EQ Journal

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Looking Back to Look Forward

To find out if your startup is really going to be of any real use, take a few moments to perform an Einsteinian thought experiment. Ask: If my product or service had been around ever since Jan 27, 1756 (Mozart’s DOB), what would it be worth today? Imagine YouTube, for a moment, having been around [...]

How did Ross Video Experience 21 Consecutive Years of Growth?

(Portions of this article originally appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, March 30, 2012: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444.) The sky is falling, the sky is… Many observers of Ottawa’s tech scene seem to think it’s the end of Silicon Valley North but try telling that to David Ross, 90% owner of Ross Video. The other 10% is owned by [...]

Internet Pioneer Morphs Business Model to Include Kiosk Stores

(Portions of this article originally appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, March 5, 2012: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444.) Rob Hall was into the Internet before there was one. In high school in the 1980s, he dabbled in web technology and was ready for the Internet revolution circa the early 1990s. I met him when he was a young man [...]

Bootstrapping Your Own ETA Business

(Executive Travel Apartments Are Not Subject to RTA, Residential Tenancy Agreement) (Reducing Capital Requirements for Startups) A former student recently introduced me a new form of Bootstrap Capital, or at least, one I hadn’t considered before. It seems obvious to me now but I think it takes some creativity to apply it to any business [...]

Raising Capital by ‘Issuing’ Script

(Plus Tapping Sponsors/Co-Branders/Strategic Investors and Partners for Free Capital) There’s nothing new about raising money by issuing script. The Reynolds Brothers ran a sawmill (established in 1870 by Orson L. Reynolds) in the Adirondacks that in addition to central logging and operating their mill also ran a company store and developed other sources of income [...]

Grasshoppers, Squirrels and Ants in Grassel

Occupy Grassel Movement Picking up Steam/Government Planning Action The majority of the population of Grassel is made up of Grasshoppers, Squirrels and Ants. Mensa Ants account for 1% of the population. These are the groups that populate the World of Grassel, viz: Grassel World, 100 Rows x 100 Columns 1. Grasshoppers are low wage earners [...]

Loose Button’s Business Model

[The biz model discussed below was developed by Loose Button Founders Ray Cao and Aditya Shah. What they are building based on it is truly an amazing story. It's a very well thought out model and demonstrates a lot of the principles of GTBMR, Get the Biz Model Right. After review, we added two new [...]

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 [...]

Negative Cost Selling a Mobile App

Put Leverage in Your Biz Model What’s the most common reason a municipality or non-profit turns down a project? “We don’t have the budget for that!” There was a time not too long ago (circa post WWII) when municipalities thought of things like roads, sewers, power lines and water mains as investments; today, they think [...]

Should Everyone on the Planet Have a Personal Business for Life?

The Road to Financial Security and Independence Foreword Have you ever wondered whether entrepreneurs are born or whether they can be trained? What are the ten key steps in creating and running a successful start-up? What is a Personal Business for Life and how can you get one? How do you start a business without [...]

Valuing Your Business?

Selling Your Business? Introduction Many entrepreneurs are very good at building their businesses. They know how to grow a business often with limited access to financing. They know how to persevere in difficult circumstances and how to push the right buttons in their industry to make their business profitable. However, many business owners fail to [...]

Why Real Estate is a Unique Asset Class

Real estate has some attributes that are unique to this asset class. Here are ten of them: 1. You can rent real estate to third parties. (Try that with gold or stocks assuming you are not using exotic financial instruments.) 2. By renting to a third party you are benefiting from a ‘Wealth Effect’; every [...]