Disqus - Latest Comments for Thusenth

Re: Digg gets bags of cash, but for what?

Thusenth — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:56:29 -0000

The concept of Digg is a powerful one, much like Facebook - but both are hard to monetize and I treat both as a commodity personally. I jump on Digg to see the most dugg stories in the categories I care about sans the goofy photos which are always the most dugg, then I get out of there. Digg tries to be everything to everyone when it comes to news aggregation which is a long-term project, but I'd rather just hang out on TechMeme, Autoblog, and Gizmodo and get what I care about now rather than let Digg guess for me. To give them credit, the recommendation engine isn't half bad. There's a lot of money on the line now, and Kevin seems like a cool guy as does Jay from what I've read and watched of them, but with Jay in NY, and Kevin with three projects on the go and no past exits, I can only see Digg exiting via acquisition to earn its valuation - no way can they do it as a standalone entity at a rate fast enough for the VCs considering its plateauing traffic.

Re: Start Building Empires

Thusenth — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:54:43 -0000

Why are none of those empires that you list Canadian? Booo urns. In all seriousness, those points you plan to touch on sound great and very practical, throw in some inspirational success stories a la Austin Hill and you've got a conference that could inspire a few good companies right off the bat.

What was wrong with the original StartupNorth name for the conference?

Re: Announcing Startup Nation - Canada’s Conference for Startups - November 13-14

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:45:08 -0000

Thanks for the ideas!,

Having some "take away" material is a big deal for us and something we are working on.

We will be updating the website next week with some new speakers and a list of workshops.

Re: Announcing Startup Nation - Canada’s Conference for Startups - November 13-14

Thusenth — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:02:21 -0000

Who're the sponsors? I'd like to see a few good VCs throw their support behind the event. I hope you guys can nab ThomsonReuters as they pitched in over at TC50 - they can at least support their fellow Canadian startups.

Some of the biggest questions some of my friends with a technical background come to me with are fairly basic - How do I actually start a business (from a legal standpoint, where do they go, how much does it cost, do they need it, etc), and if things go sour, how can I dissolve it? Some basic Business 101 topics would probably help - you've identified a few good ones there, but even basic book keeping, production adoption lifecycle, maybe identify some of the Canadian resources you can use early on - a really solid Canadian tailored How to Start a Tech Startup in Canada session - and hey maybe make it a handbook of sorts.

Re: Turns out Angel-Incubator VC’s were not the Answer

Thusenth — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:47:00 -0000

Canada has a few unique challenges. We can't expect to be as efficient/successful as the U.S. (in terms of VC success - lets not talk about their Finance skills as a whole), when we're geographically bigger than all of the U.S. but contain a population equivalent to one state - California. It shows as VCs in Canada averaged a much lower return on their investment this past decade in comparison to the U.S.

What Canada is lacking are the big inspirational role models - the Bill Gates, Paul Allens, Steve Jobs, Larry Pages, Mark Cubans, Peter Thiel, Mark Andreesens etc. These guys have had so much media coverage and have inspired so many new entrepreneurs - they have become stars of capitalism. Some of them have had multiple successes and continue to reinvest in new entrepreneurs as VCs or Angels.

And I think that's where Canada is different. Our media coverage seems to highlight more 'old-money' and their movements- Thomsons, Westons, Rogers etc. We haven't celebrated the successes of our technology companies in the same degree as the U.S. Ask the average Canadian if they know who Mike Lazaridis is - I even wonder how familiar Silicon Valley is with the name Mike Lazaridis.

That leads me to my next point - our biggest successes don't reinvest enough in new local entrepreneurs. I feel as if we need more of a presence from our few success stories - this lack of presence could be because a) the media doesn't do enough to highlight their success or b) they aren't interested in the Canadian start-up space.

I feel as there's something fundamentally flawed in our startup system - and part of it could be that our government may be playing too much of a role in supporting the technology start-up space. I think they may be inadvertently leaving little room for VCs and Angels to come in early. I say critical because the difference in VC returns in Canada and the U.S. are staggering.

Re: mesh 2008 day one: rocked

http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/05/22/mesh-2008-day-one-rocked/ — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:53:05 -0000

Some clips of them are available on the mDialog site and at the mesh
blog, but not the full panels unfortunately. Greg from mDialog just
told me that there are already clips on iTunes if you search there as
well.

Re: mesh 2008 day one: rocked

Thusenth — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:34:30 -0000

Hi Mat - really enjoyed meshU, thanks for making it feasible for students to make it! I hope meshU happens again next year.

Just wondering, will the videos from the Mesh conferences be made available on the site (wasn't able to grab a student ticket ot that one on time).

Re: YHOO and MSFT: Jerry Yang should be fired

Thusenth — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:25:49 -0000

Yahoo was definitely a huge strategic attempt on the part of Microsoft to gain valuable Internet media assets since apart from maybe their Start Page (msn.com), MSN Messenger, and Hotmail, Microsoft has struggled in gaining any traction on the Internet.

That said, yes Yang did pass up a lucrative offer for its shareholders, and he's definitely going to see legal action from many shareholders. But Yang can also use this as a turning point for the company and can maybe spin this in a way that makes him look like a hero - David and Goliath sort of thing - and rally his troops. Unfortunately, I'm sure there are more than a few employees with equity in the company that now looks at Yang as the guy who screwed them.

Either way, I think Yahoo is better of as a standalone company - it is innovative, a supporter of open Web standards, and has lucrative International Internet assets. The last thing I would want to see is Microsoft acquiring them and then beginning the process of moving away from PHP and MySQL to ASP and SQL server. *shutters*

Re: Twitter: more mainstream than it looks

Timothy McDoniel — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:36:57 -0000

My friends and family aren't on Twitter and they don't really 'get' it. But that's okay. The only way Twitter won't be so lonely is to just follow people that share your interests. Alot of them will return the 'follow' and you'll get to engage with some pretty interesting people. Some will just send neat links, some will make you laugh, I've even got alot of beta invites just by asking someone who started talking about it. For Twitter not to be lonely, you shouldn't depend on friends and family to make it worthwhile. Send tweets about what's going on, things you find interesting, etc. Soon you'll have people following you to hear what you've got to say. I do have a number of family and friends on Facebook, so I just installed an app their, that feeds my tweets into it. :-)

Re: Twitter: more mainstream than it looks

Thusenth — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:27:37 -0000

Twitter is a very lonely app when you're the only one on it. There's only so many tweets you can do before it hits you that no one is reading them.

If a person tweets in the cloud and there is nobody following, is there a reason to tweet?

Re: Twitter raises money, birds fly

http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/04/27/twitter-raises-money-birds-fly/ — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:48:03 -0000

I think that's an important point, Thusenth -- that more private money
is at stake this time around, and last time it was mostly public
money.

Re: Twitter raises money, birds fly

Thusenth — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:27:27 -0000

"VCs are desperate to find the next Facebook." Last time I checked VCs were looking for highly profitable businesses to invest in - but maybe they know something we don't. Then again, Facebook could have been profitable - but they've decided to build the company up. Attracting ex-Googlers can't be cheap.

Although I was only 14 when the 'dot bomb' took place, very little seems to have changed in terms of valuations. They still seem to be based on page views, but the major difference seems to be that private money is at stake now as opposed to the public's.

Re: Andreessen: MSFT did us a favour

Thusenth — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:17:39 -0000

It may have been luck, but I believe I read somewhere that his mother had a role to play with him landing IBM. Bill came from an influential family, and his mother was a well connected socialite I believe.

Furthermore, the most promising company that Bill took out had to have been HyperGlobalMegaNet, started by a chap named Homer Jay... can't remember that last name, but it was caught on camera.