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December 2011Evan's December Comment
Posted in Evan's Commentary
This past November I had the distinct privilege to participate in a fascinating trip to Israel sponsored by the Canadian Technion Society.
The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is Israel’s leading technical university, sort of a Middle Eastern MIT, and is located on a leafy hilltop overlooking the city of Haifa in Northern Israel. The school has 13,000 students studying in 18 faculties that include disciplines such as aerospace engineering, computer science, and biotechnology and food engineering. The Technion student population represents a diverse cross-section of Israeli society and includes a large number of Israeli Arabs as well as international students from over 30 countries. Almost 20% of Technion students are pursuing…
November 2011Evan’s October Commentary
Posted in Evan's Commentary
The delay in the decision regarding the building of the Keystone XL pipeline got me thinking about Canada’s tech sector. I know it sounds like a stretch, but hear me out...
July 2011Hey, You, Get Off Of My (Music) Cloud!
Posted in Evan's Commentary
I’m a pretty big music fan. I have been to more concerts than I can possibly count. I will travel great distances to see my favourite bands perform on stage. I have been to music festivals where I slept in tents for several days in order to take in as much music as possible. I have gigabytes upon gigabytes of music on my hard drive, all organized so meticulously that anyone who views it immediately concludes that I have some form of OCD. If I notice even the smallest inconsistency in the way my music appears on my iPod I must immediately correct it.
Yet I find myself strangely put off by all of the plans being announced these days about connecting more people to the “cloud” and improving their ability to upload and access their digital content from it, in particular their music collections. This is despite the fact that...
May 2011Confusing Tech Acquisitions
Posted in Evan's Commentary
Despite some high profile technology companies going public recently or planning to do so in the near future, most of the action these days continues to be in the form of mergers and acquisitions. Strategic M&A is the primary means by which large and mid-sized tech players grow their businesses and product lines, not to mention the most common method by which tech entrepreneurs can exit their ventures or take them to the next level.
This has become the new normal, due largely to the rapid pace of technological development and adoption as well as the disappearance of the public markets as a financing vehicle for early, pre-profitability companies since the bursting of the internet bubble over ten years ago. As someone who works at an investment bank focused on tech sector M&A, this is of course an ideal scenario. But once in a while I am left scratching my head as I read the news regarding
April 2011eBay and GSI Commerce: Delivering the Goods
Posted in Evan's Commentary
One of the tech sector transactions that took place over the past few weeks that really got me thinking was the acquisition of GSI Commerce by eBay. Yes, the sale price of $2.4 billion got my attention – when you work at a firm like Q1 Capital that focuses on M&A you tend to notice things like that - but it also provides an interesting example of what it takes to…
March 2011Valuation Déjà Vu
Posted in Evan's Commentary
With all of the talk about ever-increasing tech company valuations these days, I am reminded of something I experienced during the first tech bubble.
It was back in late 1999, just a few months before the Nasdaq hit its all-time high, and I was in my third year of the BBA program at Schulich. I was out late one night with a friend of mine and he told me that his brother, a chef at one of the top restaurants in Toronto, was just getting off work so we decided to go meet him. I had been there a few times before and enjoyed the chance to see the kitchen and behind-the-scenes operations, especially since this was before the constant stream of television shows about restaurants made those scenes commonplace.
While we waited for my friend’s brother to finish up, the two of us spent a few minutes talking with some of the busboys and dishwashers in the alley behind the restaurant. It being the height of the internet frenzy, the conversation immediately turned to the markets and I was asked by a few people in the group if I had any good stock tips. When I told them that…
February 2011Evan’s Sappy Comment for January
Posted in Evan's Commentary
On February 9 I attended a fantastic event at the MaRS Discovery District featuring Minister Glenn Murray, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, who promoted the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE), a group of 14 innovation centres located throughout the province, including MaRS itself. Several of these centres were represented, including those located at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, and the Ontario College of Art & Design. These are tremendously important and impressive organizations, a fact that was made apparent to all of those in attendance by the innovative start-ups that were on display, most of which have been developed or incubated within these innovation centres.
What is it that made this event stand out among all of the other events I have attended recently? As I said...
January 2011Facebook, Groupon, and Tech Bubble 2.0
Posted in Evan's Commentary
We ended 2010 and began 2011 with
two pieces of news that provided some useful insight into the current state of
the technology sector. The first was
Google’s $6 billion offer for Groupon, which was ultimately spurned, and the
second was a $500 million investment in Facebook in exchange for a 1% equity
stake.
Evan's Year-End Comment
Posted in Evan's Commentary
Over the past several months I have received a lot of feedback from some of our loyal readers regarding the tone of our newsletter. I am always happy to hear that people are reading Q-News, that they appreciate the time and effort we put forth to collect and disseminate information regarding the deals taking place within the Canadian technology community, and that they find this information useful. But lately our readers are telling me that they wished Mike’s monthly commentary wasn’t always so depressing to read, so I thought it might be time for me to chime in with my own thoughts...
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