The Importance of Co-working

Co-working has become a popular trend in Calgary over the past few years and from my first hand experience at AcceleratorYYC, it’s easy to see why this trend is here to stay.

While being your own boss and having the flexibility to work from home has its fair share of advantages, one of the biggest disadvantages is the isolation that comes with running a home based business. And let’s face it; working at your local coffee shop gets old pretty fast.

For anyone who’s hit a wall with working from home, take it from me; paying a small fee for a desk at a co-working space is well worth the investment.

Instead of relying on yourself to be a jack-of-all-trades, you suddenly have an entire entrepreneurial community within arm’s length. This is not only helpful for finding out about other resources available, this is also an amazing chance to network, collaborate and problem solve with others who are going through the same process as you or who might have expertise in something you require.

I've seen entrepreneurs meet co-founders, raise over a million from investors they met at our events, find qualified service providers, and have a great time doing it. I even met two of my best friends at an event -  a couple years later they stood up for me at my wedding!!

Beyond free coffee and the good company, don’t forget about the incredible opportunity that comes in the form of word of mouth advertising. Entrepreneurs love to support and help out their community, so if you have a service to offer, chances are good that your co-workers will call on you or refer you to someone they know.

So next time you think about purchasing a fancy coffee from Starbucks, think twice and save that money for your desk at a co-working space. 

Reverse-Networking: Bring them to you

  So often I see crowds of people at "networking events". Have you ever noticed they're all looking in one direction?... Towards the stage.

Whether by subconscious genius or dumb luck, I came across the secret to networking early in my entrepreneurial life. Bring them to you. I began attending every meetup group in the city that remotely related to startups and tech. I would meet 2 or 3 solid connections (if I was feeling REALLY social), and 3 hours of my night/week was now in the bag "building my network". Bring them to you. I continued this for over a year, but as many entrepreneurs do, I wanted to create my own events. I hosted a launch party for my new office, started a couple meetups, and even hosted other people's events in our space. Bring them to you. This is when I gradually realized that I would not only meet multiples of 2-3 people in one night, people would also show up already knowing who I was, and sometimes even approaching me with a sense of predetermined acceptance that I was credible and potentially important for them to meet. Bring them to you.

Rather than reiterate this "tip" in another anecdote, or try to emphasize or explain another way, I think there is little else to explain. Either go to 100 events and make connections, or host your own and have hundreds of pre-qualified connections show up! Bring them to you.

Don't make resolutions, set goals.

Don't make resolutions, set goals. It may be semantics, as goals are just something you resolve to do, but it always seems that people's resolutions are generalized and flaky. 

Here's an example: What are some of your resolutions for the new year? 

Answer: Drink less, workout more, be happy, do good, work less, make more money, etc... etc... 

If they were goals? 

No alcohol for 90 days. Gain 10lbs of muscle, Squat 275lbs, run a marathon by August, journal 3 positive things from each day, do 2 random acts of kindness daily, have date night once a week, volunteer 100 hours for the year, donate min $1000 this year, leave work right at 5 everyday, track productivity for 3 months then ask for an 8% raise, invest 10% of my savings into a turnkey profitable business. 

With properly phrased goals that have quantifiable outcomes (and even better goals have smaller steps/goals within them that help you achieve the bigger one), your New Year's Resolutions can take on more meaning and substance. I've read many times that "successful people set lofty, yet attainable goals", and I would argue resolutions are the "poor man's" coefficient. 

Let's set goals and be successful this year so we can all be in better shape, happier, do more good, make more money, and change the world.

Happy New Year :)

- Pieter

Big and Small data through the internet of things.

The Internet has seen the power of analytics. From Google Analytics, to hundreds of companies building online analytics tools to capture, parse, correlate, and display data in ways that are useful for people and companies. Using this information intelligently can save people money, and make companies millions in the same breath.

The Internet of things is going to usher in a new era of data that has been proven and tested on the web. With the ability to not only capture detailed information about people’s online activity while sitting at a computer, but also on their personal handheld computer (smart phone), big data is about to get even bigger.

Projections say that by the year 2020, over 50 billion devices* will be connected to the Internet and connected devices will outnumber people 5 to 1. With so much information available that will have so much more context, the world is in for some incredible innovation and optimization through data science.

Imagine a person with a wearable fitness device, smartphone, heads-up display (like Google Glass), using low-powered bluetooth or a similar technology to communicate with other connected devices in their proximity, while using a touch screen kiosk, posting pictures with meta data to their social networks, and using an e-wallet to purchase goods. The amount of data that can be captured and analyzed intelligently is staggering.

Correlations between location, weather, heartrate, shopping patterns, traffic, state of the economy that second, day, month, year, age and gender of the individual, overall health, whether or not bieber is trending, the NHL finals are on, or a crisis jas broken out overseas, a blue advertisement with a female british accent, vs the same ad in green from an american male is shown on a Tuesday vs a Wednesday to a similar demographic in China vs Las Vegas… etc… etc…

To top it all off, machine learning, sophisticated algorithms, and automated A/B testing can be used to automagically iterate, capture, test, and optimize these interactions through any digital, or “IoT” medium, whether it’s digital signage, or a sensor in your electric car that can tell you which grocery store it is going to drive you to, to save money on your current grocery list, because organic bananas are out of season and whole foods is having a one day sale mentioned on social media and the lineups are shorter based on pedometer tracking, gps and bluetooth.

Website traffic will always be interesting, and especially important to things like e-Commerce, but until the day we all plug into an VR headset, get our nutrition intravenously, and never leave the house, the physical world will be our playground, and it about to get much, much more interesting for data scientists and disruptive technology entrepreneurs.

• Source: Cisco