Vancouver-Technology-Investment

Vancouver Tech Investment Landscape

CEO who raised money in US: “What are you doing right now?” Me: “You mean right this second?” CEO: “Yeah” Me: “I am writing a blog post about Vancouver’s tech investment community” <slight pause> CEO:… more

mama

Growth Case: Big Mama Textbook Rentals

My big take away from the recent Meetup I helped host at Plenty of Fish, was CEO Markus Frind’s singular obsession with user growth. As the world’s largest dating site, POF has had success with… more

pof

Lessons Learned: Plenty of Fish

Last night 100 members of the Vancouver Pixel Crafters Meetup group had the rare opportunity to get inside one of Vancouver’s most high profile Internet companies: Plenty of Fish. For those of you that aren’t… more

tile

Three Ways to Help Vancouver Grassroots Tech

<update>Boris Mann wrote a great response entitled build more startups in Vancouver.  Alan Pike also thoughtfully weighed in with homes for Vancouver startups</update> Score another victory for a Vancouver startup.  The talented Romanian duo from Summify and… more

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Intro-Up Launch

Super excited today to announce the launch of Intro-Up, a service that facilitates networking at Meetups by matching you to one person before the Meetup based on your interests.  This is how we got Intro-Up… more

trucks

The World’s Most Dangerous Road

Fact:  If you talk to yourself, people think you are crazy. When I was plummeting down Bolivia’s “Death Road” what people around me thought was the last thing on my mind.  My outer monologue went something… more

Get Your Ideas Here

What I have learned about Idea Validation

I have ideas.  Lots of them.  My head is literally overflowing with ideas.  We all know, ideas are cheap and execution is everything. I have been spending alot of time recently trying to figure out… more

touchkeyword

TouchKeyword $15,000 IRAP Doc

I am often asked about how difficult it was to get IRAP funding for the TouchKeyword project.  For me, it was a 15 minute pitch and a one page summary (see below).  Sounds simple right?… more

Are you clever?

Are you clever?

I just finished reading Clever, leading your smartest, most creative people by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones.  These two professors at London Business School have done a great job distilling the talent of exceptional organizations… more

Image source http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/world-of-twitter-mosaic-twitter-wallpapers

The One Reason Twitter Will Fail

<update>Twitter acquired Vancouver’s Summify Jan. 2012</update> There is no question that Twitter was the darling of 2009.  Whole vocabularies that could fill a Twebster Dictionary were built up as people slathered and frothed their way… more

Aardvark Query Connector

Got Aardvark?

<update> Aardvark made me an Aardvocate in August 2010. Not that I needed an excuse to promote their incredible product. Regardless, my shameless peddling has increased exponentially </update> In February 2010 Aardvark was acquired by Google.  Right… more

keyword

SEO Tip – Keyword Research

There is no question that SEO is a complex topic.  URLs, 404s, 301s, Google, Caffeine Updates, Yahoo is now Bing, Mobile strategy, local search, more acronyms that you can shake a stick at… and the list goes… more

google-shoe

Why Google Loses

This is part 2 of a series on Google.  For the alternate take, read Part 1 – Why Google Wins Since its Launch in 1998, Google’s path to success has been seemingly uninterrupted and spectacular.  When many… more

google-homepage

Why Google Wins

This is part 1 in a two part series about the future of Google. Read part 2 – Why Google Loses Google has been a part of most of our lives for the past decade…. more

99designs-logo-r

How To Run A 99Designs.com Contest

Crowd sourced design is one of the best uses of internet technologies that I have seen in awhile. And no one is doing it better than 99designs.com.  Earlier this year, the crowd-sourcing contest firm won… more