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Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions

Written by

Jonas Brandon

in

The Founders and Funders dinner takes place tonight in Toronto. We really wish we could have invited everyone who asked for a ticket, but we have been sold out for a while now.

I really don’t want to miss out on hearing from all of you, even if you can’t make it to Toronto for the dinner tonight, so I thought I would post the questions we will post tonight at the dinner. Please comment below with your thoughts on the state of funding in Canada. Answering these questions isn’t a requirement at the dinner, but we wanted to set the tone of the discussion to focus as much as possible about what we can do to change things in Canada.

  • Do Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists get enough recognition for the deals they do in Canada?
  • Do Canadian universities inspire and support entrepreneurship? Could a “Startup Co-Op” program help?
  • What is the minimum amount of funding a startup should be able to deliver a product with?
  • Is the Dragon’s Den the most visible face of Canadian Entrepreneurship right now? What is wrong with that?

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Some of these questions may change by tonight depending on the answers we get. As you can see, the Dragon’s Den question tends to invite some good responses!

Comments

24 responses to “Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions”

  1. Founders and Funders Toronto Kickoff Questions » Founders and Funders

    […] over to StartupNorth to respond or to suggest another […]

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  2. Founders and Funders Toronto Kickoff Questions » Founders and Funders

    […] over to StartupNorth to respond or to suggest another […]

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  3. Leila Boujnane Avatar
    Leila Boujnane

    Oh sweet. My *protected* tweet makes it out in the big league. Home page of startupnorth! I will second Stuart’s advice: Step away from the keyboard. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Leila Boujnane Avatar
    Leila Boujnane

    Oh sweet. My *protected* tweet makes it out in the big league. Home page of startupnorth! I will second Stuart’s advice: Step away from the keyboard. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Jevon MacDonald Avatar
    Jevon MacDonald

    Ah Leila, Idee is the big leagues and we are just watching, you know that.

    Reply
  6. Jevon MacDonald Avatar
    Jevon MacDonald

    Ah Leila, Idee is the big leagues and we are just watching, you know that.

    Reply
  7. Chris R Avatar
    Chris R

    I attended the University of Toronto and they had a class called “The Business of Software”. That was probably the only class that I took that related to Entrepreneurship, and the only one offered in the Computer Science program. The question then becomes, can successful entrepreneurship be taught? I think a course on idea generation should be taught somewhere. All you would need is crayons and a piece of paper. Sounds like Grade 3 art? Maybe. I always liked art class 🙂

    Reply
  8. Chris R Avatar
    Chris R

    I attended the University of Toronto and they had a class called “The Business of Software”. That was probably the only class that I took that related to Entrepreneurship, and the only one offered in the Computer Science program. The question then becomes, can successful entrepreneurship be taught? I think a course on idea generation should be taught somewhere. All you would need is crayons and a piece of paper. Sounds like Grade 3 art? Maybe. I always liked art class 🙂

    Reply
  9. Thomas Purves Avatar
    Thomas Purves

    No, you are right Jevon, DD is the face of entrepreneurship in Canada … in exactly the same way that American Idol is the face of modern music:

    It’s appalling cringeworthy, completely disconnected from every new venture/artist that is meaningfully important, it’s “entertaining” like a car accident … and it’s exactly the first thing that springs to mind for any of millions of Canadians when you say “I am an entrepreneur”.

    Maybe together we could start to try and change that.

    Reply
  10. Thomas Purves Avatar
    Thomas Purves

    No, you are right Jevon, DD is the face of entrepreneurship in Canada … in exactly the same way that American Idol is the face of modern music:

    It’s appalling cringeworthy, completely disconnected from every new venture/artist that is meaningfully important, it’s “entertaining” like a car accident … and it’s exactly the first thing that springs to mind for any of millions of Canadians when you say “I am an entrepreneur”.

    Maybe together we could start to try and change that.

    Reply
  11. heri Avatar
    heri

    funny how you write the questions, we don’t really have a choice in answers, do we?

    i think there should be more videos coming from canadian entrepreneurs that gets the word out. ca.intruders.tv is a good start, but I am thinking about video blogs like Loic le meur’s seismic.

    Reply
  12. heri Avatar
    heri

    funny how you write the questions, we don’t really have a choice in answers, do we?

    i think there should be more videos coming from canadian entrepreneurs that gets the word out. ca.intruders.tv is a good start, but I am thinking about video blogs like Loic le meur’s seismic.

    Reply
  13. Brycej Avatar
    Brycej

    Everyone knows that the really business is not done by the face, it’s done by the loins.

    Reply
  14. Brycej Avatar
    Brycej

    Everyone knows that the really business is not done by the face, it’s done by the loins.

    Reply
  15. Magnus Avatar
    Magnus

    The funny thing about these show’s like DD, Venture, business stories on the news or in the newspapers is you see the same people over and over again. So I imagine the media wants Start up stories bad, enough to keep some of these entrepreneurs on some sort of media circut.

    Reply
  16. Magnus Avatar
    Magnus

    The funny thing about these show’s like DD, Venture, business stories on the news or in the newspapers is you see the same people over and over again. So I imagine the media wants Start up stories bad, enough to keep some of these entrepreneurs on some sort of media circut.

    Reply
  17. John Philip Green Avatar
    John Philip Green

    I’m with Chris R (I think): Entrepreneurship can not be taught in school. (Though Malgosia & I witnessed the best possible effort when Greg had us speak an engineering class at UoT.)

    What Toronto/Canada needs is role models. God bless the Lor’s, McDerment’s, Boujnane’s, Garrity’s, Lai’s which are inspiring the next wave. We need big successful outcomes to seem achievable (they are!) by having big successful outcomes to point to.

    Malgosia and I helped build a company in San Fran that sold for $61M after 14 months. Our conclusion, we can do that too! (Only bigger! hehe.)

    We should all do what we can to put a spotlight on the world changers we have in our midst.

    Reply
  18. John Philip Green Avatar
    John Philip Green

    I’m with Chris R (I think): Entrepreneurship can not be taught in school. (Though Malgosia & I witnessed the best possible effort when Greg had us speak an engineering class at UoT.)

    What Toronto/Canada needs is role models. God bless the Lor’s, McDerment’s, Boujnane’s, Garrity’s, Lai’s which are inspiring the next wave. We need big successful outcomes to seem achievable (they are!) by having big successful outcomes to point to.

    Malgosia and I helped build a company in San Fran that sold for $61M after 14 months. Our conclusion, we can do that too! (Only bigger! hehe.)

    We should all do what we can to put a spotlight on the world changers we have in our midst.

    Reply
  19. Rob Hyndman Avatar
    Rob Hyndman

    I’m beginning to think we should start talking about funding tech during a recession. 🙁

    Reply
  20. Rob Hyndman Avatar
    Rob Hyndman

    I’m beginning to think we should start talking about funding tech during a recession. 🙁

    Reply
  21. Jesse Rodgers Avatar
    Jesse Rodgers

    Waterloo allows students to use one of their terms or even two in co-op for a startup. Not sure how easy it is to do mind you. With the creation of the Velocity residence I think that may help highlight that as an option.

    Reply
  22. Jesse Rodgers Avatar
    Jesse Rodgers

    Waterloo allows students to use one of their terms or even two in co-op for a startup. Not sure how easy it is to do mind you. With the creation of the Velocity residence I think that may help highlight that as an option.

    Reply
  23. As the Founders & Funders are wrapping up their dinner…

    […] Is the Dragon’s Den the most visible face of Canadian Entrepreneurship right now? What is wrong with that? Source: Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions | StartupNorth […]

    Reply
  24. As the Founders & Funders are wrapping up their dinner…

    […] Is the Dragon?s Den the most visible face of Canadian Entrepreneurship right now? What is wrong with that? Source: Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions | StartupNorth […]

    Reply

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