New FP blogger: Tech startup’s advice to get you past year five

December 8th, 2011 - Toronto. It’s no secret that starting and operating a business is a complex, expensive and emotionally draining task.

But for technology entrepreneurs, some of the most common entrepreneurial challenges are amplified. Not only are you competing with other firms, but if you’re a B-to-C company, you have to navigate the rapidly evolving and highly fickle consumer tech market. On the B-to-B side, which our Toronto-based interactive online software development firm Filemobile Inc. serves, customers demand constant innovation, but are also highly price sensitive, especially in a tough economy.

When we founded Filemobile in 2006, it wasn’t our first tech startup, but it was by far the most challenging. Needless to say, there were days when — like so many entrepreneurs — we could have easily thrown in the towel. Instead, we hung on and managed to carve out a solid niche supplying our rich media platform to the likes of Fox News, the World Bank, Condé Nast, Disney, Molson Coors, Deloitte and more than 150 other clients.

As we enter our sixth year in business, we decided to share some of our mistakes, lucky breaks and a few wise moves we’ve made along the way to help other tech entrepreneurs start, manage and grow their businesses. We have the luxury of drawing from three partners’ diverse backgrounds and operational specialties, so we’ll be sure to include tech sector insights that reflect our individual experiences building Filemobile. We hope the expertise we provide in this blog will help you avoid some of the mistakes we made — or at least understand when you’ve made them.

So, to kick off this blog series — and because this tends to be a particularly reflective time of year where tech entrepreneurs look back on the year that was and plan for the one ahead — we came up with the five reasons why we almost didn’t make it to our fifth anniversary:

Find out what the five reasons are at Financial Post.com

Permalink | 4681 views | no comments

Comments

The captcha you entered is invalid

Your comments