Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin conglomerate argues that inexperience can be an asset for start-ups

Richard Branson, is the founder and CEO of Virgin group. This firm is involved in many sectors that are almost mature and in oligopolies, but with good success: i.e. airlines, cola, insurance, lottery, etc.

For Branson: "Virgin's history shows that a lack of experience does not have to be a liability -- it can be an asset.... It is something you should play up when you discuss your ideas with prospective investors, partners and employees, rather than directing the conversation toward your other strengths.... Explain that it frees you and your team to follow your vision for the industry."

For more information: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220789


How to Avoid Common Startup Mistakes according to Richard Branson.
-Stay on Target
-Be Realistic About Costs
-Hire the People You Need, Not the People You Like
-Know When to Say Goodbye

For more information aee: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220743


Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence.com
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Business start-ups tips from top entrepreneurs

Here are some business tips from top entrepreneurs. Source: Entrepreneur.com

Spanx Inventor and Founder Sara Blakely

"Don't be afraid to fail. My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. "

Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore

"You need space to try things and create. It takes a long time to recalibrate if you let people pull at you all the time. A lot of stress comes from reacting to stuff. You have to keep a certain guard [up], if you're a creative person. "

Gurbaksh Chahal, Serial Entrepreneur and RadiumOne Founder

"Many [business] people focus on what is static, black and white. Yet great algorithms can be rewritten. A business process can be defined better. A business model can be copied. But the speed of execution is dynamic within you and can never be copied. When you have an idea, figure out the pieces you need quickly, go to market, believe in it, and continue to iterate."

Marcia Kilgore, Founder of Bliss Spa, Soap and Glory and FitFlop

"Get everything in writing, especially with business partners. When you're starting out, things can be quite friendly and exciting, but people's memory can change due to money. Obviously, better to have a lawyer do it, but at least have some written recollection that you are partners, who's responsible for what, and how much money each of you put in."

Jim Koch, Founder of Boston Beer Co. and Samuel Adams Boston Lager

"You have a viable business only if your product is either better or cheaper than the alternatives. If it's not one or the other, you might make some money at first, but it's not a sustainable business."

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh

"Be true to yourself. If you follow that principle, a lot of decisions are actually pretty easy."

Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr and Hunch

"Pick a good market. The idea for approaching that market may change, but find a meaty problem to solve. You can try to attack it a bunch of different ways. Don't be too narrow."

Meetup Co-Founder Scott Heiferman

"Something worth doing might take a while, so really flesh out the potential of the business and be honest about whether it's worth doing. If it's not a $100 million company in five years, maybe it'll take 10 or 15 years. If you're doing something that has a universal, timeless need, then you need to think of the company in a timeless way."

DailyCandy Founder Dany Levy

"Don't spend money until you have money. When we used to put candy in our media kits, I would go to the Duane Reade store the day after Easter because the candy was on sale. Of course, it's important to spend on certain things in the beginning. You need good servers but you don't need Aeron desk chairs."

Go Daddy Founder Bob Parsons

"What I learned from Rockefeller that's off-the-hook important is: You need to know exactly where you stand in a business at all times. Measure everything, because everything that is measured and watched improves."

Barbara Corcoran, Corcoran Group Founder, Shark Tank Judge and Investor

"The joy is in the getting there. The beginning years of starting your business, the camaraderie when you're in the pit together, are the best years of your life. So rather than being so focused on when you get big and powerful, if you can just get the juice out of that… don't miss it."

HomeAway Co-Founder Brian Sharples

"A good idea is not enough. Business aren't just about ideas, businesses are about execution. Don't get too enamored with your own idea. Other people are going to have that same idea or something similar. You have to build a better team to execute it. You're only human, nobody has all the skills required to make a business work. [Ask yourself] what people are required to make it work for this idea, for this business?"

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Business interview with the CEO of Hootsuite: Ryan Holmes

For a recent tech event, the CEO of Hootsuite made an interesting business interview. Hootsuite is one of the most promising Canadian tech start-ups. It is involved in the field of social media. You can check the questions at the following link and see the whole interview. He has many good comments on the future of social media and he offers some start-ups tips.

http://www.vokle.com/events/54317

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Path an emerging competitor to Facebook has a valuation around $200M-$250M

Path is the simple and private way to share life with close friends & family. Founded by Dave Morin, previously Co-Inventor of Platform and Connect at Facebook with Shawn Fanning, creator of Napster, and Dustin Mierau co-creator of Macster.

Britney Spears has just created a Path account, which is sort of counterintuitive as the mobile social network only limits you to 150 friends. Briteny has more than 14 million followers on Twitter. Rumor also has it that Path is raising a Series B round of funding, wanting to bring in between $25 million to $30 million at a $250 million valuation. Existing investors and Khosla and Greylock have expressed interest amidst an environment that is producing many high-profile Series B raises.

The company has previously raised a total of $11.2 million in angel and Series A venture capital funding from Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, SV Angel, Crunchfund and others. It recently experienced unprecedented scale, due to a successful pivot according to Techcrunch. Thus, Path has grows daily users 30x since relaunch. Google wanted to buy the firm for $100M.

Path relaunched in November, changing course from photo-sharing to everything sharing, in a beautifully wrapped package with emphasis on simplicity. Many have likened the product to a better designed Facebook for your phone, which is fair and probably a compliment. But everything isn’t coming up roses, and the product still has kinks it needs to iron out.

Users are sharing more things on the new Path in a day then they had on the old Path in a year — at a rate of 12 moments per second. The company is seeing 30x the number of daily active users, going from 10K to 300K in two and a half weeks. Rumor has it that it’s seeing 100k downloads a day.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomnAnalysis

New article on Seeking Alpha: BCE relies again on a convergence strategy

Our new article is available on Seeking Alpha: "BCE relies again on a convergence strategy".

http://seekingalpha.com/article/440281-bce-relies-again-on-a-convergence-strategy

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

The majority of the world patents comes from just 3 infocom industries

In a recent Thomson Reuters report, it appears that 52% of the world patents comes from just 3 infocom (ICT) industries: Computers & peripherals (30%), telecommunications (13%) and semiconductors (12%).

The report offers a breakdown of the best innovators in term of patent applications by industry and by region.

Source: http://img.en25.com/Web/ThomsonReutersScience/StateofInnovation2011.pdf

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
Louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

A list of the new features of iPad 3

Last week Apple announced a new iPad, whose name is simply “the new iPad,” not the iPad 3 or iPad HD. The third-generation iPad launches on March 16 and has the same pricing as previous versions: $499 for a 16 GB model, $599 for 32 GB and $699 for 64 GB, plus an extra $130 for 4G.

here is a list of the new features of the new iPad by PCWorld:

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/slideshow/apples-new-ipad/

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @infocomAnalysis

LES TECHNOLOGIES DE L’INFORMATION ET DES COMMUNICATIONS (TIC) à Montréal

Le Grand Montréal s’affirme comme haut lieu d’innovation et de recherche dans le secteur
des TIC. Le secteur en un clin d’œil 120000 emplois au sein de plus de 5000 entreprises privées
Près de 70% des emplois de l’industrie des TIC au Québec sont concentrés dans le Grand Montréal. Une grappe riche et diversifiée, dotée d’une masse critique d’entreprises réparties dans cinq sous-secteurs : fabrication, logiciels, services informatiques, services de télécommunications, multimédia. Le sous-secteur du multimédia, qui représente environ 10% des emplois de la grappe, est celui dont la croissance est la plus rapide, en raison de l’ascension fulgurante du créneau du jeu vidéo. Quelques chefs de file mondiaux parmi tous ceux qui ont choisi le Grand Montréal: Autodesk, Bell Canada, CGI, Compuware, Dassault Systèmes, DMR/Fujitsu, Eidos, Electronic Arts, Ericsson, Funcom, GFI, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Positron, SAP, SR Telecom, Telus, THQ, Ubisoft, Vidéotron, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Montréal International et TechnoMontréal viennent de publier le «Profil de l'industrie des technologies de l'information et des communications du Grand Montréal» qui dresse le portrait de l'industrie des TIC dans la métropole et dans ses régions avoisinantes. En 2009, les revenus d'exploitation des entreprises spécialisées en TIC de la région auraient frôlé les 25 milliards de dollars. Le produit intérieur brut (PIB) du secteur des TIC dans le Montréal métropolitain a atteint 9 milliards de dollars en 2010.

Ce PIB, qui équivaudrait à 70 % du produit intérieur brut du secteur des TIC au Québec en 2010, serait supérieur de 25 % au PIB qui avait été produit par le secteur du Grand Montréal en 2002. D'ailleurs, on affirme que la croissance du PIB du secteur des TIC aurait été deux fois plus rapide que celle de l'économie en général dans le Grand Montréal durant la même période.

Le PIB du secteur des TIC dans le Grand Montréal n'aurait reculé que de 0,01 % entre 2008 et 2009, soit au moment de la dernière crise économique. La croissance du secteur des TIC des dernières années serait attribuable en grande partie à la progression de sous-secteurs du multimédia et de la prestation de services dans plusieurs secteurs économique, comme la santé et les finances.

Revenus

Les revenus du sous-secteur de la fabrication ont pris moins d’importance avec une proportion de 15 % en 2009 des revenus de secteur des TIC dans le Grand Montréal qu'en 2006, alors que les revenus du sous-secteur de la fabrication équivalaient à 20 % de l'ensemble des revenus du secteur des TIC.

En 2009, les revenus du secteur des TIC auraient été produits à 24 % par le sous-secteur des services en TI (19 % en 2006), à 32 % par le sous-secteur des services de télécommunications (30 % en 2006 et à 32 % par le sous-secteur des grossistes et réparateurs (32 % en 2006).
52 % des quelque 120 000 emplois spécialisés auraient été exécutés dans le sous-secteur des services en TI en 2012. 20 % des emplois auraient été associés au sous-secteur des services de télécommunications, 15 % au sous-secteur de la fabrication et 13 % au sous-secteur des grossistes et réparateurs.

Le profil indique que le secteur des TIC du Grand Montréal Amérique du Nord entre 2008 et 2010, avec une augmentation de 4 %. Seule la région de New York aurait connu la deuxième plus importante croissance du nombre d'emplois en aurait devancé celle Montréal à cet égard durant la même période, avec une croissance de 7 %.

Par ailleurs, le profil souligne que plus de 30 000 emplois du secteur des TIC dans le Grand Montréal seraient associés à environ 400 établissements qui sont des filiales d'entreprises étrangères. Ainsi, environ 25 % des emplois dans le secteur seraient associés à des entreprises dont le siège social est situé hors du Québec et du Canada.

Exportations et dépenses en R-D

Le profil indique que les exportations de produits et services en TIC d'entreprises du Grand Montréal auraient eu une valeur de 2,4 milliards de dollars en 2010, soit 60 % de la valeur de près de 4 milliards des exportations du secteur dans l'ensemble du Québec.

Également, on indique que les dépenses en recherche et développement des entreprises établies dans l'agglomération montréalaise auraient été supérieures à 800 millions de dollars en 2009, ce qui correspondrait à plus de 85 % des dépenses de ce genre qui auraient été réalisées par des entreprises du secteur au Québec durant la même période.

Le document produit par Montréal International et TechnoMontréal contient également des tableaux de classement des entreprises les plus importantes dans les divers sous-secteurs des TIC, des données sur les inscriptions et les diplômés dans les programmes de formation ainsi qu'une présentation des organismes de recherche, des associations et des regroupements spécialisés qui oeuvrent dans la région.

Le profil contient aussi des données sur les coûts d'exploitation d'une entreprise et une présentation des mesures et des incitatifs en fiscalité qui sont applicables dans le Grand Montréal.

Le « Profil de l'industrie des technologies de l'information et des communications du Grand Montréal » a été produit par Montréal International et TechnoMontréal dans le but d'inciter des organisations à s'implanter dans la région du Grand Montréal. D'ailleurs, une version anglaise du document sera distribuée par les deux organismes dans le cadre de leurs activités de démarchage. Le profil a été réalisé au moyen de données récentes qui proviennent de diverses sources et de propos qui ont été recueillis lors d'entrevues.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter : @InfocomAnalysis

Instagram has 9 employees and a valuation around $500M

Instagram, the popular photo sharing app for iPhone, is about to raise $40 million, which should give a valuation of $500 million to the firm. That's for a company that at last count had only 9 employees and hasn't really started trying to make money yet. Instagram has seen spectacular growth, getting more than 15 million users in less than two years, and was adding them at a pace of a million every couple of weeks toward the end of last year.

Founder Kevin Systrom told BI that he hasn't decided exactly how Instagram will make money, but he's confident that there's an opportunity.

"The question is, is there an opportunity beyond group buying, search advertising, to make a whole lot of revenue on the iPhone, on Android. I believe the answer is yes, that's what we're going after".

Instagram has never spent a dime on marketing. It appears that Facebook has tried to buy Instagram with no success so far.

For more information and an interview with the founder see:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-27-year-old-built-one-of-the-fastest-growing-apps-ever-without-spending-a-dime-on-marketing-2011-11#ixzz1oe9eq8EX

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-has-only-a-handful-of-employees-but-may-soon-be-valued-at-500-million-2012-3?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=10%20Things%20In%20Tech%20You%20Need%20To%20Know&utm_campaign=Post%20Blast%20%28sai%29%3A%2010%20Things%20You%20Need%20To%20Know%20This%20Morning#ixzz1oe8mPQww

The potential of m-commerce (infographic)

Here is the potential of m-commerce in a Mashable infographic.

http://mashable.com/2012/03/07/mobile-commerce-outlook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis