StartupNorth

Year: 2008

  • StartupCamp Waterloo 3 Recap

    This is a guest post by Mic Berman, one of the instigators of StartupCamp Waterloo. Thanks Mic!

    We had great turn out and interesting crowd, lots of new startups first time demonstrating in a public forum. The event was sponsored by TechCapital, WatStart, CommuniTech and SunStartup – thanks to those folks for supporting the community.

    We tried something different and hosted a panel at the start made up of Iain Klugman , Larry Borsato, Ali Asaria, Melanie Baker, Sandra MacDonald, and Gary Will. The basic question was “why, why do a startup?” The answers varied from why not to do one to a very philosophical approach by Ali that centred around passion and drive.

    The start ups that got to present (based on audience voting and time available) were:

    Semacode (on StartupIndex) – Simon showed off his technology for the first time. A fully integrated viral marketing based service integrated into FaceBook as a great way to manage events and conduct mobile marketing campaigns. The issues that came up in discussion were privacy (how does the user control information that is captured in their barcode/name tag), which target market they should go after (i.e., advertising/marketing/event type companies or the end user/enterprise running the event). Simon has partnered with SuitedMedia Inc to help them sell the service.

    Navarra run by Avery Pennarun was a somewhat controversial concept for outsourcing development of your founder ideas. The concept being they would charge a flat rate to develop against particular specifications provided by the “business founder”. Avery figures lots of business people/founders with great ideas need a good development shop to develop out their ideas. Issues that came up were: “are you mad?”, “that will never work”, and ” how will you ensure specifications are crystal?”. Maybe they are on to something (as is typically the case when faced with great controversy)?

    Clutterme presented by Mark Molckovsky & Alex Curelea was a totally fun demo of a cool technology that enables you as a user to instantly create a webpage that effectively becomes your “cork board” online. Great job to whomever did their brand and logo, as it so clearly defines what they’re up to. Their key questions of the audience were “what’s your business model?, how will you make money?”, usability issues, and how to get the word out there. They’ve asked for community support on testing their beta about to be released in 2 to 3 weeks. Check them out 🙂

    UbietyLab – Developed by local Waterloo professor, Todd Veldhuizen, demonstrated some very powerful visualization technology that quite frankly the audience was very impressed by with folks throwing out many many applications for its use. Hence the professor’s problem. What market with what offering, considering “I’m really doing this in my spare time and not really as a business person?”

    AdvertisingShowdown.com – I’m sorry guys, I missed this one because I was in conversation at the time (oops). The just is a powerful new online advertising metrics application. You can check out the recording of the presentation on www.spaetzel.com

    Let’sCube (which is currently a Firefox plug-in you can download) is an instant sharing technology for cool sites you want to share with your friends and for which you can receive results as the owner of the site that’s being shared. Differences between StunbleUpon, Digg, Twittr, etc and their service is they aggregate your interests into your own let’s cube page – so it pulls for you and filters by your friends. Does it go both ways? Can you share and pull? That was the biggest issue posed by the audience and yes, it does. Lots of other ideas about how to leverage the Firefox plug in to test additional features.

    IndigoFire presented by Karim Shaehata is solving the problem of website registration and sharing among friends real, business and otherwise. His product is not yet live (powerpoint presentation). Solving the problem of how you create differentiation among your usage across community sites like Facebook, Flickr, etc. for the people you want to share with and the public at large. Good questions and may be interesting technology yet to come 🙂 Kareem’s basic question was what are the potential business models for which the audience offered several alternatives e.g., server side, small user charge, middleware approach, etc. and would you use it?

    The audience participation rocked, thanks everyone who came and asked and offered great questions, suggestions and comments. You can check out a recording of the event on spaetzel.com

  • Mesh Conference – 15 Minutes of Fame

    One of the startup-focused parts of Mesh is the 15 Minutes of Fame they do evey year. Each day of the conference 3 companies are given 5 minutes each to pitch themselves or their product to the audience.

    What I love about it is that it really is completely open to whoever applies, and it is not an opportunity for the conference organizers to just give stage time to whoever will pay. (paying to do something like 15 minutes of fame is far more typical than you might realize)

    The lineup this year was solid, with some new companies and some more established startups.

    15 Minutes of Fame is a great way to get your startup in front of a new crowd in Canada, so think about doing it next year.

    • Carbonetworks, which has developed software that helps companies create effective carbon emissions strategies to reduce costs and capitalize on emerging global markets.
    • GigPark, a place to receive recommendations about a wide variety of services from friends and their friends.
    • AidesRSS, which has created technology to make reading RSS feeds more effective and valuable.
    • Well.ca, an online health and beauty store that ships across Canada.
    • OverlayTV, an interactive media company that provides a video commerce platform that lets Internet users, content owners and e-commerce sites to monetize and customize their video assets.
    • Enomalism, an open source consulting firm that focuses on solving the cost and complexity for enterprises that run large technical server infrastructures.

  • As the Web Turns: Spielo – Co-Founders for Sale?

    Just how bad ass of an entrepreneur are you? Will you kick your friends and co-founders to the curb when the time comes? When the money is about to roll in, will you put the rub on your original startup buddies? Should we all be watching our back now before things get too hot?

    According to Yves Doucet, former Vice President and partner in Spielo, a Moncton-based VLT producer, he was stabbed in the back by his partner, John Manship, when their company we on the brink of going from $5 a share to $100.

    Yves and another colleague are now launching a lawsuit for just over $5million that they say they are owed, and another $10 million is losses. The story has been covered a bit by the CBC and TimesTranscript.

    Spielo was, in 1991, just a small startup based in New Brunswick fighting for 60-machine contracts, run by a couple of guys who were dreaming of the big time. The Big Time came when the company was sold to GTech for $180million. In the end though, something went wrong.

    It is impossible to know what really happened, and the court hasn’t made a ruling yet, but the question for me is: How can something so good go so bad?

  • Reminder: StartupCamp Waterloo tomorrow (June 3rd)

    Just a quick reminder that StartupCamp Waterloo is taking place today, June 3rd 2008, at the Waterloo Accelerator Center at 6pm.

    I just got off the phone with Mic Berman, one of the organizers, and she says that instead of a speaker this time, there is going to be a panel to kick things off. The question for the panel is “Why start a startup?”

    Just over a year ago, I wrote something along the same line: No better time than now. It remains just as relevant today as it was then.

    All the details are here.

  • Weekend Reading – May 31, 2008

    Founders & Funders Toronto is coming! Founders & Funders Toronto is coming!! Now back to your regularly scheduled weekend programming:

    Mark Dowds is showcasing BrainPark on Global TV this morning at 11:30am. If you miss the segment and forget to set your Tivo, not to worry, it will be available after the airing here: www.ceotv.com

    Mark McQueen, of Wellington Financial, prods the BDC for crowding private investors out of venture debt deals.

    Fundfindr is vetting startups for Dragon’s Den.

    A number of Canadian companies including Mployd, StandoutJobs, NowPublic, StumbleUpon, and DabbleDB won SEOMOZ’s annual Web 2.0 Awards.

    Ugly details emerge with regards to the $165M MRI Fund.

    Mike McDerment, of FreshBooks, points out why founder’s should be answering the customer support line.

    Our very own Chris Long and Jevon MacDonald were interviewed for an article about StartupIndex in IT World Canada.

    Check out these fun TinEye searches… I just love Idee contests!

    In case you missed mesh08, RabbleTV has five full sessions online now. Click on the ‘On Demand’ button on the video player to watch them.

    GigPark got featured on TechCrunch.

    Some legal advice care of Rob Hyndman: just go build the thing.

  • The Code Factory – Ottawa Co-Working Space

    The Code Factory is having its grand opening tonight in Ottawa. The Code Factory is a shared office space for startups and freelancers.

    Here in Toronto we had The Indoor Playground for a few years, but due to some problems with their landlord, they had to close up shop. Co-working spaces tend to be indicators of healthy entrepreneurial communities and it is nice to see Ottawa get such a great looking option.

    The grand opening takes place tonight, at 5:30pm at Suite 200 – 246 Queen Street (between Bank and Kent).

    David Crow recently covered co-working in Canada on our sister site CommunityNorth.ca where is also included a list of other known co-working spaces in Canada.

  • Pride and Prejudice – Why startups need community

    I was feeling extraordinarily proud of Idée last night when I saw that they received glowing coverage on TechCrunch. It is well deserved, and it seems like they are just getting started in terms of press coverage. They recently had a huge profile in the Financial Post, written by David George-Cosh (who has been getting more and more connected with the Toronto community as of late). We have been tracking Idée for a while now.

    Then as I kept flipping through my news feeds, I came across an embarrassing update about MediaScrape, which Heri and Mathew Ingram both covered well. When we first posted about MediaScrape, Tyler Cavell, the founder, responded in a much more succinct way than he did to TechCrunch’s latest post. Heri had even convinced me to lay off and see how things work out.

    I almost feel like I am doing Idée a disservice by mentioning them in the same post as MediaScrape. Where Idée has focused on perfecting their technology and winning customers, MediaScrape seems to be prone to distraction and tends to make simple matters much more confusing and difficult than necessary.

    Heri made the point in his post yesterday that when entrepreneurs are disconnected from their local community, they seem to be more likely to go off the rails. I think Heri is on to something that investors need to take in to consideration when investing.

    Again, Leila and the crew at Idée are a great contrast and example of how to do things right. While Idée is possibly the busiest startup in Canada, and one that is spending its own money (ie: they have no time to waste), they still manage to be tightly connected to the community here in Toronto. Leila is constantly organizing, co-organizing or speaking at events, and when she isn’t doing that, she spends a lot of time each week mentoring other startups.

    Capazoo and MediaScrape, according to Heri, have never made it out to a single Montreal event and have generally kept a distance from their local startup community.

    Perhaps one of the measures that investors, both Angels and VCs, take in to account when deciding whether they want to put money in to a startup or an entrepreneur should be whether or not that person has been able to take the time to connect with a community of startups. That way you know they have a social and professional circle that will keep them accountable, demand progress and that will criticize their execution, rather than patting them on the back and telling them they are going to be rich.

    If your friends tell you that you will be rich and famous, then you have the wrong friends.

  • Angel Financing – Investor Management

    “Investor Management” is probably the area of most complaint that investor’s have about companies they are involved in. Basically the scenario typically goes something like this:

    The company is pitching for funding. Throughout the pitch & due diligence process it is the number one priority of management & management takes the time to work through the funding process with prospective investors.

    Upon closing, the company gets the funds & management goes about applying them to help grow the company by ramping up development, executing marketing campaigns, etc. As there are never enough hours in a day for people involved in a startup, this takes up management’s total focus in time. Investors do not hear anything.

    As with any startup, things do not go exactly according to plan. Development takes longer, sales cycles take longer, etc. The original financial plan goes out the window and more money is required. Management then goes back to its investors looking for more money. Investors are lukewarm given they have been in the dark and wonder it its worth investing more of their money.

    What separates the good companies from the rest are ones that appropriate manage investor relations. This boils down to 2 aspects. First, know your investors and second, establish a consistent communication channel & frequency.

    As I discussed in a previous article, angels have a variety of backgrounds and motivations for funding companies. Some want to play a hands-on role in helping to grow a company, others are more passive. For the investors who are not directly involved in the company (i.e. not on the board), get to know them. In your first round of funding, you will probably have a small number of investors. Get to know their backgrounds and discuss how closely they want to be involved in helping the company. For those that do want to be involved, tap into their expertise/network when you are looking to find a supplier, get an introduction to a client, etc. As most angels are well established in their professional careers they have an enormous wealth of knowledge and expertise that can be tapped to help. If they are actively looking to be involved, it’s in everybody’s best interest to take advantage of this.

    For the overall group of investor’s in the company, you should establish a regular communication mechanism and stick to it religiously. This could be something along the lines of a monthly or quarterly investor newsletter. In it, topics such as the following can be covered:

    • Sales successes
    • Sales pipeline
    • Product development updates
    • Issues & challenges
    • Up-coming events or conferences

    This would be in addition to financial statements or other required deliverables as specified in the term sheet. The main thing is to establish consistency so the investors know when they can expect to receive a communication. This will help align investors to the company as it grows. Their investment makes them important stakeholders in the company and offers a pool of expertise that can be leveraged to help the company grow.

    As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future articles feel free to contact me: craig at mapleleafangels.com

  • CVCA – "The Face of Change" – Montreal

    I am heading to Montreal next week for the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s annual conference. The theme this year is “The Face of Change”, and the idea is to look at what causes change in the VC and Private Equity worlds.

    I am excited to be going for a few reasons. The biggest one is the fact that I have been making a lot of noise recently saying that Canadian VCs need to spend more time connecting to the startup community, and Suzie Dingwell Williams recently said the same thing, so turning down an invitation to the only national VC conference in Canada would have been a little backwards.

    The other reason I want to go is to spread the word about some of the great startups that are popping up these days. We have been lagging behind on writing profiles (I know I know I know), but we are always telling people about some of the cooler ones we are seeing.

    I promise to make a few posts during and after the conference with some notes on what goes on when VCs get together. (besides Scotch tastings that is!)

    Will any of you be there, or in Montreal during those days/nights? (May 28th-30th). I would love to meet up.

  • MeshU: One day developer mini conference that rocked

    This is a guest post by Chris Long, the lead developer of Well.ca and a partner in the launch of the StartupIndex.

    MeshU, which took place on the day before the Mesh Conference here in Toronto, was a developer focused mini-conference with 3 streams of sessions. Each stream had a distinct focus such as: development, design and management. While the Mesh Conference is in its third year, this was the first ever MeshU, so I was curious to see how well things would go.

    There was a lot of variety in attendees, with people from management, sales, and development and from varying sizes of companies in attendance. One of the biggest reasons people had for coming to MeshU was the unique lineup of speakers, especially for a Canadian conference.

    After much deliberation and coin flipping, I settled on attending: Avi Bryant’s “Turning the Tables: Moving Beyond Relational Storage”, Daniel Burka’s “Iterative Design Strategies”, Alistair Croll?s ?Watch It ? How to Monitor Web Applications?, and Ryan Carson’s “How to Start Your Own Start?up”.

    Avi Bryant really did change my view on relational databases. For most web applications, storing data is done with databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL. Avi challenged this and described how large web companies (Yahoo, Google, Amazon) approach this, and then described what smaller companies can possibly learn from the large companies.

    The “Iterative Design Strategy” session was packed, and I ended up joining more then half the audience on the floor. Daniel Burka did not disappoint his audience, as he explored what iterative design meant to him. The example he used was the iterations of Digg’s comment system.

    Alistair Croll’s powerpoint on monitoring web applications numbered 135 slides, he just had that much information. The slides covered the types of tools available for monitoring web sites and the kind of information they give. He weighed the pros and cons of every type of monitoring tool, and left everyone with an understanding of why and how they should monitor their websites.

    I finished off my day with Ryan Carson?s presentation on starting/running a startup. At the end of it, I think a lot of people had the urge to apply for a job at Carsonified (they give iPhones, 30″ screens and Aeron Chair to all their employees). His ideas and comments, while not revolutionary, were still of use to a lot of people. I can summarize it in two words: “Be Friendly”.

    The MeshU organizers did a good job of getting an awesome lineup of speakers, and promoting a relaxed more workshop feel to the day. I will certainly be there next year.