It’s only 76 days (July 11-13, 2012) until Startup Festival in Montreal (are you planning on a roadtrip?), and the team has announced a spectacular set of speakers for the event.

• Dan Briklin
• Dave McClure (@davemcclure)
• Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd)
• Lisa Gansky (@sharethemesh)
• Deborah Schultz (@debs)
• Craig Walker (@cwalker123)
• Sizhao Yang (@zamland)
• Cindy Gallop (@cindygallop)

If you don’t know who these people are, well you should. There are some like Deborah Schultz and Stowe Boyd that are some of the best thinkers about the role that new technology has on work, culture, experience, marketing and behaviour. Go read Debs’ “Dear Miss Manners: the Social Web – WTF?” or Stowe’s Work Talk Research including Data is the New Oil: From Privacy to Publicy. These individuals are talking about the social and political forces that will create the next generation of startups. They are simply amazing.

Did you know the Internet is for porn? Cindy Gallop gave a not to be missed talk at TED in 2009, Make Love Not Porn. She has been thinking about the role pornography, advertising and entertainment.

The rest of the schedule is bound to be equally amazing. I’m looking forward to my trip to Montreal. I hope you’ll join me.

Mesh 2012 is set for May 23 & 24 at the Allstream Centre in Toronto. This year brings a special focus on big data, and the lineup is chock full of interesting speakers including:

• Max Shron – Former Data Scientist at OKCupid.
• DJ Patil - Former Chief Scientist at LinkedIn.
• Eli Portnoy - Cofounder of ThinkNear
• Duncan McCall - Cofounder of PlaceIQ

Register for GrowConf »

The Grow Conference  just released their first 50 ”super early bird” tix at 50% off and sold out in less than a day!  StartupNorth was able to secure 20 more “super early bird” tix for the StartupNorth audience to get that same price. Just register with the promo code - ”startupnorth” and you’ll get the $295 price too (it says $395 – but you’ll get the discount).

Be sure to check out Debbie and Jason on their cross-country tour. I’ve heard that they’ll each be “manning” a kissing booth in Waterloo for their Valentine’s Day stop.

GrowConf is a great event that offers something for every entrepreneur.

I loved Moneyball (the movie).  I also especially love sports analogies as they relate to technology and startups.  While well-blogged about (Fred Wilson, Dave McClure, Dharmesh Shah), I believe these analogies are representative of what it takes to create and build a successful startup.  While the premise of the book is to evaluate players based on data and metrics, I couldn’t help but tie back to the old school style of scouting in baseball to the current process we’re going through in selecting our cohort.

According to Wikipedia, in baseball, a five-tool player is one who excels at (1) hitting for average, (2) hitting for power, (3) baserunning skills and speed, (4) throwing ability, and (5) fielding abilities.  I believe the same can be said for entrepreneurs.

Hitting for Average : Selling to Customers

In Moneyball, Billy Beane and his sidekick focus their team (the Oakland A’s) on one thing – getting on base – because getting on base equates to scoring runs, which equates to wins.  In the startup world, scoring runs is the equivalent of getting cash, and this cash comes from customers.

Every entrepreneur needs to sell to customers.  They need to generate revenue aka cash.  It doesn’t matter if its enterprise customers, direct to consumer, professional services, white labeling, etc.  Ultimately, if the startup is successful, they will sell to customers (which could also mean acquiring users).  Effective hitters know where to hit the ball – pulling the ball, going opposite field, hitting gaps.  Effective entrepreneurs know the gaps in the market amongst their competition and capitalize.

Hitting for Power : Selling to Investors

Chicks dig the longball.  So how do you generate a huge amount of cash for your startup in one shot?  You sell to investors.  Entrepreneurs should also be able to successfully pitch VCs, angels, and other shareholders.  This gives their companies cash in normally larger amounts than when selling to customers.  It takes a special person to be able to raise from VCs.  It takes a lot of time, energy, and follow-through.

A note on specialists here.  In baseball, there are power hitters that specialize in hitting homeruns.  Traditionally, these are the most popular and most sought after players because they have a halo effect around them.  They fill seats, sell jerseys and advertising.  They are the top billers and they usually can do no wrong (unless they cheat).  In startups, this is also true because some franchises (VCs) want their own cleanup hitters at the top for the same halo effect.

Baserunning Skills & Speed : Hustle, Agility, and Speed

Running the bases in baseball is critical.  If you can’t run the bases effectively, you’ll hinder your ability to score runs.

In startups, it’s critical to have that hustle and agility.  This is all about opportunity maximization once the ball is in play.  This means stretching a single into a double (crosssell / upsell, bigger contracts), stealing when possible (customers from your competition), and generally reading your competition in real-time (intuition and nuances of selling to both customers and investors).

Throwing Ability : Teamwork

This relates to the internal aspects of a startup.  Can you lead and work within a team?  Can you hit the cutoff man e.g. delegate when is the right time to do so?.  This is about being affective with players on your own team to maximize the position you play.  The most effective early stage startups I’ve come across have a good team rapport and play to each others’ strengths.  Especially early when there is generally chaos, playing the position you’re best at (product, sales, marketing, customer services, QA, IT, etc.) and knowing your limits is critical.

Fielding Abilities : GTD

Every entrepreneur can get things done, and similarly every baseball player can catch a flyball or field a grounder.  But the gold glove entrepreneurs are the ones that excel at cranking things out and simply getting things done across a broad range of domains.  JFDI (thanks @msuster)!  To borrow an American football analogy, this is the blocking and tackling that is the unglamorous and often overlooked aspect of entrepreneurialism.

Intangibles

There are definitely other things that make a successful baseball player and entrepreneur – experience, drive, fire, luck, durability, clutch ability, personal circumstances.  Most things have to align for someone to be in the big leagues in baseball and technology.

Scouting

Over the last year as a VC, I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs with different combinations of these tools.  Some were very effective at selling to customers, but just could not raise a round from VCs.  Their pitches were too technical, they got into the weeds too much.  They needed more sizzle.  They were great at selling to customers, hitting their singles and doubles.  But when it came to closing a round, they only had warning track power and process became that much more drawn out and painful.

On the flipside, there were companies where the only thing the CEO could do effectively was raise VC money.  This left their companies with a lot of cash in the bank and a high valuation.  Now they need to execute and build a product that would attract and acquire customers.  Stay off the roids and start bunting if you need.

We are currently scouting players for our franchise.  Are you a five-tool entrepreneur?  If so, APPLY and come see us at Sprouter today.  We’d love to help you develop into an MVP.

I think Jevon and Jonas and Karthik are getting sick of running events with me. Before StartupEmpire back in 2008, I ended up in the Emergency Room at Toronto General for another look at my ticker. This week I ended up in the Emergency Room at Toronto General as we are planning Founders & Funders. I’m ok, I was both times but it does complicate the event planning and invitation process.

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better…stronger…faster.” Wikipedia

So if you feel like you only got your invitation very recently, i.e., today. It’s my fault, I am sorry, I have been out of commission. It’s a reminder that you should do a startup before you need a body replacement.

Here is the update on Founders & Funders. It has been almost 2 years since we ran the last Founders & Funders (thanks for noticing William ;-). We are 7 days from the event and we have 35 remaining spots. Unlike past events, we are over inviting and over selling the event, i.e., first come first served. So if you got an invite but were waiting that might be a bad plan…

• 232 Invites sent
• 65 Tickets sold
• 35 Tickets remaining
• Target 70% Founders (Currently: 66% founders)
• Apply for Founders & Funders ?

How to get an invitation?

“Fortune favors the connected entrepreneur.” @jcal7 #trueuniversity via @hnshah

We’re looking for “interesting” founders. Often this means people that we’ve met at other events, as Founders & Funders are relatively small social gatherings. That doesn’t mean it is just our friends, as I’ve been often accused. But it is entrepreneurs that we’ve met, that are building interesting companies, that have interesting traction. Get someone that we think is awesome to refer you. It’s a social hack (just like me).

Connect with other founders

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.

What’s the point?

Jonas, Jevon and I are founders. We are not an event company. We are not a media company. We have been trying to write content on StartupNorth that is relevant to us as founders. Whether we are raising money, connecting with other where we live, finding talent, or growing a business. We generally charge very close to the cost of the ticket, i.e., there are some slight over head costs but we are not collecting salaries or generating revenues. This is an unfortunate hobby. But I know there are world-class founders and companies across Canada and while there are government supported organizations and purported lobby groups, we are just a bunch of founders trying to do the things that we find useful in building our companies.

Founders & Funders is a social event. It is designed to connect with the people writing cheques and making investments on a social level. To talk about startups and technologies and business models without the constraints of a pitch. Will there be pitches, definitely (How do you know when an entrepreneur is dead? They stop pitching). The goal is to have a highly edited dinner party with “interesting founders” and get them out of their usual pitch oriented conversation with VCs.

Whether this works or not is questionable, but it does bring together founders and funders in a social context.

 Some rights reserved by miketippett

Ok, it makes me laugh every time I read GrowLab. The only way it could be better is when someone describes the GrowLab companies as “GrowOps”. They really did a great job in creating a corporate name that has a set of nuanced meanings (well maybe it’s not so nuanced).

Our friends from GrowLab are heading out on tour to find their next cohort. They are coming to:

• Toronto - February 13, 2012 Register
• Waterloo – February 14, 2012 Register
• Montreal – February 15, 2012 Register
• Edmonton – February 22, 2012 Register
• Calgary – February 23, 2012 Register

Sounds like an interesting night with Daniel Debow (LinkedIn, @ddebow), Debbie Landa (LinkedIn, @deblanda) and Jason Bailey (LinkedIn, @YVRJason) talking about startups, entrepreneurship, building companies in Canada, getting connected in the Valley, GrowConf, incubators and other fun things. The panel conversation is:

Are you an Entrepreneur or a Wantrepreneur?

What makes you different from other entrepreneurs trying to build start-ups? You are competing with thousands of entrepreneurs for the same resources, talent, and capital. How are you going to make sure that you attract the best people and funding? Is it about who you know or is it about how great your product is or the reach you have in the community?

In Toronto that I get to host the above conversation, it means that I’m going to have to represent for the “Wantrepreneur” side. Because there is too much awesomeness with Daniel, Jason and Debbie representing the “Entrepreneur” side. It should be a fun event and a great time for entrepreneurs to get or stay connected with each other. This is a great group to provide deep insight into the experience of building companies in Canada and selling them to Silicon Valley powerhouses.

Given the tour includes stops in Bucharest and Budapest, I can guarantee that someone will mention Summify (congrats guys).Also excited that Debbie and Jason will be joining us on Feb 16 for Founders & Funders.

I can’t believe it was back in 2008 that #HoHoTO started. For the past 3 years instead of a Holiday DemoCamp or Festive Founders & Funders, we’ve sponsored and attended HoHoTO. (We’ve even helped document the shenanigans). So why the fuss about a holiday party?

Toronto’s High Tech Holiday Party – #HoHoTO

“Fortune favors the connected entrepreneur.” @jcal7 #trueuniversity via @hnshah

We talk a lot about what is going on in Silicon Valley and how to make Toronto better. We can look to Helsinki, Israel, New York, Boston, Austin, and other places. But we have a strong emerging high tech culture in Toronto (and across Canada, just check out the efforts in Montreal and Vancouver). There is a strong vibrant community in Toronto that actively seeks each other out. Maybe because it’s cold and we like to snuggle, maybe because in dark of winter it’s best not to drink alone. But there are entrepreneurs that are trying to do it in Toronto and they like to get together.

 Some rights reserved by smack416 (check out the Flickr Pool for #hohoto)

We have a great community that knows how to have a great time. And with HoHoTO the great time also supports a great cause.

What is HoHoTO?

We often joke about startups being “ramen profitable”, but for many this is not a choice. We are working with HoHoTO and the Daily Bread Food Bank we hope to improve Toronto. HoHoTO is a Holiday party to raise sorely-needed funds for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank. It brings together the hyper-connected tech, marketing, PR, social media and startup communities  to raise attention and support around a core idea:

“People in our town are hungry – damnit – and we can make a difference.”

Here is the call to all Toronto startups, you should attend HoHoTO and support the Daily Bread Food Bank. It’s a great way to initial meet and connect with other readers of StartupNorth and give back to those less fortunate in Toronto.

It’s easy to sponsor, it’s easy to attend, it’s easy to donate.

Get Tickets Now!

PS this is a call out of our friends to match or beat our sponsorship/donation:

• Rob Lewis (LinkedIn, @robertslewis) at TechVibes - You know you want to beat us at something ;-)
• Erin Bury (LinkedIn, @erinbury) & Sarah Prevette (LinkedIn, @SarahPrevette) at Sprouter - We heard you’re flush with PostMedia cash…
• John Ruffolo (LinkedIn, @ruffoloj) and the team at OMERS Ventures - Really you haven’t sponsored this yet?
• Roger Chabra (LinkedIn, @rogerchabra) at Rho Ventures - I know you’re really a Toronto boy.
• Duncan Hill (LinkedIn, @dunchill) & Robin Axon (LinkedIn, @robinaxon) – Don’t call me the day of the event asking for a ticket…

This morning Rick Nathan, Robert Montgomery, and Chris Arsenault announced the 20 Canadian technology companies that have been selected to present at this year’s CIX conference. Many you’ve heard of, a few are well on their way, all definitely worth connecting with December 1.

• Massive Damage – Founded by veteran app developers Ken Seto and Garry Seto, Massive Damage is building next generation location based massively multiplayer games for mobile devices.

• Arcestra – Arcestra is a new cloud-based technology and business platform that streamlines commercial real estate transactions unlocking tremendous value for tenants, landlords, brokers, designers and suppliers in the multi-billion dollar commercial real estate market.

• Vanilla Forums – Vanilla is open source community forum software that powers discussions on over 500,000 sites around the world.

• Woozworld – Founded in 2010, Woozworld created and operates Woozworld.com, a Web 2.0 innovative social virtual world, specifically designed to answer the needs and expectations of tweens.

• Wattpad – On Wattpad users discover a new form of entertainment where you can interact and share stories across text, video, images and through conversations with other readers and writers.

• Infersystems – Infersystems has developed a proprietary, automatic predictive analytics engine based on non parametric statistics. The Infer RTB Optimizer enables marketers to effectively and efficiently optimize display media campaigns at the impression level in order to maximize CPA, CPC and/or profit.

• Recoset – Recoset is a predictive analytics company that allows marketers to bring 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data together in real time and use economic models to make purchase decisions across multiple digital marketing channels.

• ClearRisk – ClearRisk helps the insurance market by giving them a way to win in the mid market by providing the needed risk management solutions to medium sized companies.

• Achievers – Achievers is an employee recognition solution that helps companies recognize brilliant performance and empowers employees to choose their own rewards.

• Bitheads – An award-winning product development company that is creating a unique cloud-based solution for a large and emerging entertainment market.

• Shoplogix – Shoplogix envisions a manufacturing industry where every manufacturer has access to the right information to make the right decisions.

• True Voice – True Voice Technologies caters to organizations that recognize the importance of live conversation and how it can play a pivotal role in their business.

• Polar Mobile – Polar Mobile provides media companies globally an industry-leading Platform that makes it fast and easy to launch branded mobile Apps across every smartphone.

• Wave Accounting – Wave Accounting is the fastest-growing online accounting tool for small businesses around the world. Wave is 100% free, offers complete accounting made ridiculously easy, and is designed for the real-world needs of small business owners.

• Nexalogy Environics – Nexalogy Environics is a leading Canadian provider of social media/ research technology and consulting services. Nexalogy takes the guesswork out of social data analytics.

• Quickmobile – QuickMobile is a software development company that builds interactive, engaging mobile applications and mobile websites for audiences at conferences, trade shows, film festivals and other events.

• Responsetek – ResponseTek helps organizations see the link between poor customer service delivery and retention and growth problems.

• Nexj Systems – NexJ Systems (TSX: NXJ) is a leading provider of enterprise private cloud software, delivering customer relationship management solutions to the financial services, insurance, and healthcare industries.

• TribeHR – TribeHR provides a Software as a Service human resources management tool for small and medium businesses to reduce the time, cost and aggravation resulting from managing human resources on a tight budget.

• Evoco – Evoco is an enterprise class, software-as-a-service provider that integrates real estate management, project data management, and facilities management solutions for multi-location real estate owners.

Startup Weekend Toronto is coming back for it’s third event in just over year. The city is making a name for itself amongst the global Startup Weekend community, having held some of the highest quality events, including last June’s which turned out to be the largest North American event held to date.

The city has lots of great events but that’s not what gets me excited. It’s the quality, innovation and momentum that Toronto’s entrepreneurs have that is inspiring. Personally, I never had any interest in running events but I liked the idea of Startup Weekend and was inspired by Startup Weekend’s CEO, Marc Nager and his the team… at least enough to agree to run a single event. Once you’ve been involved in one, it’s hard not to keep it going. The energy, enthusiasm and drive of everyone who’s attended the last two Startup Weekend Toronto events is infectious.

Last June’s event was a raging success with over half the teams still taking their projects forward and gaining some real traction 6 months later. Vizualize.me is the perfect story of the possibility of a single weekend. A brand new idea gets pitched for the first time. A group of strangers come together as a new team. In under 54hrs, the team iterates, refines, pounds the pavement for customer feedback, signs up over 10,000 registered emails and puts an awesome final presentation together to take first prize. What’s more impressive is what comes next! The Vizualize.me team decided to commit full-time and see where they can take this. As of today, they have over 300,000 registered users, have been covered in Mashable, Fast Company, TechCrunch to name a few, and have gone through a full private and now public beta program. Eugene Woo is actively speaking to investors as they run this startup out of the Ryerson Digital Media Zone.

November’s Startup Weekend will officially close Global Entrepreneurship Week Canada (GEW) and will be part of the Global Startup Battle with over 65 Startup Weekend events happening around the world during GEW. The winning team from each city event will compete against all 65 cities with a chance to win a trip to DEMO in Singapore. Toronto is going to impress the global startup community once again with a world class event. Check out the event details from the site and by following the action on twitter using #swtoronto .

There are still a few tickets left and StartupNorth readers can have them at a discount. See you there!

#DCT30 Details

Date: October 12th, 2011

Time: 6:30 – 9:00 PM EST

Location: Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University: 55 Dundas St. W, Toronto, ON

Register to Attend:

• Count me in on Plancast
• Register Now »

Keynote Speaker – Elmer Sotto

Elmer Sotto (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) is the Head of Growth for Facebook Canada, where he is responsible for setting strategy to further grow and engage the Canadian user base. He also helps key strategic partners understand and leverage the Facebook platform.

Prior to this, he was the Vice President of Product and Operations for JumpTV. Mr. Sotto also spent more than five years at eBay Canada as Director of Marketplace Development.

We are very excited to be hosting Elmer as the keynote speaker for DemoCamp 30 and looking forward to another exciting event! Please make sure to register before tickets are sold out.

Amazing entrepreneurs & demos

The goal at DemoCamp is to provide a platform for local companies to launch, get product or pitch feedback, establish a presence for recruiting as well as help with PR and social media awareness. We aim to gather highly connected and talented entrepreneurs, developers, designers, marketers, investors and others to watch and critique entrepreneurs in a safe environment.

We have a list of amazing demos, companies and founders presenting. These are some of the best in the world, and guess what they are all located in the GTA. We have 2 companies that have participated in YCombinator, the first startup out of IAC’s Hatch Labs, a leading e-book platform and a hot social hardware application. It’s a great list of local entrepreneurs.

• Upverter
• Maide Inc.
• Vidyard
• Kobo
• BluTrumpet

Sponsored by our friends at:

• KPMG
• BlackBerry
• VMFarms
• OCE
• StartMeUp Ryerson