I got a number of emails re this, each relating a different story from Rogers. Sounds like they're taking their cues on pricing consistency ...
Andrew Ross just passed on the fact that the Free and Open Source Software Learning Centre will be putting on an open source business breakfast on the 8th of July. The event runs from 8:30 a.m to 10:00 a.m and will cost $10 for anyone wanting to meet members of the business, government and academic fields in a comfortable breakfast atmosphere.
For more information, visit open source breakfast page on the FOSSLC website.
By Will Armstrong
“Social Media Marketing” is a workshop hosted by the OCRI e2 Program which runs on Friday June 26th . The session will be delivered by session leaders Natasha D’Souza, and Rick Radko, and our very own Scott Lake, of ThinkSM.
To register go to www.ocri.ca/e2plus . For more information contact Shelley Davidson, e2 Program Coordinator, at theedge@ocri.ca .
The workshop runs from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm on June 26th , and includes a lunch service – It is no charge for e2 Alumni, and a special (subsidized) price of $195 for others interested in applying Social Media Marketing to create business growth.
By Aydin MirzaeePosted by Shane McLean. Hi all. I recently posted this on my blog and thought it might be of interest to the StartupOttawa readers:
If you are part of a growing business that requires a source of outside funding, chances are that you will at some point have to review a “term sheet”. What is a term sheet? Basically it is a high level summary of the terms on which someone is willing to invest in or lend money to your business. In this post I am going to discuss financing term sheets only. There are other circumstances in which you may be on the receiving end of a term sheet — a sale of your company, for example — but those will be left to be discussed in future posts.
Financing term sheets can vary widely in their terms and structure, but there are generally a few areas that are common (or should be common) to most:
Who: Who is the party (or parties) who will be investing, lending etc.?
What: What are they receiving in return for their investment? This might be preferred shares, common shares (if you’re lucky), convertible debt, non-convertible debt or a host of other possibilities. To give two examples, with high tech startups you’re often talking about preferred shares and with publicly listed companies you are often going to dealing with common shares and maybe warrants. If your term sheet contemplates preferred shares, debt or other complex securities the term sheet will also include a fairly detailed breakdown of the terms of those shares, debt etc.
How Much: How much $ will the investor(s) be putting up?
Price: The term sheet has to include a price per share (or a price per whatever you’re selling). With private companies this is typically the investor’s best guess (or best offer) of the value of your company. This could be stated in the form of a “pre-money valuation” which attaches a value to the company before the investment. If you know the number of shares you have outstanding prior to the investment you can use this number to determine the value per share. That’s what the investor hopes to pay. Less frequently, the price might also be expressed as a post-money valuation. Just take the aggregate amount to be invested away from this number to reach the “pre-money valuation” and do the math as described above to determine a per share price. Sometimes the investor will do the math for you and just give a per share price in the term sheet. If you are dealing with a public company the price is probably based on the most recent market price, a discount to the market price or some average of the market price over a recent period of time. The price or valuation can also tell you how much of the company is being purchased for the aggregate investment amount. For example, if your pre money valuation is $2,000,000 and the investor is investing $2,000,000 the investor will own 1/2 of the equity in the company post investment.
Timing: When do the parties hope to close the financing?
Other Closing Deliverables/Conditions: There will typically be a laundry list of other deliverables and conditions to the closing possibly including: a shareholder agreement, board of director seats, delivery of certain information, amendment to the articles of incorporation etc. This is where the investor will tell you what, if any, controls they expect to have over the operation of the business on a post closing basis.
Expenses: Typically the term sheet will describe who is responsible for the expenses incurred by the investor and the company as part of the transaction. Here’s a hint: It’s almost always the company. As a company, if you are stuck paying the fees your goal should be to negotiate a cap on investor legal fees.
Exclusivity: Sometimes there will be a commitment to exclusivity — i.e. once you sign the term sheet you won’t talk to other potential investors for some defined period of time.
With the help of good advisers you can often negotiate some of the key points on a term sheet so if you are handed a term sheet you do not necessary have to sign it in the form presented. If you want to see an example of a financing term sheet you can check out this term sheet generator developed by US law firm Wilson Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati. There are a few web based term sheet generators out there similar to this one and they generally get a lot of buzz. They are definitely neat, but I often wonder whether they have any real life benefit to companies aside from preparing you for the types of things you will see in a term sheet that is handed to you. Generally speaking the investor is going to present the term sheet to you in the investor’s “standard” form and a sophisticated investor is unlikely to accept or generate a term sheet from an Internet based term sheet generator.
Once everyone is happy with the term sheet, it is signed and the lawyers get to work preparing the definitive documentation to reflect the high level terms agreed on.
Posted by Shane McLean
On June 26th, e² is hosting a Social Media Marketing Course at OCRI. Here are the details…
By engaging online communities, Social media marketing can create exposure, opportunity, leads and sales in worldwide markets. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. There are many ways to engage and connect, and it’s easier than you think! Join us for this e2 Plus where we will demystify social media marketing through lively discussions and interactive exercises.
You will learn:
Take aways:
This e2 Plus workshop is part of the e2 Program, and is offered to e2 Alumni at no additional cost.
Date: June 26th, 2009
Times: 8:00 am - 3:00 pm
Place: OCRI, 2625 Queensview Dr., Suite 200, Ottawa
Cost: $195 (e2 Alumni: FREE)
Class size is limited (max. 14 participants) – So register now!
By Scott Lake
Not exactly startup-related, but too good to keep to myself.
If you bought an iPhone 3G from Rogers in 2008, they will now sell you a shiny new 16GB 3GS for $125 ($199 - $50 Apple rebate - $25 “customer appreciation” credit if you ask for it), and you can keep your original iPhone. I just called them to confirm, and it’s legit.
Also, there’s now a very simple hack available for tethering a laptop to an iPhone without jailbreaking it:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.iphone-notes.de/%3Fp%3D5969
Works great, but technically not exactly kosher with the Rogers terms of service, so use at your own risk.
By Nick DesbaratsKelly Rusk has been on TV a lot this past week. Here she is on CBC talking about what its like making a living in social media.
Then not to be outdone CTV covered her at the Zone5 Twitter panel. Luckily Kelly also got me in that video as well.
By Scott Lake
Here is some great news from Overlay.TV. Early this week they released Overlay.TV for Retail. Overlay.TV for Retail is an all-in-one eCommerce video solution with all the tools a business needs to provide its customers with an interactive shopping experience. Essentially this new platform integrates into existing websites with custom branded players so users can click and shop directly form your inventory catalog right from the video.
By the way OTV also recently re-designed the Overlay website and it looks stunningly beautiful. Faisal and the OTV crew did an amazing job.
By Scott LakeLuke Clare from Gowlings just told me about an interesting event that is being held by his firm to teach startups about the basics of law as it relates to them. The information is below (register here: http://www.gowlings.com/e-form/event.asp?eventId=166):
(click on the picture for a bigger view)
Hey all, had the good fortune of participating earlier this week in the University of Waterloo’s Web 3.0 thinktank, which was a very interesting experience. While the conference was the subject of some uncertain tweetering of the entrepreneurial class that attended the event (Velocity’s Jesse Rodgers has a pretty good summary of the vibe), on the whole everyone was pretty pumped by the seeds of integrating various creative and entrepreneurial instincts with a similar wealth creation imperative. BTW, Jesse has the best blog banner in the country: “Whoyoucallingajesse.com”.
I share a wariness of the big, national initiative bias that attend such events. As I posited in my post-conference discussions with Waterloo’s new digital media commercialization director, Glenn Smith, it may be that such “big” and “national” concepts are much like Einstein’s general theory of relativity: they work and are fundamental in examining big things, but they don’t work quite as well in the quantum world in which us startup folk generally reside. The trick is in finding the key drivers and friction points, understanding the math behind success, and having faith in that the appropriate inputs will generate the appropriate results, without too heavy a hand on the strategic direction. Oh yeah, and it’s probably key that we understand there is no finish line to this stuff. Maybe that is the string theory that will piece it all together.
Highlights and takeaways: in my view, probably the best is Andrew Fischer from Wesley Clover’s echoing of Terry Matthews’ rant that the government has to find ways to be better testers, users, validate-rs, and ultimately buyers of new technologies. This isn’t a “Buy Canadian” thang. It’s merely the notion that we would divorce our policy makers from the risk-management nightmare of being mentioned in Sheila Fraser’s annual audit report, and empower them to try new and sample new technologies. My idea for your feedback: what about a gov’t app store, a place where pre-blessed technologies could be sampled and tested by the public service and its consultant network? If you see me around, give me your feedback on that, I think it would be a great tool for companies to access a decent crowd-sourcing network of users in an enterprise setting. And it is probably easier to implement than you might think.
If you want to weigh in on anything Waterloo Web 3.0, you can access the discussion group here. This is supposed to be a Province-wide and national initiative, so probably the only way to pull some of the benefits back to Ottawa is to get involved somehow.
And finally, since I am ever the English major (this thing was held in Stratford after all), I leave you a slightly treated text from the last act of MacBeth from which my post title hails, which is actually a pretty decent high level take on the whole thing. I hope to inspire your use of the word “exeunt” in casual conversation (Scotts and Aydin, just an FYI, it is not an anatomical reference).
“Enter Stratford Rotary complex with drum and colours, Kevin Tuer, Ken Coates, Dalton McGuinty, and company, and their entrepreneurial Army, with boughs.
Kevin: Now, near enough; your leavy screens and national visions throw down,
And show like those budding geniuses you are.
You, worthy uncle Tom (Jenkins from Open Text),
Shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son Mike (Lazaridis from RIM),
Lead our first battle; worthy McGuinty and we
Shall take upon’s what else remains to do,
According to our order.
Ken. Fare you well.
Do we but find the multinational media tyrant’s development and distribution power to-night,
Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.
MacGuinty. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath and big financial commitments,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood, death and (hopefully) some kick-ass digital media startups.
Exeunt.”
By James SmithMy friends at Canada 2020 are hosting a great event on Thursday, June 11th when they are brining in Paul Lavoie, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Taxi, Canada’s premiere advertising company, and a widely sought after thought leader.
Lavoie argues that Brand Canada is not just about selling moose, mountains and maple syrup, but also about attracting talent, investments, entrepreneurs, students, tourists, international sporting and cultural events, R&D, and the latest technology available.
You can read more about Paul Lavoie in this article which recently appeared in Marketing Magazine. Or you can see him on CPAC here.
Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009 from 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (ET)
Location: Chateau Laurier, (Laurier Room)
By Scott Lake
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