Spokal is the first inbound marketing platform built for small business.  Spokal automates your content marketing, and makes it really easy to grow your audience.

Content marketing provides media-type content that customers want in exchange for permission to market a product or service to them.  This can include

• Blog posts
• Podcast recordings (.mp3s)
• White papers & downloadable guides
• Infographics
• Youtube videos that benefit customers and provide value

Thing is, at a core level (and I mean, right down to the code) you need to remain true to your core message, key words, identity and values.  Check out Spokal – its easy, and really helps you figure out what you’re all about!

Anyone can learn how to code, and there are tons of great resources to do so. As data becomes more and more open, the possibilities are really endless. And the resources available to all are many and free:

1. At Codecademy, you can take lessons on writing simple commands in JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Python and Ruby.
2. Stanford University’s Udacity is one of many sites that make college courses—including Introduction to Computer Science—available online for free. (See our post on free online courses for more ideas.)
3. If college courses seem a little slow, consider Code Racer, a “multi-player live coding game.” Newbies can learn to build a website using HTML and CSS, while the more experienced can test their adeptness at coding.
4. Through CoderDojo’s volunteer-led sessions, young people can learn to code, go on tours of tech companies and hear guest speakers. (Know how to code? You can set up your own CoderDojo!)
5. Code School offers online courses in a wide range of programming languages, design and web tools.
6. Similarly, Treehouse (the parent site of Code Racer) provides online video courses and exercises to help you learn technology skills.
7. Girls Who Code, geared specifically toward 13- to 17-year-old girls, pairs instruction and mentorship to “educate, inspire and equip” students to pursue their engineering and tech dreams. “Today, just 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, and less than 10% of venture capital-backed companies have female founders. Yet females use the internet 17% more than their male counterparts,” the website notes.
8. Through workshops for young girls of color, Black Girls Code aims to help address the “dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions,” founder Kimberly Bryant writes, and build “a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.”

Playerize

Playerize is the best monetization and user acquisition platform in gaming.

Profit from everyone who plays your game using the Playerize Offer Wall, and acquire new players from the Playerize worldwide network.

Playerize offers our customers the widest array of payment options in the industry, including credit cards, e-wallets, mobile, and more, aggregating coverage across hundreds of service providers across the world.

How it works: Using highly-accurate targeting, Playerize is able to present the most relevant and localized payment options based on the users’ location and purchasing behavior. This means that no matter where you have people playing your game, you can immediately show them relevant payment options that make it simple for them to pay.

Contracts as code

I have a faint recollection of Bodhi defending Keanu’s right to surf, even though he was a lawyer, in Point Break. (They should really remake that movie!)

I also faintly recall, in the early days of XML (ie. 2004), a few forward-looking lawyers suggesting in various blogs that standard contracts and provisions be ‘tagged’ for re-utilization, with visions of a more democratized, codeable contractual system emerging.  That didn’t get a lot of traction, but some legal cloud-services are beginning to emerge – some disruptive startups are making it easier to contract with others over the cloud.

I personally use a bunch of these services in my daily practice, and my clients love it!  Check out Contractual.ly, for example – an awesome web-service to negotiate, sign and manage contracts, all within your browser.  Awesome!  I can’t imagine life without it.  (I also like, and will often use, Docracy, a US-based Startup offering a competitive service).

I couldn’t cope without Dropbox and google docs (and forms!) in my daily practice, and often find this streamlines my ‘documents’ interaction with clients (and their counter parties), leaving us more time to discuss the important issues, like scaling their business online.

Because the only difference between a contract and code is scalability – In a contract we use if/thens between two parties, to govern their interaction over a period of time. Of course, the same is true in code, with the caveat that the interaction is re-usable an infinite number of times.

Clio is another web service focused on making legal services easier with cloud services.  A Canadian company from Vancouver that is just killing it, with 900% growth in the last few months!  I’ll keep you posted – I’m supposed to skype with @joshualenon sometime soon.

Of course there’s the mega-funded start-ups out of the US, like rocket lawyer (Raised over 43 Million in Series A thru D funding recently) and LegalZoom (120 Million IPO last year), but honestly I don’t use them.

The Canadian startup community is flourishing – practically bursting at the seams with talent and disruptive ideas. There are great tech ecosystems in many cities, and great government programs like SR&ED, IRAP, BDC Ventures and provincial programs aimed at streamlining investment. As well, Canadian startups have access to great mentors and advisors, capital, incentive programs, talent and other resources.

Delaware is also a great place to start a company. This can be for a number of reasons, including founders seeking an L-1 Visa, some US accelerators require a US Vehicle, and crowd-funding services (including Kickstarter, IndiGoGo, SecondMarket and AngelList) sometimes require it. Question is: Can Canadian founders (and Startup Visa applicants) take advantage of a cross-border structure in order to equally leverage awesome benefits on both sides of the border?

Answer: Yes. We call it the Delaware Straddle. We create sister companies on each side of the border (BC and Delaware). The Canadian company owns all IP, and we put in place exclusive IP License to the Delaware sister. The Canadian company is eligible for SR&ED credits, IRAP funding, BDC programs, and other federal and provincial-focused incentives.  The Delaware sister attracts US Startup programs and treatment, investment and other perks. Yes, there is some more complexity from a legal perspective, but we like to make it seamless to our clients. We create structures that get-out-of-your-way.

Quick Caution: If you use a US company for Canadian and US investors, you will need US securities law advice as well as Canadian securities law advice from day one. This annoyance plus the additional cost of having two sets of lawyers makes incorporating in the US less desirable for many Canadian start-ups. Also, you may have cross-border employment and tax issues to deal with and you will need tax and accounting advice to deal with those issues on an ongoing basis.

(Also note: Some Canadian startups prefer to use a Canadian vehicle through-and-through, and there are no restrictions (tax or otherwise) for US investors in a Canadian startup – in fact, it is a simple and effective approach for many Canadian entrepreneurs!)

Be in touch. We’d love to talk to you more about your cross-border requirements.

Even if you don’t yet agree with me on this point, this website is intended to be helpful to any entrepreneur that wants to build a valuable company. Once you have done that, you may choose to sell your company. Or you may wish to hold on to it, grow with it and manage it for decades. Either way, my suggestion herein is that you should have an Exit Plan in place at the outset (even if only to assess the value of your opportunity).
 

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This is Photoshop’s version of Lorem Ipsum. Proin gravida nibh vel velit auctor aliquet. Aenean sollicitudin, lorem quis bibendum auctor, nisi elit consequat ipsum, nec sagittis sem nibh id elit. Duis sed odio sit amet nibh vulputate cursus a sit amet mauris.

This is Photoshop’s version of Lorem Ipsum. Proin gravida nibh vel velit auctor aliquet. Aenean sollicitudin, lorem quis bibendum auctor, nisi elit consequat ipsum, nec sagittis sem nibh id elit. Duis sed odio sit amet nibh vulputate cursus a sit amet mauris.