EQ Journal

Category

Can You Bootstrap a Chain of Specialized, Cash-Only Restaurants?

I recently had a chance to ask one of the founders of Toronto-based vegan ‘fast food’ restaurant The Hogtown Vegan (http://www.facebook.com/TheHogtownVegan), Madeleine Foote, six questions about her startup. There are some terrific entrepreneurial lessons here—like KISS (Keep It Simple), be authentic, have a sense of humour about yourself, deliver a lot of value to customers, [...]

Finding Bootstrap Capital Where You Least Expect It

(How one company made $800,000 from their below market office lease) Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs work their magic every time they launch a new company/product or service with little or no funding. They’re amazingly good at finding niche opportunities and exploiting them to raise cash. Here’s one I learned from Rod Bryden who was on the [...]

How Do I Beat The Competition

Professor Carlisle Adams at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Engineering challenged me to train his second year class on how they can build world class enterprises in a tough competitive world and then sustain them. In an hour and a half no less. Case studies I use include: Rick Hunter’s Mont Cascade and Pro [...]

Institute of Entrepreneurs

Introduction Exploriem.org is launching the Institute of Entrepreneurs (IOE) this year. Why? To bring advanced research, education and mentoring to student entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from self-capitalized and forward-looking enterprises across Canada and around the world. IOE provides access to research, education and a network of high achievers that you just can’t get anywhere else. The [...]

Learn from Failure

T.C. Transitus Communications Inc. Case Study Introduction Unfortunately it is often true you can learn more from failure than you can from success. This was true of the Starflyer and it was true of Transitus as well. Just as the Starflyer was a can’t-miss idea of mine from the 1980s, Transitus was a can’t-miss idea [...]

25 Steps to Entrepreneurial Success

I am often asked: “What are the keys to success?” I have developed some ideas on this over the years and, like any list in this area, mine is incomplete. Worse than this, many of these ideas for success are contradictory. Things that I learned from my Dad, Professor O. J. Firestone, like “Never take [...]

Case Study: Digicel’s Decision to Enter Haiti Cell Phone Market

(Undergrad Mid Term Exam) I reproduce below a case study we did on Digicel’s decision to enter the cell phone market in Haiti. It was a controversial decision by Digicel CEO Denis O’Brien to go into Haiti, by far the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Digicel already had 11 million customers in 32 other [...]

What is Your Email Address Book Worth?

The short answer is: ‘I don’t know.’ But recently published figures (Bloomberg Businessweek, Oct. 2, 2011) give us a clue. LivingSocial recently offered $20 worth of goods (via their coupon service) that can be redeemed at Whole Foods for $10. But wait, they’re paying an estimated $18 to $20 for each coupon* so they’re taking [...]

Rent Curves

How Developers can Make More Money and Urban Design can Improve by Exploiting Vertical Rent Curves It has always amazed me that many developers, those veritable profit maximizers, don’t understand that neo-urbanist principles* can improve their returns while at the same time making them better city-builders and I suppose better corporate citizens. For example, most [...]

Ownership Distorts Value

Ownership of a thing increases its value in the mind of an owner. I see this all the time in real estate but it applies in other sectors as well. Thinking of selling your enterprise? When people are coming to this decision, they begin to think of all the work they did to create it [...]

Product Managers and Decoy Pricing

Manpacks and the Tipping Point

(This article first appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444) Manpacks Co-Founder, Andrew Draper, recently visited the Telfer School of Management to give a lecture in our continuing Magic from a Hat series. Anyone who starts a company with the following tagline (and a favicon that uses a pair of men’s briefs) is bound to be [...]