Entries for the Pitch4Profit contest by Canadian Business and Profit Magazine continue to grow. For those looking for some help to get their video pitches completed, the CBC camera crew will be at the Toronto Venture Group breakfast event this Wednesday February 14th to tape pitches and to help submit them to the site.
Contest details can be found here and more information about the TVG event can be found here.
Good luck to all participants!
Canadian Business and Profit Magazine have launched a Pitch contest for all aspiring entrepreneurs in Canada. You can find out more information here: www.canadianbusiness.com/pitch4profit
Just submit your 90 second audio or video elevator pitch and let the judges and audience vote for the best ideas. The contest closes February 15, 2007.
For those seeking less than $1M - the 3 best pitches get a spot on Dragons' Den season two on CBC.
For those seeking more than $1M - the 3 best pitches get to participate in the Great Canadian Pitch Off at this year's Canadian Venture Forum.
Get your submissions in early.
One of the keys to success for any startup is surrounding yourself with smart people. b5media has a great founding team in Jeremy, Shai, Duncan and Darren. Today this team gets even stronger with the addition of Mark Evans. Mark's announcement explains his excitement about the opportunity while Rick Segal discusses the value of operational experience. We are also pleased to announce that Shel Israel will be working closely with the company as well. The momentum continues!
Today, Brightspark is pleased to
announce our investment in b5media, a global new media network, along with our
partners at J.L. Albright Venture Partners. As we have been watching the
evolution of the media space, we have seen the blogging world evolve from a
niche media to a mainstream voice. This has resulted in truly unique ways to
build a significant audience base by delivering compelling content. Our
interest has been to see early evidence that this type of network could be
extended into the mainstream. B5media has successfully built such a network.
With over 150 blogs on a wide
variety of subjects ranging from entertainment and news to technology and
sports, b5media delivers content written by passionate people from all over the
world. We believe that such a network will prove to be a very valuable channel
for advertisers looking to reach key demographics. With more and more ad
dollars moving to online audiences, networks like b5media will play a very
powerful role. Many industry observers predicted that the blogging world was
simply a fad and would surely die a quick death. To the contrary, blogs have
only continued to gain visibility and reach. We have only seen the very beginnings of what b5media can accomplish. With our great investor partner and a strong management team, we are very excited about the possibiities. To learn more, please visit www.b5media.com
Last week, I had a chance to attend the Banff Venture Forum in Banff,
Alberta. This conference gives young technology companies the
opportunity to present to early-stage investors. The conference was
well attended by Angel investor groups, university commercialization
groups, as well as venture capital firms. I also sat on a panel
presentation which discussed commercialization strategies for
innovations coming out of university labs. Many feel that there is not
enough early-stage private funding in the market to support the
commercialization of university research. Very often, universities
spend significant provincial and federal government grants on years
worth of research to develop new technologies. This research is funded
based on its academic merit as determined by the University and
government professionals. As this research "graduates" from the university lab and begins its search for outside investment, it far too
frequently fails to gain private investor support. Some investors
complain that the innovations are too niche focused, while others argue
that they see little market value or customer demand for the proposed
solutions. Regardless of the issue, the fact remains that universities
are struggling with the commercialization process.
Rather than starting more government programs or funding more reports
to assess this issue, perhaps we need a radical new way to jump start
this commercialization process. My suggestion would be to have universities partner with private investors much earlier in their
process to determine which research to fund. Venture investors have a
strong understanding about industry dynamics and market needs. They
also have the ability to support emerging technologies with their
venture dollars. Why not partner these investors with the university
groups to priortize university research focus? Wouldn't it be better
to understand which research is most relevant to market needs and which
innovations will best be able to get external financing support?
Perhaps government research dollars could be spent answering the
investor's questions and concerns regarding commercialization
viability? It seems to me that this would be a much more market-focused
approach to funding technology research. This way, Investors would
also get a first chance to fund new and exciting innovations. By
involving more partners and priortitizing their research dollars,
perhaps universities can help build greater momentum for their
innovations.
I recently had a chance to conduct a Podcast with Sean Wise from Wise Mentor Capital. Sean was interested to learn more about Brightspark's seed financing model and our experience with early stage ventures. We also talked about my own adventures in the startup world including valuable lessons learned. You can find the Podcast here.
