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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wlheatmoon who wrote (43469)	1/15/1999 10:41:00 AM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

MKC: I love this kind of thinking and questioning. It is exactly why I love to prowl the junior tech arena. Wish I had some definitive answers to your main question, but I don't. I've been lucky enough to have been there at the extreme early stages of two sparkling tech take-offs, the most important of which was GPS which still dazzles me and still represents some good growth niches (you'll not be able to resist those in-car, coloured moving map displays). I also believe that there will be many potent new computer-driven applications that will come out of nowhere and take us all by storm, but none are currently displayed on my tiny radar as yet. Up here, our venture capital financing gets done primarily through the VSE and ASE, so we get to look at some juniors at extreme early stages. It's a lousy way to grow your early seedlings (garden analogies creeping in again) as it usually results in badly under-capitalized start-ups that don't need the pressure and that could additionally use the excellent nurturing that U.S. start-ups acquire from many of the U.S. venture capital firms. (I'd kill to see that industry as well established in Canada as it is in the U.S.). But it does allow one to root around in the tech outer edges. I'm not one of those who is disparaging about the VSE and other junior markets. I just accept the fact that many of their listed companies won't make it. While it's stating the obvious, companies with technology -driven barriers to entry get one's attention and should. What we all tend to be weak at is defining the actual or probable size of the market that the company or technology addresses. Technology, especially new technology dazzles. Unfortunately it has to sell to make money. Probably accounts for my interest in the views of sales folk. (g) Large companies often have superb R and D organizations, and do come up with many innovations, but it is those Wright brothers type garage-born technologies that excite me the most. Incidentally the dropping of the ball on emerging new technologies that later become big successes, occurs at every level. Big companies spend fortunes to develop new technologies only to sell them off for peanuts or let them languish until others steal the ideas about as frequently as small companies develop new technologies only to see them taken over by larger firms when the small guys go broke. One thing for sure; it is a ball just exploring this area, and one gets to meet class act people. Best, Earlie