A blog for entrepreneurs

Consulting Gigs

2009-10-08T10:08:00.005-04:00

I speak to many bootstrapping start-ups and get the same response over and over "I consult on the side to help build my company". Company founders that are sacrificing their own income to pay others in order to deliver products and grow their company are pretty special I think and good people to have on your side.

I've been consulting ever since I left Ciena over three years ago and it has worked out very well for everyone involved. My main focus and strength is to connect companies to their potential customers to answer critical questions and ultimately achieve early market success.

In some cases, my client is exploring a new product or market and needs some early customer validation. Are we building something people will buy? If not, what do we need to change? Should we sell direct, partner or OEM/white label? Important questions I help companies answer and something I'm super passionate about.

In many cases my clients are early stage companies and launching or developing the company and first product. This is an incredibly crucial time and I help them get over the hump. I even do it pro-bono for friends and ex-colleagues in many cases ... people call, ask for help and I provide it. Don't get any ideas though ... you have to be pretty special for that to happen :)

In nearly every case, my involvement led the company to realize that what they were building wasn't the right thing. Fortunately, in many cases, the customer involvement led them to realize what they should be building instead and what the business model should be.

So what do I do to achieve success for my clients?

1. Marketing collateral
Let's face it, most collateral and especially Powerpoint presentations suck ... very badly. I'm very good at this and help companies boil down their messaging to the key value proposition .... especially from the perspective of their potential customer.

2. Customer engagement
At the early stages, meeting directly with potential customers is key. I tap my extensive network of contacts that range from media companies to Telecom carriers as necessary to help initiate a first meeting.

I have often led the initial meetings, including presenting the company or product. I dig in deep and become part of your team. After the initial three or four meetings with a particular customer, I tend to move to the background to promote a deeper relationship between your company and the customer.

3. Pre-sales
I don't do pure sales for companies but have been directly involved in the pre-sales aspect many times. This includes research (who are the potential customers, names and numbers, hot buttons and customer motivation), strategy, collateral creation and initial customer interaction.

I have deep experience in the Telecom world and dealing directly with carriers but my last four years have been focused on the web including on-line strategy, video, social networks and media, and e-commerce. I blog and tweet heavily and am deeply entrenched in on-line worlds. FaveQuest is a social media platform which helps brands, especially those in the media and entertainment space, tap social networks and utilities.

Feel free to check me out on linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/allanisfan or better yet google me :)

Cheers,
Allan
allan.isfan[at]gmail.com

I might be on a SXSW Panel next march

2009-08-25T12:58:00.003-04:00

Been a crazy summer with Bluesfest in July then an incredible vacation in Europe with the family. Financially not great timing but mentally could not have been better.

In the midst of all that, I was asked to join a proposed panel at SXSW on Social Media ROI. Check out my blog post on the Favequest corporate site to get some perspective on this interesting topic. I touches on only two ways to generate and measure social media ROI. Many more to come.

http://bit.ly/mGprD

Cheers,
Allan

about passion

2009-06-14T22:06:00.006-04:00

I once asked myself: "what is the one thing that you would like to do more of but just don't get a chance to?". If you haven't asked yourself this question, you really ought to.

My answer: experience live music.

I used to have a band practice in my basement, have held outdoor parties with live music and pretty well live at the Ottawa Bluesfest every year in July. I also like to head up to the Black Sheep in Wakefiled as often as I can. That is actually where I discovered Lindsay Ferguson (http://www.lindsayferguson.com/), an amazing musician that I invited to play at this years Isfan Palooza (June 27th).

Entrepreneur's often advise you to follow your passions when it comes to business and I must admit I didn't heed their advice soon enough. However, FaveQuest is now deeply into the live music business with the launch of the Bluesfest Viewtube and we have many more surprises on this front coming imminently. It feels good. I highly recommend it!

It makes so much difference to be involved in a business and domain you are passionate about. It feels right, you have much more energy, have better ideas and push yourself that much harder. I think the passion also shines through and your customers see it. They see it when you pitch them and they see it when you over deliver.

Do you have something you're really passionate about that could be a business? I bet you there is! Please share and I bet you there's something I can do to help you (motivation, ideas, connections ...). So drop me a comment and let's chat.

Cheers,
Allan
PS. I'm also passionate about new communication tools and am fortunate to have been selected as a "character" at the 140conf conference in NYC June 16 & 17th.

new post on favequest blog

2009-05-02T03:50:00.002-04:00

Hey Everyone,

I have a new blog and some new blog posts I think you will find interesting specifically about FaveQuest. I will continue to blog here on startup issues, which reminds me, I've organized another Founders and Funders event on May 20. More information here http://www.startupottawa.com/?p=1118 (I'm a contributing blogger on Startup Ottawa

Ok, so here's the FaveQuest blog

http://favequest.com/blog/

Cheers,
Allan

The SUPERWEB: YOU win

2009-02-22T00:47:00.008-05:00

Nasty three way tug of war

There's a three way tug of war going on in mobile and it is going to create massive disruptions in the web which is great news for smart entrepreneurs and great for consumers. Read on.

Two major and radically different worlds are about to collide: the fixed web and the mobile web. We're not quite there yet. A number of websites are not quite easy to navigate on a smartphone (even the iphone), there are missing components on the security side which prevent me from logging on to a number of accounts (I can't do banking for example) and so on. We're not there yeat but we're really close and what will result is one superweb.

Furthermore, accessing this superweb from a mobile device will provide some extra features and services that only make sense with a mobile device: GPS, presence, mobile coupons, mobile payments and so on (many of these services already exist). So while the mobile web is inferior to the fixed web for now, accessing the superweb from mobile will allow us to actually do more. I think that is really cool.

Actually, it is more than cool, it is HUGE
The significance of this superweb coupled with all the app stores popping up everywhere, is that anyone can now provide value to mobile customers in the form of applications and services and with value shift comes a shift in dollars. But how are the dollars going to shift?

Handset manufacturing playing tug of war with carriers
Mobile carriers (Rogers Wireless, ATT, Verizon, Orange, Vodafone ...) have traditionally controlled the end mobile consumer in terms of the critical piece: billing. Any service on your mobile (long distance, voice mail, text messaging, ringtones) was payable to the mobile carrier. However, handset manufacturers are wrestling that away from them with things like app stores. Nokia even announced that it will be including skype with some phones (will start with N97). Nokia might as well just put up their middle finger to the carriers.

An even more concrete example: I bought a twitter app from the app store for 99 cents and my carrier got absolutely nothing for that (Apple and the app developer share that revenue). Add webservices that bypass even the app stores and you can easily see the danger carriers are in: becoming the big dumb pipe. Of course, they hate that. All is not lost for the carriers of course,they are doing some cool stuff too, but that is the subject of another post (I don't think carriers are evil BTW).

Web developers playing tug of war with handset manufacturers and carriers
This one is less obvious but hang on for a bit, I'll explain. Right now, wireless bandwidth is still poor, mobile browsers are sucky and people haven't yet figured out how to build good mobile websites. Apps provide far superior functionality and usability on a mobile phone which explains why they are doing so well. This walled garden is not going to last more than a few years. PCs are now moving more and more to web services in the cloud instead of on-board applications you have to download. This same trend is going to happen in mobile devices since after all, they are simply very small, always connected little computers.

So basically, all seems fairly quiet with everyone catching up to Apple and all major handset dudes positioning themseleves to cut out the carriers from the applications market. While that is happening, bazillions of web people will ultimately be able to reach the consumer directly and cut out even the handset dudes. Fun stuff. Will be interesting to see how it will shake out .... either way though, it will no longer be business as usual which hopefully creates opportunities for you.

Cheers,
Allan Isfan
CEO, FaveQuest

TOUCH me, I'm Sexy: Mobile World Congress Theme

2009-02-22T00:14:00.007-05:00

I just attended the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona and the clear main theme was: TOUCH me, I'm sexy.

Take a look at this picture very quickly.

What do you think it is? Yes, you are correct, it is the new LG Arena with the 3D S-Class UI. You didn't think it was an iPhone did you?

Then there is Samsung's new "TOUCH", at first look, very similar to the iPhone.

There's also Microsoft Mobile 6.5 (out second half of the year) which is sporting an apple style icon based touch screen (demo of 6.5 appeared really buggy ... shocking, I know). I can go on and on. This year's Mobile World Congress was definitely about sexy touch screen apple killers.

I was unimpressed by nearly all of them (didn't play with the Palm Pre) but I did find one exception: the Nokia N97 coming out in June. At 520 Euro, not for the faint of heart but it certainly looks to be very capable with many smart usability features, slim formafactor, touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard.

You've heard of the iPhone App store right? Google had already recently announced an app store for mobile devices using their Android operating systems. Well, Nokia and Microsoft both announced their own equivalent stores at the show (Nokia's OVI Store, Microsoft's Windows Mobile Marketplace) and there are several others ones as well. These app stores are a real boon to entrepreneurs allowing many of to finally easily play in the mobile space. Though app stores are not new, they are a big deal.

This is the first time at Mobile World congress that I don't detect any true innovation or NEW theme. In years past it was the hope of WiMax, or femtocells, LTE and so on. This year, all of these themes remain but the clear one theme is "I want to be an iPhone" and very few phones come close, even if their features on paper beat apple by a long shot (better camera, FM radio, Flash, copy and paste ...). It shocks me that people forget that usability is king in this space, not features.

Having said this, there is something VERY interesting brewing under the covers. Check out my next post on that story.

Cheers,

Allan

ten reason for launching a startup NOW!

2009-02-10T20:11:00.007-05:00

I was privileged to have been invited to speak to a group of entrepreneurs last night. The group was taking part in OCRI's entrepreneurs edge program. This program consists of five half days of intense training lead some of Ottawa's top entrepreneurs.

I was asked to talk about my experience at Catena Networks (where I cut my startup teeth) and FaveQuest, my new venture. Startups are much harder than you would think but also more rewarding than you could imagine. I did my best to share the highs and lows, including mistakes that I have made along the way and any words of advice.

I closed the talk with my top ten reasons why now is a perfect time to launch a bootstrapped startup or revector and recharge and existing company. Here are my top ten reasons (some borrowed from others):

10. Opportunity to demonstrate your skill and tenacity
-most people don't have the courage to bootstrap a company in this climate
-you have to be compelling to get partners and paying customers in this climate. If you do, it says something significant your team.

9. Tighter teams
-if your team sticks together in the tough times, you'll emerge extremely tight
-don't forget, if you're an entrepreneur you'll be doing lots of startups so building tight teams that stick together from one startup to another is a big deal

8. Focus
-you don't have the luxury of goofing around and build "wouldn't it be cool if" type concepts
-that is not to stay that you shouldn't test different things and experiment to see what works and what doesn't

7. More people available
-nuff said

6. Market disruption
-the market is experiencing a major disruption which creates opportunity

5. Less competition
-many startups will drop off, especially if they don't know how to be frugal
-large companies have been cutting so heavily, they are in a frozen state from a major innovation perspective

4. Frugal
-this economy teaches you to be extremely frugal. This will serve you well when things rebound. Furthermore, you frugality implies you can massively undercut your competition.

3. Lower Costs
-you can get equipment for cents on the dollar, rent office space for much less than you would in boom times and salaries are much more reasonable.

2. Forced to test the market
-if you are relying on revenues for operations, you don't have the choice but to go sell and close deals. that means you are very close to the market

1. ? I'll leave this one to you

What do you think is the # 1 reason your company has a better chance of succeding because you started it in a down market?

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Cheers,

Allan

Link to Entrepreneur's edge info (http://www.ottawacapitalnetwork.com/the_edge/index.cfm)

Paris and the secret to Success

2009-01-11T18:04:00.005-05:00

A great guy by the name of Peter Kemball (CEO, Acorn Partners) reminded many of us in attendance at a Codefactory function that the key to success is this: test the market soon and test it often.

With that in mind, I've been taking every opportunity to meet with a large number of customers in as many industries and locations as possible. The intent is not just to close deals but to listen and learn.

If there is anything that this financial crisis should make us realize is that we are a truly global economy. With a complete disregard for borders between countries, we therefore brought in a very sharp biz dev guy in France to help us scope out opportunities in Europe. Our arrangement is such that we share in the success if something comes to fruition (I'll leave it that).

He was able to uncover a potentially very significant opportunity with more in the wings and I flew over to meet with the customer last week (I used aeroplan points and stayed with family .... I didn't say you have blow a fortune:). It went very well but even more important is that we better understand their needs and we have a made a personal connection. Furthermore, we learned some very valuable things about the market, and that customer in particular, that allows us to tweak our offer and really meet their needs much better.

Similarly, someone recently offered to do something along the same lines in India. No trip yet ... that one is a bit tougher on my budget but if the lead is well qualified, someone's gonna talk face to face with that customer.

The message is really this: don't assume anything! Go talk to a large variety customers immediately and don't let artificial borders stop you. I know .... we were way off the mark when we started and would have build something useless.

I would love to hear your crazy travel stories about going across the world for a 1hr meeting. Was it worth it? Could you have done it over the phone? Don't be shy!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

ps. If you want to know where to get good crepes and free wifi in Paris, I've become an expert

5 easy tips for social media

2008-12-07T21:32:00.012-05:00

To me social media means "people having conversations online".

It can range from writing and/or commenting on blogs, posting pictures to facebook, uploading youtube videos, micro-blogging on twitter, listening to or creating podcasts. The list goes on and on.

I've been toying around with social media for a while. I post on four blogs and even decided to start a company to create a new social video platform (favequest). I also produce & direct a fun on-line video show called the Nasty Hockey Show. This is a space I believe in.

Over the last few months, I have been asked to help with more complete social media campaigns and thought it might be worthwhile to share some tips I've come up with to kick off the discussion with you. Please correct me if you think I'm off base or am missing something major.

Here are my 5 tips:
1) ask why: ask yourself why you are considering social media

Social media is not for all situations. Are you looking to create buzz around a specific event or looking for a long term relationship with you customers? Are you trying to save money and want a bigger bang for the buck? Get some help and advice before you dive in. Many of us would do that for free.

2) be patient: success in social media is about providing value and building relations with people in various online communities .... not about interrupting and annoying people.

For example, I sometimes see people twittering with every other tweet being a pitch and link to their website or blog. Don't bother. It just makes you look bad.

3) be human: you or people close to you must be directly involved in the communities and be transparent

Most people don't like to interact with robots or faceless companies. It is critical to have an actual person get involved and connect with people. Hire a community manager, ideally one that is already involved in the communities that are relevant to you. Lot's of pretenders out there. (no, I'm not looking for a community manager position in case you're wondering but I know many good ones)

4) contribute: truly be part of the community without constantly pushing your agenda.

For example, if every other tweet on twitter is a link to your blog or website, people are not going to follow you. Help people, listen, provide advice and tips if you can.

5) not a silver bullet: social media initiatives don't replace traditional PR, advertising, interactive agencies, Search Engine Optimization and so on.

Social media can be part of the complete equation. Applied properly, it could make your customer engagement and even your major campaigns much more effective. And yes, you could even save some money as your champions carry your message on your behalf. Does Obama rings a bell?

I'm sure I'm missing some major points here so feel free to set me straight in the comments.

My next post will provide 5 key steps in any social media initiative and I will follow that up with some very specific details and examples. Be sure to register to my blog so that we don't miss an opportunity to connect and have a constructive discussion.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
CEO, FaveQuest
blogs:
http://connecttheworld.wordpress.com/
http://nastyhockeyshow.wordpress.com
http://www.startupottawa.com/

twitter: @isfan

carleton students and favequest: win win win

2008-11-12T12:42:00.008-05:00

I was very fortunate to have been in a co-op program during my university years and remember clearly all the great projects I was involved in. I was given real jobs ranging from board design to building a test robot (that was the coolest!). It was an absolute thrill and helped launch my career, getting a job offer before I graduated from electrical engineering in the early nineties when jobs were scarce.

It is now time to create the same opportunity for a couple of very bright students. I am happy to announce that FaveQuest is collaborating with Carleton University and OCRI to place two students with FaveQuest starting this January. The lucky students will get to develop real products at the absolute bleeding edge of social networks, on-line video and mobile applications. On top of that, they get to be part of a real start-up that is just about to launch publicly with a large media partner. They'll get to truly experience and learn how it is done at a very early stage (and probably see some mistakes too). They'll even get to attend meetings with real customers! Wait ... it gets even better. The students will get paid and can work part-time (15-20 hrs/week). There could even be opportunities for summer work and even equity (i.e. shares). How often does a student get such an opportunity?

To be clear, I'm looking for a couple of very special individuals. They need strong software skills (idealy Java) who love writing code so much, they do it for fun! At least one applicant needs to have strong interest in the business side of things. You must also be a full time student at Carleton U or the Bachelor of IT program (in collaboration with Algonquin College) with preference given to students in 3rd or 4th year.

If you fit the bill, click on the following link to register for an event on November 17th at 4:00. Note that there is a limit of 20 people so don't wait. "You get one shot, one chance to play"

http://favequestandstudents.eventbrite.com/

I'm so excited to meet all of you and get your assitance in launching a great new Ottawa based company. C U soon.

Cheers,

Allan

prep for founders and funders

2008-10-25T10:58:00.008-04:00

Fellow Founders and Funders,

The Founders and Funders Ottawa event is entirely sold out! I'm so glad! Many thanks for James Smith (LaBarge Weinstein), Tim Hember (thinkRF, The Ottawa Network) and Ian Graham (CodeFactory) and a long list of sponsors (LaBarge Weinstein, Ramius, Acorn Partners, Verdexus, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Royal Bank). We took a real chance initially when we pulled the trigger on this, made it official and started taking registrations. There was always a fear that we'd get 20 people coming out and have them all be founders. A great night I'm sure but not exactly what I was looking for. So now to final preparations. If you're not registered already, I'm afraid it is too late.

I've written this blog to help entrepreneurs prepare for the event as it could change your life. Really. Rarely are so many investors and fellow founders together in one place ready to listen to YOU. Don't forget that each one of these individuals is likely very well connected to other investors, customers and partners so your personal network could literally explode in a significant way. You'll also have a few us floating around working hard to help you make connections. It is now up to you to make the best of this event so here are my ten pieces of advice for what its worth:

1) Be punctual: the event starts at 6pm and dinner is at 7pm.

The one hour before the dinner will be the best portion of the evening for working the room so don't be late.

2) Have your elevator pitch nailed solid

If you don't have it down to less than 30 seconds, then I suggest you get practicing with your wife, your dog, the mirror and get people to give you honest feedback.

Here is mine for what it's worth:
FaveQuest is a young start-up that has created a social video platform to help media companies reach out to people in social networks like Facebook and MySpace. We take content they already have access to and make it available through special video portals integrated into the social networks of their choice. The viewers get access to great content but more importantly, they get to create their own channels based on their interests and share videos and channels with their friends. We're launching with a major media company at the end of the year and have several more major ones in the pipeline.

Investors reading this, feel free to provide advice on the elevator pitch above and in general (I'm now devoid of ego ... just want to make it better).

3) Bring decent business cards

In my opinion, the flimsy print at home ones suck. Some people may disagree but when I get a crappy biz card, it takes my opinion of the person down a notch. If you don't have a proper card, it isn't too late. Clean it up and get it printed in low volume at a local print shop. I use http://www.jiffyonline.com/ . They are a small shop in the west end (near Hazeldean & Eagleson) and have been absolutely fantastic to deal with. I send them a jpeg or pdf and they get stuff printed often the next day. I usually get about 30 cards printed at a time. Basically, there's no excuse for a crappy card.

4) Come prepared

You will be getting a list of all attendees and should do some research on each and every investor in attendance. If you want to get a BRIEF note to one of them ahead of time, feel free to do so directly or through me. It is much better to come to the meeting with a well planned mission and if they know your name ahead of time, even better.

Note: the list you'll be receiving is private and for your use only. Please do not publish it or email it to others. I will hunt you down if you do.

5) don't get drunk, at least not until much later in the night when you're by yourself

The open bar at a similar event I went a while back got a bit abused and wasn't good for anyone. For that reason (and the budget), I decided to not have an wide open bar. You'll be getting two drink tickets for the bar and wine with dinner.

I hope the evening works out for you and that you make the connections you hope to make. If there is anything I can do, please let me know.

Lastly, if you agree, disagree or want to add to this blog, please fee free to leave a comment.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

why I brought Founders and Funders to Ottawa

2008-10-23T18:45:00.005-04:00

I'm a bit nuts ... I don't stop much except to hang with my family or learn to play guitar. Between running FaveQuest, consulting, three kids, filming/producing/directing/editing "The Nasty Hockey Show" and starting to design Zoogeez ... things are interesting for sure.

With all of that going on, I decided to organize a major event taking place next week. Crazy!. Here is why.

There's a lot of complaining on both sides of the funding table and way to much negativity. Lots of bitching about lack of support from government. Constant chatter that Canadian VCs have had poor returns. While some of this may be true ... there's also another possibility which is this:

"there are many investors who are looking to place money and numerous high quality, fundable start-ups looking for investment. "

Funders and Founders need each other and an event that brings these two groups together may very well unlock the apparent frozen state of start-up investment in Canada. The Founders and Funders Dinner is a grass roots by invitation only event that brings these two groups together for an evening of hard-core networking. No presentations, no demos. This initiative was started by Austin Hill (who is coming to Ottawa for our event) and Patrick Lauzon in Montreal and similar events have sold out across the country with support from David Crow & Jevon MacDonald.

After attending the Toronto F&F last spring following an invitation from David Crow, I decided it was time to bring the event to Ottawa. With the tireless assistance of James Smith (LaBarge Weinstein), Tim Hember (thinkRF, The Ottawa Network) and Ian Graham (CodeFactory) and a long list of sponsors (LaBarge Weinstein, Ramius, Acorn Partners, Verdexus, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Royal Bank).

Within barely a week of registration, the Ottawa event being held on October 29th nearly sold out as of now (and will sell out). It is especially encouraging that roughly one third of the Ottawa registered attendees are investors (VCs, Angels, government funds, working capital ...). We have some founders and investors coming from Montreal and Toronto and many well known and new local investors will be in attendance.

This is a story about people taking action at the grass roots to make things happen while everyone else is worried and complaining about the economy.

Cheers,

Allan
BTW, if you are interested, shoot me an email at allan.isfan at favequest.com

"cute kitten!" approach to business

2008-10-11T19:50:00.007-04:00

With all the talk of financial meltdown, it is easy for entrepreneurs to panic. Here is my advice inspired by the addition of a kitten to our family:

1) find paying customers ASAP

This is not the time to worry about ramping users while putting yourself in the hole for the sake of demonstrating traction. This is a bad time to look for investors and acquisition valuations aren't going to be very high so forget about trying to impress others. It is time to focus on revenue, plain and simple. That has led me to prune the list a potential clients to those that can pay and are highly motivated.

2) cut overhead to the bone

We gave up on office space last spring and any and all frills. Anything that doesn't get us paying customers is simply not pursued. Everyone continues to work for sweat equity, we're partnering with a local university to get students to work with us while getting paid through a University program. Essentially, we're building this company on less than a shoestring and we're still getting traction!

The fact that nobody in the company gets paid anything until we get revenue keeps us extremely hungry and focused. Much easier to have a false sense of security with a few million in the bank from a recent round. Raising money is not a sign of success and it could be your undoing if not handled properly. Our lack of money will make our company stronger ... I'm convinced of it.

3) Apply the "cute kitten!" sales approach

My kids are very good at sales. I have been against getting a cat for as far as I can remember. Today, one of our neighbours was giving away some kittens and the kids brought one of them in to show us. Darn thing was so cute and was cuddling and purring right away next to my wife. A quick trip to the pet store for supplies and we now officially have a four week old kitten.

We have now moved to a simpler pitch and with the fortune of a few new team members joining us recently, we can pre-build a working mock-up before going into a customer pitch. "Look how cool this is, it already has your name on it and it is ready to go ... we can have this up and running tomorrow!" I now call this the "cute kitten sales approach". It just worked on me and I didn't even want the product!

4) Make it easy for customers to say yes

Customers are going to be thinking twice about putting money out right now, no matter who they are. There are three possibilities:

a) they add to their budget to get your product ... tough sell right now
b) they eliminate something to get your product ... again, tough ... they have to change their mind which is never easy
c) your product allows your customer to save money or make money and ideally both at no or very minimal risk. a revenue share can be a good way to go with the right type of customer

5) this financial chaos can be the best thing that has happened

Are your customers going to be able to achieve their goals while spending dramatically less using your product? In good times, people don't count their pennies as much and are not motivated to change. They are motivated now. Can you build something that capitalized on this uncertainty?

So in summary, focus on revenue, cut overhead to the bone, focus on specific customers and make them taste it using the "cute kitten" technique, make it easy for them to say yes and remember ... this financial mess may be the best thing for you.

So, what do you think? Am I full of it? Do you have any advice of your own? I would love to hear it.

Cheers,

Allan

tweak to blog and new posts on "connect the world" blog

2008-09-28T13:34:00.004-04:00

Hello Everyone,

I recently launched a new blog to focus on world changing socially oriented topics. You can find the blog here http://connecttheworld.wordpress.com . There is some pretty interesting stuff on there and I urge you to check it out.

I will continue to use this existing blog but will change the focus a bit and will become more active. I have many new thoughts, tips and links and am also looking to start discussions with other entrepreneurs. I may also touch on FaveQuest but there will be less focus on that as I will eventually write a blog specific to FaveQuest when we launch the full site.

Cheers,

Allan

face your fears - it feels great

2008-08-18T15:40:00.009-04:00

If you're anything like me, you are afraid of pain and suffering. You live in fear that you might lose your job, lose your house, not be able to feed your family and so on. Quitting your job without another lined up would be insane. Check.

There are also other kinds of pain to be avoided ... the type that physically hurts. Breaking bones, cracking your head on rocks, drowning and such. You walk across a bridge over a raging waterfall, imagine falling in and get wobbly at the knees. I'm somewhat afraid of heights and not big a raging waters either ... so what do I do ... zip line across the waterfall in a harness !!!! Absolutely crazy but exhilarating!!

Facing your fears and punching through feels really good. Go ahead ... do it!

Check out this video of me and two of my girls zip lining across Ste Anne Canyon Falls just outside Quebec City.

Here is the link (for those getting this through email)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpM0HtSX51M

THEM = US can change the world

2008-07-21T22:26:00.005-04:00

Hey Everyone,
I have taken the THEM = US concept a little bit further and am kicking off a grassroots campaign of awareness for now, and action soon thereafter.

I have started a brand new blog focused on this world changing topic http://connecttheworld.wordpress.com

The presentation below tells you a bit about myself and my goals. I have entered it in SlideShare's "worlds best presentation" competition. Please register at slideshare to vote and help get the word out. The contest ends July 31, 2008 (really really soon) so please don't wait.

After you watch the slide show (you need to go to the actual blog page if you subscribe via email), if you think it is worthy, please click on the SlideShare icon at the bottom right of the player, register on the site and vote!!!!

Change the world one child at a time

view presentation (tags: canada france romania war)

is blogging dead?

2008-07-14T07:44:00.005-04:00

John Calacanis (ceo omahalo) recently gave up on blogging and is moving back to email http://www.calacanis.com/2008/07/11/official-announcement-regarding-my-retirement-from-blogging/. He is writing more of a newsletter with a limited distribution (I'm fortunate to have signed on before he capped the distribution list). Not sure if that is a good move but it got me thinking.

Email is still very central to my activities. I have my email with me at all times and tie it in to my social activities. For example, I use it to register to blogs so that I get updates in my email (easier than rss reader). I get key facebook info, some twitter activities and so on. Email is still a radically untapped social utility and for many of us includes a huge number of contacts and most of our communications. You could easily build a social graph out of email by mapping out interactions and then organizing emails by importance rather than time. For example, an email from someone I interact with often is more important than newsletter I signed up to.

I am imagining a new breed of communication tools anchored around email but that aggregate all your activities both outbound and inbound. On the outbound side, you pick who and what receives your message. That could include emailing friends, facebook status, twitter, friendfeed and so on. On the inbound side, you get messagaes regarding all major social activities but they come in automatically segmented and organized so that you don't end up with a ridiculous stream of emails.My business stuff here, my social stuff there, my blogs stuff over there.

I could even interact with the originating service by replying to an email. For example, I get an email telling me a friend left me a facebook message. If I want to reply, I have to go to facebook, log in and punch in the reply. This a major annoyance, especially if you're on a mobile device. It would be much easier if I could just reply to the email and the new email S/W automatically generates a facebook reply message for me. Another example: you the loyal reader get one of my inspiring blogs in your email because you registered (if you haven't, look to the right and register your email). You want to leave a comment but would have to go to the actual blog, go to comments and so on. Why can't you just leave a comment by replying to the email? Very simple! What if all of you could blog your thoughts without having to register to an actual blog service and go through the learning curve. Someone could easily build an email based blogging system.

I'm not going to build this ... Got enough cool things on my plate ... But I sure hope someone does. I suspect google is doing this or will eventually. They have all the right pieces (gmail, blogger, igoogle, google reader, orkut, opensocial and android to deal with mobile aspect). They have figured out how to make money from free email by including relevant sponsored links in gmail. Plus, their mission is to organize the world's information ... It would be great if they could start with mine.

Cheers,

Allan

O'Canada, our home and native land

2008-06-30T10:34:00.003-04:00

Patriotism is a curious and sometimes contradictory thing for me. As a Canadian, I'm proud of what this country stands for. On the other hand, I was born in Romania lived in France and have traveled extensively. I feel at home in Paris, Barcelona, Corsica (I'm sure I have had a past life here), Quebec City and so on with each location connecting with me in a slightly different way.

I feel more a citizen of the world than anything else so allegiance to one country is a bit strange. Nevertheless, this country has been incredibly good to me. I arrived as a skinny little immigrant and have built a great life here. I met my wife at Quebec High School many many years ago, became and engineer, have three wonderful kids, have had some success in business and generally enjoy this country tremendously. Never once did I not feel welcome here. So I wear this country's flag proudly, try to contribute as much as I can and will hopefully do something to pull the world a bit closer together.

In the meantime, please check out a beautiful song by my oldest daughter (she didn't write it btw).

A big dream, a big mission: THEM = US

2008-06-27T04:56:00.006-04:00

I woke up in the middle of the night with my heart pumping and brain full of thoughts and couldn't go back to sleep so I decided to document a big dream I've been having for the last couple of months.

Many people are calling for entrepreneurs to start launching companies that solve real problems.

For example, Fred Wilson's "Am I Bored With “Web 2.0”? http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/06/am-i-bored-with.html

or

Umair Haque's multiple blogs at http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/ .

So I'm going to share a dream that I've had that was in large part inspired by Pangea Day www.pangeaday.org, an event that took place on May 10th of this year, as well as my children as I watch them play on-line.

As some of you may know, I'm the co-founder of favequest, a company that is building a social video platform. We have a first stab at an app running in facebook http://apps.facebook.com/favequest/ and we're working on a branded one for a media company as part of revenue generation plan. Our platform is meant to create communities centered around video.

So what does this have to do with the big dream? My big dream is to use media (primarily video) to connect kids across the world to each other and their planet. I'm talking about creating a safe place for kids in the range of 6-12 where they can find content specifically for them and interact with other kids across the world. Ideally the content is created by other kids but it can also be professional content like National Geographic that kids can watch, share and talk about. The content itself doesn't matter as long as it is remarkable enough for kids to want to talk about it and learn about their world.

Why do I think this can make a big impact? Pangea Day was a good example of the use of film to connect people across the world. It was a day during which my family, friends and I learned about life in other parts of the world. Reacting to the story about a war child, one of my girls actually said ... I didn't know there was a war going on!! What better way for her to understand this than the media created by another kid living through this. Much more powerful than CNN.

The key point though is not the learning for the sake of knowledge ... it is the realization that people across the world all have the same needs and desires, whether you are a kid or an adult. It is a realization that we are all the same no matter what colour and where we live.

A realization that THEM = US leads to empathy and hopefully caring which can leads to action. If people don't care, nothing happens.

This realization can be incredibly powerful. It has caused things like "Combatants for Peace" http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=73 . This incredible documentary was filmed by the organizer of Pangea Day about Israeli and Palestinian former soldiers that denounced violence and instead sit around the table to talk and seek an end to the conflict.

Without worrying too much right now about the details and many roadblocks ... imagine that our kids got engaged with each other across the world. Imagine having Pangea Day every day with our your kids at the center. Imagine what these kids would grow up to be and how they could impact our world?

I think this is a dream worth chasing ... and I can't do it alone. I've spoken to people like Tom Williams (CEO of GiveMeaning.com), the founder of Club Penguin, David Usher (the singer http://www.davidusher.com/) and many others. This will happen!

Please comment or email me, find me on facebook or twitter (@isfan) and tell me what you think about this and what you want to do to help.

Cheers,

Allan
PS. As I finish this blog, it is 6:14am and my eight year old walks in to the office and boots up the computer to go on webkinz ... ironic

Success is about perseverance ... plain and simple

2008-06-23T20:49:00.008-04:00

I really truly believe success is about perseverance. Sure you need some decent brains, a good team, being in the right place at the right time, some luck and so on. It clearly takes a lot to be successful as an individual or as a business.

But ultimately, it is about not giving up, believing in yourself and just continuing to push hard even in the face of adversity. My parents managed to get out of Romania even with two young kids in tow and not a penny to their name. They made a great life for their family eventually bringing us to Canada. My wife launched her own graphic design business straight out of school and has been running it very successfully for many years. You just have to decide you are going for it no matter how hard it is.

And now, my oldest daughter reminds us of this in spades. We were at her elementary graduation this morning. It was a beautiful affair in the brand new church in Stittsville and all the kids looked great. The place was packed with lots of proud family. They called up several kids for awards and although we were hoping she would get something, we knew the odds were not great.

She has struggled with ADHD every since she was little but we have refused to drug her. She has a beautiful sparkling personality and an amazing imagination that we don't want to snuff out. It is a gift even it makes school very difficult. So she has to work harder ... everything takes twice as long to do as her peers and she meets with a tutor every week on top of us staying on her case (especially her mother who doesn't let up thankfully ... just like my mother who would study with me late into the night). Her marks have steadily improved with all the hard work to such a degree that she won a medal for having the most improved scholastic achievement. It is a big deal and the lesson learned is even more important than anything else she may have learned in school ... don't give ... don't give up ... don't give up!

Cheers,

Allan

favequest to take over the world

2008-05-18T10:27:00.002-04:00

In due time.

I promised a couple of blogs ago that I would tell you a bit more about where we are headed here at favequest. So why did I then get into twitter on my last post? I've realized that, although some people have heard the name, they don't know what it is and why they should care. This also goes for major brands and publishers (i.e. Media companies). There is just so much going on in the social space that it is nearly impossible to keep up. It is really wild out there to put it mildly. Twitter, friend feed, openid, data portability, friend connect, open social and on and on.

Media companies,major brands, sports franchises are extremely busy doing what they do ... Create content, promotion and advertising. They often just don't have the time, resources and the background to keep up with all this stuff on a daily basis and then capitalize on it.

And yet, people are spending more and more of their time in social networks, communicating with each other, watching youtube, reading blogs and so on. People want to be in control of their time, what they consume and what they do with the content. This is extremely clear. I personally consume about ten times more media on my laptop or smartphone (which is what I'm using to write this blog) than tv or print.

Our mission at favequest is therefore to build a bridge between media companies and consumers. We will do this by giving the publishers the tools (essentially a new video platform) to reach consumers where they hang out. They hand us an RSS feed of all the content they want to make available and we do everything else. Consumers benefit because they can get at great relevant content on their terms, finally breaking down the walled garden. They will be able to create their own channels and shows which get filled automatically by our engine making their experience truly personal. They will even be able to embed the portal into their blogs. Imagine being able to create you own CNN news portal, or have a place to follow just the sports and teams you are interested in. That's the idea.

Because we'll be hanging out in all the major social networks and utilities, you'll be able to reach all of your friends on your terms. You want to share a channel you created with friends on MySpace, Facebook, the people that follow you on twitter, have it show up in Friend Feed and your Facebook news feed? Go right ahead ... a one click experience.

Ok ... so I have told you a bit more about the "why" and not that much about "how". That will come.

In the meantime, we're about to launch our latest facebook video app and we'll be making this one public. Let me know if you want to get in on the beta test list. We've also started working on a branded facebook app for a great media company in the sports space. More on that later.

why twitter is better than facebook

2008-05-17T09:49:00.004-04:00

Ok ... so that is not completely true. I enjoy both but I have found twitter surprisingly powerful. The two features I enjoy most on facebook are the picture and status updates. I find those two apps give the best sense for who an individual is. Twitter does a great job of both of those features without a pile of other garbage.

Twitter is like facebook status updates on steroids. Message are limited to 140 characters and allow you to very quickly send messages to a group of people that follow you. You can use it from a computer using many different programs. I use Twhirl which is a light desktop app based on Adobe Air. There's also a facebook app. When I send something on twitter, it shows up in my facebook status. You can also receive and send tweets from a mobile device.

If you've ever seen a friend's facebook status and would like to reply to it ... and can't ... well ... you can do that in twitter. You can even send pictures using twitpic.

What I find cool is the stuff that people are building on top of twitter (which is extremely open). For example, a venture capital guy in NYC called Fred Wilson kicked off "lyric of the day". When you hear a lyric that you like, you post a message with @lotd at the front and everyone that follows @lotd gets the lyric. Pretty cool but just an early example.

I follow a few people on twitter and I have found that it is a much better way to get to know people than facebook. If you are looking for a way to connect to others and have others connect with you, you might want to give twitter a try. Of course , the issue is that you have to get your friends on twitter first and right now it is mostly used by propeller heads but that will change. So go ahead ... sign up. I'm @isfan.

Cheers,

Allan

Pangea Day ... why such a big deal?

2008-05-07T21:24:00.004-04:00

Hey Everyone,

As some of you may have heard, I'm hosting a major event at my place for Pangea Day this coming Saturday May 10 (pls arrive at 1:30 so we're ready for 2pm start). People sometimes look at me like I have a third eye. What the heck is Pangea Day? I try to explain and some get it while others go blank.

If you really want to get the lowdown, go to http://www.pangeaday.org/ and flip through the site to see what it is all about. Here is a quote from the site:

"The Pangea Day Mission & Purpose

Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film.

Why? In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film."

As an individual, I've always believed in people's equality and treat people as such, no matter what background, education level, skin color or gender. I also have a propensity to organize big parties to bring people together. I hope to connect with people individually and learn from them (a bit selfish), share stories and have fun. I also hope that people that come to these events connect with each other and Pangea Day is an especially good opportunity to do that since there will be lots to talk about.

I truly and deeply believe the world becomes a better place when people get to know and understand each other. This leads to compassion. From wikipedia:

"Compassion is an understanding of the emotional state of another or oneself. Not to be confused with empathy, compassion is often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another or to show special kindness to those who suffer. However, compassion may lead an individual to feel empathy with another person."

Compassion can lead to action because if you are truly compassionate, you do not have the choice but to act. Someone else's suffering is your own suffering.

What does this have to do with FaveQuest? Like the Pangea Day events and films, my secret dream and goal is for FaveQuest to connect people, have them share and collaborate and thereby make the world a smaller place. We will use the platform ourselves and make it available to others to achieve this. Of course, we're shooting to build a thriving business and I believe we will but there is something bigger in it for me.

I hope you come out to our event or catch Pangea Day elsewhere.

PS. I'll be twittering during our event. You can follow me on Twitter ... I'm @isfan.

social video

2008-05-04T08:27:00.006-04:00

In case you are new to this blog, the easiest way to get updates is to register your email on the right and you'll get updates in your email inbox automatically.

Favequest is playing in the 'social video' space and I thought it would be worthwhile to explain what that means to me. It might give you a sense for why we are building what we are building.

I have to come to realize that I get a much bigger kick out of media when I have a chance to use that media to interact with others. I write this blog to interact with you, even if people don't leave comments. I run into many of you through my travels and the blog often comes up which helps connect us. Why does that matter? I think it matters because the only way for us to evolve is to understand each other and work together to achieve greater things. This is one reason I'm supporting Pangea day http://www.pangeaday.org/index.php in a big way (reminder about event at my place on May 10 at 1:30). We're all much too isolated and busy living our lives to care or worry about others and that simply must change.

Why did I start this train?

One way media like tv is feeling increasingly empty to me. I only watch it occasionally when I'm relaxing with my wife but would NEVER just sit down to watch anything on tv. It feels like having dinner alone in a strange town or traveling and seeing something exciting and having no one to share it with. It's like watching a hockey game alone in the basement vs being with friends and screaming together. Enough with the analogies, I hope you get the idea.

Just watching video on-line is also empty if all I can do is watch it in isolation. Let me share with others, tell them what I think, have them do the same and start a conversation (can't really do that on YouTube). Let me discover exciting topics and meet new people with whom I can exchange ideas and create action. Let me reconnect with my Romanian friends and family all over the world by collaborating and sharing on Romanian topics.

I'm willing to bet a lot of money (done) and my reputation (done) that there are many others like me. If I'm the only one, were kinda screwed ... But I don't think so.

So we are building a platform that is totally about social interaction around video. So you should ask .... why does this matter? What are you really trying to do? What's the big picture? If you know me, you know there's always a big picture even it doesn't seem like it.

Look for the next blog for answers to some of these questions.

Cheers,

Allan

the fans are the most powerful distribution points

2008-04-04T20:50:00.007-04:00

The title of this blog was pulled out of context from Fred Wilson's recent post about some major things going on in the world of music http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/04/something-impor.html . Sorry Fred. I think this is true on a much larger scale than just music. The signs are absolutely everywhere. It is pretty wild actually from my vantage point.

People ... i.e. you and I, are increasingly powering the new economy. Some of the most successful and revolutionary things in recent years are powered by people in some way. People create and/or distribute content and messages on their own ... often with no clear incentive. Even google, though powered by complex algorithms, is ultimately powered by people they got the word out (ever see a google ad?)

Canvas & Paint Brush
The internet has connected us and some smart people gave us canvas and paint brushes so we could create and/or share. MySpace started out as an empty canvas which allowed people to express themselves and feel important. Similarly for youtube, facebook, blogger, digg, hypemachine, flickr, texting, twitter ... heck ... even email, still the most powerful (and undervalued) social utility. There are so many ways for people to communicate and express themselves that this will lead to a new economy. It is not possible for it not to.

Word of Mouth
It used to be that a brand could reach millions of people and become successful purely through advertising on tv. No more. Even pure advertising online (banners ...), though easier to track, is ultimately doomed. I've never seen an add for google, or twitter or facebook. I heard about these from friends and others I respect. The beauty in all of this is that people are willing to carry your message ... you "just" need to create something worth talking about and give them the tools to get the message out(and some incentives like fun & notoriety... don't hurt).

We Canadians have always been good at building things to help people communicate .... perhaps because the population is spread out. Basic communication is now ubiquitous & and is increasingly moving to a more complex level which is pretty exciting and I'm so glad to be part of it.

Cheers,

Allan

PS. Check out Umair Haque's blogs at http://www.bubblegeneration.com/ and http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/2008/03/the_future_is_goople.html for some much deeper and insightful discussion. I've had the good fortune to chat with Umair on a couple of occasions and rarely will you meet someone with such a deep insight.

favequest at a turning point

2008-04-02T21:20:00.005-04:00

I've run into a few of you here and there and you've been asking me wassup with the blog? You know, typical "really busy with three kids, launching a company, raising money, closing deals with customers, producing an online hockey show, trying to show up at the gym once in while ...". Other than that, pretty bored.

FaveQuest is now getting near an important turning point. We are now in advanced discussions with a great customer that I would love to work with. Ours to lose basically at this point and we're all very happy and excited. Must execute.

We're also in advanced discussion for some funding that would allow us to grow the team, execute on some important things that have had to stay on the back burner (opensocial, improved algorithms, some magical tools) and expand our customer base. One of the potential funders is in California so it is a long shot. I had to postpone our family Disney World vacation to fly out to Palo Alto ... kids weren't too impressed + it cost me $2000 to change all the flights. Hope it was worth it ... but hey ... if you don't play, you don't win. Check out the rental car (sweet talked lady at Budget to give me that one for the same prices as Nissan Altima!). Sweet ride.

All good stuff but this also changes the dynamic. We're going to lose a bit of freedom but we're on the right path. Tougher than I thought.

Hello, my name is Old Media and I'm an Adaholic

2008-02-02T08:58:00.000-05:00

I attended the AlwaysOn OnMedia conference in NYC last week and took part in the CEO Showcase, a six minutes of fame for FaveQuest. I haven't seen the video yet (how long does it take to put a freaking video online!!). I could have sucked it in to Adobe Premiere Pro, put some cool effects, added some music and have it up on line in less than an hour! As soon as I get my hands on it I'll share it with you if it doesn't suck too much.

I went there primarily to connect with more people in the media and advertising industries as well as investors in the space. I also paid very close attention to what media companies were saying regarding the things they worry about, where they think they are weak and what they may be doing about it. I feel it was worth my time though the price tag was a bit steep.

I came away realizing even more than I did before that the whole old media market is a mess and that they have no clue what to do about it but at least they seem to be admitting it more now. Will they make the transition? Many won't but some, like Newscorp, will flourish. We need to tie ourselves to the winners.

They are asking themselves all the tough questions and at least some seem to have willingness to try new things which bodes very well for us. Should they just concentrate on creating or acquiring great content? Should they become a platform and bring whatever content people want to see, even if that includes content they didn't create themselves? It also became very clear that many executives in the media space wish they were software companies so that they could create the environments and platforms that are kicking their ass for the attention of the people they are trying to connect with. At least that's what they seem to be saying. Good for companies like us and others ... they need us.

Even though this is an industry in serious turmoil in my opinion, ironically the conference was held at the very posh Mandarin New York. Conference people had a great deal to stay at the hotel ... $650/night. What a bargain! Needless to say, I didn't get a room there. I stayed where ever William Shatner told me to ... (via Priceline). The Wellington on 7th avenue. Ten minute walk, king sized bed, hot water, free wireless internet, no roaches, Starbucks across the street. $140/night.

I think there's another problem lurking. An overwhelming number of the start-ups that are getting attention are those that are finding innovative ways to put more ads in front of people. Is that what we really need? More banners and interruptions? Hello, my name is Old Media and I'm an Adaholic.

I'm very happy that our company is talking to media companies and organizations that I think will make that transition. I truly think we can help them ... no kidding. There are other companies that I came across that I thin also get it. In my next post, I'll give you some examples of some companies that I think are doing great work by focusing on the users (i.e. you and I). I'll also tell you why I think FaveQuest is doing the right things.

If interested for more on the topic of old media, check out the following post by Marc Andreesen. He is putting The New York Times on deathwatch.
http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/02/inaugurating-th.html

Cheers,

Allan

favequest nasty hockey show -episode 1

2008-01-20T08:01:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,

Episode 1 is now done and posted. You can watch it below or click on the link below to watch it on blip.tv where you can view it in full screen.

http://favequestnastyhockeyshow.blip.tv

Note that you may have to click

As one would expect with a first show, you run into a few hitches. First there was a UFC event that started at 3pm and ended at about 5:15 so we had to wait for that to finish. There were tons of kids there for the kickoff and the last fight got extremely bloody. It seems the forehead bleeds a lot. It reminds of the time my daughter cracked her eyebrow on the boards in our backyard hockey rink .... boy did that bleed. Couple of stitches later she was all good.

Then I had to sprint around Centrum mall to find the right firewire cable to record the video straight to my laptop to save time . None at Future Shop ... seems it was a popular item lately and they sold out (&$&*%!!!!) so I sprinted to Best Buy, found one and we were all good ... got it there in time to finish the setup before the end of the UFC blood bath.

With the late start we weren't able to edit the film in time to post the final cut before the 7pm game start so we decided to wait till today to do that. I think we'll likely do that form the next few shows since getting the video edited and encoded that quickly won't happen until we shorten the show and start editing as we are shooting ... basically recording live and shipping immediately.

I broke the video into three parts to make the encoding easier. I'll try to get the whole thing posted as well.

Intro to Show

Part I Of Live Discussion

Part II of Live Discussion

announcing the FaveQuest Nasty Hockey Show

2008-01-19T09:37:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,

Check out the first taping of FaveQuest Nasty Hockey Show tonight at Philthy McNasty's in Kanata near the AMC theater at 4:30. Check back here at about 6pm for the edited version of the show.

Also go to www.favequest.com to see our facebook app and click the "try it" to add the app to your facebook profile.

top ten startup songs

2008-01-15T01:43:00.000-05:00

So it's 1:44am and I'm tired from working on a crazy way too big financial spreadsheet for FaveQuest and decided to play with the FaveQuest app on facebook instead ... way more fun. I decided to write a quick blog post about the songs I think about as a start-up founder. Either they inspire me and get me going and the reflect the a bummed out mood after too many hard knocks and bad news. I listen to some of these when I go running to get pumped or I'll pick up the guitar and try to play one of them, especially Yesterday.

Instead of writing about them, I figured I would find the videos and embed them. So here we go. You might note a recurring theme:). If you get this via email, you may have to click on the blog and go to the website to see the videos depending on your email client:

If I Had a Million Dollars by Bare Naked Ladies

Money by Pink Floyd

Money by "The Flying Lizards"

Money for Nothing by Dire Straits

Yesterday - by The Beatles

Lose Yourself - Eminem

A few lyrics "If you had one shot, one opportunity. To seize everything you ever wanted. One Moment. Would you capture it or let it slip" .... "

Pain by Three Days Grace

Ladies and Gentlemen by Saliva

Working Class Hero by John Lennon

Time to go to bed. I'll let you pick the tenth.

seeing the world through Facebook colored glasses

2007-12-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

As you can probably gather from previous posts, I'm very big on personalization. However, it has been challenging to get the message across to people since it is just a term and people have a hard time understanding what it actually means in the context of the web. I've used examples and analogies, and fortunately we are able to start showing people what we mean which goes a long way. I thought I would try a different angle and see what pops out.

Imagine if you could surf the entire web anonymously from within Facebook. Assuming new websites were developed with the right intelligence, they would look entirely different for every user.

Say I visit ESPN. It would know that I'm forty years old, live in Ottawa, Canada, I like hockey and skiing among other things. If I had been to the site in the past, it knew what videos and articles I liked. It could take whatever information I allow it to know and it will present me with content that I will probably like without showing me stuff that I have seen before. The more often I go back, the better the service gets.

Imagine that I go to Amazon.com. It would present me with a list of books based on books I said I like in my Facebook Profile (Tipping Point, Blink, Wikinomics, Innovator's Dilemma ... ) as well as deals for music based on my musical tastes with some new bands thrown in that I have never heard of before.

Imagine I go to YouTube and have it present me with videos about playing the guitar, skiing, just for laughs, comedy and so on based on who I am and what I like, while also sending some surprises my way.

Better yet, what if you could also reverse the direction and have me stay still in one place (say Facebook) and have relevant web stuff dropped on my lap. If this was possible it would provide me, the user, a huge benefit because the entire web would reshape itself around me to help me find what I'm looking for while discovering new things I didn't even know existed.

All this without me having to lift a finger and in complete anonymity ... I'm just a number hiding behind a wall and yet I am unique. No more frustrating hunting and pecking. Just me and my friends and the power of the entire internet servings us. A bit utopian perhaps, but many of us are starting to develop technology and services to move the yardsticks towards the intelligent web that serves us as individuals.

If you get any of this, you get what FaveQuest is about.

We took a small step a few days ago and launched a video app in Facebook called FaveQuest that starts down this path. It creates personal video channels for you based on your Facebook profile by pulling relevant videos from all over the web including YouTube, Metacafe, AOL, iFilm and dozens of others. Not only does our software find stuff for you but we also draft your friends into the cause ... just to serve you. Aren't you special. If you like you can very easily share and start conversations with your friends around topics you care about. I have already learned so much about my business partners and we have each helped each other discover many new things already. We figured we would share this with everyone and evolve the app with your assistance.

If you feel like trying it out, click on the link below. Please share your feedback and we'll do our best to make it better (BTW, we are working hard to speed it up .... takes a while to filter out the crap just for you, and to make the interface simpler .... stay tuned).

http://apps.facebook.com/favequest/

Allan Isfan
Co-founder, CEO
FaveQuest

The three Ps I care about Passion, Permission, Personalization,

2007-12-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

When starting a business, you need to define the things that are going to make up the fabric of your company. The shorter the list, the better. The list a bit longer than these, but to keep things simple here are my three Ps for FaveQuest: Passion, Permission, Personalization.

Passion:

Passion has always been the main driver behind anything I do and I look for that everywhere. I look for passion in myself, my team and our customers. People on my team have been spending countless months with no pay and it wears thin after a while. There is just no way to go on without passion when you are working this hard and sacrificing so much.

The products that we are building, naturally, are also about passion. It doesn't matter if your passion is knitting, mustangs, traveling, music, collecting mustard, butterflies, aliens, horror movies or anything else. Whatever the passion, people seem to become irrational when it comes to their passions. This is a good thing and we encourage it. People are also sometimes compelled to tell the world because their passions define who they are. This is also a good things and we encourage it. This is the energy that FaveQuest is tapping and it is a tough, but golden vein to find.

Permission:

Maybe I've been drinking too much Seth Godin kool-aid but I think permission is critical. One of our missions is to find stuff you will like (we like to call them faves ... very original). We could guess based on stuff you do while surfing normally but we find that creepy. It isn't for everyone but we prefer to ask you what you want and give you the chance to provide us feedback so we do better. It requires a tiny bit of effort but we think this is good for everyone. Some people won't want to bother ... and they won't be our customer. I told Pandora I like Pink Floyd and U2 and it rewarded me with great music. It was worth it.

Personalization:

This is where the world is going. Permit me to share an nice analogy one of my partners came up with. Imagine that you walk in to your local video store and the clerk asks you: you're a good customer and we would like to provide you with personal VIP service by assembling a video rack just for you every week. It would save you time and we could also bring in some rare movies you might like. You say yes (duh), let them know what movies you have enjoyed in the past, and next week you walk in to find a rack with the name "Allan's Videos". Some obvious titles that you definitely like but also a few surprises. You're in and out in 2 minutes and now you're walking out with two movies instead of one. When you return the movies, you tell the clerk what you thought of the movies. You are happy and the video store makes more money so they are happy. You never go anywhere else to get videos, you tell your friends and the video store is now renting more movies to more people.

Imagine now that instead of a video store, we are talking about a website with media and your company makes money by having people come to your site and consume (duh ... that's nearly everyone ... a good thing). Personalization, done properly, has been proven to easily pay for itself.

You tap an irrational passion, get permission and fan the flames.

These are the three Ps we care about: Passion, Permission, Personalization

More on personalization and other subjects very soon.

thoughts from NewTeeVee conference

2007-11-19T23:10:00.001-05:00

I attended the NewTeeVee 1 day conference in San Francisco last week. The conference was put on by Om Malik and his team. It was a very intense day that started at 7:30am and ended a little after 8pm with very few breaks. Although tired, it was great to squeeze this into one day.

First of all, hats off to Om for all the great guest speakers and panelists ... a pretty impressive list of people. These events are perfect for networking and I got in as much as I could in one day. It had a real grass roots feel to it that I hope is maintained through the years

The key things that becomes clear day in and day out working in this space is that online video is not TV. Anyone that tries to make it like TV is doomed to fail. The web continues to be a short form video snacking environment and will continue to be so for a while. What really hit me at the conference is the real emergence of high quality, edgy made for the internet type of content created by what may seem to be amateurs. Well ... these amateurs are really funny and they are getting support from many great new online media companies like www.blip.tv, www.revision3.com, www.crackle.com and many others. These companies are helping produce and distribute this new content while also helping these aspiring actors, writers and directors make money.

I already read way more blogs than newspaper articles and I stopped being interested in TV long ago. I don't really know if we are at a tipping point but we may not be far. I predict that this new "pro-am" movement will get significant momentum and will become a major force to be reckoned with. The writer's strike is going to add fuel to the fire by forcing many of the extremely funny pros that write for shows like The Daily Show to create their own online shows and many will eventually make this a full time gig. I also wouldn't be surprised if we begin to see some serious market consolidation in this space and a new media goliath starting to form challenging the major big guns like NBC.

Here is a picture of some of the stars of tomorrow at the end of the conference that was capped by the Web Video Celebrity Game Show. From left to right Lindsay Campbell (www.wallstrip.com), Veronica Belmont (daily.mahalo.com), Zadi Diaz (epicfu.com), Hayden Black (http://www.goodnightburbank.com//Abigail's x-rated teen diary), Casey McKinnon (http://www.galacticast.com/), Heather Gold (heathergold.com), Rober Scoble (http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/), Kevin Rose (http://revision3.com/diggnation/), Yuri Baranovski (http://www.breakaleg.tv/), Eddie (not sure what show), Justin Kan (sittting down, justin.tv).

There are many more great online shows and can't list them all out here. For FaveQuest, this is great news because it provides us access to lots of great fresh content. All these guys syndicate their content in multiple places and we hope to be one of them. How exciting!

Tune in to the next blog for more predictions

girl power

2007-11-19T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm a guy so it may seems strange to be writing a blog on girl power. For some strange reason, I struck me this week that the new media space I'm in has many women in positions of power and I think that is really cool. As the father of three girls, I'm always happy to see women succeed in life and in business. It gives me hope that they will have all the chances in the world to do whatever they want and prosper.

My own mother was an Electrical Engineer and got head hunted often ... even causing us to move back to Europe for a while when I was 12. Meme si Paris was great at the time they didn't have flavored chips, sliced bread, toaster, peanut butter, cable and we had an 800cc mini austin. Fortunately, we ended up back in Canada.

While I'm sure it continues to be difficult for women in business, new media seems to be a place where women prosper. My wife started her own freelance graphic design business straight out of school and it has been doing very well with blue chip clients right from the start. While at the NewTeeVee conference, I had the chance to observe a few panels and the women pulled no punches ... very strong, knowledgeable and capable. Later in the week, I had to pitch to a major media company in Toronto. All the executives I had to present to were women.

It also struck me how the women I spoke to are more interested in their customers and the experience they have with their products than the techie wiz bang stuff. They don't seem to care how the stuff does what it does ... as long the end result is positive from a customer and business perspective. Pretty refreshing since that is ultimately what matters.

Check out the next blog on thoughts about the NewTeeVee conference.

back in San Francisco

2007-11-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

Back in San Francisco almost exactly a year after I posted from the exact same table overlooking the bay and alcatraz. A few people thought I had lost it ... Got a little poetic. No maniacs are rowing against the wind this time ... All is sunny and good and i'm sipping in some san pellegrino water ... Have a vc meeting this aft.

About a year ago, I was basically on my own but things quickly took off when I got back home. I now have some great partners and we are about to post the second version of our facebook ap that is getting better and better all the time. Our company name went from EarCandy to MyDYO and finally to FaveQuest which should stick for a while. We are also engaging with some real customers and hope to close on some trials in the coming weeks as we start beating the drum on the FaveQuest facebook ap.

Our biggest issue is funding. Self funding this puppy has been fine so far but we will end up having to wave goodbye to some important opportunities. It would really suck if we had to turn down business. Speaking of which ... gotta head out and get ready for the VC chat. Wish us luck. I'll be posting live from the NewTeeVee conference in San Fran. Here are some pics I took yesterday while in town for a VC meeting.

living inside of Facebook

2007-11-07T21:05:00.001-05:00

In my last posting, I indicated that we had launched our application on Facebook on September 30th. I held a small launch party at my house with friends and colleagues to show them what we have been up to. There was lots of interest, many questions and cool ideas ... a night I will remember. The ap was launched for friends and family and we have been getting feedback that is getting folded in gradually with a major update coming out very soon, including a name change. We will eventually be posting into the FB directory in the near future.

So what are we up to? Might as well tell you since it is out there.

We are building an advanced media personalization engine with fun social functions. What the hell does that mean? It means that we get to know you as best we can, with your permission and input, and go out and find relevant content we think you will like from dozens of sources and millions of videos. We organize the videos in channels and wicked themed worlds (a couple of releases away) and make it very easy and fun to share with like minded people. You get great content without having to hunt for it.

Facebook opening up to third party developers was a godsend. Imagine the following examples. I'm into sports cars (at least dreaming about them) so I had that in my FB profile. Our ap found lots of great videos from a fantastic show called Top Gear that I had never heard of. I also got to check out an electric car that beat the pants off a Porsche and a Ferrari. I'm also from Romania and it discovered a freedom anthem that I thought was great ... something I definitely would share with Romanian friends and family ... a good excuse to reconnect with my culture. There is much more to it than that of course but that is the essence ... we get to know you and drop great relevant content from all over the web on your lap.

I can't divulge everything since we are in the middle of developing some pretty cool proprietary things, including something we call "the blender", but at least now you know generally what we are up to. If you want access to the application, let me know.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Toronto which I have been visiting on a nearly weekly basis. Next week is insane. On Monday, I'm in L.A. speaking on a panel, Tuesday I head to San Francisco hopefully for some VC meetings but ultimately to attend the NewTeeVee conference started by Om Malik on the 14th. I fly back to Ottawa on the 15th only to zip to Toronto on Friday for a major meeting with a big media company. Saturday is my youngest daughter's birthday and Saturday night I breathe and have a pint. Yikes!

If you are going to be at the NewTeeVee conference, please let me know. If you have a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, also let me know. I have included a video below to inspire you.

we are finally launching

2007-09-25T15:03:00.000-04:00

It has been a long ... long time since my last post and much has happened since. I'll try to keep it short (as if:). Basically it feels like going up a rollercoaster with ups and downs along the way after not sleeping for a couple of days and catching a cold from your kids. Definitely feeling alive!

Part I

To put you in context, I'm writing part I while sitting in the lobby of a major media company in the US in L.A., Beverly Hills to be more precise (see picture I took Friday morning). My meeting is at 11:30 pacific time and I got here about 2 hours early after walking about 5km from my hotel (turned left instead of right on Santa Monica Blvd *(*(*#*($!) This is a first meeting and I'm not messing this one up so I got there ridiculously early to get in the zone. My Chief Markting Officer (CMO) in Toronto helped me sharpen the message and it really helped (helps to be surrounded by really smart people). I have a very good feeling about this meeting. I arrived in L.A. very late Thursday night (3am Ottawa time) after a meeting with a media company in Toronto, coffee with a great connection and chinese food followed by an afternoon meeting with my CMO. The meeting in Toronto went ok ... understand customer much better and what it will take to win them over. We met with the president of the company and he is a great guy (connection through our advisors ... they are awesome). I wasn't as crisp as I would have liked but we have an open invitation to return and show them more precisely how we will improve their business.

I'm wiped but excited. We continue to persevere through our validation and fund raising phase. Customers we have met continue to welcome us back for follow up meetings to know more. Oh yeah ... my phone slipped out my pocket in the cab to the airport ... I called it from L.A. to confirm. Fortunately it was my backup phone .... don't call my 863 number.

On the VC front, pitches continue though it was a bit slow during August. This will accelerate dramatically after next week. I'm presenting at the Ottawa Venture Technology Summit next week (send me some +ve vibes at around 11:15) which should create some activity and I have a long list of VCs in the pipeline to connect with in Canada and the US. Credit card is taking a beating.

The really exciting thing though is that we actually have a nice application working that we are launching on at least one major social network in the coming weeks followed by another one soon thereafter. It is still very basic but we will get users interacting with it and get great feedback as we continue to evolve the true secret sauce which will take many months to start bearing fruit. If you are interested in taking part in the alpha trial, please let me know .... were generally keeping it to friendlies for now before beating the drum.

Gotta go ... my time is up .... gotta head in to my meeting.

---------------- cut here

Part II

On the plane back to Toronto and ideally Ottawa by about 1am and in bed by 2am. Hopefully I won't get woken up by a blond cutie in pajamas jumping on the bed (could be any one of the four females in my house ... though my wife doesn't usually jump on the bed like it was a trampoline ... I said usually).

The meeting was absolutely awesome! I nailed it and I'm really pumped. I know we will have customers but we have so much very difficult work to do ... much of which has never been done before ... and urgently need to get funded to really do it. We have hiring to do and I don't hire average people. To hire the best, it really helps to have $$ though we're doing pretty good so far. If you see a job posting on Craigslist or Workopolis that says "awesome opportunity at hot startup ... salary doubles every month and starts at $0/month (that's $0/year if you don't have a calculator). At least the taxes are reasonable.

Part III

Got home at 1:30 am to find the following stuck to the door between the garage and the house. I'm one lucky guy! In case you didn't get an invite the MyDYO launch party, it is this Saturday at 8 pm at my place.

My first triathlon

2007-08-07T08:46:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I realized that things were going to get crazy with consulting gigs while also heading up a new start-up so I decided to sign up for a short triathlon ... you know ... just to add to the insanity. To ensure I wouldn't die, I signed up for a try-a-tri which is a mini triathlon instead of a complete triathlon. It consists of a 200m swim, 20km bike and 5km run which is about 1/2 of a real triathlon. The date was slowly creeping up which caused me to train more and more. Like I said, there's nothing like a goal to get you going. At one point I said to my wife ... "why am I doing this to myself?". My wife answered "to push yourself" and she was bang on.

I need goals to really get fired up. I don't work out because it is good for me and the desire to look acceptable in a bathing suit is not enough of a goal. I work out because I signed up for a race and I don't want to die or be finishing the race as they are folding up the tents.

These races are set up so with different levels and age groups so that you don't feel like a complete loser. I now have an advantage ... I'm 40 and get to be in the older group. I should have claimed to be 67 and everyone would have been impressed. I got passed more times that I could count. Some people had very tight behinds and some not so tight (that's all I could see). I ended up in the group that made the top 50% possible though I was far from last. I didn't do too badly but definitely want to do better next time. More training and better tools (mountain bike with knobby tires not great ... must get proper bike) are definitely in the plan. Still, my wife and kids are very proud of me and they cheered me at every step which was pretty awesome.

Of course, I can't go a minute without drawing parallels and analogies with business. You get a lot of time to think while you're out there. In the business world, there are no age groups or tri-a-biz races. You have to either compete on a world class level or you get buried. You have to be ready for the race but you also have to get out there and start competing so you get a feel for the competition. If you are in a team sport, you'd better have a heck of a team. And you have to set aggressive goals for the company as a whole as well as everyone in the team.

So this is where we're at:

-I have set some aggressive short term and long term goals regarding what the company must achieve

-I'll be announcing a closed trial very soon for friends and family ... please let me know if you want to participate

-we have added an amazing marketing executive to our team. We now have all the key execs in place for this phase of the company. This is huge!

-we are bringing on a great development team which is already executing towards an alpha release (big party coming up!)

-we continue to have good discussions with VCs, including being accepted to present at the Ottawa Venture Technology Summit at the end of September. This is also huge and we'll knock it out of the park.

I really feel we have some good momentum behind us coming in to the fall. Funny enough, even though the triathlon finished with two uphills that weren't exactly welcome, I managed to step on the gas and sprint like a madman zipping by some of the people that had passed me earlier. So there!

BTW, I'm doing another try-a-tri in Brockville on August 19th right after a crazy week in Toronto and pitching to VCs and potential partners. Care to join me?

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, MYDYO

forty is the new thirty

2007-07-24T21:15:00.000-04:00

I turn 40 in exactly 1 week. I had planned on starting my own company before I turned 40. I guess I succeeded. While I was an engineering student my employer didn't have any "headcount" to hire me into a position I wanted so I started Semicon Autotest which they contracted to do the work. More recently, my wife and I launched Isfan Solutions to deal with consulting gigs and that business continues to do well. I also launched MYDYO last December and will turn up a live site sometime this fall. This is the big one and it continues to feel like it is not actually launched until we get funded. I know this is stupid since we are developing product but somehow it doesn't seem real yet, probably since no one is getting paid and we don't have an office. I've got to get over that.

Fred Wilson wrote some great blogs about the "age question" as it relates to getting funded for a web play (see link below ... a very good read). He was unfortunately misunderstood and got a bit flamed but the subject is nevertheless interesting. The major web properties we hear most about, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace were all started by a young bunch of hackers that were trying to build something for themselves and their friends. It turns out that there were many just like them and their products took off into the stratosphere. 40 sounds so damn old .. 39 was infinitely better. Is it therefore possible or even realistic for a 40 year old guy to come up with something magical that will hit a nerve?

Of course it is but some things need to be unlearned to get into the right mental state. I started out in the ASIC business (electronics chips basically). We had to plan things to death, write extensive design documents, simulate the crap out of everything and cross our fingers before taping out (basically send the design to get manufactured into a silicon chip). Web development is totally different. You still need to have a vision and a plan but it is a much more trial and error type of environment. It doesn't imply you get can sloppy but it does mean you need to constantly throw the spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks. It is very difficult to create something so compelling that millions of people come back on a regular basis. That is what you need to make a serious living on the web.

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/06/the_age_questio.html

Back to the "turning 40" thang. I actually thought I had a couple of weeks to go but alas, it was not to be. Last week was one of my most exhausting weeks in a while. Many very late nights all to be capped by getting stranded in Cincinnati Thursday night due to weather. In order to get back to Ottawa in time for a meeting arranged by my brother in law with some big shot CEO, I had to take the 6:15am flight back to Ottawa. By the time I got to bed and starting tossing and turning, it was 1:30am. Since I had to get up at 4am to head back to the airport, I decided to pull out the laptop and get to work since there wasn't much point sleeping just 2 hours. I made sure the demo I had to show the CEO dude was running and all was good. Many hours later and after many donations to the Starbucks gods, I was sitting in a nice pub ready for my meeting with laptop booted and demo running. About 30 minutes before the meeting, I said to my brother in law ... "my spidey sense is tingling ... I don't think this guy is going to show up" but the beer was good and cold so I didn't worry. Kinda said the same thing back in Cinci before our flight got canceled. Anyway, at about 5:10pm, his phone rings and as expected, the guy's partner is on the line indicated that the CEO dude is not showing up ... stuck in Toronto due to weather! The guy should have know he wouldn't make it hours ago! Hang in there ... it gets better ... there's a reason I'm telling you this.

As luck would have it, we ran into some buddies and proceeded to have another pint and a bite. The only item left on the to do list this evening was to show up for my nephew's birthday at 7pm. He is 7 years old and having a party on a Friday night at the Lonestar Ranch seemed odd to me but my brother in law spun some believable story. A couple beers and roughly 6 hours of sleep over the previous three days ... who was I to argue. I get home, grab a quick shower and we head over to the Lonestar Ranch a couple of minutes late. As I walk in to the main building, I see the following poster and say "hey that looks like me!".

Well duh! As I look into the building, I see a bunch of my friends and wonder why they showed up for Alex's party. About a millisecond later ... I clue in. A surprise birthday party! Son of a #)()(#~! I didn't have a clue. Apparently it had been planned months ago and everyone knew and not once did I sense anything going on! So much for the spidey sense. As the amazing evening proceeded, it all started making sense. The meeting with the CEO ... all fake. I had been trying to set up a meeting in NYC on that same day and it was the only way they could get me to be in Ottawa on Friday. Apparently I'm like a firefly that you want to catch in the jar but can't. The guys we ran into at the pub ... just grabbing a bite before heading to my party. The triple espresso my wife made me before heading to the party ... designed to keep me awake for a longer evening than expected. The deceit goes on an on and on. Doing it two weeks earlier was an unfair advantage!

My brother in law wrote a song for my roast entitled "Buddy Bob" (Bob is my nickname ... short for Bogdan, my middle name ... long story). He actually sang it while playing to bongos! The last line in the song goes like this "When mydyo takes off, will you give me a job?" Fat chance now, you deceitful son of a $)$#&! Oh ... and thanks!

Thank you Yvonne for an amazing surprise party. Sorry about nearly giving you a heart attack with my very fluid plans. Many thanks to everyone that helped out including Tammy, Yvette, Jo Ann and I'm sure others I don't yet know about.

Let's hope someone will fund an old 40 year old guy with the spirit of a 30 year old. 40 is the new 30.

Naked Cowboy and more

2007-07-15T17:42:00.000-04:00

I decided to take my wife to NY City for our 17th anniversary this weekend. We were there last fall and both loved it so I thought it would be a good idea to go back again and I was right. Highlights include central park, including taking a rowboat for a spin, Hairspray (the musical) and dinner at "One If By Land, Two if by Sea" (highly highly recommended though we set a new record for $ spent on dinner for two). We finished off the trip by taking a short ride on "The Beast", a large speedboat that takes off from Pier 83 and heads to the Statue of Liberty. New York City is a truly amazing place and always gives me energy even though I always come back exhausted. I suspect business will bring me to NYC on a regular basis and I suspect I'll never get bored of it.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you might remember that I wrote a blog about NYC last October. The concept I wanted to build was at the very early stage in my brain and being in NYC gave me some courage. Funny enough, I was reading "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin on the trip down and there is no better place than NYC to see what Seth is talking about. "Purple Cow" speaks to the fact that traditional advertising just doesn't work anymore. You really need to focus on creating something that is truly remarkable and that people will want to tell their friends about (like I'm doing with NYC). It doesn't mean that you have to be flashy but you do have to quite different and provide something people want and will evangelize for you.

When you walk through Times Square, you are constantly bombarded with huge bright Billboards. To tell you the truth, I can't even remember one after walking through there a dozen times over the last few days. However, I do remember a promotion RIM did there last year for the Pearl. They have people in times square taking your picture and posting it up on one of the big screens. You can't avoid noticing that. You also can't miss the Naked Cowboy. If you google him on the net, you'll note that he is now a brand and is probably doing quite well. It is possible to stand out, even in Times Square. He is a picture with my wife as well as a video of some wacky guys in Central Park skating to the beat.

With that in mind, I have regained the courage to do some of the wacky things that have popped in my head over the last month. At first I thought I was a bit crazy, and I'm sure my partners did as well, but as Seth puts it, "Safe is Risky". So we're going to launch something on our own this fall and it will be a blast. I was originally thinking we should just do it as a closed, locked demo (i.e. friends only, password access ...) but screw that ... that's only fear talking. So if you are a S/W hacker type with experience in the web, AJAX, Flash and all that jazz and have the balls to jump in and start coding your brains out ... let me know ... we're looking for a few developers to get the show on the road!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
CEO, MYDYO
PS. If you are one of my friends on facebook, you can check out the pics from the trip
PPS. I'm launching a social network called "Friends of MYDYO" through the NING service. I'll let you know more soon.

gator video at resort

2007-07-11T09:50:00.001-04:00

While we were at Wild Dunes last week, we were walking from the tennis courts back to the hotel and the kids decided to take a look and the turtles in the small pond near the hotel. Keep in mind that this is a totally civilized area with condos, hotels, pools and so on .... not a wild park. My wife swore see saw something big and dark drop down in the water and I said she was crazy. Was I ever wrong. There was a in fact an alligator in the pond. I have no idea if he can get out of that pond and presume that he can since there doesn't seem to be any kind of barrier. I hope is kept well fed.

I'll post a video of a nice beaver swimming in my pool a few months ago.

Note: This is mostly a test for embedding YouTube videos in my blog.

vacations and brands

2007-07-10T19:35:00.000-04:00

Just to put you in context, I'm sitting on a beautiful deck overlooking the Atlantic ocean sipping on a great cold beer.Two of the kids are in the pool playing Marco Polo with some kids they just met while the other is with her mom somewhere on the beach hunting for shells and having some mommy time. I'll try to avoid getting too poetic this time ... my deep blog from San Fran overlooking the bay and Alcatraz was a bit deep. I have spent the last week travelling with family and meeting up with my sister and her family on the Atlantic coast at a great resort called Wild Dunes. It is about 20 minutes from Charleston just north of Savannah. We will definitely be back. The resort itself consists of a number of houses and condos as well as the Boardwalk Inn where we stayed. The Inn is pricey ... about $500/night for a 1 bedroom suite at peak season (July 4th week) but when on holidays, we don't like to do dishes, laundry or beds so we opted for that instead of a villa which runs at about $2000k/week.The best part is the beach. Miles and miles of fine sand and very shallow water for hundreds of feet. That makes the water very warm and safe for the kids. We were body surfing the three foot waves for hours and hunting for sand dollars and great shells. We're capping that off with a three hour boat trip to Caper's Island Saturday morning to check out wildlife including dolphins.

Since you don't read this blog for travel advice, I'd better toss in some biz stuff. That brings me to the value of brands. With three kids under 10, McDonald's is hard to avoid on a long trip. The kids can spot the golden arches before they are even visible to us and we ended up there quite a few times. We tolerate their salads and the kids burn off some steam in the PlayPlace after hours of sitting in the car. My wife and I have a similar reaction to Starbucks. There is nothing else that brings more of a smile to our face than seeing that green Starbucks logo ... the kids think we have lost our mind. There is sometimes dancing and a couple of wooohoos! My wife and I are heading to NY City this coming weekend for our anniversary and a bit of business and I already know where all the Starbucks are in Times Square where we are staying. It is hard to beat such brands when people have an emotional attachment to them. One brand that I found confusing is Holiday Inn. We stayed at an amazing Holiday Inn in Williamsburg Virginia that could have just as well been a boutique hotel in Manhattan. I figured that maybe Holiday Inn has been upgrading so we stayed at another one on the road and it was a complete dump. Not staying at Holiday Inn again ... don't know what you get. Marriott is much smarter ... they have a number of different brands under the Marriott umbrella for different tiers and markets.

For MYDYO, our brand is extremely critical. We can't afford to go through an expensive branding exercise. We need to make who we are extremely crystal clear and that message needs to get across in 3 minutes or less. This is very tough and I have been struggling with it but every pitch gets more concise and clearer. With that in mind, I'll give you a sneak peek "MYDYO is building a media personalization engine". If you work for a media company or a service provider looking to deliver media in a complete new way, give me a shout. As indicated, I'll be in NYC at the end of the week and may have a bit of time Friday am to chat (right after I deliver a non-fat wet cappuccino to my lovely wife).

For absolutely no reason, here is a link to a stupid bank robber. http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2007/07/05/dumb-bank-robber/

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
CEO, MYDYO

getting over the fear of a start-up

2007-06-24T19:32:00.000-04:00

Marc Andreesen (of Netscape fame) wrote an excellent blog recently listing the top reasons not to do a start up. He was really bang on ... An excellent read with many other fantastic blogs and comments http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid_1.html. In the end it is either in you or not but how do you know? Most often, fear clouds the judgement and people don't do what they really want to do. Once you do away with the fear, you think more clearly.

When I think about my own situation, I can point to so many people that gave me confidence. This ranges from my own parents who always had incredible courage leaving a communist country with two kids and absolutely nothing else. My parents had incredible conviction and perseverance. I still remember being seven years old (just before we left Romania) and my dad signing me up for a bike race in the 10 year old group. I had a crappy bike but he ran beside me the whole way giving me so much strength I actually won. They didn't want to award me the cup because I was too young but there was no way my dad would give up until they did. I still have that cup.

The extensive list also includes my wife who has supported me since we started together when I was in grade eight! Don't know what she saw in that skinny guy with big hair and a pack of smokes rolled up in his cut-off tee shirt. Glad she stuck with me ... not sure where I would be without her. After I quit my job a Ciena a year ago, she agreed to start Isfan Solutions Inc with me even though her own graphics company was doing just fine without me.

It also includes strong bosses who would not put up with crap forcing me to aim higher while also checking with my wife to see how I was doing when I got Myasthenia Gravis as we were about to have our first child and I could barely stand, hold a fork or even swallow. As I decided to leave Ciena, several of the executives as well as some of the original founders of Catena encouraged me as they continue to do. A couple of them even got me consulting opportunities which helped me get through the worry of at least some income while I pursued my dream of creating a great new start-up. It made putting in the resignation letter that much easier.

Since I left, Leo Lax from Skypoint Capital gave me the opportunity to join Skypoint as an Entrepreneur In Residence. It has been a fantastic learning experience and has opened up a new world. I now have amazing partners and advisers that keep me on my toes every day. They are all much better at what they do than I would ever be and I am extremely fortunate to be leading such a fantastic team. People always recommend to surround yourself with people that are better than you and I certainly have managed to do that.

I recently had the third annual Isfan Palooza in our back yard, complete with a live band by the pool and later around the bonfire. We must have had close to 100 people or so, with quite a bunch sticking around by the bonfire late into the night.

Many of these were ex Catena people and it reminds me of the amazing times we had, especially when we hit critical milestones: the first ASIC out of the fab and working in the lab, the first time we made a phone call or streamed a video through our new product, the first tradeshow, the first customer and so on.

We are now pitching MYDYO to VCs and I certainly get the feeling it will be a long hard road which is not a surprise. We will get there but continued support is always helpful. I am a lucky man indeed. When we hit it big, I will have many people to share our success with and those that know me certainly don't doubt it will be a good time.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, MYDYO

PS. Come find me on facebook and check out the photos of Isfan Palooza

4 VC meetings, many more to go

2007-06-10T08:47:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I blogged and much has happened since. Note that I will be transforming the blog into more of a short "daily musings of a start-up founder", similar to Fred Wilson's blog entitled "musings of a VC in NYC" that I have been enjoying so much (http://avc.blogs.com/).

I was recently in Williamsburg, VA for a panel discussion on regulatory issues affecting broadband deployment. This is connected to my other personality as the "engineering" component of Isfan Solutions Inc. ... a consulting firm my wife and I founded a year ago (she had been running her own company for about fourteen years). A very interesting panel discussion and got to very briefly check out this pretty cool colonial town. Will definitely go back this summer with the family on our way to Charleston, SC to celebrate my niece's 16th birthday.

Also got to see Roger Waters play a fantastic show in Ottawa while the Senators unfortunately lost to the Anaheim ducks in the Stanley Cup final. It was a truly magical show and I strongly recommend not missing it if you have a chance (though it was extremely political ... a pink pig flying around the arena with anti-war and anti-bush messages).

On the VC front, we finally kicked off requests for VC meetings and managed to pitch to a few major VCs and a strategic investor so far and overall it went very well. So what does that actually mean? What makes an entrepreneur think a pitch went well?

1) very likely to have a follow up meeting
You don't really know until the next meeting actually happens. However, indications are that we will have follow up meetings with an expanding group of partners.

2) lots of good dynamic discussion
All meetings involved lots of great discussion with many great comments and questions. The partners were clearly enganged and involved which shows some interest in the topic. They also appeared genuinly interested to continue the discussion.

3) learned something new and useful about the VC and ourselves
In one case, the VC is very interested in knowing about our technical intellectual property. Unfortunately, we didn't focus on that very much but at least we now know it is very important to them so that will be a major focus during the next meeting. Fortunately, my partner and I both have credibility in terms of IP as we both have patents and history in complex technology. We have lots of patentable concepts but need to get moving on filing them.

In another case, it was less about technology but more about go-to-market strategy and shooting for the stars. We are actually not planning for a huge A round after the seed and are able to become profitable on only one round. This can create a perception that we are not thinking big enough even though we are. The basic question was "once your trial is complete and you have validated/adjusted your assumptions, how do you aggressively bring this to market to secure your place in a significant way, i.e. land grab". Another question in a similar direction was "if you could raise more money than projecting right now, what would you do differently?".

Answer I gave was not great ... more work there to make the our case and pitch that aspect more convincingly.

4) every pitch gets better
Every time we pitch to a partner, VC or other interested party, we learn something very valuable that gets folded back in to the plan and pitch and the whole story gets better.

I continue to be convinced that we are on to something significant and have credibility in the space. If we continue to evolve as necessary, make every pitch better than the last one and get follow up meetings with partners and VCs, we'll close our funding and step on the gas. In the meantime, we have been experimenting and implementing some of our concepts and I'm really enjoying being a customer which bodes well for the future.

Let me leave you with a question/comment that I hope will generate some thoughts and feedback. Our strategy has always been to think about the consumer first. We want to build a very simple, intuitive and personal service that amazes people by what it can do for them. You always hope that it takes off like wildfire and virally ramps to millions of people. We get picked up by a major player for some crazy valuation and everyone is happy even if we never made a dime. Think YouTube, Skype, MySpace ... you get the picture. However, as I always say, hope is not a strategy. We have therefore been spending a significant amount of time and effort creating a strong go-to-market strategy and business model that actually creates revenue instead of just thinking about how to get as many consumers to sign on, regardless of potential revenue. I believe in solid business concepts and creating a viable entity that can grow and make money without having to cross our fingers and pray that someone picks us up before we run out of cash. Are we crazy?

windmills and the impossible dream

2007-04-25T20:32:00.000-04:00

We are finally emerging from a nasty winter up here. The igloo is finally melting and we have to move back into ... what do people call it? ... the house. With some help from family, we put away all the boards for the hockey rink and cleaned up after a nasty winter. Len, the pool guy, came by today to get the pool ready to roll for the season ... kids can't wait to jump in. The nice weather, the bright sun, getting the bbq fired up again, the ridiculously large beer fridge full of beer and all that nice summer stuff definitely cheers everyone up. Before I forget, Funding Bad Habits has confirmed their availability to play at the annual Isfan Palooza fest June 16th and with any luck (and a bit of pressure), they'll allow me to join them in a few songs. This party has been a huge success in the past with over 100 people showing up, pitching tents, trailers, multiple blenders going at once and drinks being served and on and on. Please keep June 16th starting at 3pm booked in your calendar. If you want details, drop me an note. If you are on my evite list then you'll see something come out soon.

For a start-up seeking money though, summer is not exactly welcome. The summer is a very bad time to do business. People's minds are on other things and key people are on vacation which makes it difficult to get everyone together long enough to make major decisions. It is a tricky time for members of a start-up as well since summer is not typically a time for long hours on a computer. I'm desperately trying to get things nailed down and launch this puppy before summer otherwise we'll have to ride out the heat wave and get things done in the fall. It is not the end of the world but it will be critical to keep up the great momentum we have managed build up so the goal remains to get this funded ASAP.

As I indicated in my last post, we did our first pitch to a VC recently. To be fair, the pitch was to the partners of VC where I am an Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR). It is certainly a more friendly environment than a typical off the street pitch to a bunch of people looking for a reason to say no. My partner and advisors were invited to follow up with a more informal discussion early this week to answer some questions and provide more detailed descriptions of our architecture and business plan. This also went very well too and we'll be moving on to the critical final stages which includes combing through the financials and providing validation for our numbers and assumptions from credible people in the industry.

Emails are leaving my outbox imminently to set up round of talks with other VCs, angels and some potentially very interesting partners which could also be strategic investors. You never feel quite ready but I think we are ready enough to rock and roll with the punches.

With that in mind, I thought I would share the lyrics to a very tough song my singing teacher is trying to teach me. It is a song that I believe may have been written for the movie "The Man of La Mancha" which is a film adaptation of the Don Quixote story. Quixano (aka Don Quixote) eventually loses his mind from little sleep and food because of so much reading (sounds familiar) and slips in to a world of fantasy in which he is a night and begins attacking windmills which he believes are giants. Surprisingly a propos.

You can find a recording of the actual song at the link below and the lyrics just below that.

http://www.reelclassics.com/Audio_Video/Music7q/manoflamancha_otoole_impossibledream.mp3

To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...

This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...

Back to you guys soon with more news.

Cheers,

Allan "never give up" Isfan

you gotta pitch and pitch and pitch and pitch

2007-04-16T18:34:00.000-04:00

Lots to talk about since the last post. I zipped down to NY city for a couple of days to meet with some potential technology partners. We met in the hotel lobby bar for a great chat which we capped off with a Tequila. I knew I would like these guys! We proceeded to munch down on some Cuban food and headed to Club Element http://www.elementny.com/ to check out partystrands, one of their products. This was the craziest place I've been to in a long time. First, there was a shoe and boot painter doing a demonstration which included paintings some woman's breasts (just what was poking out above her shirt which was lots). Then a dancer on spring stilts all dressed in white with neon lights going through her legs. This was followed by a singer and dancers and finally a couple of fire breathers. You don't exactly see this in Ottawa. You might be able to check some pictures at the following link show a more recent party http://www.mystrands.com/emt/venuephotos/all/p/4 . There are a couple of pics of me in the fourth row. Felt a little rough the next morning but survived the next meetings. To cap things off nicely, as I stepped out of the hotel to grab a yellow cab back to LaGuardia, the hotel doorman indicated that someone didn't show up for a limo and I could get it for the price of a cab to the airport. Bingo!

As a completely irrelevant tangent, I stayed at the W hotel .... a very nice 4 star hotel in Midtown east. I got it through Priceline.com by naming my price and got if for $180/night which is pretty darn good. I used Priceline.com in Toronto previously and got a great room right downtown for $90. Sounds like I'm doing an ad for these guys ... definitely not getting paid for it but thought you guys should know about this since it has paid off for me very nicely.

On to start-up stuff.

This last week was extremely intense. I had to prepare for my first pitch which I finally did today. In preparation for this, I pitched to as many trustworthy people as I could. I pitched to our advisors, I pitched to old colleagues and business partners, friends and on and on. I even invited about a dozen people to my place to sit through my pitch Saturday night. I got so much fantastic feedback and suggestions from everyone that the pitch got 100% better over 1 week. My kids even sat through it .... they said it felt like 3 hours! An exaggeration but it did take an hour and half which is way too long. I trimmed it down like crazy all of Sunday and managed to get it done in under an hour which is about right when you cover everything from A to Z plus questions and a demo. I got lots of emails this morning wishing me luck ... great to have a bunch of people rooting for you. I don't know if I hit it out of the park but I did feel pretty good about it. I guess we'll see. Stay tuned. The champagne is in the wine fridge just in case.

Allan "pretty exhausted but exhilarated" Isfan

little inventors

2007-04-01T21:14:00.000-04:00

Before I jump in, I would like to remind you that you can receive my posts in your email by simply entering your email in the Feedblitz box to the right of this article. I also want to remind you about the April 14th Open Kimono Party at the Isfan Ranch. If you didn't get the invite, give me a shout at 5628isfan@rogers.com.

Ok here we go.

When I made the decision to quit my job so that I could ultimately launch a great new company, I remember a discussion around the dinner table with the family about why I had decided to do this. One of the girls summed it best "daddy has too many ideas and he wants to build one of them". That's about it.

My ten year old is also a little inventor. She has a little black note book just like I do and she scribbles notes and diagrams in it whenever she thinks of something. Her books says "INVENTIONS" on the front with nice silver paint. Wish I had thought about that. She wants me to help her create a doll that starts out as a baby and grows to about 4 feet. Simple enough. She has many other ones, some of which are pretty impossible while others are actually quite good. Interestingly, she is just as scatter brained, unfocused, messy and forgetful as I was at her age.

My mother was an electrical engineer and inventor just like me. She specialized in audio and had prototypes of speakers all over. She used to test the coils for continuity with a small battery. She would touch the end of the speaker wires to the poles of the battery and if she heard a small click, the coil was good. I figured if a battery worked, a wall outlet would also do the trick. My test usually passed but my pops were a little louder :) My mom was probably wondering what went wrong with her designs ... I got a bunch of great magnets to play with though :)

I still fondly remember the first time I got a serious electrical shock for the good of mankind. I was twelve and taking apart an old phone to install another microphone and speakers to turn it into a hands free phone. I talked to friends for hours and got sick of holding the receiver. Unfortunately, someone called at the exact moment I had my fingers in there and rang my bell real good. Not lethal but it definitely got my attention. I would enjoy the gentle shock of ring voltages for years to come as I entered the world of telecom.

Creating things that don't exist is a lot of fun. Turning these crazy ideas into real products that people want to actually pay for is a completely different thing and equally fun. I have actually been surprised by how exciting the business side has been. While at Catena, I had the fortune of getting involved directly and deeply with customers, business and technology. I worked on product definition, strategy, navigating around politics, regulatory issues, pricing, product verification, defining and executing trade show demos, competitive analysis .... all the while working on defining core technology and writing the associated protocols and patents. I have so many good stories and would not trade it for the world.

Although I have been working a ridiculous number of hours on this thing on top of consulting, it just doesn't feel like work. Though I'm often tired, I'm glad to have the opportunity to share this experience with my family. We had a third child and built a home during all that Catena craziness and some people wonder how the hell we did it. People often fear too much. Just do it. That would make a great motto .... nah ... would never catch on.

It is not usually good to bring the office home but in this instance it gives the kids a chance to learn about life, hard work, the power of dreams, relationships and especially perseverance. My wife and I are both self employed (she is an artist and graphic designer) which can be a little stressful especially since one of us is spending most of the time on non billable work. Nonetheless, we are still able to keep an excellent balance by tag teaming and being there at the bus morning and afternoon, doing homework, going to gymnastics and music lessons, going to movies, cooking and just goofing around together. Ultimately, these are positive lessons for our kids that no school can ever teach. I can't wait to read the patents, go to the recitals, attend the art gallery openings or whatever our kids end up being passionate about. We'll have to fly in from Hawaii quite often (don't have a place there yet but we will ... even if it is a trailer).

Note that I will be in NY city this Thursday and possibly Wednesday evening. Drop me an email if you feel like touching base.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

stumble the net

2007-03-23T02:03:00.000-04:00

Very quick post as an ad on. After trying to sleep yesterday (i.e. last night), it is now tomorrow of yesterday. My brain being mush at this point, I decided to stumble around the net. More specifically to stumbleupon the net. This is absolutely genius. You basically tell the system some topics you are interested in and keep hitting stumble and it takes you from site to site.

I tend to use this when I'm burnt and want a laugh. On the first try, it brought me to the following site http://www.scribd.com/doc/5107/They-didnt-study

It is absolutely hilarious ... if you don't laugh, you're dead. I've been playing around with this for a while and keep forgetting to share it with you guys. I hope you enjoy it.

This was created by a couple of guys from Calgary of all places!!! Way to go hosers eh!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Asbestos Underwear and the VC Ring of Fire

2007-03-22T21:01:00.000-04:00

Going into the VC ring of fire. Read this blog with the Johnny Cash Song "Ring of Fire" playing in your head and imagine the object of the love is a start up.

Ring Of Fire Lyrics

Love is a burning thing
and it makes a firery ring
bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire...

I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down,down,down
and the flames went higher.
And it burns,burns,burns
the ring of fire
the ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet
when hearts like our's meet
I fell for you like a child
oh, but the fire went wild..

I fell in to a burning ring of fire.....[etc]

Well .... that time is now. Dates are being nailed down for a VC roadshow. I expect to have at least 3 or 4 major pitches between now and the end of April. That's nothing as far VC road trips go but it is still scary since this is the first time. No more kid gloves ... I'm expecting to come out somewhat burnt but hopefully not too bitter and ultimately successful.

There is so much to think about ... burn rate, advertising vs subscription, founders, founders, founders, advisers, patents, validation, a detailed spreadsheet that tracks everything including coffee stir sticks and toilet paper, tax credits, what makes you truly different and can you defend that, patents, partners, go to market strategy, value chain, marketing plan, sales plan, development costs and on and on and on. Add some of the consulting work to all that and the relaxation we had in Disney last week seems like months ago.

When I started this, I knew it would get crazy and have some ups and downs. I can't say that it has been easier or harder than expected though I'm entering the hardest phase imminently. We are actually aiming for a seed investment under $1M which should theoretically be easier to achieve since there is less risk. However, I falsely believed that the expectations would be lower. My expectation was that I would have to pull together a great team around a good concept and growing market. A detailed description of the concept coupled with some validation in the form of "sounds very interesting ... it could be something we would deploy because of reason X, Y and Z" from some key industry people and we're off to the races. Silly and naive. The way I perceive it, you have to plan on being just as prepared as you would for a $5M A round. The only difference is that the VC is not taking as much of a chance ... you are lowering their risk. I'm probably exaggerating a bit but not much ... but I'm not taking any chances.

It is enough to drive you to drink. The 2 AM trips to the hot tub with a glass of Drambuie are becoming a nearly daily event to clear the head and it actually works quite well ... I should be able to claim it as a tax deduction. To add to the joy, a very recent change in the founding team has led to some pieces of the puzzle falling back in my lap to scramble. Fortunately I was able to pull some favors and draft some excellent help but I hit a real low for about a day this week. This was followed by clinching some fantastic partners I've been hoping to get to sign on to the advisory board and another major exec that could really help fill out the team ... a fantastic guy ... back up to a high. Basically this week has been a roller coaster.

I was the QB of the football team in High School and I must admit I wasn't a fantastic one though I did have some great moments. If my center, good ol Fraser, got stomped on, I would ultimately feel much pain, especially on a very wet late October with mud in nearly every orifice. Things seem to hurt a lot more when you are cold and wet for some reason. I don't like pain and fortunately Fraser covered me most of the time, a big boy who ended up in RCMP I think. You have to be able to count on your team and I'm working very hard to ensure I have very good pigs and not chickens. Sometimes one is disguised as the other ... why did that pig just lay an egg??? hmmm ....

Having said all that, even though I'm exhausted and whipped, I'm more pumped than ever. I have managed to polarize some people who don't think what I'm doing will work or that people won't sign on in the quantities required. Of course, I have many on the positive side but the negatives is what I need right now to polish things. I have asked a number of knowledgeable people to sit through my pitch over the next couple of weeks and hammer me as hard as they can. Be difficult, a devil's advocate, ask nasty questions ... whatever ... tell me I'm crazy and dreaming. I best get some calluses before go time on April 10th. This is one of the reasons I have invited many of you to a big bash (other than an excuse to party with lots of fun people) on April 14th. I really need the input of the general consumers, and especially women who don't get easily swayed by cool wiz bang stuff. Plus its a good excuse to party ... not that I need one mind you but this way at least it is a tax deduction.

Well ... heading to bed before tomorrow for once ... must find my asbestos underwear.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
CEO, MYDYO (as in My Radio + My Video = MYDYO in case you are wondering)

wiki miki

2007-03-15T20:08:00.000-04:00

Wow ... it has been a while since my last post. When I start getting emails from people sounding worried about the lack of posts lately, it is probably time to get back at it. Things have been crazy since my last post about 3GSM in Barcelona. I was running around on start-up stuff as well as some new consulting work helping CLECs with some FCC petitions ... interesting new work, and then a quick trip to Disney World with the family. Yikes!! Good times on all fronts.

First a couple of quick words on the land of Mickey Mouse. I've been so busy lately, my wife wisely figured it was time to get away with the kids for some R&R. We stayed on the Disney property at a hotel called the Beach Club. Other than the sucking sound of an industrial vacuum on our wallets, it was fantastic. The bar made an excellent Pina Colava and the pool actually had sand in it, including a sand bar for the kids to play in, a small lazy river and a waterfall. Someone accidentally turned up the heat and the entire pool was hovering near 90 degrees Fahrenheit by our last day! I'm sure I saw dollar bills floating up in the air where someone had written JESUS in the sky with an airplane ... I'm not kidding ... about the Jesus part.

An entrepreneur can never flip the switch to off .... the hamster is always running though I managed to get him into a steady jog rather than the mad sprint he is usually in. Actually, I usually have three hamsters running at the same time ... two of them work hard to bring in money so that the third one can live his dreams. Anyway, Disney is a great place to observe American society at work. One thing is for sure ... American's sure know how to entertain. They nearly get you crying at the "Believe" killer whale show at Sea World with the whole "young kid sitting on the beach carving a whale tale out of wood reaches his dreams of becoming a trainer at Sea World". It is not just a "killer whale jumps out of the water" trick show, it is a full dramatic production with huge rotating screens and all. Another amazing show is the new car stunt show at MGM ... absolutely incredible and very well done.

Ok ... as usual, you're wondering what the hell this has to do with start-up stuff. As I said, an entrepreneur is always "on", even if the hamster is in a slow jog sipping on a pina colava so there is a connection.

I have been on a major deep dive recently to investigate "the power of the crowds". There have been many huge successes in the last number of years that really highlight the extremely social nature of human beings. Some excellent examples you may have heard of include MySpace, YouTube, WikiPedia, Digg, eBay, CraigList, SecondLife, Blogs, LinkedIn .... I could go on and on and on. Not only are people interested in connecting with others but many of them spend an insane number of hours creating, posting and rating content. It is true that fewer than 10% of the people actually contribute ... probably closer to 1% actually ... but when you consider the entire wired world that 1% ends up being a very big number.

While on the way to Orlando, I picked up a great new book called "Wikinomics, How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything". I highly recommend it ... a very well written book by a couple of guys from Toronto of all places (Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams of New Paradigm). I'll definitely try to hook up with the authors next time I'm in Toronto as this is a critical component of our start up.

I'll share some more about this in future posts as this is a major trend that will impact all of us. Speaking of social, I'm announcing a big party at the Isfan residence in mid April. It is mostly a social affair but I will pull together a bit of an "open kimono" session at the beginning and share with all in attendance a bit of what we are up to. If you are interested in attending and are not on my evite list, please shoot me an email and make your case ... I'll take it to the judges to earn you a fastpass (don't tell anyone).

Cheers,

Allan "back to reality" Isfan
Entrepreneur In Residence, Skypoint Capital
CEO, MYDYO
5628isfan@rogers.com

Barcelona 3GSM trip report

2007-02-18T15:45:00.000-05:00

In case you missed the previous post, I attended the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona last week. This is arguably the biggest show in the world that focuses exclusively on cellular technology. It is a pretty large show and is attended by roughly sixty thousands people, mostly wearing fancy suits and looking stylish ... no golf shirts here. Barcelona is one of the most amazing cities in the entire world. Coming out of the conference center, you are presented with a beautiful plaza with an amazing statue and fountain like you rarely see anywhere. At night, fire comes out of the bowl at the top! I strongly recommend you come to Barcelona whenever you can .. you'll be amazed. Just keep you belongings close at hand or as by magic, they'll disappear.

Besides the setting, the conference itself was extremely busy and packed ... this is a good indication of a very healthy vibrant business environment. Anyone who had the chance to attend some of the more telecom oriented shows like Supercomm a few years ago would be shocked by the excitement and energy in the air at this show instead of the sound of crickets.

I attended the show to reconnect with some key people, make new contacts and especially to get a strong pulse on the world of wireless and cellular. A huge success on all fronts .... very glad I made the trip even though I came back utterly exhausted like I have never been before. I flew the red eye on the way there and took such an early flight back on Thursday, I didn't bother sleeping the night before at all. Keeping in mind these people start eating at about 8:30pm and the night life starts at midnight, it wasn't exactly a restful trip. When I was back home Thursday night, I fell asleep 5 times while my 8 year old daughter was reading her book before bedtime ..... daddy ... wake up!!! My wife tells me I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I have so much to tell about what I learned or reaffirmed, the blog would go on forever so I'll stick to the highlights.

Wireless providers are struggling to figure out what is next

The stock market has a strange way of forcing the value of companies to be dependent on future earnings. Wireless companies are desperately trying to figure out where growth is going to come from and many billions of dollars are at stake. If you ever analyze the various big service providers such as AT&T (SBC, BellSouth & Cingular), Verizon, Sprint, Telus, Rogers and Bell that provide multiple services such as telephony, internet access and wireless services, you note that the wireless division is the strongest. Doesn't everyone review quarterly earnings reports like I do? However, although you could do all sorts of cool things with you cellphone and especially smartphones, most of the revenue still comes from voice services ... i.e. minutes of use, roaming, long distance ... basically boring stuff and the revenues are getting flat.

All wireless providers are extremely motivated to figure how to sell you more services and increase average revenue per user (ARPU). This makes for some pretty cool stuff but much of it hasn't been doing the trick. Most non-voice revenue still comes from silly things like ringtones (roughly $5Billion in 2006!!!) and texting. If you're over 30 years old, like me, you don't get texting. These kids are as crazy about texting as business people are about the crackberry .... must be connected!! As my trainer told me the other day when I asked him how much he texts, he said "huge" ... nearly 2000 in the last month". That can't be quite right ... must have misunderstood ... either way, it was a big number. When people call him on his cell phone, his response is ... "dude, why are you calling me ... text me!"

So voice, ringtone, texting are already huge ... what is next? Video, Music, IM and Bluetooth are just a few things.

Video to your mobile

It appears that video on the cellphone is one of the expected key drivers of growth but the uptake hasn't been as huge as hoped in much of the world. You're thinking ... duh ... who wants to watch t.v. on a cellphone? Well, you would be hugely wrong. The cell phone is becoming the first screen in many countries, especially in ASIA. Some wicked phones were on display at 3GSM ... ultra sharp and clear ... very watchable. But, the services today are just too expensive and complicated.

If it takes more than two or three clicks ... forget it. Cost can also be ridiculous. If you don't have an unlimited data plan, which is the case for most people, data costs can be huge. Bell Mobility for example charges roughly $12/Mbyte for a Pocket PC or Treo plan!!!!*(&((!!!!. A typical song is about 4 Mbytes. So downloading a song from some third party location would cost you $48. Going off-portal can ruin you literally. These stories get out and it scares the crap out of everyone especially since it is very hard to actually figure what it will cost you. This is what is called the walled garden. You can pick flowers from within the garden all you want but stick your arm over the wall and it gets cleaved off clean leaving you bleeding and you don't even notice until you try to reach for your wallet. Ok maybe a bit dramatic but you get the point.

Music

Music on your cellphone is going to be so ridiculously huge. Why do you think Apple decided to build the iPhone? The iPOD is pretty cool with roughly 100 Million shipped so far ... a big number. But this is puny in comparison to the cell phone market which is estimated at 1 Billion units per year!!!! The market for music on cell phones, excluding ringtones, has been pegged at several billion dollars by the end of this decade. If you don't think people are going to listen to audio on their phones, you're once again way out to lunch. Stay with the tour! It is already happening everywhere else.

Instant Messaging

People of all ages are glued to their instant messengers. They chit chat back and forth sending cute emoticons ... lots of fun and useful too actually. IMs are coming to your phone and it will be very popular. I already have it on my pocket PC running windows mobile. I remember my wife MSNing with her mom as we were returning from Nova Scotia this summer and stopping by their cottage in Quebec on the way back. We were in the car and grandma was on the laptop we gave her. We decided Raclette would be a good idea for supper and she had it mostly ready by the time we got there ... it paid for itself right there!

Bluetooth

Bluetooth was actually a old Norse king. For some reason, he inspired a pretty exciting new wireless technology for close range communication. Bluetooth is being embedded in most laptops, many cell phones and even cars these days. It has been years in the making but this is now taking off like absolutely crazy. Many people are now making some pretty neat accessories such as headphones. I tried out a new pair being launched by Motorola at the show which was playing music from one of their music phones. It sounded great. I also checked out a retrofit kit from Motorola that allows you to connect to your existing card stereo over bluetooth ... sounded great from the cell phone. They were also demoing a small GPS puck that communicates with cell phones and PDA over bluetooth. I checked out an ultraportable 20G hard drive Seagate is launching called DAVE. You leave it in your pocket and you can stream music or video from it to your portable and save files and pictures to it. It worked very nicely over bluetooth (though it also has wifi I believe). I would be shocked if we didn't see cameras, portable screens and zillions of other bluetooth gadgets in the coming months and years.

Anyway, I have hockey at 7AM so I best retire to sleepland. More on 3GSM and cool stuff in the next post.

Cheers,

Allan

Why are blueberries called blueberries when they are actually purple

2007-02-08T22:33:00.000-05:00

When I started this blog, my intent was to share the experience with you as it happens. It has been mostly good but this week was quite challenging in Isfan start-up land.

It has felt like a physical and emotional roller coaster. First of all, with both my wife and I being completely self employed, we rely on our customers to actually pay. My own consulting helps pay the bills and fund my crazy start-up dreams. All of our clients got messed with POs stuck everywhere and no money coming in. That would have been fine had the treasurer (me) for Isfan Solutions Inc. (our consulting firm) not made an inputting error when paying our payroll taxes online with way too much money being wired to the government. Several faxes later and explaining the situation to the entire staff of the federal government, it seems things have been rectified and a cheque is on its way. The POs have also been greased and that is all now groovy. Crisis managed. Moving on. Mental note ... check the cash-flow numbers in the spreadsheet for the start-up and get someone else to do payroll ... Cindy Loo ... I'll be calling you.

This week has been characterized by a crazy schedule with some great really great meetings but I found myself literally running from one meeting to another. Here is the play by play for the last couple of days.

Wednesday: Drop kids off at school bus in the morning, pick up my partner, drive to Montreal, meet with a great entrepreneur for lunch, rush and arrive late to meet and greet with a great VC (downtown Montreal ... yikes) ... literally running from a far away parking lot to the building the VC is in. I can't believe we managed to be late for a first meeting with a VC, especially one you really think highly of. If you are reading this S.F., a million apologies ... it is not a reflection of the respect we have for you. Head back to Ottawa, call home on they way. My wife got stuck doing some urgent work for one her clients (executives at the biggest tech company in Ottawa ... you don't say no) so I swing by Harvey's to pick up dinner for everyone. Pull in to the garage and two of my sweet girls, having heard the garage door opening, greet me jumping up and down screaming daddy! daddy! daddy! and hand me a note telling how much they love me and how much they missed me. How absolutely awesome ... one lucky guy. Scarf down dinner, tag team with my wife to finish homework and get the kids to bed, head upstairs to my office, do a few hours of work for a customer then flip into start-up mode till 2:30am. Come up with some great stuff ... all worth it. A dip in the hot-tub with a beer is well deserved I think.

Thursday:

Up early and take daughter to school for basketball practice, help coach her team, then head downtown to meet with a lawyer versed in trademark and copyright to get advice on the legality of what we are doing. Looks pretty good but answers are not definitive enough .... get contacts to follow up with though. Head back to west end to meet for lunch with one of my partners and a great exec that is interested in what we are doing and may team up with us. Realize I have to rush off to Skypoint for a 1pm meeting, take off to Skypoint, running through the parking lot and making it there 5 minutes late. Have a fantastic meeting and meet a couple of people with extensive experience and success in the web 2.0 space ... excellent connection and advice. Pick up my wife from one of her clients (sounds like Midol), meet kids at school bus then take them to singing and piano lessons, including my own singing lesson. Spend evening on some wicked idea for one of my clients and flip back into start-up mode. Tough to get up this morning but a double cappuccino kicks things into gear before I meet with my personal trainer this morning.

What does this have to do with a start-up blog? Quite a bit actually. Unless you have so much money it doesn't really matter what happens (not my case), some suffering and stress for your passion is normal and expected. If you can't handle it, you're no entrepreneur. As a successful guy told me this week, you have to be prepared to be figuratively naked alone in the forest ... that's what it will sometimes feel like. Another told me "the happy plan never happens" you'll wake up many morning with you credit card maxed out and wondering what they hell you're doing.

It is always darkest before dawn and I know the sun will come up so there is absolutely no giving up. Compared to the stress and fear my parents had to deal with leaving a communist Romania with two you kids in tow and nothing but a couple of suitcases, to start a new life in France and ultimately Canada, this ain't nothin! I've been taught to work my ass off, persevere and never give up. I'm supported by a fantastic wife and kids, a network of developers and executives as well amazing new people I'm meeting all the time that believe we will make it and are willing to help for little or nothing in return. I don't see how we can fail as long as we keep being smart, creative, agile, organized, focused and hard working and not being afraid to shoot high while asking for help when needed.

Next week will be wilder than ever as I head to Barcelona on Sunday for the 3GSM conference. Wow. As I'm thinking about all this, and chomping down on some muffins my six year old made last night, one of the girls asks "why are blueberries called blueberries when they are actually purple?". I have no idea but my six year old suggests we google it!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

PS. If you are in Barcelona for 3GSM and want to hook up, please shoot me an email @ 5628isfan@rogers.com. You should also be able to contact me on my cell at +16138635844.

batten down the hatches

2007-02-02T10:19:00.000-05:00

Before I forget, I'd like to let you know that I'm being interviewed by a local Ottawa tv channel today. The interview is being done by Janet Eastman and will be aired today (Friday Feb 2) at 6:30pm on Rogers channel 22. It is short interview and is the first of a series of monthly interviews that will follow a new entrepreneur (i.e. me) through the trials and tribulations of kicking off a start-up. Because we are right in the thick of it right now and don't know how it will turn out, it should give people a more real sense of the experience. Ultimately, the last interview should be of our team diving in to a pool of champagne. I'll be getting a copy of the show to podcast from my blog.

I got some comments from a number of you off-line regarding the last blog. I guess I sounded really negative and upset. That is partly true I suppose but more at myself than anything. I haven't been turned down for investment yet and everything is moving along fine so there's no real reason to be upset. Having said that, it hit me quite hard last week that if I didn't start working on a number of parallel paths for funding, it was unlikely to happen. VCs rarely invest alone, especially in this very tentative climate, therefore getting multiple VCs lined up is critical. There was also a realization that it is possible that we would not get VC investment at all for quite some time for one reason or another and I needed to consider alternate plans more seriously.

I therefore began looking at the product that we are building in more detail to figure out what it would cost to launch our first basic product. I realized that if we scaled back the feature set a bit and got some outside help in exchange for equity, we could get quite far with very little money. If the team was willing to consult a bit on the side to help the cash flow, that could really help as well. This was a very positive realization that we are not urgently dependent on huge outside investments and we are prepared to move forward one way or the other.

Some people saw this as giving up and that is absolutely not the case. Quite to the contrary. We are putting on a full court press on the funding side and widening the scope of potential investors while we prepare to batten down the hatches and ensure we are not urgently dependent on significant funding. I think the ultimate result of this new direction is that we will get the funding we need but will be in a much more powerful position which will make it easier on the knees.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Co-founder, CEO
MYDYO

audio tipping point

2007-01-28T22:02:00.001-05:00

Before I get going, a quick reminder regarding the recent interview on Rogers 22. I think it actually went really well but I must admit I was very nervous. I don't get nervous very easily but being on t.v. is more nerve racking than I expected. When the interview starts, you enter this strange fog ... no time to think at all. They don't do second takes so you get one shot. Time flies and you have no idea how it actually went. I was anxious to check out the newscast at 6:30pm Friday but I was with my girls at Gymnastics and had to wait until later! Overall a great learning experience. I'll get my hands on the clip and make it available on my blog.

Ok ... let's change gears. Let me share what I see coming in the next few years in the world of audio.

In my opinion, we are reaching a tipping point in the online audio streaming world. In case you're not sure what "tipping point" is, here is the definition from WikiPedia "The phrase tipping point ... refers to that dramatic moment when something unique becomes common". Basically it is when something goes mainstream. I read a very interesting book specifically on the subject recently and could get into it more but I'll leave it to another time.

Online audio streaming has been around for quite a while. If you have ever listened to your favorite broadcast radio station through your computer, you would be counted as one of 59 Million people in the US (don't think they count Canada) that has listened to audio streaming online in 2006. If you do this at least once a week, you would be one of 30 Million people weekly users of online audio streaming in the US . Congratulations for being on the cutting edge! These aren't bad numbers. A JP Morgan study that was just released estimates that audio streaming draws ~$500M/year in advertising in the US. That's not too bad but when you consider $20B is spent on traditional radio advertising, it is still puny. That's fine with me because the number of people listening to audio streaming on line is growing by roughly 27% per year since 2000. This tells me that I'm entering into a growing market that is still at its infancy and I see opportunities all over the place. The timing is good for people and investors with vision (nudge nudge wink wink). We take rolled up coins, credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, cheques and Canadian Tire money (I need more pucks and hockey tape, the dogs keep chewing them).

Most people don't listen to streaming audio on the net yet. However, lots of interesting and moderately successful products and services are popping up all the time though, even though most aren't making a lot of money yet. I've mentioned Pandora and Last.fm in the past. I've also been experimenting with AOL radio and Musicovery to name a few. There are also some excellent internet radios, such as the Squeezebox http://www.slimdevices.com/, and many very low cost WiFi radios will be popping up in 2007. This is the calm before the storm and a perfect indication of a tipping point. In 2-3 years or so, I predict it will be absolutely huge. A few more things need to fall into place and the floodgates will open. These things are falling into place as we speak and the trickle of water is starting.We also plan to help this along (our snorkels are ready).

There is a pretty clear desire to move away from pure broadcast but the existing streaming services lack a number of things before the tipping point happens. First, the services need to ubiquitous and reliable. Second, they need to be as easy to use as radio. Third, they need to be free. Fourth, they need to provide more than music. And finally, as always, there has to be some pretty useful, compelling and entertaining content behind to rip you away from your comfortable and familiar products, especially if you're not a teenager anymore (works the opposite for them).

Some pretty cool stuff is coming down the pipe and I can't wait to share the . I'll share cool stuff with you in the coming weeks. I'm heading to Barcelona next week for the world 3gsm congress, a huge show which focuses primarily on wireless technology. It is a wild and insane show and I expect to come back brutally exhausted but hugely pumped and ideally armed with follow-up meetings with key execs and potential customers. If you are heading and want to chat, let me know so we can set up a meeting ahead of time.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Co-founder, CEO
MYDYO

who needs money anyway

2007-01-28T20:30:00.000-05:00

My last post included some tidbits that some experienced individuals shared with a crowd of entrepreneurs recently. I promised I would go back to a few important items and I may as well do so now, especially since a friend of mine just lived through a few of the bullets very recently. Fortunately, it was only a flesh wound but it sucks to see this happen.

I've been slapped over the head by the following realizations enough times to have it finally sink in and I'm compelled to pass on the slap. It stings a bit since I see myself making some of these mistakes and must correct course immediately.

Work multiple investors until the money is in the bank!

Investors will sometimes appear to be very interested which gets the entrepreneur all pumped up thinking they have finally found "the one". They jump through hoops, expend lots of energy and stop chasing other investors thinking this one is so close, you'll be cashing a cheque and popping the champagne anytime. Months and months go by ... you finally start talking numbers and you might even be so lucky to get a decent term sheet thinking .... this is it ... time to polish the dancing shoes. Then you realize the due diligence is just beginning ... many more months might go by and the trail goes cold. What the F&%#!?

Slap, slap, slap!!!

Who needs money anyway!

Although this is not possible in all industries, it is good to be ready to move forward without any significant outside investment. This is especially possible with pure S/W plays, especially in a Web 2.0 environment in the year 2007. Fortunately, this is the space we are in. We are prepared to move forward to develop our product on the slow path if that is what it takes. I'll keep the knee pads on and continue prostituting my brain to the telecom world for a while longer. You go numb after a while ... it isn't so bad ... plus the people are great which makes it much easier.

Go to market strategy!!!

So ... you have a great idea. You know what you are going to build, have a developed a compelling business case that shows you'll be swimming in dollar bills in no time and hopefully making more than you're spending. You know how you are going to build your world changing thingy, how many people it is going to take and where they are going to come from. Awesome ... ready to roll. Now comes the hardest part in my opinion. How do we bring this to market?

Basically, how do we ensure everyone in the entire world knows about our product. This is especially challenging for a start-up since the marketing dollars are simply not there. A huge marketing campaign is definitely out. So we are left with a few options:
-have each of the team members tattoo one of the company letters on their butt and we can start streaking side by side through all the major cities (we'll do Canada in the summer ... nuf said)
-hey ... this might not be half bad ... guys, are you in? I'd better hit the gym a little harder
-work with a big brother/channel partner with a big name
-this is one we are looking into quite a bit. The trick is that you need to prove to them that you can do something for them that no one else can (without giving up your virginity for it).... even though you are absolutely nobody and they could step on you like a bug ... where the hell did they go ... they were just here a minute ago!
-viral. This is a really fun one since it can be super powerful but can be very difficult to predict and control. A bit of luck is required here.

The tattoo thing is sounding pretty good!

If you are into listening to music on the net (if not you will be), I'd like to leave you with a neat service I discovered virally (i.e. someone sent me the link). I'm not quite sure if it is really good yet since I've only used it a few times but it is an interesting take on music streaming. It is very simple and free so give it a shot. Let me know what you think.

http://www.musicovery.com/

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Founder

Big brothers willing to help

2007-01-21T21:02:00.000-05:00

Before I get going, please note that I've syndicated my blog through FeedBurner. Look for the RSS chicklet (orange logo) and associated link to the right of the blog. This allows you to include my feed in your news reader and get updates. Note that you can also register your email and get the blog automatically the day after it is published.

I recently registered my company with the Ottawa Center for Research and Innovation (OCRI) and attended the first of many presentations last Thursday. Basic registration for a start-up is $300 which provides access to what seems to be a significant set of resources, events and networking opportunities.

The session I attended last Thursday consisted of presentations on the topic of early stage financing from a diverse group including a VC (Jim Laird) CFA/VP investments, Covington Capital Corp, a member of the Ottawa Angel Alliance (Irving Ebert), a lawyer (Michael Dunleavy, LaBarge Weinstein ... the firm that represents me), investment consultants (Raj Narula and Mike Manson, Taraspan Group ... assisting OneChip) and a successful serial entrepreneur (Jim Hjartarson now CEO of OneChip Photonics, formerly founder and CEO of Catena networks). If you are from Ottawa, you've probably heard of this last character. Note that Andy Weirich is also at OneChip (coincidence?).

I mostly went to heckle Jim and to do a bit of networking. I must say though, all the presentations were absolutely fantastic ... the best $85 dollar breakfast I ever had. There was lots of great and honest advice. I truly felt these guys took lots of time to prepare and were truly genuine in their quest to help young entrepreneurs. If there is anything to take away from this post is that Ottawa is a close and tight community full of successful people willing to help others. I have already been fortunate to have asked for assistance from many such people and they have certainly not disappointed. If you are an entrepreneur, get out into the community through organizations such as www.OCRI.ca , tie.org and/or contact entrepreneurs and other capable people in the community to ask for help ... don't be shy.

I will attempt to summarize the key take aways from the sessions through some short bullets. I'll try to come back to the key items in future blogs.

-rate of return for VCs has been pretty bad over the last few years which makes it difficult for them to raise large funds from which to invest - just fantastic!
-VC early stage investment sweet spot is ~3-5M in Canada and closer to about $9M in us
-if you're looking for something in $3M range, stick to VCs in Canada
-VC funds have a timeline for each fund in 8-10yr range, basically they need to invest and recover funds within that rough time-line
-before you go to a VC, make sure you know what stage their fund is at. If they are late in the fund, they'll be looking for an acquisition or IPO (fat chance) quickly which changes their investment decisions
-liquidity event is typically expected in 4-5 yrs
-ask for twice the amount of money you think you'll need
-kinda obvious but most companies fail when they run out of money :)
-go to VCs before you need the money ... build relationships, get to know them and how they make their decisions, the stage of their fund, the types of companies they invest in and at what stage ...
-this is actually how I ended up as an Entrepreneur In Residence at Skypoint
-give them a sense for what you are thinking about and where the market is going ... then come back in 6 months and show them you were right ... good for credibility
-qualified angel investors invest a significant amount of money and have helped a very large number of companies get off the ground ... definitely worth a serious look
-angel alliances, such as the Ottawa Angel Alliance www.ottawaangels.ca/, are generally much more successful than individual angels (their rate of return seem better than most VCs too)
-angel investors are hands on and local (within ~1hr) ... as Irving put it, angels with faster cars invest in a larger geographic radius
-important to pick the right investors ... don't take shotgun approach
-very wise to do lots of research on each VC before attempting to pitch
-look for short list of 10-12 VCs
-wise to consider getting help from consultants such as www.taraspan.com (they are working with Jim Hjartarson's new company, OneChip Photonics).
-have fun, have fun, have fun
-investors are diversifying out of telecom (no big surprise here .... darn gotta scrap my next DSLAM idea!)
-don't look for investment until you are completely ready ... bootstrap like crazy to get going

I have more stuff but for the sake of brevity, I'll save the rest for the next post.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Founder

The chicken and the pig

2007-01-11T20:47:00.000-05:00

Before I get into my my blog, it is impossible not to mention the iPhone. Holy wicked cool phone thingy batman! As expected, the thing is amazing! I'm going to get one as soon as it is available! That might be mid 2008 in Canada, probably through Rogers ... no way I can wait that long. Why is Steve Jobs the only guy in the world that can come up with stuff like this! The Microsoft Zune looks cold in comparison ... it has no soul (sorry ... don't mean to be so hard on it but that's the truth ... you could do so much better with all you money). I strongly recommend you go the apple website and check out the demos ... way cool.

Ok ... back to my little world.

There are so many things to keep track of when you start a serious company ... it gets crazy. I've been compiling a list of major milestones, assumptions and actions being delegated. Priorities are assigned to each item since the list is getting long. Priority 1 turns red automatically in my spreadsheet and it looks like a blood bath. Tons and tons of work to do but unfortunately important items that were being delegated were just not getting done to my satisfaction. It was time to shake things up, create a sense of urgency and see where the commitment really is.

Doing a start-up is brutally hard ... it is stressful, exhausting, you get rejected by investors and potential partners and customers. In addition, you are trying to build something amazing while having to learn a huge number of new things at the same time and you need to do things on a complete shoestring. You beg, borrow and steal. You call in favors that may not actually be owed to you. And it can certainly be scary. You need the absolute best and everyone on the team has to work their fingers to the bone.

On the positive side though, the people that have been invited into our inner circle get to have an impact like they never have in their entire life. If this thing gets as huge as we think it is, the people on the inside will do very well. Not just financially but by getting involved very early on and living through the creation and eventual growth of a new company. When this thing takes off and people eventually move on to new things in the future, the credibility and experience will be insanely valuable.

It is not an opportunity to squander, especially when you really really believe in something. This is basically what I communicated with the team as a whole and through one on one sessions that are ongoing. Things are coming to a head and you have to decide where you want to end up. The pen is being divided into the chickens and the pigs. As one of the GPs at Skypoint likes to say regarding the role the chicken and the pig play in a great bacon and eggs breakfast ... the chicken is involved and the pig is committed. The litmus test I tossed to the team is "if your spouse hasn't complained that you are working too hard on this ... you're not working hard enough". If you're not working hard, I assume you're not committed.

I'm also asking the following questions:

-do you really, truly believe in what we are doing and why
-how many hours a week can you commit to the cause (I've set an aggressive target)
-what role do you see yourself playing in this company and what are you looking to achieve
-when we close on the seed round and have 6 to 9 months of runway, are you going to quit your job and join at likely lower pay (at least temporarily)

Although I have not spoken one-on-one with everyone, I've been surprised to find people clearly on one side or the other. Either they are in all the way .... work every moment possible and will quit their job at the appropriate time (some of us don't have other jobs which makes it easier) or they are able to work a limited 4-8 hrs a week and are only willing to come in after an A round. That is perfectly fine ... everyone has different goals in life and risk aversion but this is the time to be finding this out. VCs fund teams, not individuals, and without a team, there is no funding. There are many things that scare investors and teams with unclear commitment is one of them. Money is often conditional on key people joining so as the CEO, you need to really and truly know who is behind you.

We are still months away from being in a position to close a seed round which means the core team needs to be nailed down in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, we'll have lots pigs and not too many chickens. And then we'll have a great greasy breakfast of bacon and eggs.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Founder

kicking it up a notch

2007-01-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

The tree is finally down, all the millions of pine needles cleaned up, labelled boxes back in the basement and the kids going back to school tomorrow. It kinda sucks really ... it was really fantastic hanging out with my wife and kids for days and days and no cares in the world. Everyone healthy, relaxed, happy. It is now back to reality. Not a bad reality mind you ... but it is time to get really serious about business.

I would like to take you back and do a quick review of 2006 to give you a sense for what has transpired since I quit my job last April. I'll also share a few important items that will be happening over the next few months.

Mid April
1) , 2006: Quit job as Senior Product Marketing Director at Ciena after 7 years
-an extremely difficult thing to do when you're not rolling in dough ... but necessary
2) Launch Isfan Solutions Inc. with my wife and begin consulting for a couple of tech companies while she continues freelancing in graphic design
3) Join Skypoint Capital as Entrepreneur In Residence

Summer
4) Spend summer kicking around ideas with several different groups in various spaces such as RFID, WiFi and WiMAX, DSL, Distributed Servers
5) Decide to stop trying to get onto moving trains and get out of internet plumbing business ... I'll be the founder of whatever I do and it won't be on infrastructure

September
6) Share a short list of ideas with VC. Some good ones in the lot but only one is really keeping me up at night ... and it is probably the hardest one as it is furthest from my direct experience
7) Swallow hard and set a course ... research and capture thoughts like crazy ..... a very exciting time

November
8) Team comes together and we have first boardroom meeting in my kitchen/dinning room with a borrowed projector, the kitchen table and a bed sheet.
-this was a great great night that I will remember for ever (plus we have it captured with an expensive HD camera just in case)

December
9) Share update with VC. Goes ok. Some happy, some less happy with progress.
-several lessons learned 1) set clear expectations 2) need to work on pitch really hard ... in retrospect it wasn't very good (wasn't supposed to be a pitch ... but it always really is)
10) Some fantastic meetings with potential senior advisers and partners ... potential senior team members, great advice, excellent connections, great potential help to develop concept ....
11) Take a breather during holidays

Early January
12) Review team and shake things up ... only the best will do ... must believe, work like crazy and deliver

Ok so everyone is caught up. What is the plan moving forward? Of course, I can't share the details but the following can be said:

-what we are doing is still awesome and continues to get better ... I'm more pumped than ever
-need to add some critical advisers and senior members ... will be going hard to fill out team
-VC road trips start in February
-I expect to be depressed 75% of the time during this faze ... it is going to be brutal and I expect to wake up in the middle of night many times wondering what the hell I was thinking
-kicking off regular interviews on local Ottawa TV station to follow the "entrepreneur's story" ... also trying to get coverage from main newspaper
-I'll be getting access to the video and will share it with you. The first installment should happen this month.
-launch a few features in coming months to test the waters and use as learning opportunity
-will set-up invitation only trial ... I'll let you know when we are ready
-raise seed round (<$1M) in spring with A round in the fall ... may look at angel money as long it comes from the right sources and doesn't poison opportunity with VCs

It is going to be a wild wild year! Thank you for continuing to check out the blog. I'll do my best to post at least once a week and sometimes two if I can squeeze it in. I may also use this post for recruiting people with some very specific skills so keep checking it out.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Founder

keys to the back door

2006-12-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

As this wild year wraps up and transitions to 2007 through the fog induced by fermented juices and too much sugar, it is a good time to be reminded of the important things in life, both on the personal as well as the business side. Success in life is truly about strong relationships built on fun and trust. Of course, there are lots of other factors to success but with all else being mostly equal in the end (there are lots of smart, creative people out there) relationships end up making the biggest difference. An yet this is often overlooked in most business books. I can't believe how many people are willing to help me just because I ask. I guess you have to know what yo need and not be afraid to ask for it.

I've written about a number of strategies I'm using to create differentiation and a defensible position. All useful stuff I think ... but sometimes it is over analytical. The reality is that we're putting together a fantastic team I am very proud of and will be creating products that will be really engaging. We've bounced the concept off enough people to know we are definitely on the right track but having a good concept and great technology to back it does not guarantee success. Failure is simply not an option so we have to put all the chips on our side. To get our product out there, we need elements that cannot be captured in a business plan. How do you measure the value of strong relationships?

A very successful guy provided us some excellent advice this week. He basically said (paraphrasing) "in an nascent market, everyone is bullshitting". Basically, when you are pushing the edge and treading new ground, no one is really sure what piece of the technology will be valuable and what customers will really go for. Customers will therefore work with people they know and trust. This is true of end consumers like you and I as well as well as larger customers. I decided on an iPOD several years ago because I trusted Apple. I knew their product was going to be great before I even got it. I didn't have to shop around and compare prices and features ... I just went with Apple to save myself the trouble and risk and I was not disappointed. Roughly 70 Million people seem to agree (that's how many iPODs have been sold!)

Corporate customers are the same. They want to work with people they know and trust. If you can gain that trust, it allows you to get connected with them earlier and work together to create something that is valuable for both sides. What really allowed us to create something valuable for major customers in previous companies was some good relationships that got us in the door before we actually had anything more than powerpoint slides. We then went off and designed products that not only fit them like a glove ... no wonder they continue to sell like hot cakes. Without the initial relationships, we would have floundered for a while and probably failed.

Interestingly enough, products that failed to secure some major contracts failed because we no longer had the right relationships in place at the highest levels. One of the products was the most capable and advanced product of its kind in the world and was backed by a world leading technical team. Our pricing was lower and the key features were available far sooner than our competition. The reason for the failure to secure the deals was mostly due to poorly timed personnel changes that prevented us from taking full advantage of the relationships we previously had. "Incumbency trumps technology"

In the end, you need good products based on good technology but people and relationships are the true differentiators. The reminder of this obvious critical factor will redirect our strategy to take advantage of relationships we already have as well as building the relationships we don't yet have before we really need them.

For the next couple of weeks, I'll be focusing on the relationships that truly matter.

I wish you all a fantastic holiday season and I'll see you back in 2007.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Master of the Impossible

strategy and the circus

2006-12-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

First of all, apologies for slipping on the blog last week. I had some critical meetings which took my entire focus. The meetings went really well but it also highlighted that there is much work to do before takeoff. It was a good reminder to slow down a bit and focus on the basics 'figure out who you customer is, what is his problem and how you are going to solve it better tha anyone else'. Oh ... And you need to figure out how you're going to make money'. Oh and you need to figure out how your competition will react and how you're going to create a defensible position. The results need to be based on some sound research although some gut feel is required as well, especially when you're creating something revolutionary. Like I said earlier, lots to do. Fortunately I now have lots of capable people that can help me. Time to delegate.

A meeting with a very experienced and capable individual a couple of weeks ago reminded me of some basic, but often forgotten critical methods for pulling together real, defensible and sustainable strategies. I would like to share some of these, together with some associated examples. There are lots of concepts that pass for strategy that really are not and his recommendations were an excellent reminder to review my own strategy to ensure it actually is a strategy and that the position I'm creating is indeed defensible.

The basic premise of building a differentiated and defensible strategy is to choose a different set of goals and associated activities. Cirque du Soleil is good example I pulled from one the papers I just read. They chose to dispense with costly items such as animals and other things that did not fit in with their value proposition such as food concessions. Instead, they added high quality dance, music, venues and seating. Each of their shows has a theme and is quite different from others which allows you to see several totally different Cirque du Soleil shows if you wish. In constrast, the traditionals circus is pretty well the same every year .... you probably aren't compelled to go more that once a year (if ever:). Cirque du Soleil also targets a different customer. They are shooting primarily for adults even though some kids certainly go. It would be very unlikely that I would go to a traditional circus without my kids but I would and have gone to Cirque du Soleil without them. My wife and I recently paid $125/ticket for front row seats at the recent Delirium show, and I can tell you that I had no regrets ... a fantastic show! No way anyone would pay that for a traditional three ring circus.

Cirque du Soleil has built an extremely defensible position. Ideally, the competition doesn't even care untill it is too late. If the three ring circus tried to copy Cirque du Soleil, the result would likely be laughable. A critical part of a defensible strategy is tying together a number of key components, doing those really well and linking these to each other in a powerful way. This makes you very difficulut to imitate. Going back to Cirque du Soleil, they provide totally different experience by using out of this world high quality music tied to visual ambience, wild costumes, extreme acrobatics, fantastic dance and held in a decent venue. Very difficult to copy the formula and get it right. Even if you got close, their brand is strong enough that if you are looking for that kind of show, you go to Cirque du Soleil rather than an imitator. They have created a very defensible position.

So lets say we manage to create a defensible position by doing a number of activities differently and pulling these together tightly so that they build on each other making the whole thing difficult to imitate. How do we now sustain this strategic position? Assuming we are successful do create something different, compelling and defensible, presumably many will try to attack us. This is one of the most difficult things to figure out quite honestly. Some of the things that come to mind are obvious ... patent as much as you can, keep moving forward like crazy making each critical item better and better (remember "continuous improvement"?) and maybe add some new features and twist to the mix and perhaps create some strong relationships with key partners. Although you likely do continue to improve and add new capabilities, it probably isn't enough.

For a strategy to be defensible, it needs to be based on trade-offs. We need to chose what not to do and so do our competitors. If there are no trade-offs, there is not need for strategy ... just do everything. I've done this throughout my career and understand very well the trade-offs that need to be made in new products ... there are lots of things that just can't make it in and it is frustrating. However, the interesting stuff starts when you look at your competition and try to understand their business and motivations for doing certain things. If you understand the trade-offs they are going to make, then you can build a strong business because you'll have a good idea how they will react. Ideally what makes you special is exactly what your competitors will chose not to do.

Watcha talking about Willy?

Let me give you an example that will hit home if you are from a great little start-up in Ottawa called Catena. Catena created a plug in card for the SLC Series 5, an old product deployed by Lucent over the years with an installed base of nearly 20 Million lines. This product, named CNX-5, has been and continues to sell extremely well even though we were just a little start-up. How did we beat Alcatel, Lucent and all the other big players? The truth is that we didn't beat them ... we were just an annoying pimple and their big behind. Alcatel has better things to do than to build a custom solution for a small handful of customers ... their revenues from DSLAMs all over the world dwarfed our revenues and they must defend that fiercely against the other big guys. I'm pretty sure they weren't worried about us ... annoyed maybe. They would have had to drop their price dramatically to match our overall deployment costs in order to crush us and that would have cost them more than it was worth. For a small company, the revenues were amazing and we had a defensible position. We created some advanced technology that was very hard to duplicate, even by the top companies, and applied it to a significant market for our size. The technology and tenacity required was a barrier for other small companies and the market we attacked was large for us but not for our large competitors. A really good lesson to have lived through !!!

Ok ... enough with this dry stuff. Let's have a bit of fun. Check out this ad that was created through personiva (see link below). You can create your own through their website www.personiva.com . You upload your picture and it identifies your face then replaces the face of an actor in a comercial or anything else like such as a video game with your face. This company is shooting for a very different adverising model by being really neat, wacky and viral (i.e. the fact that I'm sending you this link is proof). The tech isn't so good that it fools you into thinking it was actually me in the commercial but that is what makes it extra funny in my opinion. Be sure to check out some of the different endings ... the disco one is really funny.

http://www.us.levi.com/lsco/levi/features/yourad/l_yourad.jsp?DetId=18499-7F6V6P0W6D2B7Y8

Cheers,

Allan

The kitchen table, a borrowed projector and a bed sheet

2006-11-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

I invited the team over to my place Monday night for our first boardroom meeting. Since we don't have a boardroom (or an office for that matter) I pulled together the dining room table and the kitchen table ... enough for a dozen or so guys. I borrowed a projector, put up a white bed sheet on the wall and the kitchen was transformed into a boardroom ... endearing in its crudeness. We'll laugh at this one day ... actually kinda laughing about it already. With the beer fridge filled (we're in Canada eh!), we were set to go.

I would have liked to do it in the garage because it would have given it that romantic "started in a garage" aspect to it but nobody starts companies in their garage up here ... too damn cold ... unless you're starting an igloo business which is getting renewed interest from VC these days. With the price of gas, sled dogs are coming out of retirement and you have to keep the dogs somewhere now don't you! Makes complete sense.

The guys all arrived and the energy in the place was palpable. There is a beautiful sound when a pile of really passionate people are having simultaneous discussions. We settled down to a presentation I put together with my wife's assistance. It's great to have a professional graphic designer in the house. She tends to push me aside and takes over, fixing things up and making it look 10 times better. I shared my vision, answered questions and delved into brainstorming on some key aspects such as demos. The evening flew by and by the time I checked, it was very late. As people were heading out to their cars, several small pockets continued the conversations outside even though it was windy and freakin cold ... nobody really wanted to stop (maybe moving to California is not such a bad idea). They're in!

There was a posting I wrote earlier this fall from San Fransisco as I was sipping on a cold brewski and watching some nut in a rowboat in San Fransisco bay. They should probably put breathalyzers on Pocket PCs. At the time, I was talking to a bunch of people about the concept hoping they would join but I was still essentially alone. That is definitely no longer the case and it feels great to be in the company of fantastic people that share the vision and feed me the red pills and blue pills as necessary.

I was talking with a local t.v. producer that is considering doing a piece on me and the start-up experience as it unfolds. There is a raw realness associated with telling the story as it unfolds, without the colored filter of time, success or failure. I was recounting how I got to this point (which is still pretty well nowhere and yet still going somewhere) and realized how crazy you have to be to do what I'm doing. I quit a great well paying job in the CTO office of a large company working with people I actually really liked and I prostitute my brain through consulting gigs to feed the three little birds in the nest. I didn't even know what the hell I was actually going to build for the first six months or so but knowing that I was going to figure something out like I always had in the past. And it was going to be really good! What a nut! Skypoint Capital had some faith and provided me a fantastic role as an Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) which has really helped me get to this point. You can't do it alone ... and so alone I am no more.

With the support of many people, a kitchen table, a borrowed projector and a bed sheet, the magic is beginning and we're captured it all on tape. Hmmm a reality show on start-ups ... nah ... would never work.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Nut with an Iron Ring

taking "the purple pill"

2006-11-28T00:07:00.000-05:00

I've been flipping back through the book "The Art of The Start" by Guy Kawasaki. It is a really fantastic book for anyone trying to start a new company. If you are in this position, it is required reading.

I went back to the section entitled "Take The Red Pill" in which he refers to a scene in the movie "The Matrix". Morpheus presents Neo with the difficult choice between taking the Red Pill or the Blue Pill. The Red Pill takes him back to the harsh reality while The Blue Pill takes him back to the fantasy world. Guy recommends taking The Red Pill and getting a Morpheus on the team.

I'm happy to say I have some people that fit the bill in my team. They are experienced people that know what it takes and they force me to take The Red Pill while others are convinced it's a slam dunk. They believe but question most things forcing me to get back to reality. As for me, I regularly take The Purple Pill. I need to have enough reality to stay on my toes but enough fantasy to remain encouraged.

The company I'm launching will be fighting for your attention, Mr. and Mrs. consumer. You probably surf the web, listen to radio and CDs. You might have an MP3 player and possibly listen to streaming music. You might even have satellite radio and if you don't could get one if you wanted to. You have lots of choices but each has its own pros and cons and none provide the complete experience I'm looking for which compels me to create it. I think the team I'm pulling together can create something totally different and better ... but is it enough?

The real enemy is "good enough". This is where The Red Pill comes in handy. It is not too hard to make things better. However, incremental improvements are not the realm of startups. We need to make things 10 times better or cheaper or create an entirely different experience or paradigm. We have chosen the "entirely different" approach. Nevertheless, we'll be fighting for your attention and so in the end, you'll need to be compelled to come over to our side.

So what are you really looking for you fickle customer? I'm going to eventually find out but I could use some help. Share with us and you'll probably be rewarded by a new experience that will finally satisfy you. Tell us what you like, dislike, love, hate and what really drives you crazy about:
-AM/FM radio
-MP3 players
-Satellite radio

I'll seed this a little without leading the witness too much:
-I feel like listening to a specific song right now and I don't own it ... tough luck
-I get in my car in the middle of a great song ... tough luck
-The local stations cover only hockey but I'm also interested in basketball ... tough luck
-I heading towards the main highway but I just missed the traffic report ... tough luck

I could go on and on. There are lots of problems and things that drive me crazy. How about you?

I promise I'll take The Red Pill ... but for now, The Blue Pill tells me there are lots of problems that need to be solved and that I can do it. Perhaps I need The Purple Pill.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring

Feel free to email me directly at 5628isfan@rogers.com

Radio is going where tv is

2006-11-23T18:39:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here before singing and piano lessons composing this blog while listening to Radio Total from Romania (where I was born) http://www.radiototal.ro . I'm streaming through the internet and it works quite nicely. This whole Internet thing may be here to stay ... not the fad I thought it would be:). It definitely brings me back and it's a good feeling ... until they play Back Street Boys!! AAGHH ... wish I could skip forward ... but of course I can't because it is a radio station. The motto is "Muzica buna se imparte cu prietenii" which translates roughly to "Good music must be shared with friends".

I guess you can't account for taste. Somehow the Romanian DJ, sitting in some building in Bucharest doesn't seem to know what I like. Shocking!!! Just for fun, do some searches for internet stations being broadcast from different provinces, states or countries and listen in a bit just for fun. This is especially cool if the station is based in a place you have some ties to. There are so many of them, it is incredible and overwhelming. Getting to any decent ones that actually work properly and that are good takes forever and it is frustrating but it is pretty neat to listen on all these different societies and get a totally different experience ... I'm going to try to listen in on some Jamaican stations to see how that goes ... should be interesting.

So where am I going with this?

As you start to exploring what the world has to offer on line, you realize how much great stuff is out there. My daughter walked in to my office the other day and listened in on one of the songs that was streaming through pandora. She said, with surprise "I've never heard that song before ... it is really good!". We've all gotten so used to radio pushing us the same stuff over and over, it is a surprise when we hear something new! I used to fill in surveys from Chez 106.9 The Bear (Ottawa Station) but now that I'm checking out different streaming services and radio stations from around the world, I'm literally pissed off at the local stations (except for Live 88.5FM ... a breath of fresh air). They are doing a crappy job of filtering stuff for me. I imagine satellite will do a better job but 150 channels is still a puny drop in the content bucket ... and it is still filtered.

TV went through this phase several years ago. It had a few generic free channels and then came cable with the subscription fees and hundreds of niche channels. That was a welcome improvement as is satellite radio for many people. However, we've already entered the TIVO/PVR world and Video On Demand (VOD) that allow us to have much better control of what we watch and when we watch it while even adding some mobility with portable video players. Radio is following a couple of steps behind. If you want to figure out where radio is going, look at where tv is. A major disruption is happening and earcandy will play its part.

BTW, incorporation has begun.

Before I go, I promised you something cool. Check out http://www.jajah.com/, potentially the next skype.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Engineer with an Iron Ring

The power of passion

2006-11-19T07:53:00.000-05:00

Trying to kick off a start-up is crazy. I knew this before jumping in but it took a while before I found something I really truly and categorically wanted to do ... the type of stuff you sneak out of bed late at night to work on or wake up in the morning thinking about. It is wild, stressful, exhausting ... the only way to make it work is to believe in it otherwise there's no way you can keep going. I've passed on many great ideas and opportunities that I was convinced were going to make it but it just wasn't turning my crank.

I saw this kind of passion and excitement Saturday night at the Senators hockey game against Buffalo (beat them 4 to 1!). I saw it in the players but especially from the crowd. I saw it in my oldest daughters who were jumping for joy after a great goal. The excitement was so raw and honest it even caught the attention of the camera man who ended up capturing the moment. They ended up on the live broadcast and in the news!! If you saw two sweet girls with ringlets, faces painted and sens jerseys bouncing up and down just behind the Sens bench ... those were mine. How much more exciting can it get!! Oh yeah we got a few pucks and my brother in law got a signed hockey stick from Ray Emery.

Fortunately, our escapade was as a result of a Molson Canadian contest my brother in law won at Local Heroes in Kanata. The prize included a return limo to the game which was pretty cool too!! VIP all the way baby!! For most of the other pore saps, it cost them a bundle ... hundreds of dollars in many cases. It is unbelievable how many pay stupids amounts of money to be there ... but when the main lights go down and are replaced by spotlights and the crowd is getting ready for the team to come out or in the last ten seconds of the anthem when the crowd goes crazy ... there is nowhere else you want to be. You forget everything else and get caught up in the excitement ... it is worth it!

So what does this have to do with start-ups and cool stuff? Listening to the coverage before and after the game, you realize that the passion of being at the game does not translate to most professional broadcasts. There are lots of smart people talking about the technical aspects of the game but most are missing the raw emotion present in the people at the game or even watching it on t.v. Earcandy.fm (no website yet ... hang in there) will aim at giving the people a voice so that the raw thoughts and emotions come through. When you experience what we will create, I think you might find it unpolished but extremely engaging and hopefully addictive.

BTW, my brother from another mother, Rolly "Rokpig" Renaud has just kicked of his own blog. Check it out and give him some words of encouragement ... he is very shy!

http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/rokpig/46410

I have a few cool things to share with you but I'll save them for the friday post so please check it out later in the week. Gotta go make some money.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Engineer with an Irong Ring (and two new NHL game pucks)

cool stuff part deux

2006-11-16T17:26:00.000-05:00

Before getting going, I would like to remind people that I've included a way for you to subscribe to this blog by entering your email into the appropriate box on the right. You'll receive an email with the blog post when the blog is updated.

Bienvenue aussi a mes amis de la France, la Belgique, Espana (bunos dias), si de la Romania (buna!) , India, Australia and people from all other countries checking out this blog.

During my last post, I provided some short descriptions of a few companies I discovered at the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Ventures conference a couple of weeks ago in San Jose, California. I couldn't go through all of them in one post so I'll include a few more here. If you discover some cool stuff you want to share, shoot me an email or post a comment.

Revver www.revver.com

Revver allows users to post their videos to the internet and get paid for it. You upload your video to their site, they clean it up and allow the video to be distributed anywhere on the net, such as YouTube. They attach ads to the end of the video on the fly, track when and where your video is viewed and share the revenue with the individual that posted . They are more of a user generated content distribution and monetization service than a destination like YouTube and they absolutely do not allow any illegal video to get distributed.

Having read about and heard the CEO speak several times, I can tell you that he is a pretty special individual. You'll be hearing alot more about Revver in the coming months and years.

Turn Here Productions www.turnhere.com

This company has a global network of amateurs or independent film makers, who generate short documentary like videos and ads shot by a team of one. They focus on capturing the essence of neighborhoods and associated small businesses as well as travel destinations and often use real people in the ads. One of the ads I saw was for a very high end hotel in Asia in which they used the hotel concierge as a tour guide of the city ... very compelling. The ads are of very good quality, not the shaky grainy stuff you would expect, and their "realness" really comes through which I think makes them very effective. You kinda have to see it to get it.

The thing that is very interesting about this is that they end being able to make really effective ads for small and large clients at a very small fraction of the cost of traditional ads that require dozens of people to write, produce, shoot, edit and market. Not only does this allow very small businesses like bakeries and restaurants to get very good ads for a few hundred dollars but it changes the economic equation in a HUGE way. This is one of concepts we'll be using at earcandy.

Micro Optical
http://www.microopticalcorp.com/

http://www.myvu.com/

They have developed some technology and products (myvu glasses) that project a large screen into what appear to normally be narrow glasses. These are not the only guys doing something like this and they are definitely not the first. However, the key difference is that the devices use some optical magic which projects from the side onto what looks like clear glass. This allows you see around you and in front of you while also getting a great image from devices such as video iPODS. The image is pretty good and you don't feel like you're in a cocoon which is the problem with other solutions that I've seen. They naturally have some military applications as well.

Everybody wonders how effective small screens on iPODS and cellphones are really going to be. With a solution like this, you can be on a plane or a bus, watching a big screen tv for less that a few hundred dollars. It could be a game changer.

Microsoft Zune http://www.zune.net/en-US/meetzune/device.htm

Microsoft .... you may have heard of this company. You know ... the one you swear at several times a day. The have just launched an "iPOD killer" called the Zune. I've checked it out and quite frankly it leaves me entirely cold. The only semi-cool feature is that it has WiFi. You would think ... great, it will automatically sync up with my music collection from any WiFi hotspot.... no more docking to your PC. Of course you would be wrong ... it is only used to beam up to three songs to another Zune owner which are going to be as hard to find as Stanley Cups in Ottawa. Furthermore, microsoft has also launched a proprietary service like iTunes, that will sync with the zune.

I predict this product to be a massive failure. There is nothing compelling about it relative to the iPOD and other players like sandisk and creative. Apple had a huge advantage because they are... well .. Apple. You knew without even touching the iPOD that it was going to be really cool, beautiful, easy to use and reliable. I was absolutely delighted when I opened the beautiful box and ever more delighted when I started playing with the click wheel. I got a must have, luxury item that everyone wanted for a few hundred bucks (well .... actually ... the honey bunny bought if for me as a present so it was technically free :).

I guess earcandy and apple will have to split the market after all .... gotta go raise some $$$$!!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring

pretty cool stuff

2006-11-13T11:09:00.000-05:00

During my last post, I promised I would identify some companies with cool technology I discovered at the Dow Jownes Technology Ventures conference I attended in San Jose last week. I suspect many of you may be interested in checking out some of these services. I share these without my VC hat on, just pure consumer perspective. Some of these companies may be trying to raise money but not all of them are.

Before, I get to that, I would like to signal a change to this blog. I have used this blog to share some thoughts on start-ups and to give people a sense for how I plan on building my new company and make it successful. Not everyone is interested in start-up topics and I have found many great resources/blogs written by others that do a great job of that (I've included link at the right of the page). As I find new ones, I'll share them with you but won't elaborate too much. A new blog I started reading is:

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/

Note that I've also added a feature to my blog that allows you to type in your email and you will receive new and exciting posts from me in your inbox saving you the trouble of going to the web page or setting up an RSS reader. Look just below my profile. You barely have to lift a finger. Am I nice or what!!

I'm going to be migrating the topic to more cool topics in the space of music and video services, cool multi-media gadgets and evolution of multi-media. We all listen to radio, music, news, watch tv and go to movies and view movies at home. This space is experiencing dramatic changes. On the surface, things may still appear the same with people mostly watching broadcast t.v., listening to broadcast radio or reading newspapers. However, people are increasingly moving away from broadcast and spending time and effort to pick and choose what they want, when and where they want it. Add to that people's interest in more reality based content and people's desire to be heard and you get a major shift in how people will be entertained. The one thing that became clear from the conference is that there is a MAJOR shift in advertising dollars from broadcast to online services going on right about now. So ... hang on ... cause things are about to get interesting!

Cool stuff and companies:

www.earcandy.fm
-this is the URL for my new company. There is no website yet (just bought the URL last night). I'll let you know when the site is up and running
-will definitely be looking for $$

www.personiva.com

-have developed technology that puts you in real commercials
-the demo consisted of the presenter taking a picture of someone in the crowd and uploading it to their server. He then played a pepsi commercial (the one with the guy from SNL dancing on the car) and his face was automatically replaced with the picture of the guy in the crowd, complete with moving eyebrows and lips!
-the idea is that commercials become much more interesting when you're in them. It was really funny and they figure you'll forward the commercial to all your friends
-profitable and looking for investment in first half 2007

www.motionbox.com

-allows you to upload your personal videos, easily edit them and tag different sections so you can find the sections of interest later and search your library of videos
-also allows you to pick certain selections of the video and share those with others. For example, I filmed the hockey game and I share with you the times when your kid was on the ice
-these guys have done a very good job of making the interface ultra simple to use

www.mystrands.com

-have developed algorithms that allow certain types of services, such as music, to figure out what you might like next
-this doesn't seem very exciting on the surface but the applications that come out of this can be very powerful. There is just so much information out there that figuring out what you might be interested based on your history and preferences, together with others like you could be huge. Basically like search (google) but more proactive.
-one product that has popped out of this base is called partystrands. This is a system aimed at bars and clubs that allow people to text the music they want to hear ... essentially a social jukebox. Their requests and other messages and pictures go up on the various big screen tvs throughout the club together with advertising.
-launching in US and Spain (CEO is from Barcelona)
-unsure if they are raising money

www.fliptrack.com

-not launched yet (can put in your email and they'll contact you when the service is available)
-allows you to pick a song and synchronize pictures and videos to it
-they have over one hundred songs you can use, including lyrics.
-the founder showed pictures of his kids acting out the ABCs to the song ... very cute
-adding the music to a slide show makes it much more compelling, especially if you can synchronize it
-looks very easy to use
-currently trying to raise $1M

www.ejamming.com

-service that allows people to play music together, over the internet
-target is amateur and professional musicians, music education ...
-key trick is a timestamp based system to synchronize everyone since delays through the internet can be variable and mess things up
-you can use MIDI based instruments (like keyboards) or convert analog to MIDI using a small box so that you can plug in microphones, guitars ...
-with the scheduling challenges I see with "Funding Bad Habits", the dudes that play in my basement, together with the challenges I have scheduling keyboard and singing lessons, I could certainly see myself using this
-I spoke with the founders and execs of the company and you could not find a more passionate group!
-they are currently trying to raise an A round in the next few months.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. There are a few more cool companies I'd like to share but you've probably had more than enough by now.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring

are angels really angels?

2006-11-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

My 10 year old daughter still believes in the tooth fairy. I give her about $5/tooth and a note written with my left hand so that she doesn't recognize my hand writing. She has whispered to me a few times that she knows the tooth fairy is not real and I don't try to convince her otherwise. We both know it's a game and since it benefits both sides, we continue to play it. She gets money and I get to have fun writing the note and giving her an incentive to keep her teeth clean since the cleaner they are, the more money she gets. You have to know how to play the game such that both sides get something out of it ... a basic win-win.

The same goes for the start-up & VC game. I saw lots of games played over the last few days. I just returned from a few days in Silicon Valley where I attended the "DowJones VentureWire Consumer Technology Ventures" conference. This is a great conference and a fantastic learning opportunity I strongly recommend for anyone considering a start-up, although the turnout this year was weak due to a Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco happening at the same time. The conference is small, but very well run. Each day starts with a keynote followed by panels and interviews with key people. The rest of the day is broken up into eight separate rooms and companies have 50 minutes to do their pitch. There were quite a few VCs attending, sharing their thoughts and advice. I'm definitely going to shoot for presenting here in the next year or two. If you're interested in knowing more, I would be happy to share more details.

The overall pitches and presentations were weaker than I would have expected for the valley, although there certainly were some that were excellent. There are some well documented things you need to cover and many missed major components which was shocking to me. There was too much focus on the idea itself and little on the management team and how the company was actually going to make money. Many of these companies need very experienced leaders, consultants or advisors with deep VC knowledge to help them raise money. A good idea simply isn't enough.

As a consumer, I saw lots of things I would probably use but with my VC hat on, I left many of the presentations being unconvinced they were real VC opportunities. Many were too small to be real standalone companies that VCs would invest in and would be better off sticking with angels, bootstrap like crazy and get profitable in a hurry to survive before flipping their companies to a bigger player. Some of these thoughts were echoed my many VCs. Having said that, there certainly were some that have significant merit and will hopefully get funded. I'll provide a summary of the highlights for my next post on Monday. Be sure to check it out because I'm convinced you'll find some services you'll want to use.

If you'll need VC money, start early

Many companies were of the right size and scope for a VC but started off with angel money, typically a few hundred thousands but sometimes more. They stretched the money extremely well and I was amazed by what they managed to develop with so little money. However, they now need VC money to take it to the next level and the lack of early engagement and experience with VCs showed. Because they haven't been talking to VCs up to now, it is a little late to start learning when you need money in a few months. Things just don't move that quickly. The way I figure it, if you're going to need VC money eventually, get involved with VCs as soon as possible and ideally even at the seed stage.

I know it sounds like I'm biased because I'm an EIR with a VC firm. This is really not the case. I've been considering looking at angel investing as well but as some of you know, I don't do things on a small scale. I think big and I know I'll need significant investment that will have to come from VCs. It is super critical to never ever lose sight of that, even if you do get a bit of money from angels to get things going. Getting money from VCs is RADICALLY different from working with angels in nearly every respect, including timeline, so the sooner you start talking with VCs the better.

Most VCs I know work much slower than you would think. If things go well, you'd be lucky to close anything within 6 months of first contact. The reality is that you'll start pitching to VCs and it will take many months before you'll get even a small nibble from a couple of them. Start-up teams often believe so much in their concept that they think it will sell itself and VC will immediately sign on but it is so much more complicated than that. I'll share a few tidbits to think about although it is definitely not a complete list.

Thing to think about when going down the VC route:

-do you have a fundable team, and especially a credible CEO
-the idea is great but probably wrong ... need a team that will adjust as necessary and have strategy to penetrate the market
-I have heard the following comment many times "good idea but they don't have a CEO"
-what is the exit strategy? M&A, IPO?
-it's fine to make piles of money but if the VC can't pull it out, it doesn't help much
-I would contend that you need to think big and be able conceive of an IPO in 5 years or so. If that is clearly never an option, that's a really bad thing
-is there is a history of IPO and M&A in the space you are entering and if so what were the valuations?
-VCs often start with the end in mind. Basically ... the VC needs to have a sense for the value of the company in 3-5yrs (i.e. what you could sell it for or raise in an IPO) and work backwards from there. Examples of similar companies that were acquired or did an IPO are very useful. YouTube is probably not a good example!
-timing timing timing
-you need to hit the market with your product just before the hockey stick inflection. The timing of the investment will depend on many factors. If it is S/W, you can fund closer to the inflection, perhaps 1-2 years. If it is hardware & software, you need to invest at least 2-3yrs. If it is silicon ... god help you. You need to invest at least 3yrs ahead in my opinion and need huge $$$
-VC partners often decide by consensus
-it is extremely important to find a champion and you therefore should do some research to find the right partner to pitch to initially but keep in mind that the others will need to be convinced as well.
-are there other companies in their portfolio that are in a similar space? That can work for you and against you.
-people like to place bets in a variety of different markets and types of opportunities
-does the VC have experience in the space you are pitching?
-if the answer is no, they will have a hard time with the due diligence required to make a big decision. Furthermore, they won't help open the doors you need. You may also get steered from one play to another. For example, they'll steer you from a consumer play to an enterprise play simply because it is closer to their experience, even if the market is not nearly as good.
-who are the other VCs investing?
-chances are, you'll need multiple VCs and working with VCs that have a history of working together is important (not absolute requirement though)

There is much more I could say here but I hope you get the point. Getting money from VCs is possible and new companies are successful in getting funded all the time but it is extremely complicated and takes a huge amount of time. You really need to know what you are doing and getting people with direct experience and contacts to help is absolutely crucial. I'm not such a person yet but am learning the game with the help of many people and personal perseverance. It has already highlighted major holes in my own initiatives that I know I need to sort out before I have a chance in hell to get funded.

If you have opinions to share on this topic, I'd be extremely interested to hear your thoughts. If you are willing to post these in the comments so that other readers can see them, even better.

Next Monday's post will include a summary and links for many of the cool technologies and services I discovered over the last few days. Don't miss it!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring

California Dreamin!

2006-11-06T23:59:00.000-05:00


Sorry for the late posting ... was travelling to California

I'm sitting here near the heart of the VC action. I'm grabbing a bite at "Neptune's Palace" in San Fransisco's Fisherman's Wharf (average meal btw). I'm watching a lone guy in a rowboat paddling against the wind near Alcatraz in San Franscisco Bay. Its a huge bay and yet he is moving along very nicely ...much better than when I tried crossing the Ottawa river in a canoe ... my wife nearly killed me!

I feel like that guy sometimes. Still mostly alone in my quest moving into windy challenging waters. Many cheering me on from the sidelines but not yet willing to jump in and start rowing. I'm looking forward to some serious company on my voyage.

I've managed to assemble quite a crew of merry men waiting at the wharf to decide if they are ready for the voyage. They are a fantastic bunch and we're going to kick ass. I guess it's up to me to let them know where we're going. That time is coming very soon ... must stop getting distracted by shiny objects.

At this very moment, I have to find a Starbucks cappuccino to keep me company as I travel down highway 1 along the coast on my way to San Jose. Should be a great sunset. Just picture it ... convertible Mustang, tunes blaring yo, shades cause the future so bright and all that, sun going down ... you get the picture.

Fast forward a few hours.

The drive down hwy 1 didn't start so well. The fog was so thick I couldn't see the water or the sun. I nearly turned around but decided to persevere. Good thing I had Alice with me (97.3 FM ... http://www.radioalice.com/ Great radio station). I pulled over into a parking lot on the side of the road and decided to walk towards the water. As I got closer, I realized there were people on the beach with at least 30 people actually surfing in the fog! It was amazing and surreal! There's no way my camera phone would do it justice so I pressed on. By the time I reached Half Moon Bay, the fog had mostly lifted and I managed to catch the sunset, while kids played in the sand a flew kites. Quite a sight.

I can't help but to draw parallels between this experience and a start-up in the very early stages of formation, way before any funding or even a real business plan. You are mostly alone driving through the fog. You get distracted by one thing or another ... always wondering if you missed an ideal or opportunity.

Sometimes you doubt yourself and consider turning around ... but you persevere because you have a strong sense that you'll get through and what is waiting on the other side will be fantastic.

Just when you thought I got distracted and started writing about travel instead of start-ups, I bring it right back to the main topic.

Ahh .... California Dreamin!

Be a DJ

2006-11-02T21:33:00.000-05:00

I just got back from singing lessons ......... ok now stop laughing .... I'm serious. My daughter had been dying to take lessons and I finally signed her up. My guitar playing, although still pretty rough, is at the point where I would like to start singing along. Only problem, the voice is as rough as the guitar playing so I figured I would take lessons along side my oldest daughter (while the other is taking piano). My teacher, Fran, the co-owner of Domenic's Music (on Hazeldean Road in Kanata) really knows what she's doing. She makes us do some strange exercises with different vowels, head position, breathing .... I was nearly yodeling today! Little by little, the sound in my head is starting to get closer and closer to the sound coming out of my mouth! I can literally hear the difference in my daughter and myself from the beginning of the lesson to the end and from week to week. It it going to take time and patience but we'll get there.

Sometimes you really need someone who has deep experience and really knows what they are doing. You probably don't want to go to a self taught gynecologist or proctologist. Having said that, I feel that we are in the thick of three key trends that when combined, can cause some interesting things to happen that pull away from traditional experts. These trends are 1) "Do It Yourself" 2) "reality" and 3) "express yourself".

Blogs are a perfect example that combine all three. YouTube is another. These two examples lack in polish and sometimes quality relative to real authors, reporters or producers but they make up for it in "realness", honesty and volume. People can say absolutely anything they want through these media which makes it real for both the creator and observer. There are so many people creating entertainment (arguably just like me right now) that there are bound to be some good things that pop out (and tons of crap). User generated content is extremely cheap to create and distribute and free for the end users.

I've been dreaming of publishing some children's stories for some time. I sometimes make up some pretty funny ones for my girls completely on the fly. It makes them giggle which is like ear candy to a parent. There are now services available that allow you to print your own very short run books .... who needs a publisher? I can create my own podcasts of the stories and put them on iTunes. As a lone dude up in my office in Stittsville, I can reach hundreds or thousands of people for almost no investment other than time. This is very cool!

I've been digging really deep into the audio space (radio, streaming music, mp3 players ...) and have realized that there is still very little user generated audio content. Radio is run by professionals and streaming music and mp3 players mostly provide music (ok ... many podcasts exist but many are professional too). I just know my brother in law would love to be a radio personality or play by play sports announcer. He has a radio face and is entertaining ... plus with a bit of computer magic we can probably make him sound good ... why can't he be on the radio?

He will but not the radio you're thinking ... no way that's happening. However, the service we're pulling together will give him and thousands of others like him that voice. After the game, or even during, people will have the choice regarding who they listen to. It won't be a handful of radio stations and tv stations ... it will be hundreds or thousands of people each with their own little show. The good ones will get heard and the crappy ones won't ... just as it should be. You want to do a morning show with your two other funny buddies? ... be my guest! You want to do play by play of your son's hockey game ... why not! And when the show is done, your radio automatically cuts to music you like ...

You get the point. Be a DJ.

PS. I'm going to be attending the Dow Jones Technology Ventures conference in San Jose next week (arriving Nov 6th and leaving on the redeye Nov 8th). If you're in the valley and want to chat, drop me an email and we can exchange contact info.

PPS. If you didn't get the evite for the big Halloween Bash at my place Friday Nov 3 in Ottawa and are interested in dropping by, shoot me a note and I'll get you the details.

make meaning

2006-10-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

A colleague recently recommended I take a look at the book entitled "The Art of the Start" written by Guy Kawasaki. I got my hands on the book through Amazon (man they make it easy!) and proceeded to devour it. It is a fantastic book with lots of great advice ... a must read for any entrepreneur looking to start a new company. The recommendation that sticks with me the most though is to "Make Meaning". Although obvious, it is very easy to forget we have a responsibility to make the world a better place.

This reminded me of a very clear moment that occurred last year during a U2 concert following the very moving song ""Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", written by Bono as a tribute to his father who died of cancer in 2001. I was just recently rudely reminded of a pledge I made to myself during that moment. A colleague of many years lost his young daughter to cancer last week. This is such a sad sad tragedy ... I don't have the words to describe how awful I felt hearing she had lost her battle. I can't even begin to imagine how her family could possibly cope with this senseless loss. It literally brings grown men to tears.

I lost my own mother to cancer many years ago and with an awesome wife and three daughters myself, I'm scared to death one of them will get sick. Children are so sweet, innocent and helpless against the world, making the world a better place for them must become a life's mission.

So what does this have to do with start-ups? Quite a bit if we choose to. During that moment at the U2 concert, when the thousands of people around me seemed to disappear and everything went quiet in my head, I pledged to earmark at least 1% of profits of my new venture to fight the suffering of children . With your support, we will do amazing things.

The company I will build will make allot of money. I will not rest until it does because no matter what the product or service is, it has a much grander and more important mission. This will be one of the pillars of the company that goes beyond "don't do evil". So rather than wait until success finds this new venture to make such a pledge because all the money somehow feels hollow, this is now a public goal made on-line where it will live forever.

As a reader of this blog, you will have the opportunity to be part of this mission as a potential partner, future employee or customer. It's all coming together.

Cheers,

Allan

people and the idea pendulum

2006-10-27T00:28:00.000-04:00

Startup concepts often feel like a pendulum. You start with one idea, you bounce it off people you can trust, they add their thoughts and it picks up momentum and speed. Next thing you know, you've diverged significantly and hit a standstill as you realize you are way off track. Before you know it, you are somewhat back to the original concept but the "bob" is now a bit shinier.

I was a little stuck until I had a chance to meet with my crew of merry men today for lunch. We had such a fantastic discussion that I believe we may have come up with some potentially revolutionary concepts ... one idea building on another and another until some really neat thing popped out. Very exciting stuff, especially since it is tied to delivery of ads (gotta leave it there ... sorry). It is great to be in the presence of smart capable people! The ingredients for the magic potion are now appearing.

Having said that, the team is missing one or two key people that are crucial. We are playing in an emerging market but it has strong roots in radio and its usually duller second cousin on the net. I am looking for assistance from some senior people out of the radio industry to provide some critical input, feedback and contribution. If you are one or know of one that wants to be involved in something revolutionary and disruptive, please contact me. Perhaps some adult supervision wouldn't hurt either (ok, I'm nearly 40 ... but I feel so young!).

You have often heard that VCs invest in teams, not ideas. In my slightly younger, more naive days I thought this was complete bull. What good is a fantastic team if there is no fantastic idea to go with it? I experienced this at my previous company (great team) when we changed our business model and struck gold. Now I'm literally living through it again. The things we came up with today, coupled with one or two key people (whom I need to find) will catapult us to new heights.

Cheers,

Allan "Bob" Isfan
PS. Those that have known me for a while know that my nickname is Bob (eastern european for Bogdan ... my middle name) so this is a bit of a funny irony relative to the whole pendulum thing.

Also note that I have added links to some blogs I think are worth checking out. I'd strongly recommend Guy Kawasaki's latest blog since it covers defensibility really well (a topic I covered in my post entitled "crush crush crush") http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

take a flying leap

2006-10-23T22:58:00.000-04:00

Before I get going, I would like to encourage people to begin posting comments or sending me their thoughts via email. I've noted several repeat readers from many unexpected locations (California, UK, Southern France, Australia, British Columbia ...) and I sure would like to know who you are. I've also spoken to many of you faithful readers personally and you have much to share so don't be afraid ... start posting comments. Lastly, it would be great if you could forward the link to your friends and colleagues or include a link to the blog when you post elsewhere if it makes sense. We'll be looking for people's opinions regarding our product and ideally many would be willing to be beta users once we have a basic service up and running. The more people get involved early, the more feedback we'll get. If you friends like the service, they'll thank you.

Ok ... to the main post

I've noticed a strange phenomenon lately which I think is awesome. More and more people I know are quiting their jobs, not necessarily in disgust but because what they were doing wasn't doing the trick anymore. Most of these people left their jobs without having another job to go to but with the intention of getting involved in a start-up or a new career. In many cases, they realized that the comfort of their jobs, and the addiction to the big $$, was preventing from doing new things. I love seeing people having the guts and the confidence to simply quit! I thought I was the only crazy one.

This was certainly not happening a few years ago when jobs were hard to come by. I'm really hoping that this is an indication of a resurgence in start-up activity in Ottawa. There seem to be few truly new start-ups in the area and this should worry everyone. I've have been advised several times over the last few weeks that I should move to NY, Boston and especially Silicon Valley in order to be successful at my new venture. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do but I'm not even considering it at this point. Having said that, I'm heading that way during the second week in November to attend the Dow Jones Consumer Ventures conference (kinda pricey but hopefully worth it) Nov 7&8. If any readers are in the area, please let me know.

Ottawa is a fantastic place to live but there is no doubt doing a start-up here is much harder, especially if you are interested in developing consumer products or services (unless it has to do with ice or hockey). You'd better be developing some telecom equipment or enterprise product or you stick out like a sore thumb. I've decided this is the time to break out of telecom, H/W, ICs and all the stuff. I'm not so old yet that I can't change direction. I may have to come back to that comfort zone with my tail between my legs one of these day but it's going to take allot to do that.

Investors need to get out of their comfort zone too ... take a chance. Sometimes the only way to learn about something is to do it. So, together with a few kindred spirits willing to bust their humps and blaze some new trails, we move forward. Wish us luck (which reminds me ... gotta set up a paypal donation box for you to toss your pennies into).

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring

Is this legal?

2006-10-20T00:03:00.000-04:00

Remember when you used to record radio? That was a long time ago ... at least for me ... but this fad is coming back. In the search for free music, it is amazing what amazing tools people will come up with.

A number of MP3 players with FM tuners allow you to record the radio to your local memory. This is interesting but not necessarily that exciting at first thought. However, some of the legal tools that have popped make this a potentially very useful way to get all your music for free.

I recently downloaded a trial version of a product called Replay Music from a company called Applian http://www.applian.com. The product can record the music you are streaming on the net, determine the song and artist, clip the beginning and end so that you get a neat and tidy mp3 of all the songs, complete with artist and song info! It even asks you if you want the songs added to your iTunes library!!! I tried it and was amazed by how good a job it did. With the quality from many streaming services being pretty decent, this is an amazing way to huge quantities of music for essentially nothing (except for the S/W) and all legally so far. They also have many other cool products, such as a Radio TIVO recorder.

It don't know if that's just me but this is huge once it hits the mainstream. It could certainly impact the operation of streaming services in major ways. Hints of changes are already coming. Creative recently removed a feature from their mp3 player that prevents you from recording from the built in FM tuner. This of course is pissing off lots of their customers that bought the player specifically due to that feature. Fortunately, you have to apply a "patch" for this improvement to take place. Naturally, the patch includes things some people may want so some may get suckered. There's lots of banter on the net regarding what caused Creative to pull this feature? Was it pressure from the RIAA (radio cops)? Quite likely. This is the same reason satellite radio players don't have a record function.

Before all hell breaks loose, I'm grabbing as much music as I can legally before someone shuts this down. Have fun.

Some start up stuff now. I continue to have discussions with many people, with some of the discussions being at very high levels (CEO, Chairman, VP, President, VC partner ...) and I keep being amazed about the positive feedback regarding the concept I'm shooting for. It is extremely encouraging. I will continue to have these discussions but I already know we just need to build it.

So here we are ... quit job in April ... consult on the side... dream up ideas for months ... hang by the pool with family and friends ... get serious in September ... nail down general concept in October ... get friends to help ... and start building. Seems simple doesn't it? That's the easy part, but you have to start somewhere. There is no better way to raise money than to actually build something and use that in your pitch instead of just powerpoint. Seems obvious I suppose but it wasn't obvious to me months ago.

If you are interested in start-ups, here is a great link several people forwarded me recently from a blog written by Paul Graham (I quoted some of his stuff in an earlier post). The article is entitled "The 18 Mistakes that kill startups" http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

Since many of you on this post come from companies developing broadband, I thought you might like the analysis I've copied below from "The New Yorker". The full link to the story is http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061016ta_talk_paumgarten

"In the church, he presented meticulously researched, technically correct, but completely ridiculous charts and graphs. He compared various data-transfer systems: ISDN, ADSL, Wi-Fly (that is, pigeons). Then he showed a slide of a snail hitched to a tiny chariot with DVDs for wheels. If each disk contains 4.7 gigabytes of data, and if the snail (chasing a scrap of lettuce) travels at 0.000023 metres per second, the snail-system performance rate is over thirty-seven megabits per second. That blows ADSL out of the water. (There are flaws, however. As Vardi noted, “In some regions, most notably France, culinary habits may pose a denial-of-service problem.”) Dubno rang a bell and shooed Vardi from the stage."

crush crush crush!

2006-10-16T22:47:00.000-04:00

Do you remember that "Kids in the Hall" skit in which Mr. Tyzik would crush people with his fingers? It still makes me laugh!

I've been dealing with people asking me "why won't Motorola, apple or any other Goliath crush you"? A very valid question which I have asked myself many more times than others have.

This brings up many important questions for a start-up, but two key ones keep me up at night ... not with worry but to figure out the answer. The questions are:
1) have all good ideas been thought of already? If someone has thought of your idea, are you screwed?
2) if your idea is more of a concept rather than a technology, how do you defend it?

Let's tackle the first one. You come up with what you think is an awesome idea. With the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, you type in your key words with shaky fingers into google .... and 100 links come up in 0.01 seconds!!! SON OF A BEEYATCH!. All good ideas have already been thought of, with some associated patents in and many websites describing your great idea. Radio TIVO? Done. MP3 player with WiFi. Done. With all the smart, motivated people out there, this is bound to happen.

Of course this is not true. However, it is wise to assume this is the case so that you can build a truly defensible product or service. If you assume you're the only one that thought of a particular way of doing something and that is your only foundation, the false sense of security makes you extremely vulnerable. New concepts fail or don't get implemented for many reasons (two of many are highlighted below).

Execution is key. The last $100M/yr product I was a major contributor on was not that novel. In fact, a major telecom equipment vendor had teamed up with a leader in DSL at that time and came up with what turned out to be a complete catastrophe. Our solution was so much better, it's not even funny. We were in a life and death situation where the whole company depended on the success of the product. We set very high goals, hired people with balls, executed with unbelievable focus. Failure was not an option and it showed. Our second product didn't fare so well.

Incumbents don't care. Big companies need big revenues and need universal appeal to hit their numbers. Even big companies have limited resources. Can you imagine if Apple came out with the next iPOD and it only sold 100k units per month. Heads would be rolling. BTW, they sold 14M iPODs in the last quarter. If we could sell 100k units/month, we'd be snorkeling in a pool of champagne (I wonder how much that would cost?)

Lots more to be said but best move on. Ok, so what if your idea is more of a concept, such as a service, rather than a magical technology, how do you defend it?

Everyone is looking for the secret sauce or that one ingredient that makes the sauce secret. I remember going to restaurants, trying to guess how they made the sauce so I could make it at home. I came close a few times but mostly didn't quite nail it. The trick is to mix ingredients such that they build on each other. Each one brings out the elements of the other. You see where I'm going with this. Amazon doesn't just have access to huge inventory and low storage costs. Their recommendations, often contributed by users, help people find other stuff. I often buy books two or three at a time to minimize shipping charges. Amazon often doesn't store items in their own warehouse. They just serve as a storefront and products get shipped directly from someone else's warehouse to you ... $0 cost to Amazon. Freaking genius. Nothing secret here.

Few people believed in search when Google was pitching. A site for crazy, user generated content called YouTube? Well ... we now have GooTube which controls an absolutely ridiculous number of eye balls and the equally ridiculous ad revenues.

Ye must have faith ... and balls.

The Thick Plottens

2006-10-12T22:53:00.000-04:00

I'd like to start this post with a quote from an interview with William Shatner written by James Martin in the Air Canada EnRoute magazine. This piece in part caused a bit of a eureka moment on the way to New York City a couple of weeks ago.

"
Bill likes music. He likes listening to music, especially jazz radio, though he blanks on specific musicians: "If you named some, I might know them." He like making music too, "even though I can't sing!".

Someone gave Bill a free iPOD. The thing holds 5,000 songs, "but I don't know three." Downloading wasn't an option: "At 99 cents a song, that's $5,000 and 5,000 minutes, right there!" So he walked around listening to an empty iPOD"

"It was like being insane," he recalls. "My mind was empty. I had no memories, no musical identity. I'm not supposed to say this, but what the hell: Someone said, 'Well, I've got 4,000 song on my iPod ...' So they download their iPod into my iPod, which is apparently illegal. I now have someone else's musical personality. I am bipolar.

"
After reading this, the light went on .... there are many people just like this. Bill will be my first customer. Oh ... and I also decided it would be awesome to get him to do the launch of the product. He's a good old boy from Montreal ... I'm sure he'd love to do it. The choreography came together years ago on a ski trip with a bunch of friends in St. Sauver. We were laughing so hard, we were crying and sore. We were going to call the group "R Soul". Say it a couple of times ... you'll get it ... let's say the were lots of corks freed from the confines of their wine bottles. I now have a great reason to do it and can't wait. BTW, the name gets changed to "Out of Sink" to be a little less antagonistic ... the ladies didn't seem to think the other name was that funny. Don't want to spoil it by telling you more.

Ok ... so back to the startup. I've been having many private conversations with a large variety of people ... from non techies, ultra techies, CEOs, VCs and many in between. The overwhelming consensus is "keep going ... this is very interesting". Naturally everyone has a different tangent on it and they get some parts more than others but the whole vision hangs together well, even though the product itself is still fuzzy.

With the help of friends in high places, I will have the opportunity to share the concept with some very high level people, including potential customers and partners, in the coming weeks. I'm also very fortunate to have some fantastic people volunteer to join me in this initiative. This will allow me to spread the joy, fill some big gaps in the story, develop a demo and have fun with a great group of people. The next few weeks will be very critical and exciting.

I'll close this off with a few tips from Guy Kawasaki's excellent book "The Art of the Start" that I'm taking very seriously:

THINK BIG. Set your sights high and strive for something grand. If you're going to change the world, you can't do it with milquetoast and boring products or services. Shoot for doing things at least ten times better than the status quo ....
-anyone that knows me knows that isn't a problem for me ... it has been coined "The Isfan Way"

FIND A FEW SOULMATES. History love the notion of the sole innovator .... History is wrong. Successful companies are started, and made successful, by at least two, and usually more soulmates ...
-working on it

USE PROTOTYPES AS MARKET RESEARCH. In the early days of an organization, there is high uncertainty about exactly what you should create and exactly what customers want. In these times, traditional market research is useless - there is no survey or focus group that can predict customers acceptance for a product or service that you may barely be able to describe. .... The wisest course of action is to take your best shot with a prototype, immediately go to market, and iterate quickly ...
-already in the works

Live well and prosper ... beam me up Scotty!

evolution of your audio experience

2006-10-07T21:25:00.000-04:00

I have had the chance to speak with several of you one on one or in small groups in order to better understand how you experience audio information and entertainment. It turns out that nearly everyone listens to the radio to different degrees nearly every day and people often jump around from one station to another. People like radio because it is easy and free and has some variety and information people like. However, there is significant repetition, lots of commercials, too much talk and in the end there is no way they'll play exactly what you want to hear. Radio is forced to play what they think will be most popular ... top 100 music, brief news highlights ... and yet they are losing customers.

People are now migrating down the tail so that they can listen to the stuff they want. Some have gone the portable mp3 player (ipod etc) way but it seems that many people have not bothered and don't plan on bothering even though they do like to listen to music, news, sports reports and other audio content. Compared to radio, setting up an mp3 player is allot of work. You have to burn piles of CDs which is very time consuming and/or download music off the net (hopefully legaly :). Every time you have something to transfer to your IPOD, you need to dock it and it is tied up for the duration of the transfer. My ipod seems to hang quite often and syncing takes forever even if I have only added a few songs. Then you have to perform S/W upgrades quite often. Most people are not diligent about backing up their hard drives ... what if it crashes and you lose all your tunes?!!!! No wonder many people have not bothered. I'm bothering less and less and I already have one.

I believe I have come up with a completely different model. It will allow people that are too tentative to jump in with no fear. It will also allow intermediate users to do things they cannot imagine doing with any of their existing tools. Advanced users will love the refined and granular customization. The open system will let hackers create entirely new applications ... I can't wait to see what they come up with! I'm not going after the incumbent competition but I'm going after the customers they seem to have a forgotten. It will allow people to surf the long tail to their heart's content! It's time to give everyone complete control of their audio experience.

In preparation for a roadshow, I will send out an invitation to this community to join together in a live session. The next evite you will get from me won't be an annoying noisy animation (sorry about that) ... it will be an invitation to this session. It should be interesting.

This could be huge ... how fun!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Engineer with an Iron Ring

The Long Tail

2006-10-05T23:12:00.000-04:00

I’m finally catching up with my reading and would like to share some concepts from the book “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson that I found quite fascinating. Note that Chris Anderson is editor in chief of Wired, one my absolute favorite magazines. This topic has been blogged to death. However, most people I have spoken to recently have never heard of this so I feel compelled to provide a brief summary since it is a very critical concept for today's economy.

The key premise of “The Long Tail” is that the economy is shifting away from hits to niches. In the past, if something was not a hit, it was essentially considered a market failure since non-hits did not have any economic viability. When products were predominantly sold in physical bricks and mortar stores, the cost to keep an item on a shelf was such that it has to sell very well in order to justify the expense. If you were a musician and your CD was not expected to be a huge seller, it was not carried by music stores and you essentially sold nothing. Labels only heavily promoted bands they thought would make it and the rest were left out in the cold. In effect the labels and stores were the filter essentially deciding for you what is good and what is bad.

However, with the advent of the internet, the cost to make a product available to the public dropped significantly. This cost can approach $0 for electronic content like music. For physical products like books, storing items in a warehouse is much cheaper than shelf space at your local books store. Amazon can therefore make money even on items that don’t sell in large volumes. As people now had access to a much greater variety of products, purchasing patterns changed significantly. Although hits and top brands still exist, people are spending much more money on non-hits or niches.

You can see evidence of this everywhere. Take television as an example. Not so many years ago, there were only a few TV channels and no internet. Everyone essentially watched the same shows. Fast forward to the present and the number of niche cable channels is incredible. Each individual niche by itself may not be a huge power by itself but if you take them all together, the revenue is significant compared to the top channels such as NBC, CBS, ABC, CBC (ha ha ha). In many industries, selling many niches is more lucrative than selling a few hits. As Chris puts it, “Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More”.

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But … there’s more. Simply providing choice is not enough. It can be overwhelming and may turn customers away. The real magic comes from helping the customer find what he wants effectively and efficiently. If you ever travel and need to book a hotel somewhere, your first stop should be trip advisor http://www.tripadvisor.com or other sites like it. Travelers share their experience and rate the hotels allowing you to make an informed decision. Google is the ultimate success story in this space. The founders realized years ago that people would value a tool that lets them find what they need fast. I use Google at least 20 times a day … I can’t image surfing the net without it.

So the summary is …. there is huge opportunity in niches but you have to provide people the tools to find what they need. Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Brin and Page (founders of Google) figured this out long before most of us and as a result are ridiculously rich.

I’ve only scratched the surface here. I strongly recommend you get you hands on the book (got mine in three days from Amazon) and/or check out www.thelongtail.com. In my next post, I will touch on the impact of this market transition on my own startup concepts.

to the top ... who's in?

2006-10-01T20:53:00.000-04:00

How fitting to take a trip to new york city before making a major decision. This place is quite amazing in so many ways ... definitely very inspiring. Although sky scrapers and bright lights come to mind first, the history of this place is equally amazing.

Since this was my wife's first trip here, we had to cover the highlights. As we were approaching the statue of liberty by boat, I was reminded of the first trip I took here as a kid. My family drove down from Quebec city right after getting our Canadian citizenship (came to canada from romania with a one year stop in france). As we approached the border, I could tell my father was getting emotional. He held it together while getting through the border but one we got to the other side, he started crying, a very rare event. After years of dreaming about this moment, going through hell in a communist country and never thinking the dream would come true, the power of the moment was too much. I will never forget that moment ... ever. It reminds me how fortunate I am that anything is possible. Immigrants helped build this great place and I'm going to do my part.

So what does this have to do with start ups you ask?

Quite a bit actually. It takes a lot of courage think that you can do something significant when you are essentially nobody. Evidence of this courage and the associated success are extremely evident here. Most of the people that build this place came here with nothing but learned the language and did amazing things from building the longest bridge at the time (Brooklyn Bridge) to starting a major broadcasting company (NBC). It has allowed me to put away the fear and given me the energy to go for gold.

So where are things at with the start up?

I've documented a fairly long list of ideas, broken them up into three groups (primary, secondary and crazy) and presented these to the partners at the VC where I'm an EIR. After some excellent feedback, I've narrowed it down to a short list of three ideas I'm taking to the next level.

There's one in particular that I just can't seem to stop thinking about or shoot down. It nearly totally consumes my mind, even my dreams. It’s not about getting rich or being famous ... it’s about this thing that feels so right it cannot be wrong. It’s a long shot but I'm going for it! I can't wait to get going! It’s good to be alive!

Although I have to stay in stealth mode, I’m going to need some help from S/W and H/W hackers in order to build a prototype. Who’s in? If you think I'm crazy, check out this guy. He probably rakes in more than most of us after tax.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Engineer with an Iron Ring
PS. look for a separate post on Tuesday related to NYC and wired nextfest

KISS

2006-09-24T20:41:00.000-04:00

Keep It Simple Stupid!

If you live in Ottawa, you might have noticed how ridiculously windy it was on Sunday... not the greatest day to be out. As is often the case, my 5 year old has a way of seeing the silver lining. "What a great day to fly a kite" she says. How right she was so we proceeded to grab one of the new, fancy kites in the shape of a blimp. It would get up, twirl around and crash to the ground to the point of demolishing itself. I proceed to get old faithful ... a basic, old, triangular kite while my daughter goes and designs her own (seen above). We both have a great time flying our kites until a gust of wind pulls my kite so hard that the handle pops out of my hand, flies across the yard nearly knocking my wife out and proceed to get lodged somewhere on our roof where it remains. My daughter continues to fly her kite successfully. Sometimes simple is best .... a string, a few pieces of paper, some tape ... done.

Some of the most magical and amazing things are simple ... at least to the end user. When things get so darn complicated and fragile without actually helping you do what you need any better, you know there's a problem that needs a solution. As I've said in a previous email, PCs are definitely due for a major correction. The funny thing is that no one is actually working very hard at fixing this. They are working at making them faster, with more features while remaining affordable.

While most of us grumble and bear with it, these issues, coupled with fear, keep a huge and growing population away from owning computers. Unless they have a relative that can help them, many elderly simply stay away from computers entirely. We just gave grandma a little laptop. She is getting the hang of it but I know the thing will end up with problems and I'll have to fix it. She is getting so used to MSNing with her kids that I'm sure she'll freak when it crashes and I'll be taking the first flight out to Florida.

This leads me to the idea of the week .... an ultra simple PC for the elderly (or paint it pink or blue for kids). Here is what I think this device should be like:

-laptop

-automatically connects to Internet over wireless network ... grandma shouldn't have to set-up a cable modem and a wifi network

-ultra simple keyboard with very readable keys

-big on/off button ... that actually says ON/OFF (grandma doesn't know what O/I means)

-absolutely no wires, except for power

-when it boots up you get 5 big icons that clearly say, EMAIL, INTERNET, MESSENGER, PICTURES, GAMES

-default font and color scheme appropriate for people with reduced visibility

-comes with a wireless printer that automatically works with the computer

-computer comes with wireless Internet service automatically and email already created for you based on your requirement when you ordered the computer, you should be able to unpack the box, hit the ON button write an email in 5 seconds

-minimal upfront fee (say $100) and monthly payments which include Internet access and a help desk that you can reach by hitting the big HELP button

-device is ultra simple with nearly all applications running on a network based server

-nearly all user data is stored on the network (no need to worry about backing up data)

-no need to worry about viruses either

-awesome dictation S/W .... one finger typing is really painful when you are on MSN

This type of computer must be marketed in a very different way. Don't tell them about how many gigs, video ram and usb ports the thing has. It must also be sold through entirely different channels to reach the targeted customers ... home shopping channel, retirement homes, bingo halls ....

Recall one of my previous posts that suggested looking at consumers and markets the major players are not interested in (a major tenet of "The Innovators Dilemma"). This group may be irrelevant to Dell and HP but a company that focuses exclusively on this market and gets a significant share of this large and growing niche is going to do very well. Next thing you know, the simple PC thing catches on and people start buying these for their kids and as extra PCs to throw in the kitchen, at the cottage ... and you don't know what to do with all the money!! All this without any fancy technology. You might want to call the company "The Simple Computer Company" ... nice and simple.

The beauty of simplicity! As easy as flying a kite.

Note: There won't be a post this Friday. I'll be at Wired Nextfest in New York City. I should have lots to tell you on Monday though!

ideas aren't worth much but people are

2006-09-21T00:30:00.000-04:00

Back from 20 minutes in the hot-tub with a glass of Drambuie (oh sweet nectar of the Scottish Gods), the synapses are well greased for another blog. This one will be shorter than the last one ... the fingers kinda went a little crazy on the last one.

I'm preparing for pitch of some of my ideas at the end of this week and thought it would be an opportune time to discuss the value of ideas as a follow up to my previous post on the subject. I'll also toss out a little idea that I won't be chasing myself but think it may have legs ... with the right body on top.

So what is the value of a good idea? It seems that an idea by itself is nearly worthless. What if someone else has the same idea or finds out about your idea? Unless you have more to go on, relying just on the idea, you're could be pretty well screwed unless you have other things under your sleeve. However, an idea than spawns the next idea and the next has a different twist. Although this is not exactly vision, it has value because it gives you the ability to stay ahead.

The RIM/Blackberry guys didn't have any real secret sauce per se. Based on the premise they started with ... basically an advanced pager ... anyone could have done the same thing from a technical point of view. What they had was a vision around a service and associated device that others and their passion for this vision together with appropriate adjustment and execution on this vision is what I believe got them to where they are. Continuous incremental improvements kept them ahead of the game and made their device indispensable to many professionals.

The interesting thing though is that RIM didn't really start out as the "blackberry" company. They toyed around with other things in the mid 80's before. I have seen this time and again with Catena being a great example of this. The original idea associated with building a POTS+DSL chipset was certainly a powerful one but the magic really started when this was applied to the Lucent SLC-5 digital loop carrier. The low density and cost that the integrated chipset provided enabled us to build a card that would fit physically, thermally and financially. There would be many more challenges ahead of us though. How were we going to get the traffic across the backplane?, how about the extra heat in the cabinet?,regulatory challenges that prevented some major RBOCs from deploying integrated solutions (thanks Doug for your work in DC) until regulations allowed it ...

Yikes ... had we really know all the challenges ahead of us, we might have quit or never even received the funding in the first place.

Fortunately, the real magic came in the form of people. Not much of a secret sauce really. The people that were brought on to build the company were absolutely the best, not just technically super strong but agile and resourceful. When VCs invest, the team is often one of the most critical factors. It would be nice if you could just build a team first, get a bunch of money ... say $2M, then figure something out. I know exactly who would be on that team ... you are probably reading this post.

Back to reality. I get to pitch some of my ideas at the end of the week and am very excited to see what happens. Couple the roughly right idea at the right time with the right team, figure out some secret-sauce that will give everyone a false sense of security and things should be a go. When we narrow things down, the team will be critical ... I know that for sure and that will turn out to be the most important factor.

Darn, I rambling again and I promised you an idea so here goes. I'll keep it fairly brief and you can fill in the blanks.

Netcreds (TM)

Google and much of the free internet economy is driven by advertising dollars (as is entertainment in general). Many billions of dollars actually just for google. This is a dance between getting eyeballs and monetizing those eyeballs .... the more people see your ad the better and if they click on a google ad (often know as "Ads by google" or "sponsored links" just as I've included in my blog). It may be time to stop beating around the bush reward the consumers directly.

The idea is that people earn Netcreds(tm) ... basically new currency for the internet economy ... for intentionally watching ads. The more engaged you get, the more Netcreds you get. For example, you go to www.netcreds.com (made it up ... don't click on it). You watch ads and answer a couple of questions to prove you actually paid attention and that you are a human. If you choose to fill in a survey, you get even more creds and so on. You pile up Netcreds (tm) and get to trade them in for goodies ... music, videos ... Hopefully, the government doesn't figure out how to tax you on that.

Anyway, blog is too long again ... sorry ... I guess I just can't be brief.

BTW, here are some of the music channels I've created on www.pandora.com. I suspect you may have to register before you can use these though ... not sure.

Stevie Ray Vaughan channel
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh153084862210310378

Andre Boccelli channel
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh151705490513527018

Pink Floyd channel
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh151451670831235306

Jean Michel Jarre channel (old new age)
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh151024699542405354

Eminem Radio (not censored ... be careful)
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh120525617082466538

Basic Rock (Tragically Hip ...)
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh116070726679199978

Check back Monday morning ... should be a good one.