Jevon MacDonald

co-founder of Startupnorth.ca

If you want to change the ecosystem you need to build an amazing startup

At Founders and Funders this week we took some time to interview Dan Debow. It was a bit of a love-in I admit but that is just because I really love how much passion Dan has for helping those around him. He has made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. I’ve benefitted from it and so have dozens of others in the Canadian startup community.

One thing that Dan said really struck me. A little context might help though.

A lot of folks have been working hard to build a startup ecosystem in Toronto. For over half a decade guys like Dan have been pouring energy in to helping anyone with an idea and a glimmer in their eye to start a startup. There are of course formal organizations that do this on behalf of the government, but the fact is that making Toronto a viable city for startups has been a mostly clandestine movement. People working on the fringes to do what they believe in.

Sometimes you hear complaints about the ecosystem. Whether it is Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver or Halifax you can find complainers.

“How can we fix the local ecosystem?”

Dan said it best this week and he was clearly passionate about it: You can’t fix your ecosystem. Just get out there and build something great. More accurately he said:

 

That’s your job. Your only job. Get out there and build something great.

You can stop being shy, coy and tepid about it. Everyone around you wants you to do something great. They just want you to step up a little and say you are going to do it.

I want you to do something great. I want you to put a ding in the fucking universe.

Take your vision and make it even hairier, bolder and broader. Take your product and get obsessed with it. Change the world for people around you and every single one of us will step in line and push behind you.

Dan did it and this week we got to shine the spotlight on him a bit. There are hundreds of folks out there pushing to do it. Stop worrying about the community. Go big and the community will be right there behind you.

The next time we plan a Founders and Funders I want it to be you that’s up there telling your story.

You can be next. JFDI

Founders and Funders Toronto – February 16th, 2012

The last Founders and Funders dinner in Toronto was almost exactly two years ago. A lot has happened in that time and we thought it was time to sit down and break bread together again.

The Founders and Funders dinners are a series of invitation-only dinners that are held across Canada several times a year. They are a sort of summit on the state of each community and we do our best to make sure that the best startups possible have a chance to meet the most respected and active investors who are doing deals in those cities. There is always a mix of locals and people who come in for the event as a way to get connected.

We believe that if you cannot sit down and have dinner with someone, then you probably shouldn’t invest in or take investment from them. This is a great chance to apply a social filter to the dealflow in any one place.

What is it?: An invitation-only 3 course dinner. Cocktails before, cocktails after….

Who is coming?: The top investment-ready startups and active investors in Canada.

Where is it?: Downtown Toronto

When?: February 16th, 2012 at 6:30pm

How much is it?: Tickets range from $125 (startups) to $500 (service providers)

We are now accepting requests for invitations and the first round of invitations will go out this week.

To apply please use this form >>

We have also decided to include a brief fireside chat with Daniel Debow at this dinner. We rarely do this sort of thing at a Founders and Funders but 2011 was such a great year we thought it would be fun to look back on the ups and downs of Rypple through the years and how they got to their eventual exit, some of which was written about in Forbes this week.

Daniel and Rypple have also been a big part of the Canadian startup community and he has also been an active angel investor recently.

We are excited to hear what he has to say about how we can help build more great Canadian companies and how to build awareness in Silicon Valley when your HQ is back here in Canada.

We hope you will join us as we kick off another great year for the Toronto and Canadian startup community.

We will be announcing Founders and Funders dinners in other cities soon as well.

 

Shit, that was a big year. Now we make our move…

2011 was an important year for Canadian Startups.

We had some exits. Over $1bn worth. We needed that. The more important thing is that a lot of those exits were by entrepreneurs who “get it” and who are going to be re-investing in startups here in Canada.

Now we have a handful of funds who have money to deploy. Many of you probably don’t remember the good old days when there was no money to go around. I once saw a startup panhandling on Queen St West to raise money for some Dell servers. No joke.

This was also a big year because it was one of the first in which we saw deals getting done in Canada by US based investors. That’s good because it keeps us all on our toes and it forces local investors to compete on market-driven terms.

The biggest problem now, as far as I can tell, is that we are out of excuses. There is money, talent, and the need to build more quality startups.

So get to work.

In the early days of Democamp there was an obsession with quality. I think it probably stemmed from our (Toronto’s) own insecurity with itself. There was no identity or real history to draw from, so we had to be careful to make sure that everything that came from the community was world class. It wasn’t always but we tried. We need to get really obsessed with the quality of stuff we turn out in Canada in the next year. No more being cheerleaders for mediocre shit. We need to be OBSESSED with setting the bar high.

We need to go a step further now. We need to set the bar for world class. Now is not the time to slow down.

Part of the problem is that we don’t have a single voice to tell our story. Techvibes is doing an amazing job covering EVERYTHING, but it doesn’t have personality. Startupnorth is editorial and a lot of preaching (like this post). That doesn’t help much either. I hope a voice emerges in the next year that has the time and economic model to really tell the story in Canada. It would be good if Mark MacQueen quit his job as a banker and just blogged fulltime. That guy has it right.

If you are still reading, you should put your name in for the founders and funders dinner in toronto in February. I promise it will be good.