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Transcript

Think Big

SAEED AMIDI: I joined a boot camp which visited five cities but I only joined them in Toronto and Ottawa and in each stop I looked at about 20 startups. I could say because I look at a lot of startups here in Silicon Valley. The quality of the entrepreneur was great, the quality of the technology was great - they were all from very good schools, very depth technology so I think Canada has a lot to offer by providing great startups which could change our world. I had a few you know different points of view compared to what is happening here versus what I saw in Canada. One of them is how big the entrepreneurs dream. Somehow in Canada they were happy to build the company, reach ten million revenues, have two to three million profit which could be a great lifestyle but it's generally that is not a VC fundable company even though their idea could maybe grow to a hundred million or 500 million but their vision was smaller but the reason why I'm saying they should dream bigger is that if they want to attract US venture money you know because the US venture money, even if you can show that you would make ten times your investment in your projection they think it's not good enough so they would like to see a projection even though it might be hard to reach, even though it might be you know almost like a dream but they want to see the company to become the next Google or the next Yahoo or at least reach critical mass as a global technology provider and again I think that is what has happened in Silicon Valley. You have seen startups like Larry and Sergei straight from Stanford build hundred billion-dollar companies in less than ten years so people believe if they execute well they can build a similar company so I think that's what needs to be promoted in. We used to put in half a million to a million dollars about 18 months ago at two to 2.5 million prix. For sure the valuation has come down 30, 40 per cent so know when you want to do the seed funding the valuation are between one to one and a half million. That is for a company that you may have two or three smart founders, you may have a little pilot project but you don't have a product yet so the valuation has come down a little, the seed capital, there is less available, the VCs are a little more difficult in funding companies but still there is tremendous amount of funding available for good ideas, good teams that want to work hard and executive so the bar has gone a little higher and evaluation has come a little lower but there is still tremendous amount of money available. I mean the idea is you have to dream big, you have to go after a big market then you have to execute at the small scale - conserve cash, get a product demo up and running, do your first launch and then keep tweaking it but I think if you don't dream big the product or the, it's not VC fundable.