Author Archives: Mark Evans
The Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Principle
We live in a fast-paced, time-strapped, multi-tasking world. Most Web users are lazy; they want instant gratification with minimal effort. For startups, it is a challenging landscape because they may only get a single, short-lived shot to attract a potential … Continue reading
Why Signup Processes Must be Dead Simple
For startups, it’s challenging to capture the spotlight. There’s so much competition, lots of noise and a marketplace chock-a-block with consumers who are fickle, time-strapped and not really paying attention. It means if a startup is successful in actually getting … Continue reading
Canada’s Hot New VC: The Federal Government
While Canada’s venture capital sector is showing signs of improvement, it is a long way from being robust, let alone healthy. So it was encouraging to see the Conservatives commit $500-million to support venture capital initiatives. The support consists of … Continue reading
This Week in Canadian Startups
It was a busy week in the Canadian startup landscape, highlighted by a high-profile investment and changes to Canada’s highly regarded R&D credit regime. If you have feedback or want me to add an item, leave a comment or send … Continue reading
Pinterest: The What, Why and How
It’s increasingly difficult to ignore Pinterest these days. Heck, Barack Obama has jumped on the bandwagon, although he seems to like just about anything social. After being asked to put together a presentation on Pinterest, my take is there’s really interesting … Continue reading
OMERS’ Derek Smyth on the $20M HootSuite Stake
After OMERS Ventures announced its $20-million investment in HootSuite, I did a quick interview with managing director Derek Smyth. Why the investment in HootSuite? We have a general investment hypothesis focused on pursuing enterprise companies fully integrated to the social … Continue reading
