March 2011

There were 11 posts published in March 2011 (this is page 2 of 4).

Year One Labs — The Perfect “Incubator”?

I abhor the term “incubator”. I remember in fifth grade when our teacher brought in a chicken incubator to show us how chickens are born.

We waited and waited and waited a while longer still.

All the little Chickens were dead, it turned out. We weren’t quite sure why but most of us thought that one of the guys in our class with “anger issues” was somehow responsible.

So to this day when I hear the term incubator, I think of a sea of dead chickens and the broken dreams of little boys and girls.

So I was surprised when I walked in to Year One Labs today and, rather than chickens, I saw a lot of people. Not just any people either, but some of the best entrepreneurs I have met in years.

We wrote about the launch of Year One Labs back in September 2010

The current portfolio of Montreal based Year One Labs includes:

High Score House

HighScoreHouse was founded by Kyle Seaman and Theo Ephraim. The company is building a fun, entertaining solution to help parents use positive reinforcement to motivate their children.

They have yet to launch but you can learn more at highscorehouse.com.

Localmind

Localmind was founded by Lenny Rachitsky and Beau Haugh. Localmind allows people (from the web or their mobile phone) to ask questions of people checked in at locations. Questions can be in real-time or not. The big vision is to empower people to know anything they need to know about any place at any time.

Localmind is currently available online at localmind.com.

Please Stay Calm

Please Stay Calm was founded by Garry Seto andKen Seto. The company is building a massively co-operative location based social game with a zombie theme. They have not yet released the game, but you can sign up for news at pleasestaycalm.com.

And you can learn more about the game and their progress on their blog.

as well as Assemblio and one other as of yet unnamed startup.

There are some things to love about Year One Labs:

  • The founders of Year One Labs have their own money invested
  • The founders of Year One Labs are experienced founders with good operational backgrounds. It seems clear to me that they know how to gradually disengage as the founders of resident companies get their feet under them. They aren’t constrained by awkward incubator contracts or “client service agreements” where a lot of resources go more and more unused as a startup outgrows them. That flexibility is important.
  • They have a bar built right in to the lobby

It’s not all ice cream and pie for these guys though, from the outside it is clear to me that follow-on financing relationships are always going to be tough for groups like this and keeping the lights on does become a heavy expense over time.

This sort of activity, much like Extreme Venture Partners in Toronto and the work that BootupLabs had been doing in Vancouver is the lifeblood of an early stage startup community. Whenever politicians give speeches and talk about things like the “IT Sector” and “knowledge workers” — this is what they are talking about. We have to find careful ways to support efforts like Year One Labs but also keep the market competitive enough that the best ones may rise to the top. In the current model of massive infusions of cash for real-estate and bureaucrats does not let the market pick the winners.

The entrepreneurs are the ultimate customers here and they will be the ones who make or break Year One Labs and every other similar effort in Canada.

Salesforce acquires Radian6 for $326 Million

This will be all over the news today so I won’t try to keep pace with the commentary, but the news that Salesforce has agreed to acquire Radian6 a Fredericton, New Brunswick company founded in 2006 ,is out.

I won’t try to keep pace with then endless coverage that will be happening, but here are some thoughts on what is cool about this:

  • Ride the Winners: There is no doubt that Radian6 has had a lot of offers over the years. Competitors such as Techrigy, ScoutLabs and Sysomos likely sold out WAY too early. This is something Roger Chabra has been saying to me for a while: When something is working, stick with it.
  • Canadian made: Radian6 was built and financed entirely in Canada by Summerhill, BDC and Brightspark. They funded Radian6 early and they stuck with it. That’s a great and all too rare story.
  • New Brunswick made: When I tell many of you that I have moved to Halifax I sometimes get questions like “is there any startup community there?” or “Is there any talent there?” — Now I have an easy answer to what I have already found out: This region is brimming with talent and with the right leadership great things can be accomplished.

Congrats to the entire Radian6 team as well as Summerhill, BDC and Brightspark. This is big news and a great story.

Ted Livingston is insane in the best sort of way

A lot of people talked shit about the recent valuation of Kik. It all seemed a bit insane and I admit the numbers I heard seemed wild. That was until word dropped that Union Square Ventures has joined the deal alongside RRE.

Today Techcrunch is reporting that Ted Livingston is using a chunk of the money that he took off the table in the recent financing in order to further back UWs Velocity dorm/program.

Say what you want to but Ted Livingston gets it and the moment he had the chance to do it: he gave back. That is all too rare a thing. He obviously did well in the transaction that generated the extra $1million, but not THAT well. He is obviously just an incredibly generous person. I am totally inspired.

If we can continue to back and inspire entrepreneurs as passionate as Ted then we just might get somewhere.