I have been meeting with a decent number of startups in and around Toronto lately. I have been doing this for a few reasons. The most obvious is that I want to find interesting startups to profile here on StartupNorth, I want to encourage people to keep at it, and more selfishly, I find startups, whether they are my own or someone else’s, fascinating.
When I came across this chronicle of the ArsDigita story, I was fascinated. Philip Greenspun went through it all. An incredible ramp up of his business, strong response from customers and a solid development team that was producing really great products.
If you remember Ars back then, they were a big deal. The Ars Community System was the top notch social media platform of it’s day, and a lot of companies are just now starting to replicate it, including a few Candian startups. (Whether or not they know they are simply replicating Ars is another story).
You will have to read the story for yourself. Take what lessons you can from it, it is the story of what happens when investors don’t play nicely. ArsDigita was a strong company, profitable and reasonably well run, but it only took a few petty VCs to tank the whole thing.
If that can happen to Ars, what could happen to your little startup if you took money from the wrong source?
We are going to try to do a better job of covering the various *camp events in Canada. For now, a reminder: