3twenty Solutions‘ Bryan McCrea, Channing McCorriston & Evan Willoughby gave a wonderful pitch of their business on CBC Dragons’ Den. I love interesting use of containers, and I am impressed with the 3twenty‘s business and its tagline of “durable, stackable, transportable modular structures – give new life to old shipping containers”. Seem like a wonderful business idea with some good potentials. As a business, new entrants to the market can probably copy and compete with them without much difficulties but I trust the entrepreneurs will work very hard to ensure a good return for themselves and their investors.
“The pitch Bryan McCrea, Channing McCorriston and Evan Willoughby first crossed paths with dragon and philanthropist Brett Wilson when they competed in and won the Idea Challenge, a competition at the University of Saskatchewan’s Wilson Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence in 2009. [...] They used their winnings of $30,000 to launch Saskatoonbased 3twenty Solutions. [...]
Mr. Wilson was on hand for the unveiling of the first container: “He walked in and said we should come on the show,” Mr. McCrea says. About a month before appearing on Dragons’ Den, 3twenty Solutions made its first two sales worth $70,000. The momentum was building, but they decided to take Mr. Wilson’s advice and enter the Den mainly to get a strategic partner.
“Many of our target clients watch the show. We knew if we could make our pitch on the Den we would be hitting the right market,” Mr. McCrea notes.“
To me, Snappy Socks‘ Corla Rokochy is one of those entrepreneurs that has the can-do spirit. And she is also very likeable. It was wonderful to see her receiving investment from the Dragons (I can’t remember for sure but I think from Arlene and Brett).
The socks look cute and the snap-on button is a great idea. If there is one thing I don’t like about the business, it is that anyone can attach a snap-on button to their socks. And if the idea/business become successful, there is nothing stopping other copycat businesses from anywhere (including China) from attaching snap-on buttons to their socks. Hopefully, the initial investment will have generated enough returns for Corla and the Dragons by then, and Corla will have created new products to sell.
Knowing I won’t have time in the next while to write a more detail article about Honibe, let me share with you what I’ve found so far. Here are links to Honibe’s Canadian trademark (TMA729391) and patent (CA 2649936) for interested readers. I had tried but was unable to find Honibe’s US patent filings (to me, US patent is important to have since US is a much bigger market than Canada). For those that are new to patents, one can learn a lot about about a business from its patents (in this case, Honibe’s patent).
* The openness in the discussions and directly from the source.
* The source can be quoted and linked directly.
* The exchanges between politicians and reporters/academics/bloggers are “fun” to watch.
What I don’t like
* Tweets in 140 characters or less may not be the best medium for debating complex issues.
* 140 characters or less = Soundbite and headline ready
Concluding thoughts
I like the openness in the debates and discussions. At some point, I like the ministers (and even prime ministers) to go one step further by add links to mini-blog entries to expand on some of their thoughts and positions.
FromIndustryMinisterTonyClement’stweetsyesterday, looks like the government has made up its mind to order the CRTC to start over on the issue (see also “CRTC must reverse internet usage ruling: Clement” [from CBC]). University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist made a point (emphasis added), “Given that there is no reason or obvious legal mechanism for the CRTC to withdraw its UBB opinions, this appears to confirm that the government will order the CRTC to start over on the issue.“
As a consumer and content creator, I think UBB is bad for Canada. I am interested to watch the exchanges/discussions between CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein and House of Commons industry committee members later this afternoon (4-5:30pm EST, Feb 3, 2011) (4:08pm EST update: LIVE feed in progress). If the government want the CRTC to start over, won’t the government/committee need to give some NEW directives to the CRTC?
P.P.S. On a personal note, four of my friends are trained “free market” economists and I am pretty sure it would be a lot of fun if we were to chat about this issue further.
The newly launched Art Project (powered by Google) is super cool and is a ton of fun for people to explore. I love it. Here is an insightful observation from WSJ (emphasis added),
“You might not think it’s possible to have a better art experience than going to an art gallery and looking at a piece of work in real life — but the folks at Google in conjunction with 17 of the world’s leading museums and galleries* have created a website that might just give you a more informative experience online than looking at the real thing.
Simply called “Art Project,” the website uses Google’s Street View technology and adapts it to give users 360-degree tours of the galleries involved in the project. While this is not terribly exciting, the real innovation in the project is the use of “gigapixel” resolution images that allow users to get a microscopic view of the paintings.
The level of detail offered up by up to 14 billion pixels is pretty jaw-dropping.“
Here are samples of the amazing details from three paintings,
As a non-painter and a technical geek, I need to remind myself that I shouldn’t focus too much in the details (the amazing 14 billion pixels) and missing the feeling from “seeing and experiencing” the bigger picture. The famous Voice of Fire, which I saw in Ottawa, comes to mind.
“FedEx has deployed its first all-electric delivery vehicles and will have 31 in service by the middle of this year. Early results confirm that the costs of operating and maintaining electric vehicles are significantly less than those for traditional internal-combustion-engine vehicles. In some cases we’ve achieved savings of 70% to 80%. As the price of batteries continues to fall, mostly due to scale production, the economics will start to make real sense from a total-cost-of-ownership perspective.
So we are making a start at FedEx, but it is not enough when it comes to the question of combating our nation’s dependence on oil. What we need to protect our nation is the environment to create in a few short years an entirely new transportation system with millions, and then tens of millions, of electric cars and trucks.”
YouTube is carrying Al Jazeera English and informing citizens from around the world of what is happening in Egypt LIVE. I wish the Egyptians well and a peaceful and orderly transition.
Posted by kempton 
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