Often (too often), I am approached by people who think I make apps and want me to give them a price to make theirs. Most people outside the technology industry figure that these are fairly trivial efforts, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re right,...
It’s been at least 10 years since I’ve cobbled together a few lines of code, or INIT 6’d a server, so I feel as though I can practically qualify as a non-technical CEO in a technology startup. It is for this reason that I can empathize with the plight of the...
This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post. For those clamouring for a return of the awesome Martin Mars water bomber(s) to cure B.C.’s current forest fire apocalypse, you may very well see it bombing fires here again.. but there are a few really big...
In online marketing, the idea that a consumer will see your advertisement and then immediately click through and become a customer has long been known to be fantasy. As a rule of thumb, advertising experts believe that it takes an average of five “impressions” of your...
It’s 10 a.m. on a wintery Wednesday and I am standing, backstage, in the Dragons’ Den studios at the CBC’s towering Toronto broadcast centre. A camera intrudes into my personal space and an associate producer is prodding me with questions: Am I ready? Am I worried?...
The movie “Fight Club” offers more lessons than you’d think about being a successful entrepreneur. Like the book it is based on, the film harnesses the fantastical angst of Generation X, confronting the hypocrisy and injustice in society with ironic (and mostly...
Entrepreneurs that are successful as sole proprietors are rare. Most often, success is the product of collaboration. Recently, I caught myself reading a New York Post article, as I very infrequently do, about the rise and fall of Lady Gaga, who received a tepid...
The ancient parable of the fox and the hedgehog has come into increasing view in popular culture lately. And while its origins are somewhat ambiguous, the allegory has been applied to entrepreneurs, scientists, philosophers, playwrights, business leaders, economists,...
The following is my letter to Jack Harris, the NDP’s Defence Critic, regarding what I fear is the pending confirmation of the purchase of the F-35 Lightning II by Canada’s government. This after I recently read a staggeringly overstated defense of the...
The breakup of the Bell System, and the shifting tides in our approach to the regulation of communications in the US, was likely the single-most important precursor to the growth of the Consumer Internet. Without these, consumers would never have been able to...
