Startup Genome – 2013 Report
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Subordinated Debt (aka “sub-debt” or mezzanine financing)
WHAT IT IS according to Wikipedia: In finance, subordinated debt (also known as subordinated loan, subordinated bond, subordinated debenture or junior debt) is debt which ranks after other debts should a company fall in to liquidation or bankruptcy. Such debt is referred to as ‘subordinate’, because the debt providers (the lenders) have subordinate status in relationship to the normal debt. A typical example for […]
Creating Customer Value
What is Value Anyway? (Why Creating Customer Value is at the Heart of Building a Business) The following is Part II of a multi-part series on value, segmentation and pricing by guest contributor Steven Forth, Partner at Rocket Builders and eFund Member. Read Part I here. The founder of modern management, Peter Drucker, famously said […]
Popular Boomerang eMail App Founder Advises Against VC Funding
It’s time to stop chasing VC funds already Alex Moore co-founder of Baydin, Inc – developer of the popular Boomerang email app – advises against wasting time chasing VC funding. For his company – and probably for most other early stage companies that is sound advice. Moore and his wife and co-founder Aye Moah, chose […]
Are Tech CEOs too Focused on the Exit?
A 2014 survey by PwC indicates that most Canadian tech CEOs are focused on an early exit by way of acquisition. While PwC concludes that more companies should plan to grow their companies, for my part I am pleased to see that CEOs are becoming more realistic. The fact that only 7% believe that an […]
Towards a National Securities Regulator
The status quo for securities regulation in Canada is really a disaster. Globally we are a tiny market with a population of only about 35 million. In spite of this we have 13 separate securities administrators. Compare this to the US with a single national securities regulator and a population of 314 million. On July […]
The lower the CEO salary, the more likely a startup is to succeed
According to The Next Web the founders of successful startups pay themselves very modest wages. The data comes from a new tool called COMPASS from the people behind the STARTUP GENOME PROJECT. It can be set up to pull in data automatically from the likes of Google Analytics, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Quickbooks, Mixpanel, PayPal and Stripe, and it also accepts directly input data […]
Convertible Debt or Convertible Equity for Early Stage Companies
An article by Leena Rao – a senior editor at TechCrunch.com – suggests that while convertible debt may be getting popular with early stage investors, it can cause a lot of problems. This is especially true where Series A funding doesn’t come along before the notes become due – putting start ups in default. This […]
Evaluating BC’s Venture Capital Programs
In June of 2010 Thomas Hellman (Sauder School of Business – UBC) and Paul Schure (Department of Economics – Uvic) prepared a report evaluating BC’s Venture Capital Program for the BC Ministry of Small Business, Technology and Economic Development. Executive Summary The objective of this study is to evaluate the economic impact of the venture […]
Where Startup Funding Really Comes From – a Canadian Perspective
A recent article in Entrepreneur Magazine gave us a reality check on startup funding in the US. Prominent VCs and angel investors may dominate the headlines with their big sticker investments, but personal loans and credit – along with investments from friends and family – make up the lion’s share of funding for startups in the U.S. […]