StartupNorth

Month: November 2007

  • Savvica Languify – Don't Sleep, Release!

    We covered the return of Savvica earlier and expected we’d hear from them soon. I was thinking more like 5 or 6 months, but instead today we see that Languify, a crowd-sourced translation service, has gone live.

    Languify InfoIt is a service which not only let’s you manage your own translations for your product, but let’s you benefit from the translation work of others. Languify offers a full REST-style API, which allows other systems to programmatically interact with all of the projects, locales, keys, and translations you have on their service.

    I woke up this morning to a few messages from a well known entrepreneur that he left me on Skype at 3am, and I am sometimes amazed by the number of late night e-mail exchanges I have with other startups as we work through the night. I have a feeling that John and Malgosia pulled a few all-nighters to get Languify done and released (8 days from start to finish).

    While you don’t have to work long nights, and I avoid it most of the time these days, I have to admit that most entrepreneurs I know, who are successful, do it regularly.

  • StartupCampToronto 1 – Now taking submissions

    startupcamplogo_small.pngWe have 3 slots remaining for startups to present at StartupCampToronto and we have decided to let the audience vote on who those companies will be.

    StartupCamp is almost completely sold out, and in looking over the list of people who have tickets, I can see that it is a really high quality group. The mix of Startups, experienced entrepreneurs, experienced investors (both VC and Angel) as well as eager students, all has me feeling pretty excited and optimistic that there will be a lot of value in presenting at StartupCamp.

    The primary benefit of presenting is that you will get candid feedback on your pitch from a crowd that is made up of both other entrepreneurs, experienced investors and people who have successfully exited their previous startups.

    I know that when I was getting my first few startups off the ground, I would have loved the opportunity to have the core of my business plan assessed by such a great crowd.

  • StartupCamp Toronto – December 6th

    Update #5: All tickets are currently sold out. We plan to release any remaining tickets this coming Friday at 2pm ET.

    Update #4: 4 Service Provider tickets remain. Some people have been asking why we service providers are expected to purchase a sponsorship. The basic reason is that we have a very limited amount of tickets available, and in our experience (and we did ask for advice on this): tickets can be snatched up by service providers pretty quickly. Instead of shutting them out completely, we chose to offer a limited amount of spots to the most serious and dedicated of the group.

    We will not let this event grow to the size of a FaceBookCamp or a DemoCamp. Because of the format and intent of startupcamp, startups will not benefit from a large group. Please feel free to drop us a note if you have any questions.

    Update #3: Student tickets are now sold out.

    Update #2: Guru tickets are now sold out.

    Update: The Entrepreneur Round 1 tickets have sold out. We will be releasing a second round soon as well as doing a re-release of any tickets which were claimed by people not involved in startups. Stay tuned for updates about the second release of tickets.

    If you aren’t able to get a ticket for Startupcamp, please remember that there is Democamp just a few nights before which has less of a startup focus.

    startupcamplogo_small.pngI am extremely happy to announce that we will be holding StartupCampToronto on December 6th.

    After we had such a great time in Waterloo, we knew the time was right to do it right here in Toronto.

    We are simply announcing the event now and intend to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next few weeks. We have put together a small group to work out the details and that has been coming together nicely.

    There are loads of great startups in Toronto and even more future entrepreneurs with great ideas and a great work ethic. Building a startup in Toronto is no picnic, and we think the best thing to do is to create an opportunity for those who are committed to their startups to share with and help each-other.

    The format will be relatively simple. There will be 5 pitches by existing or soon-to-be startups. Each pitch is limited to 5 minutes and it is expected to cover the extent of your existing business plan. This may change, but it is the format right now. It worked extremely well in Waterloo a few weeks ago.

    Entrepreneur, Student and Guru tickets are now available here. And of course, we aren’t charging for admission, but we are limiting the amount of tickets available.

    We will email updates to ticket holders and post updates on the wiki.

    Note: We have created specific ticket types in order to make sure that there is enough space for Students and Entrepenurs. If you are a consultant, web developer, lawyer, accountant or other type of service provider, we have created a special type of sponsorship opportunity for you. Please purchase the type of ticket that describes you accurately. We will be checking tickets and re-releasing any which are invalid.

    We aren’t doing this to be jerks, we realize that a lot of people are excited about startups, but our focus is on helping existing startups who need advice now.