#boris wertz

[mayo615]

Why The Biggest Tech Companies Are Not In Canada

Why The Biggest Tech Companies Are Not In Canada

Mayo0615 Reblog from July 22, 2013

It dawned on me that my blog post from July 2013, still has particular relevance to the current situation in Canada. I discuss the longer term structural issues confronting Canadian entrepreneurs and Canadian venture capital. Boris Wertz, founder of Vancouver’s Version One Ventures is also crucial to this discussion. When I first arrived in Canada, I learned…

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[mayo615]

Canadian Startup Case Study Underscores Canada's VC Challenges

Canadian Startup Case Study Underscores Canada’s VC Challenges

UPDATE: It is worth noting that this 2012 case study on a company in British Columbia, Mobile Data International, and its CEO Barclay Isherwood, attracted the ire of followers of Werner Erhard, prominent San Francisco New Age cult leader, with similarities to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.  It is a lens into New Age cults at that time.  In the same way that Scientology reacts to attacks…

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[mayo615]

Why The Biggest Tech Companies Are Not In Canada

Why The Biggest Tech Companies Are Not In Canada

Mayo0615 Reblog from July 22, 2013

It dawned on me that my blog post from July 2013, still has particular relevance to the current situation in Canada. I discuss the longer term structural issues confronting Canadian entrepreneurs and Canadian venture capital. When I first arrived in Canada, I learned quickly that the Vancouver startup ecosystem was nothing like what I knew from Silicon Valley.…

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[tapstreammobilepodcast]

TMP Episode 10: Boris Wertz, Founding Partner @ Version One Ventures

The valley is the valley and will always will be the valley… in this cycle.

[imadeit-davidjanes]

Creating entirely new categories? - it'll be interesting to see if they'll be able to recognize companies that are actually doing it.

"Our investment strategy is simple: we’re looking for the best teams who solve big problems in a unique way,” said Wertz. “It’s not necessarily enough to make something better, faster, or cheaper. We want to support entrepreneurs who are disrupting big categories or aiming to create entirely new ones.”

[imadeit-davidjanes]

According to award winning Canadian superangel Boris Wertz, there are only two ways to scale a startup to hit the $100 million threshold: your business either has a high life time value per user, or your business has a high viral co-efficient. Let's take a look at these two paths to success.

As Boris puts it, "the exact definition of a 'high' user LTV depends on the specific vertical, so it’s typically better to analyze the ratio between Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and the Life Time Value of the customer." In his experience, having an LTV that’s three to four times greater than CAC makes a business (and potential investment) interesting.

[persimmonlions]

So an investor in Wattpad just joined one of the most influential venture capital firms in Silicon Valley (which is cofounded by one of the co-creators of Netscape).

This is the apex of the internet, everyone.

[kaler]

Boris Wertz (@bwertz) :

Narrow Focus = Better Products

Reach a Category-Leading Position Faster

Better Customer Acquisition Metrics

Expansion Into Long Tail

These are pretty much my thoughts on building a SaaS business, too.  Build a horizontal platform with an API.  Bootstrap the platform by building narrow, vertical Apps on top of it.