StartupNorth

Following on with Jevon’s original post of Canada’s Next Five Years, I want to discuss Waterloo.

Five years ago, I organized the first StartupCampWaterloo. It built on the great community and open space tools from BarCampWaterloo and focused participants around startups. Simon Woodside, Ali Asaria, Mic Berman, and myself felt like we needed to something a little different to get the grass roots high tech startup community moving in Waterloo. It was a year after the Accelerator Centre opened and the community was just finding its feet. Waterloo felt bold and creative with a strong core of startups but it was small.

With the aggressive growth of RIM and Open Text, the Waterloo community has spent the last five years building a strong and diverse tech community. In addition to the homegrown companies, the community was fuelled by a few California based companies making some big purchases in Waterloo Region. These three purchases resulted in the parent companies building a larger presence in the Waterloo Region:

• Google’s acquisition of Reqwireless in 2006
• Intel buying RapidMind in 2009
• EA buying J2Play in 2009

In the last couple of years Communitech grew beyond simply being a promoter and connector for local tech companies. Communitech has established a home base for startups in downtown Kitchener. They took the bold move to put a vibrant space for startups in an old Tannery complex, which has also attracted the likes of Google and Desire2Learn, each with hundreds of employees based in the building. The Communtech Hub is a strong message to entrepreneurs that the community is there to support you.

However, the next five years are where all the attention the Waterloo region has drawn to itself is going to have to transition to results and further momentum growth. This will depend a lot on the companies that have been founded in the last five years and includes some that are now YC-backed.

Looking at what Canada needs to do, what role does Waterloo play in that?

Education

Waterloo is home to arguably the top Engineering School in the country, the University of Waterloo. With programs like REAP, CBET, and living environments like VeloCity it is committed to educating and supporting students with regards to entrepreneurship. It is also focused on having them experience it through the Co-op program that allows students to work anywhere in the world with many choosing to work at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and a ton of different startups in the valley. This results in students that have a big head start in terms of building a network as well as learning about problems that could turn into great product ideas. That experience and opportunity is a big win for Canada’s startup community. We can see the rise of Waterloo alum lead startups like Vidyard, Kik, Upverter, Well.ca, TribeHR, LearnHub, Thinking Ape, Pair, and others.

And it’s not just UWaterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga college are also doing their part. The MBA program at WLU has a focus on entrepreneurship and they are leveraging the Communitech Hub environment. Conestoga College is educating the work force in the region making it a very important partner in ensuring there is a workforce for growing companies.

Community as the Framework

The Waterloo Region has a ton of tech oriented events. A lot of folks assume the trick is to find time to attend all the events you want to attend. The real trick is figuring out which events you should attend, and how to make the most of your attendance. Are you attending for education? recruiting? to find funding? to be part of the startup scene?  More entrepreneurs need to clearly identify their desired outcomes from each event, and they participate accordingly.

What there needs to be, is a greater focus on founders and information sharing.  Peer mentorship, breakfasts with friends at Angie’s, or just chatting at the end of the day. We should avoid gossip, we don’t want or need a ValleyWag for Waterloo Region. Building a company is difficult enough that we don’t need to be hindering each other. Entrepreneurs need to be able to establish trusting relationships with each other, to build I see it happening more and more but there isn’t enough peer mentorship going on.There are a large number of entrepreneurs that have been through the ups and downs of a startup. It includes fundraising, business development, channel partner discussions, contract gotchas, etc. We need to help entrepreneurs build connections with each other.  There is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to build trustworthy relationships and share their experiences.

Tighter connections to elsewhere

Jevon calls for tighter ties to Silicon Valley. But it’s more broad than that. Canadians need to get out of Canada. We need to build stronger connections in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Buenos Ares, London, Mumbai, Shanghai, Eastern Europe.

We are doing a pretty good job at getting exposure in Silicon Valley. We have companies going to YCombinator (Vidyard, Allerta, Upverter, Pair and others). The C100 has done an amazing job identifying Canadian expatriates and connecting them across the country. The C100 has expanded to NYC and to the UK. Entrepreneurs need to expand to.  We have startups raising money from NYC (Kik raised from USV), Boston (TribeHR raised from Matrix Partners). We need to get out of the local ecosystem and build products for global customers.

I would be remiss to ignore the need for tighter connections to Toronto as well. Whenever anyone says “Toronto is better than Waterloo for…” or “Waterloo is better than Toronto for…” a kitten dies. Stop it. No one really cares and outside of Ontario people think it is just one big region. Lets build stronger ties and use both cities for everything they have to offer.

Policy

Beyond establishing the Hub, Communitech has done a lot of work on building connections with all levels of government. They have a big role to play with influencing policy as does Canada’s Technology Triangle Association.

Grow Like Hell and Don’t Stop

Hootsuite is mentioned but Waterloo is home to tech companies that have taken the long path to growth. RIM, Open Text, and Desire2Learn are examples of rapid growth (over a 10 year period) tech companies. What Waterloo needs is more of that. The challenge is going to be getting the talent that knows how to work sales funnels, marketing, etc to live in the Region in sufficient numbers.

What I would guess is going to happen initially is that US VC-backed companies that started in Waterloo will have to find a way to balance having their product teams in Waterloo and marketing/sales teams in major US startup hub cities. That means an office in Waterloo and one of Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Francisco, New York, or Boston. This allows them to hire developer talent outside of the higher salaries zones that is on par (or better) but feed on the energy in those cities. The US market and understanding it quickly is key to many of the current fast moving startups in Waterloo.

For the Region of Waterloo to live up to the expectations, in the next five years these companies will need to attract that marketing/sales talent to move here for work or be able to use Toronto for that.

Jesse Rodgers

Jesse is the Director of VentureLab at Rotman (rotmanventurelab.com), a cofounder of TribeHR, and ran VeloCity at the University for a few years. He has been a key member of the Waterloo startup community hosting StartupCampWaterloo and other events to bring together and engage local entrepreneurs. Follow him on Twitter @jrodgers or WhoYouCallingAJesse.com.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Katherine Hague (LinkedIn, @katherinehague), co-founder and CEO of Shoplocket.com, a startup that has recently launched and which aims to help people sell anything from anywhere in minutes. Part of our efforts to highlight and support entrepreneurs and projects from Ladies Learning Code.

After 6 months of hard work, we’re excited to announce the launch of Shoplocket..

ShopLocket is a simple solution for anyone wanting a quick and attractive way to start selling online without the overhead of running a storefront.

Think of it as a platform powering popup online retailers. It’s Lean Retail. Much like Lean Startup or Lean Manufacturing. It’s a platform for online retailers to find “a plan that works before running out of resources”. Just like CafePress automates the creation of customized goods, ShopLocket makes it easy for makers to sell online without investing in inventory or ecommerce solutions. It’s a way, much like restauranters testing new menus and concepts in food truck, popup restaurant or underground markets, ito test the sales of products online.

Shoplocket Cofounders Katherine and Andrew

During summer of 2011, I had the idea to have some quirky t-shirts printed to see whether I could manage to sell them online. I had a pretty decent blog following and a solid network so it occurred to me that if I posted them for sale on the blog, that people might buy them. For only one t-shirt, signing up for a full storefront solution seemed a little ridiculous, especially since I didn’t even know if I’d sell one to cover monthly fees. At the same time I wanted my product listing to look well designed and professional. These were really great t-shirts, and I couldn’t imagine myself just throwing them onto a marketplace like kijiji or craigslist. I couldn’t figure out why what seemed like an easy e-commerce problem like “I only have one product to sell” was actually so hard to solve.

Using ShopLocket, sellers can be up and running in minutes and can embed their products directly on any website, or share a link to where we host their product. In some cases, ShopLocket will serve as a customer funnel for larger online stores, helping new sellers figure out whether they’ve got something worth selling. But for many others, ShopLocket will be all they ever need. For these sellers we’re a replacement for back-and-forth email transactions with buyers and unprofessional marketplaces. Think of us as the ideal “display case” for your new product.

We’ve been in beta with about 1200 users. We’ve been accepted in the first cohort at Extreme Startups. We couldn’t have gotten to where we are today without the incredible support of the Toronto startup community. We’re now gearing up for our Demo Day on June 19th.

Guest

More Posts

Editor’s Note: William Mougayar is the CEO & founder of Engagio and previously founded Eqentia. He has 30 years of experience in the high-tech industry with large and small companies. He can be reached on Twitter at @wmougayar or by visiting his engagement profile at http://engag.io/wmougayar.

Since we were funded in early January 2012, and especially after we announced it in mid-February, I feel like I moved out of the basement and into the ground level of a building. Indeed, being part of the “Funded Club” suddenly gives you a kind of peer respect and credibility that changes the game.

We have been in the fast lane of Startup land. We produced a minimum viable product in 8 weeks and opened access to alpha users right away. 30 days later, we were funded with a $540K seed investment from 6 VC’s and Angels in the US and Canada. A month after that, we took down the alpha and beta status and opened the service totally. Four months after the first line of code was written, we’re starting to look like a mature startup with thousands of active users.

But this story wasn’t really an overnight success. It was 3 years in the making, and it sucked being in that basement during these 3 years. But they were the best preparation for the next 3 months that changed everything about me as a Canadian entrepreneur trying to be one of many others that can claim to have been funded by reputable investors.

I’ve been labeled as a tenacious individual. I’ve been called scrappy, and hard working. All true.

David Crow (@davidcrow) asked me to pen a few lessons. Take what you want, and discuss the rest in the Comment section. After all, we are entering a phase of greater social engagement, and comments are often more important that the blog post itself.

My start-up Engagio is pretty focused on one objective: letting users manage their online conversations across the fragmented Social Web and realizing relationships from these conversations.

There’s a story behind our evolution, and it’s tightly related to the future of the Social Web.

Start with Social Capital

It started in the fall of 2008 when I became inspired by Howard Lindzon (@howardlindzon), founder of StockTwits as I heard him speak at Startup Empire where he recounted how he met venture capitalist Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) a few years earlier just by commenting on his blog. Howard explained the value of Social Capital as a critical by-product of the Social Web.

The next day, I started commenting on Fred Wilson’s AVC.com blog, and gradually increased my participation because I was seeing increasing value from interacting with the other commenters. I firmly believed that every comment was an implicit linkage to a person and a potential relationship waiting to blossom.

Since that day, I have written about 3,400 comments on AVC.com, – that’s an average of 3 per day, received 1,800 Likes, and made dozens of real world relationships with other frequent commenters I met on that blog. This proved that if you invest in building relationships online, there are long-term benefits you can gain. That’s Social Capital at work.

Then in September of 2011, Fred nominated 2 members of his blog community as moderators, and I was one of them. The value of Social Capital became even clearer to me, as I was seeing the value of commenting and social engagement on the web working in my favor. But my social engagement was pretty scattered on the Social Web across other blogs and social networks, and I started to realize that this wasn’t manageable anymore.

I thought there must be a better way to manage the multiplicity of interactions across the social web. So I came up with the idea for Engagio. It was a deceptively simple idea, one based on the fact that we are entering a phase of fragmentation of the Social Web. And we needed better tools to manage this fragmentation of conversations. I ran the idea of developing an Inbox for social conversations by Fred Wilson who liked it and encouraged me to make it happen. The next day, I turned to my team and we developed the first version of Engagio 8 weeks later.

Lessons for Canadian Startups

Engagio is my second startup, so everything I learned, did or didn’t do in the first one is embedded in this second one. You can’t fake experience, and you can’t manufacture lessons. They are in the scars, the notches on your belt, the stars on your shoulder and they are who you are.

Here are a few lessons I’d like to share with the Startup North readers.

1. Don’t polish a bad idea

The simpler the starting point and the simpler you can articulate it, the better it is. If you’re spending too much time wordsmithing the positioning statement or messaging, maybe you need to change course. Polishing a bad idea won’t make it shine.

2. Relationships don’t matter

They don’t. You may have hundreds of relationships that aren’t giving you benefits. Few relationships bear fruit in terms of value offered. The relationship itself doesn’t matter, but the trust in it does, therefore trusted relationships do matter. I knew a lot of people, but few were really trusted enough that they would do something for me. With trust comes exceptions and a lot of doors open in front of you.

3. Beware of selling to the enterprise

Unless the enterprise user is behaving like a consumer, you’ll have a tough time selling to the enterprise unless you’re a large company already, or have raised a lot of money as a startup. As enticing as enterprise users are, selling them a solution that requires group approvals and long budget cycles will kill any startup, no matter how good their product is. The only way to penetrate the enterprise is by having a simple SaaS-based product that individual users can try and purchase on their own without asking anyone.

4. Keep all relationships open

Keep all your relationships on a cordial level, even with the jerk VC or fellow entrepreneur who didn’t respond to your email, or didn’t give you what you asked for, or was indifferent to your request, or ignored you intentionally. I’ve encountered each one of these situations, and it’s better to keep your head high and think they are the jerk, not you.

5. Don’t believe your own story

Let others believe in it. That’s more powerful. You need to step outside of what you are developing and believe in the reality checks that outsiders will give you. They will see things you don’t, especially if they are users.

6. Growth is what matters

Startup growth is measured in dog years, and you must have a sense of urgency about it. It’s the #1 priority of a startup. If you don’t grow daily, your chances of success diminish. A startup exists to make something out of nothing. You’re a creator, and you must start to occupy a space that didn’t exist before. Growth is a daily habit, not a quarterly goal.

7. Get out of Canada

The Lean Startup methodology advocates that the CEO must get out of the office. But in Canada, out of the office is not enough. You need to get out of Canada and go conquer the US market. The borders are so porous from a business perspective, it’s as if it wasn’t there. Use Canada as a base, but use the US as a springboard. Get a US address and act like a US company when you pursue clients, users, media attention, partnerships and capital. The barriers will suddenly appear lower.

8. Go help someone

If you’re having a good day and believe you’re making progress, go help someone that needs your help. You owe it to the ecosystem that made you where you are.

Next time you’re on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or a blog, don’t just share, re-tweet or like that piece of content or comment. Rather, engage with the other person, debate them, disagree with them, and start a conversation. You never know where it will lead you.

Connect with me on Engagio.

Editor’s Note: William Mougayar is the CEO & founder of Engagio and previously founded Eqentia. He has 30 years of experience in the high-tech industry with large and small companies. He can be reached on Twitter at @wmougayar or by visiting his engagement profile at http://engag.io/wmougayar.

William Mougayar

Engagio is William's 2nd startup, having started Eqentia in 2008. He has more than 30 years of strategic, operational, and leadership experience in the technology industry, as an entrepreneur, business executive, professional speaker, management consultant and best-selling author. His career spanned 14 years at Hewlett-Packard in a mix of senior sales & marketing management roles, 10 years as an independent thought leader, and 2.5 years as global VP of Corporate Marketing at Cognizant. He was also the best-selling author of Opening Digital Market (McGraw-Hill, 1997), co-author of The Business Internet and Intranets (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) and was a columnist for Computerworld, LANTimes and Business 2.0. William is a graduate of the University of Washington (BSc), the University of Western Ontario (Marketing Management), and attended the University of British Columbia’s Graduate Commerce School. Follow him on Twitter. LinkedIn Profile. Google+ Profile. AngelList.

More Posts - Website