order. Today the best and brightest innovators and entrepreneurs must also look east, especially to China, to fully embrace global reality of the 21st Century. Many of you might be wondering about the slowing growth rates in China? Like many aspects of China, there are many perplexing contradictions that are beyond the scope of this post. It is certainly true that Chinese infrastructure investments and some manufacturing has been overbuilt. Not so in the technology industry. The difference is that there is a huge gap as the Chinese population increasingly moves to middle class status and the country needs to solve some huge issues (e.g. environmental issues around air quality). As a result, ICT, Green Technology, Life Sciences and […]
10 Sep 2015
Middlebrook Prize on the Move
The Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators has named Adam Barbu as its third winner and is moving up to a whole new level. Founded in 2012 by John Kissick and me, with initial investments from Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund, to support and mobilize Canadian creative talent, the Prize aims to inspire positive social change through creativity and connectedness in a time of unprecedented economic, environmental, social, and cultural challenges. In our 3rd year, some exciting changes are afoot as we see our vision for the Prize unfold. First of all, the Prize has a new home in our partner gallery, the recently re-branded Art Gallery of Guelph. Led by Dawn Owen, the gallery provides a compelling new venue to host the Prize exhibition and to mentor the winner. Secondly, the Prize now has a physical form and a visual identity as befits an increasingly important Canadian cultural icon. Designed by the immensely talented and award winning creative director, Chris Duchaine, our new visual identity reflects the knowledge integration inherent in modern curating interpreted with the most modern design principles. Paying homage to the “White Cube” abstraction of the idealized art gallery, it also references the forces that are breaking down that cube and moving curation firmly into the future, perhaps […]
27 Aug 2015
Management and Succession Planning of Angel Portfolios
How Can Angels Better Structure Their Portfolios? [Note: this blog post also appears on the NACO Canada guest blog by Randall Howard] Angel portfolio management remains surprisingly primitive. Many Angels have built up substantial portfolios over time, yet few give much thought to ongoing management of these valuable assets. The many various spreadsheets, documents, share certificates, warrants, emails and other essential documents are often scattered far and wide. I understand first hand the challenges Angel investors face when managing their portfolios and I also understand that things need to change. At the beginning of October, I will be moderating a panel at the 2015 National Angel Summit, regarding best practices in portfolio structuring management and succession planning in order to build awareness, and activate change, around this issue. The panel will include two “Super Angels” and a Family Office Professional who will provide first hand perspectives on approaches to filling the portfolio management gap. The fundamental question we will be addressing is, “how can Angels structure their portfolios better?” We will also be diving into the importance of succession planning for Angel investors. It may sound morbid, but how many Angel […]
30 May 2015
Snapshot of the ACA Summit 2015
In mid-April, I attended the 10th annual ACA Summit hosted by Angel Capital Association in San Diego. With about 600 people in attendance from dozens of countries, it was an excellent chance to get tuned into the latest trends happening in angel world at large. And since Angel Investing is now a global phenomenon, it is interesting to note that ACA Summit can have two faces. On one hand, it is a very international gathering of Angel investors and yet sometimes the content reflects the fact that ACA is primarily an association of US Angel investors, for example by showing trends without regard that Canadian angels are just across the border. The international range of attendees was striking, with many delegations from various European countries; Latin American countries like Mexico, Chile and Barbados; India; a particular concentration from Australia and New Zealand and of course Canada. Regarding this antipodean concentration, one attendee found it odd that there were more of participants from halfway around the world than from Canada. I am a member of the program committee for Canada’s own 2015 NACO Summit which is being held October 6-8 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, right on the US frontier. I see a huge opportunity to learn […]
8 Feb 2015
Top 25 Waterloo Technology Acquisitions – Wisdom from the Data
The acquisition of MKS by PTC in 2011, caused me to reflect a bit on what good acquisitions might look like and what they might teach us about building (sometimes elusive) long term shareholder value. As a result, over the last 6 months, I’ve progressively assembled a collection on the most significant acquisitions in the Waterloo area. To my knowledge, such information has hitherto never been collected. We all love to speculate, but it is more productive to ground that speculation with facts. The following table is intended to summarize value creation through the lens of several key benchmarks. Rank Company Acquiror Acquisition Price [4](UIS$ millions) Date Acquired Date Founded Company Age(years) Employees LTM Sales($US Million) NOTES Price/Sales Revenue/Emp CAGR $/Employee 1 Pixstream Cisco 369 December 21, 2000 1996 4 196 5.4 2 68.3 27 551 47.2 1.88 2 Dalsa Teledyne Technologies 341 February 14, 2011 1980 31 1000 200 3 1.7 200 000 0.85 0.34 3 MKS PTC – Parametric 304 May 31, 2011 May 1, 1984 27 360 75 4.1 208 333 0.96 0.84 4 Mitra Imaging AGFA Healthcare 252 January 3, 2002 1990 12 400 50 […]
4 Jan 2015
The Downside of Meeting Requests
“Expectation is the mother of all frustration.” – Antonio Banderas Meeting requests are an amazing invention. Pioneered, and standardized, almost 20 years ago by companies like Microsoft (as part of Outlook/Exchange), Novell (Groupwise) and Lotus (now part of IBM Lotus Notes) this innovation had great promise to automate an essential, yet completely routine, aspect of modern life. The ascendency of meeting request usage, also rides several trends: In the 1990s, I had an Executive Assistant who scheduled my time, acted as a “gatekeeper” and also worked on many projects. She was a master tactician who managed to keep 3 or more Type A executives productively multi-tasking. In many ways, sadly, such personal assistance is being subsumed by.. Increasing computational power means that automation of routine tasks, personalized to the needs of individuals is much more of a reality, The mobile revolution has made meetings much more multi-modal and virtual, but also means that most executives must be productive even while being mobile nomads, and Calendars have migrated from paper – I switched about 20 years ago – to desktop computers using Outlook and the like, and now to the ubiquitous smartphone and tablet devices. Such mobile devices […]
29 Jun 2017
Canada at 150 – What is Your Gift to Canada and the World?
As we approach Canada Day of our 150th year of Confederation, I am compelled to share my personal reflections on where our country is headed, how the lessons of history (positive or negative) are shaping our future journey and the contribution we, as Canadians, can make to our world. Beyond celebration, our nation urgently needs our care and attention. As a result, I am sharing my own journey in the form of a call to action.Over four years ago, I received a call join a group helping to build programs to shape our Canadian sense as a “Smart and Caring Nation”, inspired by His Excellency Governor General David Johnston. My love of our country has been inexorably shaped and enhanced through extended periods of living and working abroad. The opportunity to serve Canada and to collaborate with an unbelievably talented group of leaders, made it a no-brainer for me to accept this call. Since then, in many varied groupings, conversations about Canada and nation-building were convened at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Deloitte Greenhouse, Wasan Island and more. Although not apparent from the core group shown below, a diverse and impactful group of individual leaders, first nations, national […]