May 22, 2013
Notre article est disponible sur lesnews.ca
Selon certains experts, dont Peter Relan, entrepreneur en série, 90 % des programmes d’accélérateurs et d’incubateurs ne sont pas rentables!
Louis Rhéaume
Éditeur
Infocom Analysis
February 23, 2013
Investor Pitches provides a description of the average US angel investor in the following infographic. The average angel investor is a man with 47 years old, making$90,000 a year, and investing around $37,000 per deal. In 2002, there were 200,000 angel investors. In 2011, that number jumped 60 percent to 318,480. Angels funded 66,230 companies in 2011, compared to 36,000 in 2002, investing $22.5 billion in entrepreneurship in USA, an increased by 84 percent, from $15.7 billion in 2002.
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
February 6, 2013
According to the NY Times, the number of privately held Silicon Valley start-ups that are worth more than $1 billion is between 25 to 40.
Among the startups in the $ billion club, there are:
-Evernote
-Airbnb
-SurveyMonkey
-Spotify
-Box
-Violin Memory
-Zscale
-Dropbox
-MobileIron
-Pure Storage
-Marketo
-DDS
-Palantir
For Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote, ““There is no safe industry anymore, even here.” Several of those startups are in the enterprise sector.
“A year from now that might be 100,” said Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture capital business. Sequoia counts a dozen such companies in its portfolio. It is part of what he calls “a permanent change” in the way people are building their companies and financiers are pushing up values.
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs argue that the price spiral is not a sign of another tech bubble. The high prices are reasonable, they say, because innovations like smartphones and cloud computing are disrupting some technology sectors that are already worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
December 18, 2012
http://lesnews.ca/technologie/34408-le-quebec-a-besoin-de-plus-dentrepreneurs-comme-dominique-brown/
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
November 16, 2012
Last week was the third Demo Day at FounderFuel in Montréal, this time for the cohort of fall 2012. FounderFuel is in the major league of tech accelerator in North America. So far, start-ups in the three cohorts have raised $6.5 million in financing. The quality of each cohort is improving. In this latest cohort, the three most promising start-ups are: Urbita, MyCustomizer and Openera.
Urbita has reached an important milestone with 3 million unique visitors last month on its web site. The website is based on recommendation of marketplaces and destinations for travelers. The website is rich in images and comments from people who are passionate about the city. The web site aims to become a platform with direct competitors such as TripAdvisor.
In a previous article I discussed about the challenges for entrepreneurs who want to build platforms on the web. With strong network effects and economies of scale, the success can be very fast, and unfortunately fierce competition can also produce fast failures. Thus, Urbita will need to differentiate itself from TripAdvisor by focusing for instance on the weaknesses of the quality of many reviews on TripAdvisor. Several travel agencies are not recommending TripAdvisor to their customers due to poor assessment of hotels, for instance.
Urbita has raised $500,000 so far and wants another $500,000 in the short-term. Building successful web platforms necessitate a lot of capital but the payoff can be huge (Facebook and Yelp are public firms and Pinterest is growing fast). The founders are from Los Angeles and Buenos Aires.
Openera aims to simplify automated filing for everyone. Openera automatically organizes email and cloud files to meet corporate compliance requirements and allow the right people to find files quickly. The start-up is in a niche market that could be huge. The CEO of Openera had over 15 years of experience at Open Text, one of the biggest IT firm in Canada, which experienced fast growth through internal projects and acquisitions. The software of Openera makes the links in cloud computing with many other applications such as Box, Salesforce and Evernote. Some of their first customers are Box and CCA (Creative Artists Agency). Openera has an iPhone application enabling the management of document filing. The start-up has raised $250,000 so far and wants $500,000 more in the short-term. The firm is from Ottawa.
MyCustomizer enables retailers to sell customized products adapted to the special requests of their customers through cloud computing with a ready-to-use SaaS platform. Mass customization was a buzzword with the growth of Web 1.0 around 1998. Now, it is a reality in the retail world through Web 2.0. For instance, MyCustomizer has a partnership with Warrior Sports, a hockey goods firm, that lets the customer pick the colors of a hockey glove, and can change the material or even put its name or number. In exchange, retailers can charge around 30% more to the customers for their special requests. MyCustomizer is charging $99.99 per month and a commission around 5% on sales. Thus, the company is already profitable and wants to expand in other vertical markets such as furniture. The potential for customized products represents a large market for the start-up, which should help to attract Venture Capital money. The founders are from Quebec City and Montreal. MyCustomizer is looking for a financing of $600,000.
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter:@InfocomAnalysis
November 6, 2012
OOHLALA is the mobile app for university and college students. OOHLALA help students better connect with their campus and also help campus services better engage with students. Students use the app to enhance their campus life with features such as campus maps, courses, study groups, social scheduling (find where your friends are), campus wall (share conversations and photos), and games.
Problem: Right now if you as a student want to know what’s happening on campus your choices are several Facebook groups, different campus websites etc. Information is fragmented everywhere, and we are betting that mobile the best platform to both organize this information and keep students connected on the go. User discovery is another aspect that’s broken. For example if you are sitting in class and want to connect with other students in real-time (or that cute girl in the front row), current social networks such as Facebook can’t help you as you don’t know their names (but we can).
We did an interview with the CEO of OOHLALA Mobile: Danial Jameel. OOHLALA was part of the Montreal technology accelerator FounderFuel in 2011.
Q1-OOHLALA mobile app is available in how many campus/ student organizations?
Since this semester, we are currently working with 50 campuses in Canada and United States, with another 150 to be launched during the next semester from US, Canada, UK, Singapore, France and potentially Mexico (currently in progress).
Q2-Does OOHLALA monetize with advertising? Any other source of revenue?
We put user experience and satisfaction as our top priority and generate revenues through sources that provide value to students. We currently monetize through premium features for campus services, and location based deals. We don’t do generic ads as its ruins the experience for our community.
Q3-How much money your firm has raised so far for its financing?
I can’t disclose this as yet as we are undergoing some financing, but we have raised our seed round.
Q4-OOHLALA has how many employees?
10-12 (we have some part time community managers)
Q5-What are your goals in one year?
To be the leading mobile platform for college and university students in North America and UK.
Q6-Are you planning any new or complementary product(s) and service(s) in the short-term?
Right now our focus is looking into user feedback and user metrics to optimize UX and streamline performance.
Q7- As an entrepreneur, what is your most important challenge, since you graduated from FounderFuel?
Once Demo Day ends and the hype is over, its time to get back to reality and the grind. Demo Day puts you out there in the spotlight which is great, but it also means expectations for you are much higher. The reality of most startups is that after the initial hype they need to figure out the right product to market fit and build a business model before running out of cash. This doesn’t always happen overnight and hard/smart work is required. I knew some founders who were not able to adjust the ‘you are on your own’ reality that sets in after.
On our end, we started our company at the basement library at our university where we iterated 24/7, and ate $4 pizzas to help solve student problems lol (good times). Post Demo day for us meant we could focus back on our users without distractions and on building the best product.
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter : @InfocomAnalysis
October 15, 2012
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/the-secret-to-the-ryerson-entrepreneurship-programs-success-2012-10-15
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
October 10, 2012
Entrevue avec Marcel Côté de SECOR (acquis par KPMG) sur la gestion de l’innovation dans les industries des technologies de l’information es des communications (TIC). Conseils pour les entrepreneurs et gestionnaires.
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
October 5, 2012
Second part of an interview with Marcel Côté of SECOR about innovation in the Information and Communications Technology industries (ICT).
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
September 18, 2012
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Analysis
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis
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