Wired Wednesdays TO

Last month was the first time I visited Wired Wednesdays Toronto (@wiredwedto). The key presentation was by Regan Fletcherfrom Yoono and consisted of three very interesting demos. It was a great event to visit both for networking and for motivational lessons from people with experience. As a side note—I found that guys from BackType have the best presentation skills.

I thought the presentation by Regan Fletcher, a serial entrepreneur on his fifth startup, was rich with insights one can only get from the experience of building companies from the ground up. He obviously has a very good sense of humor along with business acumen. Here are some key points that I took with me after the event:>

Learn How to Use a Shotgun

The benefit of a shotgun is instantaneous, extreme power. Obviously Regan meant this metaphorically. What it means is that if you want to hang with the big dogs you have to act like one. One of the examples he gave is getting VC funding. When you come to the meeting with a VC don’t get scared thinking that you are just a little company and they are some big company. You have to feel that you are giving them a favor by letting invest in your amazing product. I think this is what he meant; the last phrase from the analogy was “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”

I pretty much agree with this thought and think that if you don’t know to use a shotgun just yet: fake it ‘til you make it. I don’t advocate misrepresenting your business, what I am suggesting is if you want your company to be something (the top creative agency for example), then start portraying that exact image from day one.

2) Know the business you are getting onto

Regan mentioned that he constantly sees people who want to make better existing ideas and “easily” make money, while not really knowing the insides of the business. Regan mentioned that he usually never hears from those guys again.

I can say that when I started running Toronto4couples I had been reading blogs for awhile and knew how to run a successful newspaper. That’s why I thought that I was ready to take on a brand new web project, but the reality is…I wasn’t. I wish a year ago I was where I am right now in terms of my experience, my team—I ran into many pitfalls that completely screwed up my business plan. At the same time I wouldn’t be able to learn about all of those details if I hadn’t been running this business for the past year. Therefore, it is the best to get involved with something you know the best, but when you do approach unknown opportunities expect a learning curve, pitfalls, and DO NOT expect that you will be able to easily improve what other smart people have been working on day and night.

3) Embrace A..holes

You are going to run into some—that is a fact. Sometimes they can be so big, that you can’t possibly fight them. Use them to learn how to deal with challenges and LEARN from them. I always say that I learned what not do from my bad bosses just as much as I learned from the good ones. Same goes for challenges, embrace them, if what you were doing was challenge free then everybody would do it.

4) Fight with a shotgun for the A round of financing.

Regan says two things in this one: it is pretty much guaranteed that you are going to run out of cash faster than your business plan says and that it is easier to receive round A of funding then round B. That is why if you decided to receive financing don’t settle and fight as much as you can for that first round of financing. Appropriate cash flow is a lifeline of any start-up and determines your ability to have an ample amount of time to develop the product and start making money off it.

5) When everything else fails there is always porn.

This was meant as a joking way to finish the conversation, but Regan was half serious—porn companies adopt and push the development of new technologies. So there is always a possibility of selling your technology to a company like and to move on to the next creation of passion.

I think all of these are great lessons from someone who has been there and done that. Have some lessons of your own, share them in comments!

P.S. The next Wired Wednesday is on August 12 @ London Taphouse.

Sometimes when topic is of a particular interest I do visit launches in Gladstone Hotel organized by Interacative Ontario.  I find their events very informative and in some way motivational as you get people in the room that have similar vision to yours.

This past Friday the topic was  Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit (OIDMTC) . OIDMTC is a refundable tax credit based upon the eligible Ontario expenditures claimed by Canadian corporation for an interactive digital media products.

These are my notes from the discussion:

-bigger portion of the discussion was centered on SR&ED vs. OIDMTC . Conclusion: SR&ED is better since you can apply for it year long and you don’t have to have a successful product in a time of application. However, if you are in doubt either your company is eligible for SR&ED you can apply for both programs and government will choose which is the most appropriate program for you. You can’t stack two of these credits.

-OIDMTC is a labour credit. Some nuances might arise when you sub-contract work to other companies. If you do plan to claim this credit make sure you meet with an accounting firm that has an expertise in this field to make sure you stay in requirements of the credit.

-it is a good idea to hire an accounting company to fill out the application for you as it can be very difficulat to do it for a person. Most of the accounting companies work on contingency basis (10%-25%) depending on a difficulty of an application

-when you do use outside company make sure you still understand the process of the claim and what is submitted to the government. When they come with an audit you want to be able to showcase that you do what you claimed you do in your application.

-some of the other funds used for financing are Telefilm Canada New Media Fund and Bell New Media Fund

-you have up to 4 years to claim OIDMTC and if you constantly update your product (for example website platform update) you can only apply once in two years. From what I understood you have to apply by the end of your fiscal year.

-two deadlines May 11th and October

Overall it seemed like that if you are eligible it is actually humanely possible to receive this credit and people in OMDC are actually pretty nice and answer phone calls. Being a new entrepreneur during recession times there are so many things I have to take care of and sometimes it is hard to pay attention to everything. However, optimizing you company and getting financed through governemnt should never go off your radar as cashflow and investment is a bloodline for a start-up business.

I will post in the future my experiences with applyijg for different tax credits.

Comments?

Quick note that I attended a networking event organized by AMA Toronto chapter and Craig Lund. This part Thursday.

The location and the events itself was pretty cool. The crowd was a mix of glamour, professional and anti-corporate lifestyle professionals.

I came with a goal to find some potential sales reps, writers and designers. I did get couple of leads from there and working on it.

At the same time it amazes me how a lot of marketers don’t know by themselfes how to market. Some ideas that came in mind after this event:

• -be nice to everybody, i saw some people that changed the attitutde when they realized they can’t sell anything to a person. The person might know somebody or need your services in the future
• -if you come to the networking event – bring your business cards. Some people “ran out” it is such a simple thing, yet it has a good impact
• -if you are doing a presentation – don’t read from your power point especially when you are presenting to marketers who earn their living my doing presentations
• -don’t drink too much. While it is ok to drink to some, to relax and be laid back. Being drunk won’t help you to get that next gig.

Overall it was a usefull event I will atend it again. I woudl reccomend it to anybody who is looking for a work or business opportunities in marketing industry in Toronto.

My readers know that this Friday is my last day at my 9-5 job. After that I am on my own. One thing I learned at my job that is all about networking, knowing right people is imperative to besuccessful in achieving your goals. That is why I am attending CaseCamp.org event in Toronto on April 29th.

I’ve never been to this event before, but from I what I understand it is really casual presentation of case studies by big names and open collaboration of the audience.This is totally Reality 2.0. It is a wiki in a real time. I Googled it and it looks like a lot of bloggers from Toronto will be attending it. I am sure they don’t know anything about me, but I was checking out their blogs for awhile – almost like a stalker.

Anyways if you live in Toronto and even remotely interested in social network marketing I urge you to attend CaseCamp. I am sure it will be inspirational and will allow for the opportunity to meet a lot of people that might help in achieving your business goals.

I think their wiki is down, but Facebook page still works. Check it out.

Here is the list of presenters:

P.S. trying to print my new personal business cards before the event, because I guess my current company’s won’t work:)

 Yesterday I went to a little seminar organized by Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce (CICC) called “The Power of Search Engine Markering.”  Couple of weeks ago I didn’t even know that CICC existed, by a fluke I saw the ad in Shalom Toronto. While I found a seminar to be a basic overview more targeted to people who are unfamiliar to the concept there are some ideas I walked out with. 

First presenter was Maor Daniel - he is head of marketing of Yahoo Canada. Here are some memorable points:

• Canada is second only to Korea to internet usage in the world. Israel is third.
• the future of SEM is cost per aquisition. Meaning that advertisers will only pay when the actually reach their conversion goal and not just for a click. If Yahoo would be able implement that I am sure that would turn an idustry upside down. Basically, it means that you pay and get a sale for sure
• in the future the bots would able to index videos and I assuming the same goes for the photos. I wonder how much of computer resourses that would demand

Second was Jim Ben Simon – he is a CEO of Searchlinqs.  I couldn’t find his profile online so I am just linking to his business. He was presented as a proffesional in SEM and was recognized by Maor as one of the few SEM companies they work with in Canada. Jim’s points I found interesting:

• even though Google is a major player you can’t close your eyes on Yahoo and MSN since they are portals. He provided some real life cases and during to fast scan it looked to me that the conversion rate from Yahoo searches is twice as high than from Google. Does it mean that when you are a small business with very limited budget you might as well just stick with Yahoo since it will give you the biggest ROI?
• In of his campaigns for Aeroplan his firm used 4000 keywords. That is freaking a lot! He mentioned that on average they don’t use less than 300 keywords per campaign. I find it hard to wrap my mind around it. I am going to try and use kewords software over the weekend and see if I come up with at least 100 keywords. I always thought that the best is to pick a couple of keywords and just try to master those.

Third one was Dvir Weininiger – SEO Specialist, CMS Buffet. I found out that Dvir was actually the one that gave the most practical advice out of all three:

• He said a really cool phrase: Don’t show bots what you don’t show humans and don’t show humans what you don’t show bots. Takes a second to absorb, but it makes a lot of sense. I think the bottom line is make a real usefull site for you users and don’t just try to use some techniques to get your site at the top
• He said that after a year of his services your site will be in the first 30 positions and will stay there, so you won’t need his services anymore or you could expand more. I wonder if that is true? I find that search engines evolve their algorithms all the time and to stay at the top I would assume a business need to publish a regular content.
• He said that the next thing is optimization of the webpage to be used on cellphones. What  a bright though, I agreed immediatly. There countless number of times when I tried to get some essential info on the go from my blackberry and it was a pain. Certainly, there is an Iphone, but the battery on is just not sufficient for high perfornance business users. 

Overall it was a great evening and opportunity for networking. I was really in a rush, so I didn’t take advantage of it fully. However, I would suggest anyone who wants to dive into the business circle of Toronto especially if involved Israel to attend CICC events.