Another gem from FreshBooks CEO Mike McDerment – The 5 Pillars of Customer Experience.
Using Great Customer Service as a Differentiator.
Startups could learn a thing or two about marketing from liquor companies.
Month: July 2008
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AideRSS – postrank.com and a slew of updates
AideRSS was one of the first companies I really got excited about. I had (and have) done a lot of thinking about RSS as a market and how you would need to build a technology and a product in that space. When Ilya sent me an email about AideRSS, I loved it.
That glowing review was the first posts on StartupNorth that really generated significant feedback for me. Comments, email and phone calls from VCs and companies who wanted to know more about them. It was fun, and Ilya didn’t disappoint. He continued to build the company back then with Kevin Thomason and they pushed product out the door.
In the intervening year they have secured funding, Kevin has moved on and they are starting to make updates regularly. I have given Ilya a hard time in the last year about focusing on the product, but I did it knowing he could deliver. With a great team behind him now AideRSS has been doing partnerships.
Today they are launching PostRank.com, which is a promotional site for their PostRank system, and they are also introducing Thematic Postrank, their Google Reader Extension and a set of APIs that produce PostRank calculations to developers. This change means that PostRank is no longer just a component of the AideRSS website, but it is now an independent service that other applications will be able to use.Thematic Postrank is a new service that helps cluster topic-specific blog posts together. I will be interested to see how good this service is. It could potentially be the start of a better Techmeme (my words, not theirs).
They are also expanding the list of sources that they draw from to calculate a PostRank score, adding clicks, views, Ma.gnolia, and Pownce.
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IT LAUNCHED! PlanetEye finally goes live
After my first post about PlanetEye and the teddy-bear response it garnered from their VC and co-founder Rick, I am not really predisposed to writing much about PlanetEye.Well, that was back in September and their new CEO, Butch Langlois, was just getting settled in. Without speculating about how much money PlanetEye has gone through getting off the ground or how long it has taken, I’ll just say congratulations. The progress under Butch has been impressive to everyone, and the product looks great.
When I asked Scott Pelton why he joined Rick in funding PlanetEye, he was candid. He said “do you think that cameras will someday come embedded with GPS location and that it will be a big deal?”.
I think that day is coming. It might be a little ways off, but with GPS chips the size of your fingernail out there, it won’t be too long. And yes, I do think it is going to be a big deal.
The fact is, two Canadian VCs took a big bet on the future and did more than most Canadian VCs do: they followed a vision.
Sites like Panaramio (which integrates with Google Earth) offer a similar pictures-on-a-map experience, but do not have the travel focus that will either make, or break, PlanetEye.
So, a tip of the hat to Scott and Rick and their firms, Growthworks and JLA. I hope this one goes all the way.
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praized.com – Local, niche, reviews and communities
Lets say that you run a highly successful online community of blond vegans who have a penchant for Prosciutto. You would like to manage local reviews for that community, but you do not have the technical ability or the data you need to get it kick started.Montreal based Praized is an innovative solution in the heavily contested local listings and review space. Praized is designed a white-label platform that integrates seamlessly with editorial content by using either an API or plug-ins that are compatible with SixApart?s MovableType and WordPress. Bloggers and site editors can embed snippets of merchant information within posts or news articles to drive traffic to their Praized-powered local section. Praized also designed its platform to be available to Facebook application developers and others through an API.
Praized communities enable users to search, discover and discuss places with like-minded people. Users benefit from discovering the ?long tail? of places via discussions on lesser known local merchants that struggle to be found through Web search. End-users also get real value from social tools that allow them to tag, comment, bookmark, share and vote on places that matter to them.
Praized is bringing a really novel and sensible approach to local listings. Realizing that you can bridge the gap between the hype-local and centralized business models can bring opportunities in a lot of markets, and that is what Praized is doing here.
The first Praized-Powered community is now active at Mocolocal and they also recently announced distribution agreements with Yellowbook in the US and Yellow Pages Group Co. in Canada.
Other Canadian local-search and review companies include iBegin, who have moved in to the data wholesale business, and ZipLocal (TSX:ZIP) who recently launched ZipDating. Praized does go beyond just reviews and listings, they also have a recommendation system that allows users to suggest places and things to friends in their social network, including Facebook.
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VenturesWest shuttering offices, several people gone
After a day of posting great news from three startups, I hate to end things on a sad note.The Canadian VC community is getting hit hard again, this time it looks like VenturesWest is on its heels. The Ottawa office has been shuttered several key folks have left.
Departures appear to include Chris Laird, David Mcintyre, Maha Katabi as well as Robin Axon, who has been a supporter of the startup community here in Toronto.
There is no official word yet as to what is going on and whether this is a reshuffling or whether the fund is being wound down. There have been persistent rumors lately indicating the latter. We will try to get some word tomorrow when someone is picking up the phone.
The Canadian VC industry in general seems to be paying the price for poor returns in the last few years with more and more of the talk on the street focusing on funds being unable to raise new rounds from LPs and the mood was decidedly bleak at the recent CVCA National Convention. Is this the beginning of a trend, or just a bad blip in the Canadian VC story?
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LearnHub.com Launches World's Largest Free SAT and GMAT Question Banks
Toronto based Learnhub.com, who we have profiled before, is making a big announcement today.LearnHub, who are doing deals all over the place these days, is quickly becoming a huge destination site for international students. Being able to practice SAT and GMAT questions online will be a fantastic addition for their audience.
Along with the availability of the new SAT & GMAT question banks, today’s announcement includes a significant update to LearnHub’s community platform. Over 1,500 members use this innovative social interface to practice for exams, which includes tools to allow members to time themselves, debate solutions and strategy with each other, and to track their improvement over time. The question banks grow daily as members and staff add new questions. As one of the only alternatives to expensive books and courses, LearnHub’s free SAT and GMAT communities are catching on quickly, averaging 50 new members every day since their launch.
Learnhub gives wannabe international students an online social network and learning site that North American schools then tap in to via recruiters in order to attract top-tier talent. The model delivers new value to all of their audiences, and while I am not in any of their target markets, I think the value of the site huge.
I even started startups.learnhub.com a while ago, and will start populating it more soon. Jump in and help out!
LearnHub, who took a large financing round from India-based EduComp Solutions, was recently in our Top 10 Startups to Watch list for Canada.
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ChickAdvisor launches new show, does deal with Rogers Media
Toronto based ChickAdvisor.com has gone from fledgling community startup to a deal-making media machine overnight!The deal kicks off production of ChickAdvisor’s second video series, called ChickChatTV. The series, which is made up of 20 episodes at 90 seconds each will feature commentary that is based on the conversations that site members are having in the Chick Advisor forums. The host, site co-founder Ali de Bold then poses questions to people on the street.
“ChickChat TV” is based on the juicy discussions that take place on ChickAdvisor’s popular forums, ChickChat. Questions posed to unsuspecting strangers include: ‘Would you take back a cheater?’ ‘”Who should pay for the first date?’ ‘Can Dudes be Fashionistas too?’ The series will air in Fall 2008 on ChickAdvisor.com and Rogers Media properties including their Pizza Pizza network, which have a combined reach of over 685,000 viewers per week.
This is a great leap forward for ChickAdvisor, who were featured on Fortune Hunters earlier this year and were very candid about how well, and not well, things were going.
Co-founder Alex de Bold says this will bring them a lot of new exposure and that they are “hoping that this announcement will bring us more top of mind with brand managers too as they do their 2009 planning”
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Distinctly Canadian Web Habits
This is a guest post by CommunityLend.com CEO Michael Garrity. We have profiled CommunityLend in the past.
There was a great piece in Saturday?s Globe and Mail outlining the contrast in the opinions of Canadians and Americans on who got the short end of the stick on the Free Trade Agreement. Predictably, both sides think the other is making out better (which in my own political experience is usually a good sign that things are about equal).
Reading the story did get me to thinking about other contrasts between ourselves and our American brethren, here on the week of both of our national patriotic celebrations. Further, as the CEO of a web company focused on the Canadian market, the story specifically got me thinking about the differences between our two nations? general usage patterns on the web.
To get some informational guidance on the issue, I went to Alexa and pulled the Top 100 most visited US sites and compared them to the Top 100 most visited Canadian sites. The net result of this imperfectly empirical study is what I?ll call ?Michael?s 5 Observations on National Web Behaviour? (just to give it a flashy and important title). I share these unique and clearly very important observations with you here in joint celebration of our National Holiday.
Observations on National Web Behaviour:
- Plus ca change… : The clearest observation from the two lists is that we share most of the same online pastimes as our American web surfing neighbours, especially on the top end of the list. The majority of the top sites on both lists are predictably all the big names in Search, Social Networks, Auctions, File ?sharing?, Online Gaming and of course, Porn. Two notable Canadian distinctions; we tend to use the .ca extensions of the big names (e.g. google.ca) and our number one social network by a LONG SHOT is Facebook, coming in at the number 2 spot overall after the big G. MySpace, picks up the 11th spot, just beating …
- Peace, Order and Good Government: The biggest surprise to me on the Canadian list is that the 13th spot is the Government of Canada website. Yes, you heard that correctly, the spot right after MySpace and eBay. My only explanation I have for this distinctly Canadian behaviour is that there are just so many departments and agencies and forms and services provided by the Canadian government that these sites have become an easier way to navigate it all. By comparison, the only US government service on the US Alexa list is USPS at number 72, presumably folks trying to locate their lost mail.
- Mosaic Nation: They are the ?melting pot? and we are the ?mosaic?, or at least that?s the story we have been taught in school. The question is does it hold up online? The answer seems to be ?yes?. While 100% of sites on the US Alexa list are unilingual English, about 10% of Canadian Alexa 100 are sites that are specifically non-English (not to mention all of the sites that offer two languages as an option). Top on the list at number 56 is the French site Meteomedia.com and next is number 64, Sina.com, all in Chinese.
- Minding the Books: Canadians top the world in usage statistics for online banking and it bears itself out at Alexa. The first Canadian bank comes in at the 21st spot (TD Bank) then they pepper the list until the end. Contrast this to the US list where the first bank comes in at the 38th spot (Bank of America). Yes, it seems we are a nation of book-keepers, bouncing actively between our Facebook profile updates and our bill payment screens. An exciting lot, us Canadians. Good news is that this should bode especially well if one had, say, an internet start up focused on the Canadian financial services space … say.
- And Speaking of Start-Up?s: How do Canadian start-ups fare on the list? Well, not exceptionally well. There are three I can see. At 59 comes plentyoffish out of Vancouver, then at 91 it`s Toronto?s own redflagdeals.com, followed by Edmonton?s nexopia.com at 92. It should be noted here that there is certainly no shortage of criticism related to Alexa as an accurate measure of web usage so I?m sure other start ups will have at it for not being on the list. In the meantime, the list shows that there is still a lot to strive for in our community in getting the numbers up for our respective services.
- Plus ca change… : The clearest observation from the two lists is that we share most of the same online pastimes as our American web surfing neighbours, especially on the top end of the list. The majority of the top sites on both lists are predictably all the big names in Search, Social Networks, Auctions, File ?sharing?, Online Gaming and of course, Porn. Two notable Canadian distinctions; we tend to use the .ca extensions of the big names (e.g. google.ca) and our number one social network by a LONG SHOT is Facebook, coming in at the number 2 spot overall after the big G. MySpace, picks up the 11th spot, just beating …
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Weekend Reading – July 5, 2008
Loyalty Match, who pitched at StartupCamp Toronto, got written up in The New York Times.
Don’t walk into a VC’s office naked… of course, you already knew that.
Every once in a while you need to step off the roller coaster to appraise the health of your startup. Here is a checklist for putting together a halftime report.
Iterative development is great, but you still need to launch with a bang every once in a while.
Startups – Beware of the consulting trap.
It’s supposed to be a scorcher this weekend… so here is a cold shower: the startup equity simulator. Remember 10% of something is worth more than 100% of nothing.
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Y Combinator Accepting Winter 2009 Applications
Y Combinator is now accepting applications for the winter 2009 funding cycle happening in Mountain View, CA. It’s possible for Canadians to get accepted to the Y Combinator program. All of Canada is following the exploits of Michael Parkatti and Mike Marrone during the summer cycle in Boston. We’ve covered the story, with Austin Hill interviewing both Michael and Mike. It’s important for Canadian entrepreneurs to apply. The Y Combinator program is about the experience and connections that you can build during the three month program.
The Winter 2009 Y Combinator is offering $5000 + $5000n where n = the number of founders in exchange for between 2-10% of the company. Assuming 2 founders and Y Combinator owning 6% of company, this works out to a pre-money valuation of $250,000 and a post-money valuation of $265,000. It’s a great way to seed a company.
Jevon talks about startups being about execution, the Y Combinator program is all about execution.
7. Once your company exists, we’ll write a check to it for the rest of the money. You can spend the money however you want.
8. Y Combinator is not an incubator. We have space you can use if you need to, but we expect you to work out of wherever you find to live. It is no coincidence that so many successful startups have started this way; it’s the ideal setup for the initial phase.
9. Throughout the 3 months we have regular office hours for startups who want to talk about what they’re building, or get advice in dealing with investors. We also have occasional open houses at YC on Thursday afternoons.
10. From January through March we’ll have dinners every Tuesday for all the founders. At each dinner we’ll invite an expert in some aspect of startups to speak.
It is a program that is designed to help you take an idea, and learn to execute with very little capital resources. The benefits of mentorship, guidance and a growing network of alumni and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world. You get enough cash to pay for your living expenses for 3-4 months. You get a cohort of entrepreneurs you can have a shared experience with. You have scheduled diners with the Y Combinator team and an expert about some aspect of startups. You get 2 investor days where follow on investors are brought in and use the Y Combinator to do deal flow. It’s a great opportunity.
The original motivation for Y Combinator was benevolent, but this is not a charity. If our investments pay off, we can invest in more startups, and if they don’t, we can’t keep doing this indefinitely. So we’re looking for startups we think will succeed.
If you’re a small team of Canadian entrepreneurs looking for a chance. You should fill out an application the deadline to apply is October 17, 2007.