A new voice in the blog wilderness

You must all be completely tired of this space by now….

So, with that in mind, let me recommend a new blog to follow. It’s called www.techdisruptions.com, written by venture capitalist Peter Carrescia. Peter has been based at VenGrowth as a technology principal investor for years, and recently helped the Opalis folks with a great exit via their acquisition by Microsoft (see prior post “LSIF funds see another win as Microsoft acquires Opalis” Dec 27-09).

I promise that Peter will never harp about you know what and you know who. A recent post, The case for focus, is the kind of commentary that you will come to expect:

I was reviewing a list of Canadian technology IPOs the other day. Post-bubble (2003), there have been 22 technology IPOs on the TSX. What struck me with the list was what most of the companies did. Fully 17 of the 22 companies (77%) would be classified as “communications-related” companies.

Also interesting was the performance of the companies post IPO. Now technology has had a difficult run over the last decade, and of the 22 companies that went public, only 7 were trading at values above their IPO price (as of a few weeks ago). But more interesting is that of those, 6 (or 86%) were communications-related. I guess the easy point to make here is that if you invest in Canadian technology IPOs, you better understand communications.

So why the concentration? Why were 77% of all IPO companies, and 86% of successful IPO companies communications-related? Well, it’s about focus. Canadian regulations and tariffs decades ago made our telecommunications carriers captive buyers of Canadian gear, the main beneficiary of which was Northern Telecom and its research arm Bell-Northern Research (BNR). Canadians, whether we knew it or not, were subsidizing a very focused communications innovation strategy with every Bell, AGT, BCTel etc bill that we paid.

And you know what? It worked.

The sooner that you 117,000 annual unique visitors all move on to other blogs such as Peter’s, the sooner I can get back to sleeping later than 5am each morning.

MRM