Archive for February, 2007

Montreal Wifi Network

Posted by john in Ideas Dept on February 23rd, 2007

I have been following the municipal wifi market over the last year following an investment I made in RoamAD, a wireless infrastructure vendor.

Quebec, as with Canada in general, has a strong wireless history (congratulations Mr. Sirois !) and it is still being driven today by VC’s such as Acta Wireless, Trio Capital and Garage Canada along with the “usual suspects” of Caisse de Depot and FTQ.

Montreal now has some serious players in the Wimax market, including SR Telecom, Maravedis and Wavesat; but Why, I ask, is nothing happening in the area of wifi? I know I’m going to sound very much like a conspiracy theorist but is this a coincidence ? The guys at Ils Sans Fils have doon a great job at getting hotspots throughout Montreal, as have Eye-In Wireless, but nothing of any scale has even been mooted in Montreal.

I have done some work on a wholsesale/retail business model for a Wireless ISP (along the lines of the UK’s Cloud and think that something along those lines could work in Canada (It does for Wimax!!), but one of the issues I’ve been tackling recently is the network roll out and in particular site acquisition.

Utility providers and the various “cities” of Montreal have infrastructure that might be usable but it has also been suggested to me that other companies may have citywide infrastructure that may assist in getting the site acquisition rolling quickly. Is anyone willing to stand up to the evil forces of Montreal’s Wimax community ?

(I don’t really think there is a conspiracy, or that the Wimax community is evil – sometime you’ve just got to, and I quote, “weave the pot of soup!”)

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Penny Stocks

Posted by john in Finance Dept on February 23rd, 2007

I am new to the world of penny stocks but have been trying to educate myself on it for a few reasons.

Firstly, I invested in a company that was not a penny stock when it IPO’ed but soon became one !! (fortunately I “doubled down” and am now back in the black); secondly, one friend and one business acquaintance have recently taken companies public, one on the Bulletin Board (BB) and one via a pink sheet reverse take-over; thirdly, my interest in mortages and securitisation have lead me to a BB listed sub-prime mortgage lender that I wanted to investigate further prior to seeing whether they were worth investing any of my time or money.

My current feeling is that back door listings, penny stocks are used by companies that can’t get a serious investor interested – so they try to get money by selling a story to un-educated investors who won’t ask difficult questions. I’ve heard stories about having stock to acquire companies, but shares are very expensive currency if you really do have a solid business.

I would love to be convinced that I’m wrong. Any takers?

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A Members Club in Montreal

Posted by john in Ideas Dept, Uncategorized on February 23rd, 2007

Another project I’ve been working on is a Private Members club. I had looked into this type of place when I was in Japan and actually had some meetings in London with Nick Jones, the owner of Soho House, a members club in London and a members hotel in New York, to discuss setting one up in Tokyo.

I warn any of my tech friends that its not aiming at you .. its much more focused on the arts and media crowd. I am not talking about something like the stiff upper lip, jacket and tie type places they already have in Montreal; nor am I talking about something like 357c, Daniel Langlois’ place , that is stunning but rather formal, expensive and unappealing to a younger crowd (I confess that I haven’t been in I’ve just heard rumours). Perhaps, something more akin to Daniel’s, Gault Hotel, if I’m looking for a Montreal reference, but with a number of changes to improve the ambience of the establishment – more relaxed and more comfortable.

There is a concept site that has been developed to introduce interested parties to the concept. It’s password protected, so let me know if you are interested in knowing more and I’ll set you up with access.

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Mortgages & Securitisation

Posted by john in Finance Dept, Ideas Dept, Uncategorized on February 23rd, 2007

I am a big fan of securitisation. It’s only been around since the 70′s but annually there is now a 3-4 trillion dollar market in securitised products. The major securitisations deal with things like residential mortgages and credit card receivables, but there have been some much more exotic securitisations such as David Bowies record royalties and a number of soccer clubs tickets receivables.
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Unorganisation

Posted by john in Admin Dept on February 23rd, 2007

In the pre-blog days a good friend of mine, Simon Buckingham, the founder and CEO of Mobile Streams, used to have a site called unorg.net (or maybe unorg.com). It espoused on his philosophy of how an organisation did not necessarily have to be “organised” and that there was an alternative structure for a company … one in which the company lacks standard structure and operates as an “unorganisation” (Buck, sorry if I didn’t get that quite right.)

I can’t link to the site because it was taken down prior to the Mobile Streams IPO. I guess it didn’t gel with the message in the prospectus!

A Montreal Start Up isn’t planning on going IPO just yet and as such it will have much of the structure of an Unorganisation for the next few months!

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