StartupNorth

Month: August 2008

  • September: New Year's Resolutions and a few events

    The summer is usually a time when things go a little slower, a little less gets done and people are hard to get in touch with. I’m not sure what is in the water this year, but it seems like nothing has slowed down for the sunny weather. People are still scheming, startups are launching and I am still hearing a dozen new ideas a day. Love it.

    September is the January of the Startup world. If there was ever a time to restart, give it one last shot, or to set new goals, September is that time.

    Take some time and look back at what you’ve accomplished since this time last year. Did you get a failure under your belt? Did you start something, but didn’t take it all the way? Did you raise your first round? Did you get your first exit?

    A lot of people seemed to spend the last year just finding out about the Startup community in Canada. Connecting, learning and sharing. Now is the time to start to create something of your own. We’re all here, waiting to hear about it, and we want to help.

    With September about to swing in and kick our butts, there are a handful of great events already lined up.

    DemoCamp Edmonton 3 is on September 17th. There were over 100 people at the last DemoCamp in Edmonton. That is some of the best news this year. Cam Linke has been doing a great job organizing and promoting DC Edmonton. I can’t wait to get out to one.

    Launch Party Vancouver is the first one, taking place on September 18th. Launch Party is such a great name, and there are always incedible startups on the lineup.

    StartupCamp Waterloo is happening on October 8th at the Accelerator Center. I have said it before: This is the orignial and most community-focused StartupCamp.

    And then there is StartupCamp Montreal, on November 27th. Patrick Lor will be coming down from Calgary to talk about what he is up to and share about his experience at iStockPhoto. The guys at Embrase always run a fantastic event. Thanks again Phillipe and Vincent.

    What about Toronto you say? Oh, we have some great things planned. Founders and Funders, StartupCamp, DemoCamps, and even something a little bit secret. I say we kick it off with some beer, a patio and some big ideas. I’ll post details soon.

  • backtype – Search blog comments from all over the web

    Comments on blog posts have always been the forgotten son of web content. When you make a comment, you never know how it will be read, where it will end up, and because of spam issues, they rarely show up in search engines. Also, because of NoFollow, your links don’t matter either.

    BackType, a YCombinator funded company started by Toronto’s Christopher Golda and Mike Montano is the first tool that just may solve these problems. Some have gone in this direction before, but have had technically top-heavy models.

    Instead of creating a new standard, or trying to convince blog authors to make changes to their site, BackType scours the web just like other search engines and it scrapes the comments, or they pick up the comments RSS feeds, which tools like WordPress output on request.

    The moment I used BackType for the first time, I had a total “aha!” moment and I knew exactly when and why I would use the service.

    Chris and Mike’s first startup was iPartee, a beautiful but underused (at least in Canada) event tool. Austin Hill also interviewed them here on StartupNorth just over a month ago.

  • yourteledoctor – Online Patient/Doctor Consultations

    YourTeleDoctor is a Montreal based startup that wants to transform how we think about a visit to the doctor.

    I have no doubt, absolutely zero, about the role that telemedicine will play in healthcare delivery in the future. You can search for data from Gartner, Forrester or anyone, they all predict that TeleMedicine is going to be a big deal. 

    YourTeleDoctor is trying to be one of the first providers to come to market with a consumer-ready system to allow for video-based visits to a doctor. Quebec is a good example of a province/state with a huge rural population and a government that needs to stretch every dollar in health care delivery.

    If Mehdi can be the one to bring a new level of efficiency to governments, HMOs and clinics, then there is a lot of money to be made. The flip side, however, is that this is medicine. Medicine, for all the research and great thinking that goes in to it, changes very little. It is incredibly bureaucratic, even in the private sector, and care-delivery, the component that startups like YourTeleDoctor will attempt to shake up, sees even fewer changes than other parts of the sector.

    It seems likely that the first market for a tool like this would be private clinics who are relatively autonomous and well heeled. Just a few great case studies and a decent sales team might be all you need to start breaking in to an early market.
     

  • Devshop.com launches version 2.0

    Devshop.com, which was one of the first profiles we ever did, recently launched a new version of their project management application for development teams.

    The most unique aspect of Devshop is its focus on using historical data to estimate future performance. By monitoring past timelines, milestones and other aspect of a project, Devshop will estimate the risk associated with current time estimates.

    Devshop also focuses on tying project requirements to the development schedule, so things don’t get out of sync.

    Craig has methodically gone from a private beta through launch, a 1.0 and now Devshop 2.0 looks like a powerful tool for development teams of any size. I also took a look at the team that has come together in the last year and I was even more impressed. It’s not hard to tell that Craig is aiming to build a company that will scale when the opportunity comes.

     

  • Tineye now in Open Beta

    For everyone who didn’t get in on our rounds of TinEye invitations, suffer no more! The service is now in open beta and you can get a free account.

    The launch is getting a lot of coverage including Ars Technica, Information Week, and PC Pro. 

     

  • classtell.com – easy class websites

    Serve-yourself class websites aren’t entirely new. ChalkSite has come and gone, Engrade is a long-time option and there have been a mish mash of others. Toronto’s own Savvica had Nuvvo.com for a while as well, which was not quite the same, but close. They have since closed Nuvvo and have created LearnHub.com. One of the biggest new entrants in this market is Google. They have been marketing their Google Sites product heavily to educators.

    Classtell is the latest offering in this space by Kasra Kyanzadeh from Toronto. Kasra is 15 years old (and doesn’t mind advertising it) and he has a decent set of sites under his belt.

    This is a crowded space, but Kasra has built a fantastic vertical-specific CMS tool. There is a lot of room for micro-CMSs like this in all sorts of markets. Paul Graham identified sites like this in his “Startup Ideas we’d like to fund” post.

    Classtell is 20$ CAD per year, and you get a 90 day (wow!) free trial to test out and get comfortable with the site.

    The thing I love the most? Kasra has built the product on his own, established an early business model (rather than just giving it away), and to be honest: the product is fantastic. I played around with the demo, and it did everything other LMSs do and more.

  • PoolExpert acquired by Rogers

    Pool Expert LogoToronto based PoolExpert, one of Canada’s leading fantasy sports providers, announced their acquisition by Rogers Media earlier this week. While financial details were not released, this has to be a nice little exit for co-owners Ron Watson and Steve Hulford. Ron and Steve acquired PoolExpert in 2005 (the site was founded back in 1999) and grew the company over the last three years to hundreds of thousands of registered active players.

    The duo are already onto their next venture, Filemobile, an on-demand social media platform company. Word is that Filemobile is growing fast and already profitable with clients such as: CTV, TSN, CBC, MTV, MuchMusic, and Molson. Starting a company is a tremendous amount of work and exiting PoolExpert should allow these two to focus their full attention on growing FileMobile as fast as possible.

    Congrats on the exit guys! We’re looking forward to posting about the next win soon!

  • AndyCamper.com – Get kids outdoors

    AndyCamper.com launched this week. The Ottawa based startup is a sort of “activities portal” targeted at kids. 

    The site categorizes activities in the same way that kids tend to, using broad titles like “bugs”. When you click through there are all sorts of videos, ideas and games about what you can do to learn about bugs.

    I would have been all over things like How to Create and Berlese Funnel and to be honest, it is still tempting!

    The amount of content available on this site is incredible. It sort of makes me wonder if the days of “Mom, we’re bored!” will soon be a thing of the past. “Just go to AndyCamper.com kids”

     

     

     

  • Weekend Reading – August 2, 2008

    The Up-sell.

    On sales. And how much to charge.

    Y Combinator, seven weeks in. On work.

    There is no place like home.