Jacoline Loewen: The Pitch Larry Wasser Wednesday

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May 18, 2011

BNN The Pitch Gives Thumbs Up to 500px and Pinpoint Social

Smart entrepreneurs with high tech products on BNN The Pitch today. I was on with the warm Rick Nathan from Kensington and the more I spend time with Rick, the more I see why his company is Canada's leading private equity firm.
View BNN The Pitch.
Here were a few of my notes I scribbled about the two exciting presenters and maybe you can decide what you think. The panel was quite split in their views:
500px Inc.

The overall look and feel of the site is nicely set up, the interface is user-friendly and the professional quality of product (photos) is what sets it apart from the current competition. They’re playing off the online community concept (similar to all the social networks out there). Technically, the platform in not very advanced at this time, and there’s significant growth opportunity in the site’s capability to purchase, sell and share photos via established social networks.

What is the growth plan for getting more exposure and populate the site with paying customers?

There’s also opportunity to earn additional revenue through membership sales and advertising to complementary trades, such as make-up artists, modeling agencies, production companies, interior design professionals.

Another important growth market (not yet being explored by 500px) is the mobile market.

It has potential to become THE destination for professional photographers to market their products and services, but it’s currently lacking scope, and the founders need to dedicate to a well-structured marketing program to build a brand – the product (photos) will follow.

Pinpoint Social

It essentially offers the ability to create and track marketing campaigns on Facebook. The space is about to become 1000x more competitive due to the newly introduced (May 2011) regulation that requires companies to use a 3^rd party application to conduct promotions. So you better have superior technical capability or lower pricing to attract market share.
Pinpoint - nice idea - and who doesn't want to invest in a company that uses FB as its platform?? A couple of questions:
1. Need to get the platform into the hands of agencies - how?
2. What's the $250K used for? Is this for software innovation - keeping
ahead of their competitors? How much to marketing and sales force salaries.
If they get traction with their platform I can see them as an attractive acquisition target - where their software is embedded within a larger software suite (by Adobe, for example).

Yet, a major downside may be that Pinpoint’s capability is limited to Facebook, and many professional organizations remain anti-Facebook (crazy as it sounds!) If campaigns created on Pinpoint could be integrated with complementary print/social network/other campaigns, that would significantly increase their utility.

To succeed, Pinpoint has to be a highly scalable model, i.e. 100% self-serve, otherwise you’re paying expensive developers to manage campaign requests. Currently, creating campaigns requires a lot of customer support and they want the money to launch the self-serve, so thinking in the right direction.

The Pitch – Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Entrepreneurs:

Daniel Patricio, founder, Pinpoint Social

Ian Sobolev, founder, 500px.com-SK

Panelists:

Larry Wasser, Genuity Fund Management

Rick Nathan, Managing Director, Kensington Capital Partners

Jacoline Loewen, Director, Loewen Partnershttp://www.bnn.ca/Shows/The-Pitch.aspx

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WEALTH

The question every wealthy person asks themself is "What does wealth mean to me?" The full and rich answer can take years to come to full light. In the meantime, money needs to be managed.in order to focus on wealth preservation and risk mangement.

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Twitter @JacolineLoewen

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Invited as expert on BNN The Pitch, CBC, Dragons' Den and published by National Post, Globe & Mail, Leadership, Business Entrepreneurs, The Journal, Women's Post, as well as author of three books.

Money Magnet by J. Loewen - Book Review

The feedback we have had about using the steps in Money Magnet is that business owners are surprised by how simple it is to understand, how much more money they can invest and earn and how shockingly few of their lawyers and accountants were aware of the benefits.

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Other books by J B Loewen:
The Power of Strategy
Business e-Volution

See Jacoline Loewen on BNN TV Show The Pitch

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Rick Spence, National Post, review

"A lot of business people still have trouble with the concept of strategic planning. They wonder who should do it, and what it's for. I just encountered a great explanation of strategy. It comes from a book, The Power of Strategy by Jacoline Loewen.

"I think that strategy is very similar to the search for the Holy Grail. Renowned knights traveled great distances and overcame severe hardship in the struggle to find this sacred relic, the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Finally, Sir Galahad was the one who discovered that the Holy Grail is, in fact, within us. There is no right or wrong answer -- it is the journey that provides the learning, not the Holy Grail itself.

In strategy, it is the process of people going through the questioning and thinking that ingrains the strategy into their everyday actions, not the plan itself."

You can read a much longer excerpt from Loewen's book at

post by Rick Spence, Canadian Entrepreneur

Wealth Management

May 18, 2011

BNN The Pitch Gives Thumbs Up to 500px and Pinpoint Social