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?

As many of you know my cell phone service provider is Rogers Wireless.  The reason I chose Rogers is not because they are the best, or have any sort of acceptable customer service – the reason is that they are the ONLY GSM company in Canada. I travel a lot overseas and need to be able to use the same phone with different sim cards – that’s why I need GSM phone.

Today I learned that they increased a time between upgrading your phone from 12 to 24 months only for smartphone. My questions is Why???

As a blackberry bold user (that I bought on craigslist, since Rogers didn’t let me upgrade even though my monthly bills are around $400) I spend more money with you than your average voice only customer.  Furthermore, I am a business user so I will have roaming charges, long distance charges and higher voice usage. Overall I would consider myself a pretty good customer in terms of revenue.

My question is then why shouldn’t you take care of me even more than you do of a low paying customer? Have you ever heard of parreto principle? I want to see my cellphone company as my business partner, you don’t look like one right now! It looks like that because you know I can pay more – you charge me way more not giving anything in return.

Shame, shame, shame.

We say in Russia the world is round and we will meet in the corner. I hope that one day your monopoly is over – and you will suffer or even go bankrupt from years of abusing your customers.

Even though some of my friends thing I am into technology I am really not that tech savvy and for sure I am not a web designer. That is why the decision of outsourcing the web site creation and maintenance was obvious. My believe is that a business can outsource everything except strategic functions – basis for the competitive advantage. In my business competitive advantage is created through creation if unique content, marketing of the media channel to bring visitors and sales relationships with advertisers. I strongly believe that everything else can be and should be outsourced for lean operations.

I am writing a detailed business plan these days (if you still didn’t participate in the survey I sent you – do it right now, that is a part of marketing research) and needed to understand how much the website will costs. I also wanted a break down of how much each feature I want takes time and costs associated with it. My plan is not only to outsource web site development but also to offshore it. I have connections in both Russia and Israel where the website can be created on the same level as in North America, but for the fraction of the cost.

My first step in getting quotes is to use Elance.com it is a great tool to upload some of the simple projects to someone else. I used it to find a designer Steve Sotto to build a logo for the website.

After posting a brief description of what I need “Entertainment Portal based on CMS” I received more that 40 private messages, some firms even quoted me on a project right away varying from $1000 to $20,000. The experience made me write this post dedicated to anyone who sends quotes or proposals for web development and pretty much for any business. I have to provide a disclaimer that I think in my professional life I provided a top notch service to my clients and that is why when I am a buyer I am very picky. So here are my rules:

• Don’t quote on a project till you know the scope of it - Everyone who quoted without even looking into what I need and furthermore wanted to push me into making a purchase decision were eliminated from the list. It is simple as that: if you don’t have time to make sure you have what I need – I am not willing to work with you daily for 2-3 month in creating my baby.
• Remember who you quoted – a guy wrote me an email that he would be “delighted to go over the project details” with me over the phone and that I can call at my earliest convenience. I did call after 15 minutes of receiving his email. To my surprise he didn’t know who I was or what project I am talking about. It took him five minutes to figure it. I even felt that he unhappy that I interrupted whatever he was doing with my phone call. Gone.
• Read what client wrote -after talking to a couple of firms I understood that I have to write a detailed feature by feature description of what I need. It took me almost a day of writing and making schemes in order to try to translate my vision into paper (even though I thought it is plain clear – apparently it is not). I provided pretty detailed explanation of every feature I need along with examples from different websites that use these features right now. I also included executive summary. Sure enough some fast readers read executive summary and didn’t read the explanations. I got bunch of questions I already answered in the original document I sent. Again it mean a disrespect to my work and project. I felt that people just want to get the project as fast as possible without making sure that they are actually right people for the job. All of those guys – gone.
• Send formal proposal - if you expect me to send you a detailed feature by feature request and schemes of the pages, be kind enough to elaborate on your quote as well. Some people answered with once sentence ” You project will cost $12,000 and will take around 60 days. We can iron details as move along. Looking forward to getting started on your project.” I am sorry that just won’t cut it. I need to know what features take the longest time, your maintenance suggestions and what can be done better. All one liners – gone.
• Don’t quote too low – some people quoted me way bellow average like $1500 dollars. This make me suspicious – too good to be true. If everywhere else it costs $5000 and I get it for $4000 that is a deal, if I get for $1000 – it is a scam.
  
• Don’t slam down the competition – I don’t want to hear why other guys are bad. I want to hear why you are good. Concentrate on yourself and what value you bring to me.
• Do what you tell me you will – if you tell a client that you will send an email by the end of today – do it. Don’t send it after 3 days without even apologies – gone.

I am glad to say that 3 businesses passed all my picky tests and moved up to the next level of competition. My next step in weeding out who is gone it is to look more carefully on the previous work done and their expertise. I am not just going to look on their portfolio, but also to contact their previous clients and see if they would recommend them as suppliers. I will then look on who is “getting it” my vision I meant and with whom I would like to work together for at least all of the next year.

So here it is, I am picky – but I apply  same standards to my suppliers that I apply to my own business.

p.s. I am going to also look on a local level and compare the cost savings
p.p.s. my next post will explain exactly on how long it will take to make the website and what features are the most time consuming

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and these series are just summarizing what I with my limited knowledge understood about creating and operating a media corporation in Ontario Canada. If you are interested in incorporating I suggest you to seek  professional help.

I mentioned on Monday that one of the first steps for me is incorporating. My reasons for creating a corporation are dead simple: limited liability, lower tax rate (very important in Canada and Ontario) and ability to raise capital. In Canada you can incorporate either under provincial ($338-$360) or federal law ($200-$250).Here is a nice table on federal vs provincial corporations.

I decided to incorporate under Federal law in order to be able to operate all over Canada and most importantly to eliminate a possibility of someone using my company’s name in another province. The downside of incorporating Federally is more stringent process for the name approval and you still have to register a corporation in every province it is engaged in business and to receive the permit and licenses.

Corporation needs a unique name or can be assigned a number. I obviously want to have a corporation with a name, so my process is a bit more complicated. The name needs to be unique, in English or French, representative of the business and not be very similar to competitors. You need to check the availability of the name and submit with incorporation papers by using NUANS® name search system ($20 per search) you can also use a third party for a fee that would make sure that your name has a chance to be approved. Furthermore, since people in Quebec like to do things differently than all Canada they are using different naming system called CIDREQ. While submitting CIDREQ report is not mandatory for incorporating it is your responsibility to check if your name is available in that province. Especially if you would like to do any business in Montreal.


My registered office for the corporatin will be my house in Vaughan, Ontario for now. So what else will I need to legally operate a media corporation in Ontario (assuming I am not building my own office):

1) Since advertising space is a taxable good I would need to obtain a Vendor Permit (RST) which will enable me to collect sales tax.  The application for a vendor permit is free.
2) Master Business License (MBL) – which is basically just a registration of the business in Ontario. As everything else registration of the business can be performed online and costs around $60.
3) Business Number (BN) – is a number from Canada Revenue Agency. You will receive the number when you will go through the federal incorporation.


It took me awhile to understand the process and what licenses do I need. The next post in these series will about me actually writting Articles of Incorporation and going ahead with the process. Obviously, my first step is finding the name. Which is not easy!

I will keep you posted on the name I chose. Questions? Comments? Did I get something wrong? Let me know!

I read TechCrunch all the time on monday they posted about a new startup Movies Networks Incrporated. The service provides High Definition movies via internet to users. The post discusses thechical differences from it’s major competitors Brightcove and Maven. I think the general feel of the post and the comments is that High definition on demand is the way of the future.

I totally agree, however here is my problem: what are we going to do in Toronto with hight defenition videos when both Rogers Wireless and Bell put caps of 60gb for internet traffic. I mean 60 gb should be enough for 15 movies – assuming you don’t do anything else online that month online. The same goes for everything else : online applications like Google Docs or online back up services eat your traffic. Really, looks like everything is moving these days online and what do we do here in Toronto? We limit the internet usage.

Is it just me or are we going backwards? Leave a comment if you agree that 60 gb for a new era of internet is just NOT enough.

mosenmori :

Does anyone know of a way to get around rogers’ bandwidth throttling for bittorrent?

2008-04-13 13:55:21

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chris24 :

Earlier in the week I used 56GB for this billing period (ISP bandwidth), now its down to 55.19GB. That’s Rogers for you.

2008-04-11 19:52:29

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mcgraths :

Not happy with the fact that Rogers just warned me that I’ve used 82% of my 95GB bandwidth this month.

2008-04-10 09:39:25

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tylermac :

Well, Rogers wants to limit the usage of my internet and Bell want to control bandwidth usage… Rock meet hard place.

2008-04-09 21:23:05

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RJToronto :

Personally, I have no issue with the $25 surcharge Rogers is putting on those of us who exceed our bandwidth each month.

2008-04-08 19:30:34

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clarkey :

@DougWalker Rogers had been intruding my browser with “You have reached 100% of your 60GB bandwidth limit for the month” so I turned off BT

2008-04-08 19:21:00

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DougWalker :

@clarkey yeah capping the bandwidth sucks, esp when you sign up for “unlimited”. I suspect Shaw will be hot on the heels of Rogers.

2008-04-08 19:19:31

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clarkey :

I was upset that my ISP Rogers was capping bandwidth. I thought it started immediately-turns out they won’t start til June. Bittorrent time!

2008-04-08 19:14:20

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Rajio :

Up early (for some reason). Analyzing the last 24h’s bandwidth trends graph. Noticing suspicious patterns. Up yours Ted Rogers.

2008-04-07 06:27:44

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stephenaevans :

There seems to be evidence that Rogers bandwidth reporting is inaccurate – anyone else seeing this? http://tinyurl.com/6b7rol

2008-04-05 11:32:03

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ashchristopher :

@spaetzel I pay less than I would with Bell or Rogers and I get unlimited bandwidth per month.also have the option of 200G on Peer1.

2008-04-03 09:53:39

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raian :

Wow – Rogers implemented a bandwidth cap! Those fuckers.

2008-04-01 20:57:59

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zvisus :

thinking of trying to resell my bandwidth now that rogers has placed a transfer cap on downloads

2008-04-01 14:33:14

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davidcubed :

More on Rogers – Better than what lower speed people will pay. Allowed Bandwidth on lower accounts range from 2GB to 60GB.

2008-04-01 13:17:08

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davidcubed :

Rogers Reported bandwidth usage: Nov – 127GB, Dec – 160GB, Jan – 132GB. Though they are upgrading my speed to 10mbps. Grr @ Rogers.

2008-04-01 13:14:36

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bfortner :

Rogers: Broadband Fees to Rise with Bandwidth Use. New rates will charge $5 per gig when user goes over quota. http://tinyurl.com/yo7cpq

2008-04-01 12:01:31

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