Rocco Rossi for Mayor challenge - Announcing winner of Platinum Raps tickets !!

Just as I feared ... the decision on best post has been much more difficult than I had originally anticipated. You guys really have a lot of very valid perspectives, priorities and questions on your mind, when it comes to the future of our town !! Actually, this bodes very well for the city, because we do need more people who think seriously about where we can and should take this city, and who are not reticent about stepping up and making sure their voices are heard.

Anyhow, at the end of the day, I had to make a decision. So let me break it down this way. Three posts really stood out for me -- one for the Heart, another for the Head and the final, for the Gut.

THE HEART
[The Weathermaking Challenge ... I love the passion in your words, and the lyrics in your comment. Your "creed" is one which most politicians can only aspire to, but one which I genuinely believe Rocco lives on a daily basis.]

"The Weathermaking Challenge said ... The next mayor of our great city must love her as much as I do, and be courageous in his love for her. No matter what forces internally or externally attempt to hurt her, defame her, or take advantage of her, our next mayor must never allow anything less than what she deserves. He must share the vision of those who live in this fair city to help her continue to grow into the world-class powerhouse of growth, prosperity, culture, and diversity. He must put this vision before himself, he must put this vision before his friends, and he must put this vision before the interests of anyone else. We need a mayor who will fearlessly and diligently work towards, and never compromise the integrity of this vision. That mayor is Rocco Rossi."


THE HEAD
[Louis, your post was the longest :-). However, it was also very well thought out, compelling, and well researched. I also liked that you outlined integrated solutions, as opposed to just focusing on the issues. Really well done, and a bit of a manifesto.]

"Louis said...Toronto has always billed itself as a world-class city but has never reached true world-class elite status. It is not spoken about in the same terms as London, Paris, New York and Shanghai. Over the next decade, there is a perfect opportunity for Toronto to elevate itself to that elite status and this responsibility will fall on the shoulders of the next mayor.

Here are 5 key issues I believe the next mayor of Toronto needs to focus on:

1. Taxes - Taxes discourage investment and slows down consumer spending. New businesses are less inclined to invest in a jurisdiction with an unfavorable tax regime. This means less jobs, less income and less money going into the local economy. However, the city is mired in debt and rely heavily tax revenues to fund services Torontonians expect. The best way to reduce this debt obligation is to sell off crown assets such as Toronto Hydro. Paying down debts will allow Toronto to cut taxes for local residents and businesses, making it a more attractive place to live and invest.
   
   
2. Traffic Congestion/Public Transportation - Traffic congestion is horrible in the city. Public transportation is not efficient and there are not enough options on a regional basis. The mayor must work with his regional counterparts to develop a regional transportation strategy that will increase transit options both in and out of the city. The strategy must be cost effective and sustainable. You have to make commuting on public transit the easiest option available. A successful strategy will help solve two pervasive problems: congestion and smog.
   
   
3. Find a niche and get rich. Toronto needs to brand itself in economic terms. What will the city be known as the "center" of? There are a number of advantages Toronto can play off. Canadian banks have shown to be true global competitors. York University's Schulich School of Business is known as the number 1 sustainability MBA in the world. Many of the world's largest technology firms have their Canadian headquarters here. The point is, Toronto needs to focus on a few things the city does really well. We need to make Toronto an attractive desitination for talent and investment that will propel Toronto into a world class competitor in a given industry. Whether its banking, renewable energies or technolgy - invest in the necessary infrastructure to make Toronto the best at it.
   
   
4. Continue to develop and promote Toronto's cultural richness. We are a diverse city with a thriving culture. We have wonderful events like the the dragon boat races, Caribana, and Nuit Blanche. We have world class theatre, music and Dance. We have cultural icons in the AGO and the ROM. But simply having this is not enough. We need to raise the awareness globally. We need to make this a priority travel destination for tourists worldwide. And to do this will need to invest more in these events and organizations; allowing them to expand and grow. The city can not fund all this but they need to take a proactive approach in finding the right corporate partners that will invest in this city and who are willing to share in the city's success.
   
   
5. Rebuild city hall's image on how they manage the city. Show the city that you are socially responsible, transperant and committed to making Toronto and more sustainable city. Past contraversies such as Toronto police paid duty, outrageous cable bills at city hall, and prolonged city strikes are issues that range from the petty to the vital but share one thing in common: mismanagement. Focus on the issues that are relevent and important. Take care of the city's needs, show that you are honest, transperant and credible. 

Toronto is at an inflection point We need a leader to lead us. We can accept that you will make mistakes, but own up to them. Have a clear vision and stay the course. Show the courage to see all sides and adapt as necessary.

This is a bit more than a few sentances but I'm passionate about my city, just as passionate as I am about my Raptors!


THE GUT
[Anonymous, you had me at "innovative businesses and entrepreneurs" :-).  All of the businesses that I have built, grown and financed have been predicated on being able to find the best and the brightest, and enabling their talent and creativity.  However, due to the economic stresses of the past few years, most of the capital for growth in NA for SMEs and commercialization of innovation has completely dried up.  Toronto has a unique opportunity to separate itself from the crowd, by building on its diverse talent base, centers of innovation and stable infrastructure -- but only IF it is willing to back and supplement sources of early stage and venture capital providers, so that the flow of investment capital is turned back on.  How else are we to create new jobs, sustainable competitive advantage, and attract new businesses to come to this city as opposed to other urban centers in NA?]

Anonymous said ... I think the new Toronto mayor should focus on two themes: 

1. Connectivity amid diversity - This topic includes the traffic congestion, ailing infrastructure, and improving technology. With an incredibly diverse work force, Toronto should focus on tolerance, talent and technology. If there is a combined effort from the politicians and the talented workforce, Toronto could improve quickly in these areas.
   
   
2. Innovation and retention - The mayor should focus on innovative businesses and entrepreneurs as the businesses of the future. In addition, the mayor should focus on retaining the human capital that is already prevalent within this dynamic city. Instead of Toronto falling victim to what is commonly referred to as "brain drain", we should have a city that will even attract high achievers and promote forward-looking business models.

With leadership that is focused on advancing in the new global economy, Toronto is set to make a major move on the world stage.


BOTTOM LINE:

1st place goes to LOUIS, with a close 2nd place going to ANONYMOUS, and third place going to THE WEATHERMAKING CHALLENGE.

Louis, please contact me at yung.wu@NFQventures.com, and I can arrange to get the tickets to you.  If I don't hear from you by 9pm, I will go to plan B, and send the tickets to ANONYMOUS.

Thank you everyone for your interest and thoughtfulness.  Stay tuned for more ... :-).

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GREAT comments and guidance for our next mayor ...

Thank-you to all who responded with words of wisdom and personal perspectives on priorities for our next mayor. I wasn't sure quite what to expect when I made the ask, but it was incredibly gratifying to see both the number and the quality of your responses.

I have confirmed my thesis, that Raptors fans are loyal, thoughtful, well informed and passionate, not only about the team, but also about unlocking the potential in this fair city of ours. In reading the individual responses, I have also confirmed my belief in my fellow Torontonians, and our collective ability to mobilize, to give our city new life, to bring in fresh, high integrity, new leadership. Voting for Rocco Rossi as our new Mayor will be a game-changer for Toronto, and will ultimately set a new, positive and exciting trajectory for our collective home over the next decade.

As hard as this decision will be, I will be sitting down later this afternoon after my last meetings, to choose the best post, and to award my Row 1 tickets to the Raps vs. Mavs game at the ACC on Sunday at 12:30pm. If you haven`t put in your comments already, you still have another few hours to do so. If you have already posted, then take a spin through this video segment that I found, with Rocco talking about his strategy, to see how your comments lined up with his platform.

Be back to you all soon !!

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Raptors to the playoffs and Rocco Rossi for Mayor of Toronto ...

So ... I'm out of the city on Sunday, Jan 17th, and will not be able to attend as my Raptors host the Dallas Mavericks at the ACC, and I got to thinking that it would be cool to give my tickets (a pair of Row 1 platinums) to some deserving, fellow Toronto Raptors fans who are as passionate about the city and it's future as they are about the team. You see, if there is one thing that I know, it is that we Raptors fans have a huge amount of civic pride in Toronto. We are proud of our city, we are passionate about our team and we have very thin skins and easily take offense when those south of the border under-estimate or disparage our "house" without ever having been here. This is OUR city, OUR house, and the Raptors are OUR team.

Speaking about our city ... we FINALLY get to choose a new mayor in 2010 and the race is on as of January 4th (not a moment too soon as far as I am concerned). If there is one thing that I've learned from my years of starting, building and growing companies, it is that TIMING is everything. The next 4-8 years might be the most important years for this city to re-establish itself as the world-class, cosmopolitan powerhouse that we know it is capable of being. While the United States remains mired in a slow recovery from the self-inflicted financial and economic crisis of the past 2 years, Canada and Toronto specifically is uniquely positioned to really separate itself from the crowd, and restore its rightful place as a cosmopolitan metropolis which is business friendly, which attracts the best and brightest, where jobs, innovation, energy, culture, beautiful architecture and social responsibility all come together. This is a unique opportunity and a unique point in time for us to get the leadership of this great city of ours right.

Given everything that I know about Rocco Rossi, I am convinced that he is the right man at the right time for the most important job in the country. This city deserves a mayor who has the ability to articulate a long term vision and plan for one of the most important jurisdictions in the country, and who has the charisma and proven organizational skills to orchestrate the realization of that vision. Rocco brings conviction, passion, deep experience with running real organizations, and the integrity to lead. Besides, Rocco is also a huge Raptors fan, so what's there not to like !!!

So, here's my ask ... give me a couple of sentences, as a comment to this post, on what your views are, on the most important priorities for our new mayor to take on when he or she takes office. At the same time, please consider joining me in supporting Rocco Rossi, by registering on his website at www.roccorossi.com or on his Facebook page at Elect Rocco Rossi for Mayor of Toronto. I will make a choice as to the best posting by Friday of this week, and will award the tickets to the author, and announce it on this blogsite.

Let the postings begin !! And remember, in the words of the great Winston Churchill ... KBO (Keep Buggering On !!!) :-)

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Long live entrepreneurs !!!

Perhaps a contrary point of view, but I believe that the current market and economic turmoil makes it a very exciting time to be an entrepreneur and to bet on entrepreneurs, and will eventually be quite beneficial to their businesses. Gone are the days, especially in the B2B environment, when customers can afford to ignore a "better mousetrap" (especially where they drive in-year cost reductions or productivity improvements), or make "safe" decisions to choose inferior offerings just because they come from bigger brands where one is protected in the event of failure -- there is NO room for failure now. Yes it is a tough environment in which to acquire new customers, service products, meet commitments and to raise financing. On the other hand, entrepreneurs and business builders are uniquely positioned to use the harsh environment to succeed -- we've always had to bring adaptability, innovation and hunger every day, even in the good times, to build our businesses, do more with less and make something out of nothing. Now, those same qualities should result in a lot more airtime with our stakeholders, while multinational competitors are busy internally focused on retrenching, cutting overhead, reducing trade credit from 60 days to 15 days, etc. etc.

To all entrepreneurs ... this is our time now. It is a unique opportunity to make some noise, increase productivity, commercialize innovation and create jobs. We've always been the shock troops on the front lines of the economy, and it is time for us to lead the charge once again.

Long live the entrepreneur, and Never Fu@#ing Quit !!!

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NFQ !!

I founded Castek almost two decades ago, on a couple of credit cards and a dream (at the time, we referred to it as a "wing and a prayer" ... now we prefer to remember it as a "vision for global leadership" *lol*). After 2 economic cycles, 3 major rounds of financing, 3 business model changes, and 2 “perfect storms”, I have reached the conclusion that "success" and "failure" are simply different points along the same continuum, and that every human being and business will eventually encounter both (probably many times!!).

In retrospect, getting through all of these inevitable cycles wasn't just about foresight, strategic vision, competitive strategy, customer relationship management, innovation, time to market or any of a number of factors that most business pundits focus on. Yes, all of these factors were important -- but the one consistent ingredient required to survive and thrive, was to face each challenge with an "act of will", and to rapidly adapt to anything that was thrown at us.

Winston Churchill probably said it best: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts ...".

Look, everyone will applaud, remark upon and celebrate your brilliance when things are going your way. I propose, however, that you are defined by how you react when times are tough, when you don't have momentum on your side, and when you wake up to a daily, weekly, monthly diet of adversity (which every company and every person will eventually encounter). Do you exhibit grace under fire? What does your leadership look like when things aren't going your way? Do your people continue to follow you when you have to climb uphill? What about when the bullets start flying? Are you able to take decisive, tough actions while continuing to hold the hearts and minds of your team? How do you keep all of your stakeholders informed and aligned to a common purpose, when all of the external forces are working to splinter your coalition?

The single biggest challenge for my company occurred shortly after we had just raised our third and last major round of financing in June, 2002 -- the single largest private financing round for the tech sector in Canada after the tech bust. At the time we were almost 400 employees, growing annually at 50%, and 6 months away from an IPO – in other words, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. Two months later, the impact of 9/11 hit our customers hard, and the entire NA insurance sector (our primary customer base) went into a tail spin, going through the worst time in their history. Major IT programs were the first initiatives to get cut by our customers and prospects, as the insurance sector tried to conserve cash and reduce all discretionary expenditures, and we went from a market where we were winning 60% of the deal flow in our target market, to having no deal flow available in the market for the next 24 months. Instead of preparing for an IPO, we ended up facing a sudden major downturn in our business. Bad markets trump good management and great products ... we took immediate action to conserve cash, restructure the company and “hunker-down” to ride out the market cycle and survive nuclear winter in our space. We undertook the toughest and most painful actions of my entire entrepreneurial career, exiting every major long term obligation, shutting down all non-core operations, slashing expenses down to “life support” and dismantling over 90% of the company that I had carefully built up over 15 years.

We were fortunate – in spite of all of the pain that shareholders, customers and employees collectively shared, I and my management team received complete and continued backing through all of the tough actions that we needed to undertake. We outlasted the market cycle with our intellectual property and a small core team intact. We rebuilt the company from substantially the same top notch employees whom we were forced to release during the downturn. The tough actions that we had taken, resulted in a very lean, efficient operating model, and a vastly simplified equity structure and balance sheet. This allowed us to reposition the team and the intellectual property for global leadership in our space, leading eventually to the recent, very successful sale of the company to Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company.

Bottom line ... you do your best in the situations that you control, and you make the best of the ones where you don't, by making the best decisions given the data you have, being decisive and action oriented, and honoring your obligations to your stakeholders. My main premise is that the key to sustainable successful business performance, is a determination to never quit, and an ability to constantly adapt. Having the tenacity to keep continuing on, is the one thing that is within our ability to decide, and by doing so, you give yourself the opportunity to choose the nature and timing of the "Kodak moments" within the continuum, that determine your own so-called, "overnight successes".

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Dying professor's words to live by ...

I'm just back from dinner with three very close friends, KenP, PeterT and PeterC, in a sort of "guys night out" evening. Over drinks, we started talking about various inspiring experiences that might be relevant to entrepreneurs who are out there, fighting the good fight, and they pointed me towards this "last lecture" by Dr. Randy Pausch, a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon, who is dying of pancreatic cancer.

Take a few minutes to look at this video segment. It's worth it. His topic is about achieving your childhood dreams, but the words of wisdom that he imparts are essentially about how to live life, how to overcome adversity and how to take every opportunity to make choices and live the right way.



He brings out a couple of major themes in his lecture. It struck me that these are as good a set of principles as any that I've seen, to build a great company culture around ...

• "Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want."
• "Brick walls that are in our way, are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out .. they are there to give us a way to show, how much we want it. "

• "Choose to have fun and a sense of wonderment, all the time ... "
• "People are always more important than Things."
• "Live with integrity ... simple advice that is hard to follow -- just tell the truth. When you screw up, just apologize, with sincerity. "I'm sorry, It was my fault, How do I make it right?". "
• "Sooner or later, you will encounter people that you don't like, or you have a bad experience with. No one is pure evil. If you wait long enough, they will show you their good side. Be patient, and seek it out. "
• "Show gratitude. It's a simple thing -- and a very powerful thing. "
• "Complaining and whining does not solve anything. You can choose how you spend finite time, energy and effort. By complaining and wallowing, or by choosing to play the game hard. It's your choice. Make the choice. "
• "If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. "

Like many real wisdoms in life, they can be applied universally to business, family, relationships and yourself, and remain equally relevant and valuable.

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An Open Letter to Castek'ers ...

Dear Friends,

18 years after founding Castek, I will be moving on to new pursuits. From the very first experience of starting the company in 1990 with my founding business partners, Fay Wu and Dragan Kopunovic, bootstrapping its growth through our credit cards, and all of the thrills, chills and spills of an incredible journey through the most exciting times in history for our industry, the birthing of this company and the opportunity to work with each of you have been amongst the most important, formative experiences of my life.

Together, we have been able to make a difference in our industry, and in each other's lives. We have invented the future together ... we have grown up together ... we have built a foundation and won many hard-fought campaigns together -- these are the ties that bind.

It has been a privilege and an honor to have served as your CEO, and I am grateful for all of the support that employees, customers, partners and shareholders have provided me and the company through the past 18 years. As they say, all good things come to an end, but each ending is also a new beginning. Castek is not my first company, nor will it be my last -- as all of you know or suspect, I have always been a far better entrepreneur than an employee :-). That being said, we built Camelot when we built Castek, and this company and the people that built it with me will always hold an honored place in my memories.

I wish each of you all the best, as you go forward within Oracle. This is a wonderful final chapter in the Castek story, to see our collective dreams of achieving global leadership in our space realized, and I will be very excited to follow your future progress.

My very best wishes for much continued success !!
Yung Wu.

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