Alternative top 5 ways in which Twitter will change the world

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on June 20th, 2009

Here are my alternative top 5 ways in which I think Twitter will change the world:

1) People will have advanced warning as to which of their new friends are going to end up irritating the hell out of them.

2) People will no longer applaud something by clapping, they will drum their fingers as if on an imaginary keyboard. (credit for this one goes to Liz Strauss at Jeff Pulver’s #140conf).

3) With everyone looking down at screens all the time, humans will begin to recognize each other by the unique hair growth patterns around the crown of the head.
top of head

4) The size of the average human thumb will shrink by 5% per generation until it is just slightly bigger than a letter on the keyboard of an iphone.
Thumbs

5) People who don’t have a mobile phone will also learn how to recognize words that have been shortened for convenience by leaving out the vowels.

Do you think I’m off the mark?

Yes ? Well

“FCK Y”

;-)

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No Comments

Grassroots Soccer

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on June 11th, 2009

I was recently introduced to a great bunch of guys who are using soccer as a tool to drive home AIDS awareness and prevention programs in Africa and the Caribbean. Grassroots Soccer’s programs use footballers as role models, and leverage the popularity of soccer in order to engage hard to reach young people.

There curriculum is based on the Social Learning Theory and combines three powerful principles of education:

Kids learn best from people they respect. Role models have a unique power to influence young minds. Young people listen to and emulate their heroes. Grassroot Soccer uses professional players and other role models as HIV educators and spokespeople.

Learning is not a spectator sport. Adolescents retain knowledge best when they are active participants in the learning process, teaching others what they themselves have learned. Grassroot Soccer graduates are trained to become peer educators and advocates in their communities.

It takes a village. Role models can change what young people think about, but lifelong learning requires lifelong community support. Grassroot Soccer fosters community involvement through youth outreach, long-term partnerships and special events like graduation ceremonies for graduates.

With the World Cup coming up in South Africa next year, Grassroots Soccer is looking to raise the awareness of their activities so check out there website and see how you can help.

No Comments

Seedcamp Mentoring

Posted by john in Seedcamp, Tech Stars, Y Combinator, startup on April 28th, 2009

I spent some time last week in London (UK) where I had the opportunity to spend a day at Seedcamp and get involved in mentoring some of Europe’s up and coming web and wireless businesses.

There were 20 companies and about 80 mentors !

Mentors were split into groups of eight and each group spent about 30 mins each with 8 of the 20 companies. The feedback on the event from the mentors and the entrepreneurs was really positive and I personally can’t wait to do it again.

Seedcamp runs a number of mini-Seedcamps in 6 European cities and then hosts "the full monty" once a year (to date this has been held in London).This is structually different to the other "feed capital" programs and may work well in Canada.

Interestingly the type of mentors invited were very broad. Of course there were investors and experienced entrepreneurs, but there were also a number of people from industry and some recent grads from the Seedcamp program. I think that this only adds support to the feedback that comes from all the feed capital programs, showing that knowledge transfer between smart founders plays as much a role as knowledge gained from mentors / advisors.

I’ve now been to a Seedcamp event, a Y-Combinator event and Alan MacIntosh (one of MSU’s other Partners) has also been involved in Launch Box Digital. I can honestly say that the raw quality of entrepreneurs and ideas that we see in Montreal (and this also applies to the limited number of entrepreneurs I’ve met in other parts of Canada) are as good as anywhere else; but our entrepreneurs must continually compete and co-operate in order to push themselves harder (ie smarter).

Whenever possible MSU tries to get the Founders of its portfolio companies to get together and engage in some co-opetition. We will continue to do more of this and we are now also looking to find ways in which we can get other funded and "to-be-funded" entrepreneurs in Canada involved in these sessions.

Look out for some upcoming MSU out-reach events!

1 Comment

What have you leveraged today ?

Posted by john in Ideas Dept, Question on August 13th, 2008

It’s rare that we come a cross a revolutionary idea these days. Most of the ideas we see are part of the ongoing evolution of internet based products and services.

Ev.o.lu.tion – A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.

The evolutionary process employs significant leverage by building on what has gone before. Similarly ,we find that the most promising internet businesses are those that are most able to leverage what already exists today to give them a leap start towards tomorrow.

So one of the recent questions that we like to ask is " What exisiting products, services or infrastructure are you going to be able to leverage that will have a significant impact on your ability to out maneuver your competitors?".

The development frameworks (Ruby, Jango etc.) are an obvious start but that won’t give you an edge over anyone else – it just keeps you level. What have you worked out that no-one else has ?

Remember that whilst the idea is important, the most successful start-up’s are the ones that out-execute the others.

No Comments

Keep it simple !

Posted by john in Ideas Dept on July 18th, 2008

We come across many interesting ideas for products and/or businesses but more often than not it requires a lot of digging around to actually to find that gem of an idea.

Maybe that digging is part of the value an investor in start-up’s is expected to add, but as an entrepreneur it pays if you can explain your offering to an investor in a VERY simple manner.

Either it needs to make sense straight away, or you need to explain that it won’t make sense and explain why (simply!).

1 Comment