Waterloo

There are 36 posts filed in Waterloo (this is page 2 of 12).

Finding next at the University of Toronto

I’m guilty. I’ve been pandering to my alma mater, the University of Waterloo. I love Waterloo and UWaterloo startups. There is so much to love. There are Vidyard, Thalmic Labs, TribeHR, Desire2Learn, PostRank (acquired by Google), . There is even a Waterloo mafia in Toronto with Upverter, Top Hat Monocle, SocialDeck (acquired by Google), PushLife (acquired by Google), Xtreme Labs (Amar, Sunny, Farhan are all UWaterloo 1998 grads along with Social+Capital‘s Chamath) and others.

But have you seen the awesomesauce that is originating at the University of Toronto:

  • Bumptop acquired by Google, founded by UofT CS Masters student Anand Agarawala
  • Sysomos acquired by Marketwire, founded by UofT CS prof Nick Koudas and Nilesh Bansal (UofT CS PhD candidate)
  • BackType acquired by Twitter, founded by Christopher Golda and Michael Montano, both UofT Electrical Engineering Grads
  • CognoVision acquired by Intel, founded by Shahzad Malik (UofT CS PhD)
  • ScribbleLive cofounder Jonathan Keebler is a UofT CS grad
  • Rypple acquired by Salesforce, founded by Daniel Debow (JD/MBA UofT) and George Babu (Engineering, MBA and JD)
  • Canopy Labs founded by Wojciech Gryc a UofT grad
  • Wattpad founded by Allen Lau (UofT Engineering) and Ivan Yuen (UofT MBA + UWaterloo Engineering)
  • DNNresearch Inc. acquired by Google was founded by UofT prof Geoffrey Hinton and 2 graduate students

There are a number of spots on the UofT campus to find high potential growth startups and engineers. You can look at Creative Destruction Lab in the Rotman School of Business. You can look to the Entrepreneurship Hatchery in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

You can also attend the Computer Science Department’s Research In Action Showcase on April 17, 2013.

Add your events to our calendar.

Research In Action 2013

Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, where is Montreal?

Startup Genome Ecosystem Ranking

The state of the Canadian cities in the StartupCompass Startup Ecosystem Report 2012 (Get the Report) is interesting. The Startup Ecosystem Report 2012 lists 3 Canadian cities:

  • Toronto # 8
  • Vancouver # 9
  • Waterloo # 16

It leaves Montreal out of the top 20, it might very well be # 21. But it is very hard to determine without the full report that is due out later in the year. I also find it very strange, given the strong Montreal supporters in the  “Local startup ecosystem supporters” listed in the document:

The data reminds me of other analyst driven research companies (think Gartner, Altimeter, etc.). The methodology leaves it open to bias. But it is a great stick in the sand based on our own community survey responses.

“The index is based on data from more than 50,000 startups around the world who are using the Startup Genome’s Startup Compass, an automated analyst in the cloud that helps businesses make better decisions via benchmarks and actionable recommendations.”

It will be interesting to continue to read the report and lessons for Canadian entrepreneurs.

Toronto Startup Event List Fall 2012

Getting ready for startup event fatigue? Toronto is an active ecosystem (based on total activity in the Startup Genome database). But there are a lot of upcoming events, here is my inital tracking of Toronto startup events list for fall 2012. The question is which events to attend and which ones to stay heads down and work. An actual guide would breakdown the benefits of each of these events. But I’m being lazy, I’ll add some commentary around each event. Or please feel free to add events and commentary. I’ll update the post.

And for those of you thinking about attending everything, go read Mark Suster’s Be Careful not to become a Conference Ho.

September 2012

October 2012

November 2012

December 2012