StartupNorth

Month: November 2007

  • Finally, Wireless Competition Explodes in Canada

    The 3 stoogesShove over Rogers, Bell and Telus. In announcing the rules to the upcoming (May 2008) advanced spectrum auction, industry minister Jim Prentice has blasted open the doors to new wireless competition in Canada. Here is a quick overview of the new rules:

    • 40 of the 105 available megahertz will be set aside for new entrants
    • Incumbents will be required to allow roaming on their networks at reasonable rates (this is crucial as any new entrant may start regionally and take up to a few years to establish full national coverage)
    • Incumbents will be required to share towers with new entrants (significantly reducing startup costs and redundant infrastructure)

    The government has given the would-be entrants (and pretty much everyone except for the existing telcos and their bankers) everything they were asking for. The game is on for startups and new entrants in the Canadian wireless space. So get to it. The crew here at StartupNorth are just this minute back at the orbiting headquarters, scrambling beneath couch cushions for the mere few hundred million in change needed to finance a spectrum bid and national roll out.

    Even if launching a whole new wireless carrier is a little out of your league, this is great news for tech entrepreneurs in Canada. Despite recent improvements, Canada has long lagged the world in terms of mobile adoption, open access to networks and affordable data rates. With wireless rapidly becoming ?the new last mile? of the internet, our ability to innovate is going to depend on the emergence of a competitive wireless market. Assuming the new rules bring real competition to Canada, this announcement is the best thing tech entrepreneurs could hope for.

    If you want a hint of where the wind is blowing for open and competitive wireless markets, look no further than Google?s recent announcement of the Android API and Verizon?s move to open their network to non-Verizon devices (even non-phone devices). Time to get out that whiteboard, and dust off those pitch decks.

    As if this weren?t big enough news itself… The other reason that we?re bringing you this story on StartupNorth.ca is to announce that, starting Monday, the North family is getting a little bigger. WirelessNorth.ca will be launching and joins the StartupNorth family as a partner site. Tune in for more coverage of mobile startups, industry trends, device reviews, and everything awesome yet to come from the Great Wireless North.

  • onaswarm – Lifestreaming in groups

    In the world of RSS, and with users creating more of the actual content that popular sites are reselling to other users, we all start to create little islands of stuff out there on different sites, and rarely do we get the chance to pull it all together.

    I create a lot of my own stuff. I twitter, create seesmic videos, have a facebook profile, have a blog, this blog, and post on another blog, I use last.fm, and so on. It gets hard, or impossible, to serve all of this content up to someone else in a meaningful way. On their own, each tidbit I leave on a site can often lack context, but aggregated together, the lifestream starts to tell a story.

    onaswarm.pngOnaswarm is a new release from David Janes, based in Toronto, Ontario, that is one of the first movers in the personal aggregation space. There are others, such as friendfeed, but everyone in the market so far is early to the game.

    RSS is a real market, and you have to think of it that way.

    To some people RSS is at best just a file format, the vast majority of people don’t even have a clue what it is, but to a few, RSS is a market that is in a lot of pain right now. A market can be defined as “The opportunity to buy or sell; extent of demand for merchandise” and we are seeing that there is increasing demand for products and services which make RSS more useful and consumable to end users and businesses. In the same way that AideRSS and Feedburner have provided specific and useful tools to their target markets, there are subsets of the RSS market that remain open to a lifestreaming player.

    The Consumer Market

    Whoever gets the consumer side of the RSS market right is going to do pretty well. You only have to look at any set of internet usage estimates to get an idea of just how much consuming people are doing. An aggregator that can help people pull in all the content they are leaving all over the place will have a lot of opportunities. As each individual gets more accustomed to creating, and then reading content created by other amateurs, the need to have an adequate aggregation toolset will become more and more real.

    The Enterprise Market

    Standards like RSS are becoming prevalent in enterprise software and as more enterprise software platforms start to produce RSS feeds, there is going to be significant demand for aggregators which bring together feeds in unique and productive ways. There is a need to centralize feeds from tools like Sharepoint, Lotus Notes, and Wikis. Perhaps even email.

    Innovative, Still not Pretty

    Onaswarm has by far the best model for combining all manner of feeds in a reasonable and intuitive way. By reducing redundant information and filtering regularly recurring types of information Onaswarm becomes useful beyond a plain vanilla aggregator. Even better, Onaswarm allows groups of people to loosely combine all of their feeds and then slowly acts as a defacto social network. This is the Toronto Swarm, which gives you a reading of what is happening in Toronto’s tech scene.

    The one downside to Onaswarm is that it really needs a decent UI overhaul. Things feel a little disjointed and a bit ugly. I am not the only one who feels that way, and I am pretty sure the guys at Onaswarm know it is something they are going to have to tackle.

    Until their business model becomes more apparent (I am sure they have one, but are choosing to more generally test and prove the product before they really go to market), it will be hard to know if Onaswarm will be a winner or follower in the Lifestreaming space and RSS aggregator market. I think they are currently the best out there, in spite of the aforementioned need to fix up the UI. While it is not yet clear how quickly the market will or will not mature, the space should ultimately prove lucrative.

    Contact David Janes from Blogmatrix.

  • StartupCamp Toronto – More Details

    We are VERY excited to announce the line up for StartupCamp Toronto. But first, a big thank you to our sponsors. And not just because we couldn’t have put together this event without them.

    Sponsors
    These folks are in the business of making startups successful, without them a startup’s chances drop significantly… and then we’d have nothing to write about! So get to know these guys and gals at StartupCamp.

    Presenting Companies
    The five presenting companies have been chosen, thanks for all your votes! Drum roll…

    Keynote
    Albert Lai, who has started more companies than you have fingers, will be kicking things off with some thoughts on the state of the Canadian startup scene. If we get a few beers in him, Albert might even give us the inside track on his latest venture.

    Venue
    StartupCampToronto1 will be held at No Regrets, which is located at 42 Mowat Ave in the West end of the city. Parking is free in their lot starting at 6pm, and the King and Queen Street streetcars will get you there from downtown as well.

    More Tickets!
    Now that the details are worked out, we have put the last set of tickets up for grabs. This batch is for Startups and Gurus only. Service Provider sponsorships are also still available.

    There’s an After Party… AND EVERYONE IS INVITED!
    We really hated having to turn people away… so we decided to throw an after party at No Regrets! Everyone is invited. Doors open at 8:30pm. The after party is about more than free flowing beer (there will be plenty)… over a dozen startups will be giving demos all night!

    An incredible, but secret, announcement…
    Woah, have to keep a lid on this one. We have a huge new announcement to make at StartupCampToronto, you won’t want to miss this. Whether you just have an idea, or have been slaving away at your startup for years, something is about to happen in Canada that you want to know about.

  • Back to Reality – Vancouver Enterprise Forum

    index_r1_c3.jpgWhile the rest of us are sitting around moaning about the state of canadian venture capital, it appears that Vancouver is so over it, the Vancouver Enterprise Forum is at least.

    This Tuesday, November 27th, they are hosting “Beyond B.C. VCs – tips for Sourcing Tech Funding from American Venture Capitalists”

    In the November VEF event, we?ll hear from experienced American venture capitalists as they explain the fundamentals they look for when investing in B.C. and Canadian companies. How do you approach American VCs? What kind of information and potential do they want to see? What approach is best? These questions and more will be answered by Geoff Entress from Madrona of Seattle, which made an investment in Victoria based PixPo in 2006, and by Alex Gove of Walden Venture Capital of San Francisco.

    This is not a small matter for Vancouver, which has seen its share of startups heading south for funding.

    The catch? How long will startups stick around beautiful Vancouver, or anywhere in Canada, when their Venture Capitalist investors are beckoning them to come south. It starts with “let’s move the sales office”, and soon enough everyone but the developers are gone.

    This is a subject that we will be diving in to more here. Would you rather take funding outside of Canada, or would you consider it a secondary option? Considering how tightly connected Canada and the US are, does it even matter? Do we need to be doing more to make it easier for american funds to invest here?

  • Razzle Clones Woot

    Update: Caveat Emptor
    Razzle made a serious misstep selling refurbished headphones as new. The first batch of customers felt burned and started discussing their experiences on Red Flag Deals. Razzle made another poor choice by posting a fake testimonial on Red Flag Deals (under the name lohervine); a site administrator outed them by comparing IP addresses. Razzle is offering refunds, but has not yet committed to covering shipping.

    Woot sells refurbished items all the time, but they clearly state the item’s condition. While I doubt Razzle was set up to scam users, they really fumbled the ball losing the trust of their very first customers.

    On the lighter side and as predicted, a customer ended up at Razzle.com by mistake.

    Original Post
    Razzle LogoRazzle.ca, Canada’s first deal a day site, launched today. The first deal: wireless headphones for $51.90. Too rich for your blood? Well join the site anyways, because they plan to giveaway a few items every so often.

    The Montreal based site was founded by Ryan Closs, 26, who faithfully cloned Woot. Emulating a successful concept is a legitimate business strategy, so I am not going to criticize Ryan for that.

    Think Bill Gates came up with the Windows GUI? Heck even Wal-Mart’s Greeter was an idea Sam Walton copied from K-Mart. And let’s not forget to mention the multi-million dollar exits Facebook clones are making (Germany, China). That said, I would have probably paraphrased Woot’s FAQ a little less closely.

    Today’s launch had some to be expected hiccups. Fortunately, the admins were on the ball and put out the small fires in the comments. A longer term issue might be the Razzle.ca domain name. It is pretty catchy, but direct navigation traffic will occasionally end up at Razzle.com by mistake. Those users are in for a surprise… not safe for work! There is a lesson here for other entrepreneurs, pay attention to abutting domain names!

    Congrats on the launch!

    Contact: Ryan Closs

  • Angel financing – What angels look for in a company: Management (part 4 of 6)

    Now that you have given investors an overview of your product, market potential, and competition, they should have a good idea of what your company is all about and what its potential is. The next, and arguably most important topic, to cover is your company’s management. So why is management so important? Its because since early stage companies are risky and have a high chance of failing, investors look to the company’s management to ensure they have the experience, skillset, and connections to give the company the best chance of succeeding. A strong management team would include aspects such as:

    1. The CEO has a history of successfully starting and and selling companies – i.e. there is a past track record to give confidence that he/she can do it again
    2. The management team has worked together on past ventures – i.e. there is a past track record that the team works well together and there are no team dynamics issues
    3. The management team has deep experience in the industry – i.e. they have the credibility and relationships in the target industry to help get traction for the company?s product/service

    Now there are lots of examples of first time CEOs that have established very successful companies. So don’t take the above that I am suggesting its not possible. What I’m saying is that for outside investors that don’t know you or your company, having a past track record of successfully doing a similar activity provides more comfort. You would probably approach things the same way if you were looking to hire a key employee for your company – you would want to find somebody that has strong past work experience in doing a similar job.

    Since many early stage companies will not have a fully rounded management team, here are some strategies to handle this:

    Missing positions
    When a company first starts out, most likely the founders are wearing multiple hats in the roles they play. As the company grows, it is natural to bring on more members of the management team to add more specialized experience (i.e. a dedicated CFO, sales director, etc). Investors will understand this, so when you talk about your management team you should highlight the positions you feel it is missing and ones you would look to hire. This will demonstrate you can accurately assess your team and understand how it will need to change as the company grows. As some angel investors are looking to get involved with a company, they may be interested in joining the team to help the company or know of somebody else who would be interested. You should also be prepared to discuss what you see as your role in the company going forward and if you see yourself as always being the CEO. There may come a time when as a founder of the company you need to bring on another person as CEO that can take the company to the next level. I will talk more on this topic in a future article on founders syndrome.

    Board / advisors
    Another way to enhance the experience / credibility of a company’s management team is to build up a strong board of directors or advisory board. You would want to identify people that can provide value to the company in either the experience they have (i.e. if this is your first time as CEO you would want to find somebody that is an established CEO) or in the contacts they have (i.e. find somebody that is well respected/connected in the industry your company is targeting). By having these types of people involved with your company, you will be able to consult with them to discuss issues/problems your company is facing and tap into their networks to help open doors for sales, partnerships, alliances, etc. Another benefit is that it will help out the due diligence process with investors.

    Usually the first thing a group of angels will do in evaluating a company is to reach out to their network to find somebody in the industry or who knows of somebody on the company’s management team to get their insights on what they think of the company. If you have well respected people on your board or advisory board that believe enough in your company to put their name behind it and spend their time to help out, it will go a long way in establishing outside verification that your company is onto something.

    In my next article, I will talk about the financial aspects of your company to cover in an investment presentation. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future articles feel free to contact me: craig at mapleleafangels.com

  • Startup M&A – Raincity Studios acquires Bryght

    filesrc.png
    logobryght.png

    Bryght, a Drupal managed hosting startup based in Vancouver, BC has been acquired by long time partner RainCity Studios, who have developed sites such as Ozzy.com and Ask a Ninja.

    While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and I am not sure the number would be huge, this feels primarily like a smart consolidation of two very complimentary businesses. Servicing the same niche doesn’t necessarily mean two businesses should merge, but in this case the two organizations have been working together on so many projects, for so long, I have a feeling that this will be a chance to consolidate their efforts and cut some of the fat by re-directing effort.

    Many of the Bryght and RainCity Studios employees and partners are also responsible for the Northern Voice conference, which has been a huge hit for years.

    The new company is underway opening a new office in Shanghai, China, and my bet is that the renewed energy from this merger will result in a lot of cool projects in the near future. Kris Krug will be the President of the new organization with Robert Scales as CEO and running the European and Asian side of the company.

    I should also disclose: I have been a happy client of both of these companies in the past.

    Update: More straight from the source here.
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  • mesheast.com – East Coast Startup Blog

    picture-2.pngMeshEast is the latest entrant on to the Canadian Startup blog scene. I was excited to get an email from Lisa Rousseau, who is also working on her own startup, to see that the east coast would finally have a local startup blog. Lisa is going to have some work to do in finding and profiling those elusive east-coast startups, but my guess is that she will find more than enough to get started in her home province of New Brunswick.

    So please, head over to MeshEast and subscribe. We have been covering some of the bigger happenings on the east coast, but there are always a lot of things we just can’t cover. We are working on our own profile of what is going on in Atlantic Canada, and so far I have been excited about what I have seen.

    We have been trying to do as much as we can to encourage local blogs that will cover smaller regions in more detail. Montreal is the luckiest with MontrealTechWatch, which is run by Heri (who might be the hardest working blogger in Canada these days), and Ottawa has StartupOttawa, which is really starting to pick up steam. There are some gaps to fill, so if you are passionate about startups then it is time to get off your butt and step up to the place. I can think of dozens of local blogs I would love to see: Waterloo, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, and the Prairies all come to mind as the biggest gaps out there.

    So get started, and get in touch. We want to help!

  • groovle.com – Customized Google Search Pages

    picture-2-21-01-42.pngYou may have heard before: Google pays big money to people who send searchers their way. In the case of Mozilla, the search bar in the top right-hand corner of their webbrowser makes them something on the order of $40million a year. That’s a lot of money for searches. I don’t even want to know how much Apple makes off the Google search they have embedded in Safari.

    Goovle, a Oakville, Ontario startup, is trying to take advantage of Google’s generous kickbacks with their custom search tool.

    Groovle allows you to create a customized search page of your own, which most users would typically set as their homepage. Groovle’s unique feature is the huge library of images you can access to create your own page. You can also upload your own images.

    trans.pngThe comments on their September review on Techcrunch predicted that Groovle would be shut down quickly. It is now the middle of November and they are still around. While I share some of the concerns of those commentors – it is not clear whether groovle actually has any rights to use these images – that doesn’t seem to be stopping them.

    As of October 2007 they were clocking 250,000 visitors a month, but it is unclear how they have been doing since (compete.com is suggesting a 70%+ drop in traffic but I don’t trust compete all that much).

    Groovle is a great example of a simple service with a potentially large audience that just takes a little elbow grease. All the components are there, Google is providing search and a kickback to sites who send searches their way, and there is (apparently) a wealth of art and images out there that you can make available to users.

    Groovle is self funded by its founders, Ryan Fitzgibbon, Jacob Fuller and Nico Angka, and they are not currently seeking investment, but are perusing partnerships.

    Contact Jacob Fuller
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  • Coast to Coast: Amateur Sports Teams 2.0

    One of the first startups we profiled on StartupNorth was New Brunswick based Yourteamonline. Since then Yourteamonline has launched version 2.0 of their sports team management suite and added a slew of new features. In the meanwhile, Victoria based TeamPages has also risen in prominence.

    Both TeamPages and YourTeamOnline provide player pages, statistics, team pages and league interaction. It seems like we have a coast to coast fight for the amateur sports team demographic.

    clash.gif

    The market for amateur sports related spending in North America alone is $111 billion. More than enough room for two leaders, and even better if they are both from Canada. The amount of targeted advertising dollars up for grabs is staggering. Add on the amount of money that changes hands for local team sponsorships every year, and things are looking up!

    The first similarity I noticed was the abundant use of blue on both companies’ websites. The choice of colors is not where the similarities end however. And this is where I start to wonder a little.

    Both YourTeamOnline and TeamPages are marketing themselves as a generalized sports team management toolkit. If I were calling the shots here (which I am not!), I would approach each sport differently. YourTeamOnline is starting down this path, they have customized versions for Hockey and Soccer, but their marketing is still focused at a general market, which is going to be tougher to capture. This is the same strategy that every other competitor in the marketplace is using and it is going to be tough to stand out, even with a much better than average offering.

    YourTeamOnline and Teampages both focus on letting individuals, teams and leagues build social networks, and each have unique characteristics that, in my opinion, make them the two best team/league platforms out there. Where most competitive packages focus on the minutiae of managing a team, YourTeamOnline and TeamPages focus on the individual users, whether they are coaches, parents or players.

    I am also impressed with the roadmaps that both companies allude to on their sites. YourTeamOnline has plans to launch youtube-like video uploading and a feature called “SportsWire” that helps get team statistics out to the public, newspapers, and other consumers of team data.

    Is this a clash of the titans? A fight to the death? Jackie Chan vs. Chow Yun Fat? I think it is probably more the result of an overdue idea and a huge market, with scalable revenue opportunities. Will there be one winner, or two? We’ll be watching to find out.

    YourTeamOnline and Teampages have each taken early-stage funding.