Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Ian Telfer is one of the most successful businessman in Canada.  A self admitted screw-up, he chairs Vancouver's Goldcorp, the largest publicly traded company in British Columbia, and the second largest gold mining company in the world (by market capitalization).  He offered 12 lessons for people starting their careers, and for people in the middle part of their careers at a recent speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Read the whole piece. My favorites? 

"People are prepared to charge up a hill behind a competent leader, even if it's the wrong hill. Many of the times, the wrong hill is better than no hill at all."

 and…

"You're screwing up when you're not screwing up."

 To which I would add "learn to fail, fast."

We've now got the spectre of a good old fashioned patent fight on our hands as Andy "Scoop" Abramson publishes the details of a decade old 3COM patent that may read on the current Verizon / Vonage dispute.

And that's why patents, kiddies, are so important to startups.  As Suzie Dingwall Williams recently wrote, the patent system now consists of multiple overlapping monopolies, rather than the clear cut monopolies of yore.  Just 'cause you have a patent doesn't mean the other guy doesn't have one.  It's a bit like the cold war days with each side stock piling warheads as a "deterrent" to the other side. 

What happens next, of course, completely depends on what 3COM wants to do.  If 3COM has a patent, though, chances are there's somebody else who has one too…  Verizon may have opened an unappetizing can of worms after all, rather than a tasty Vonage fricasee.

David Beckemeyer's post on Fring is worth a read, for a couple of reasons:

1. He illustrates the VoIP pricing conundrum.  By now it's apparent to everyone that the differences in price points that VoIP providers have chosen, and the price points the incumbents have chosen are not a function of technology, but rather marketing. 
2. He asks the core question: do features matter?  If price is the only reason for consumers to migrate to VoIP, then there will be a lot more financial problems like Vonage in our future.  If customers will buy features then there's a different dynamic at work.

Our bet is that business customers will pay for features that make economic sense.  Consumers, we're not so sure about.