My Idea Became a Billion Dollar ($945 million) Company

Back in 1999, three Nortel employees, namely myself, Claude Bouffard, and John Shannon were enjoying beers after work at the Royal Oak pub in Kanata, Ontario. We bantered about some ideas around micropayments on the internet. Why couldn't we pay small amounts of money, such as 25 cents for the newspaper, and have it just show up on our phone bill? We worked in the DMS division of Nortel and had some idea of how the billing system worked. After all, telcos have very well established billing systems for handling tiny line items, and they have an established system for reconciling these amounts amongst themselves. So the idea was essentially that you'd click on a link, a secure transaction box would pop up and prompt you for your "Go Pin". Well, the name Go Pin would come later but it serves to help you understand how it would work. The 25 cents or whatever it was would simply show up on your phone bill.

Our VP at the time, Bob Tipple, was convinced enough by John and Claude to allow Claude to run full-time with the idea. Claude being the infectious ball of energy that he is, drove the idea forward to the point where it had enough legs for the internal incubator folks to take the whole idea seriously. John and Claude sold it to the incubator folks, I was occasionally cheerleading from the technology side. Nortel created the business as GoPin Inc, and venture capitalists were found, and finally a CEO, Gary Marino, from the banking industry in the US came on board to lead. The company underwent a number of name changes, to Pinmoney then I4Commerce, then BillMeLater and it moved to Baltimore. Also, as you likely already figured out by now, the original idea morphed into BML doing realtime credit checks and handling the billing, as opposed to trying to herd the cats we like to call telcos.

Ironically the company sold for $945 million, more than Nortel's total market capitalization today. What did I get? Well, I do have a nice mug, a great story, a sense of pride, and I'm a little older and a bit wiser now. Maybe it's time to try another idea, but this time actually get some money out of it. I do not know how Nortel itself fared, they likely cashed out to a VC early.

Update: This has been picked up by the mainstream media, I have made the front page of the Ottawa Citizen today (Oct. 9). Why does everyone have to misspell my last name?

Don't Catch a Falling Knife

Today I would simply like to say that one should wait until the stock market stabilizes and begins a sustained upwards trend before you decide to buy in. While you may look at those low stock prices and start to salivate, please hold off, unless of course you prefer to just roll the dice with wild abandon, or have gambling money you want to spend now. By holding off, you might not end up buying the absolute bottom, but don't be greedy, have some prudence in these times of uncertainty. If you prefer, buy in on a regular basis over time (dollar cost averaging), that's a better idea than trying to grab at some of these falling knives.

The Race Has Begun for TFSAs

Today, the race has begun in Canada to get you to sign up for a tax free savings account. Since TFSAs don't actually come into effect until Jan 1, 2009, ING Direct has decided to simulate it from now until the end of the year by paying you double the interest. As of Jan 1, 2009 they will automatically register a TFSA with the government for you (based on the early simulation account), and transfer up to $5000 from this early simulation into it.

I urge any of you with any money just sitting in a savings account somewhere, and you probably do since the equity markets are in turmoil, to consider opening your TFSA now. If you do it today, and fund it to the full $5000, expect a nice bonus interest payment on Dec. 31 of this year of about $35. Earning 6% on your money (as of today's rates) is pretty darn good and beats any GICs out there. I don't want to sound like a complete fan boy for ING Direct, I'm sure that there are similar offers at other progressive financial institutions too. Feel free to share by leaving a comment.