StartupNorth

Year: 2008

  • Network after hours at StartupEmpire

    microsoftbizspark

    Jevon nailed it.

    The most important part of any conference is in how you meet other people who are attending, and this is a great chance to get a head start on that.

    StartupEmpire sold out last Monday. We’ve been working with my gang at Microsoft BizSpark to build an additional opportunty for people to come together, meet the people attending, the people building new startups, and get a head chance to network your faces off.

    Purchase a BizSpark After 6pm Ticket to gain access for dinner and drinks with attendees, speakers, sponsors and others in the community. The tickets are $10 each and include access to the networking event and 2 drinks tickets.

  • clustershot.com – a fair market for stock photography

    ClusterShot.com was launched today by Charlottetown, PEI based Silverorange. The site is really pretty straightforward: Photographers post their photos, Clustershot handles reformatting them for display and handles the back-end payments and other headaches.

    If you are a professional photographer or a hobbiest, clustershot is an opportunity to get your work out there and to make sure it is available, but without all the headaches of selling your own work.

    Finally, ClusterShot takes 12% of the sale, which is more or less nothing when you consider the bandwidth and transaction costs alone. If you look at other stock photo markets, they are priced far higher than ClusterShot.

    The site is really well put together, I bought a photo and it was really painless.

    Silverorange is the design and development company that has been behind the scenes on sites such as GigaOm.com, Digg.com, DECA.tv and Bebo.

    Full disclosure (thanks to everyone who emailed!): I was a co-founder of silverorange, but currently hold no ownership in the company or any of its ventures.

  • Weekend Reading – November 8, 2008

    Make it easy for your customers.

    BTI Systems raised $15M from Export Development Canada and its existing investors: VenGrowth, BDC VC, GrowthWorks, Kodiak VP, Primaxis, Lucent VP, Summerhill VP, Wellington Financial and MMV Financial.

    FreshBooks integrated with Skydeck.

    Lots of events this month, check out the calendar for more details.

  • Want to meet fellow StartupEmpire attendees?

    We have teamed up with EventVue.com to provide a place to attendees of StartupEmpire to connect and share with eachother.

    If you have a ticket for StartupEmpire you should have recieved an invitation right now to log in to the event site where you can fill out your own profile. Be sure to add your blog and twitter accounts, as EventVue will bring them in so other attendees can see what you have to say.

    The most important part of any conference is in how you meet other people who are attending, and this is a great chance to get a head start on that. I have heard a lot of feedback from people that having tools to help them arrange meetings in advance of an event has been really useful.

    Specifically I know that a lot of people made good use of the Arrange Meeting tool at CIX last year.

    Just over 50% of attendees have signed up on EventVue so far, and we are hoping to get that number up so that it will be more valuable to everyone.

  • All you need is a blog to market your product? You’re so wrong.

    We can’t wait to get started with the StartupEmpire conference on November 13 in Toronto, so we thought we’d pass the time by talking to a Canadian startup entrepreneur who has managed to grow his business from a two-man shop to 27 employees – and counting.

    Mike McDerment, the CEO of Toronto-based FreshBooks, has agreed to talk about some of the things he learned as an entrepreneur since starting his online invoicing and time-tracking service that has so far attracted more than 500,000 users in 100 countries.

    In part 1 of this 5 part video series, Mike talks about blogs and marketing. His take:

    Do you agree or disagree with Mike? Watch the video and discuss with him and other entrepreneurs at the StartupEmpire conference.

    I would like to thank our sponsors who have been understanding and who have helped out in many ways.

    PriceWaterhouseCoopers

    Ontario Centers of Excellence,

    Gowlings

    and JLA Ventures.
    Visit www.startupempire.ca for more information on the conference and to register.

  • StartupEmpire is sold out

    The only opportunity to get a ticket now is to put your entry in to Austin’s giveaway.

  • 10 Free Entrepreneur Packages for Startup Empire – A Contest

    Guest post by Austin Hill, CEO of Akoha & Founder of Brudder Ventures.

    I’m really pleased to be speaking at Startup Empire on November 13th in Toronto.   I’m going to be running a hands on workshop for entrepreneurs entitled “Slow down &  Speed Up – Managing A Startup in Turbulent Times”.

    In my workshop I’ll be sharing some strategies & tools for the following aspects of your business,

    • Avoiding the wall – Raising Cash and Extending Runways in a Economic Downturn .
    • Risk Reduction Roadmap Planning, linking financing, scenario planning & risk reduction.
    • Performing Honest Assessments of your Market, Team & Capabilities to Win.
    • Who is investing now in Canada?

    Jevon McDonald & David Crow have put together a great line up of speakers and sponsors.

    The organizers have recently dropped the price to a very affordable price of $69 for the entire day conference.

    At the same time I know many entrepreneurs who watching budgets & may not feel they can afford to attend (travel & conference fees) so we are announcing a quick contest for entrepreneurs interested in joining us at the conference.

    FlowVentures, AngelSoft and Brudder Ventures StartupEmpire Contest

    In the spirit of creating great opportunities for entrepreneurs I have partnered with my friend Raymond Luk from FlowVentures and the team from AngelSoft to sponsor 10 entrepreneurs to get the following packages.

    • A free pass to StartupEmpire.
    • A copy of Guy Kawasaki’s brand new book Reality Check which I recently read and is a great collection of essays & practical advice on many of the aspects of running a startup.
    • A copy of Randy Komisar’s “The Monk and the Riddle” one of my favourite startup books which is a quick read about startups & finding meaning as an entrepreneur written during the last tech collapse.
    • A $100 credit towards any travel costs you incur to attend (To help out of town attendees get to Toronto.  If you win & are in Toronto we’ll ask you to donate your travel subsidy to one of the other winners who are travelling farther)
    • Angelsoft has donated a number of discounted and free applications to their OpenDeals program where you can submit your company to be viewed by over 10,000 angel groups.  These will be given to startups that apply and qualify as companies looking for funding ($100-$250 in value).

    The contest is open to any entrepreneur, startup or aspiring entrepreneur who working building a technology startup.

    To enter the contest all you need to do is send an email to startupempire [@] brudderventures.com answering the following 3 questions.   Submissions must include your contact information, URL & Company contact details (if applicable) and should not exceed 1 page per answer.

    1. If you are a startup tell us about your company, size, market, product and what stage you are at in your growth. (If you are not part of a formed startup but) If you are an entrepreneur, programmer or aspiring entrepreneur tell us about your background, your plans as an entrepreneur.  Tell us what you’ve done to advance your entrepreneurial aspirations.
    2. Why do you want to attend Startup Empire – what do you want to accomplish there?
    3. What are the 3 questions that you would want answered by any of the speakers @ StartupEmpire?

    All entries should be received by this Saturday November 8th.

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  • Microsoft BizSpark – Software and Support for Startups

    Microsoft is launching a new program focused on helping Startups get up and running. The program is called BizSpark and according to Microsoft, the biggest benefits are

  • Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.
  • Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources
  • Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners

    • Basically, you enroll and are given access to a almost all the nessecary server and development software you need. The server licenses are even prouduction grade, so you can deploy (from what I can tell) cheaply. You are getting a high end MSDN subscription and a lot more, all for free.

    My first few startups were Microsoft-based. Believe me, things have changed. We used to have to scrape together $6000, $12000 or $18000 to pay for MSDN subscriptions. That was always incredibly painful. Microsoft eventually announced a program (PowerISV) that brought down the cost, but was still really weak on support. BizSpark eliminates almost all the licensing/software costs involved in being a Microsoft Based startup.

    I am not going to get in to any religious wars here. 90% of the startups I see (at the early stage) these days are Open Source based. The reasons for going Open Source are obvious for many of them, but for others it is not such a simple decision. For those building software focused on businesses, Microsoft brings some very big opportunities to the table, especially with the Azure Services Platform.

    The other thing that tells me that Microsoft is starting to finally “get it” is that they don’t care if you are a 100% Microsoft based startup, or if you are Open Source based and just need to connect to Microsoft tools. The program is open to everyone.

    If you are coming to StartupEmpire, Microsoft is going to be throwing the after-party to celebrate startups and the new BizSpark program. There will be Microsoft execs on hand to answer your questions and to explain the program.

    In case you are wondering, no: this is not a pay-to-play post. Nobody from Microsoft asked me to write it. I believe this program stands on its own.

  • StartupEmpire – One more iteration: 1 day, $65, same great opportunity

    Any good startup has to iterate constantly. Market changes, product changes, management changes. Every part of the organization is help up to a high standard and when it does not make the cut, it has to change. With that in mind, we are announcing some changes to StartupEmpire, our conference that is just over one week away.

    These are tough economic times, we are in a period where start-ups need to buckle down and manage their cash flows closely. Likewise, a lot of individuals are considering more closely where they invest their time and money.

    In order to make StartupEmpire more accessible, we are reducing the conference to a 1-day event and we will be reducing the price of a ticket. This is to allow start-ups to continue to be more responsible with their finances and still have the opportunity to participate in conference designed to provide real-world education for start-ups about starting, building and growing successful companies.

    Therefore we are taking the following steps to help start-ups, students and entrepreneurs attend StartupEmpire:

    • Reducing StartupEmpire to a 1-day event and changing the venue to This is London, November 13th 2008
    • Reducing the price of a ticket to StartupEmpire to $65/ticket + GST
    • Refunding the difference to all registered attendees.

    We believe strongly that this event is something that the startup community needs and we have worked hard to ensure that it is still of the same high quality as the original event.

    The opportunities available at StartupEmpire are important for everyone: Real world examples of success and failure by entrepreneurs, Learn about the pitfalls of having the wrong business model, customer acquisition, financing, incorporating, getting sued, social marketing, technology selection and product development from entrepreneurs in the trenches can help you learn what to do and what to avoid with your start-up.

    The lineup includes world-class entrepreneurs including: Don Dodge, Lane Becker, David Cohen, Howard Lindzon, Rick Segal, Austin Hill and others. Along with the conference program there will be social opportunities to meet angel investors, venture capitalists, lawyers, accountants and others with expertise helping Canadian startups get to the next level. The day will end with a wonderful social event hosted by Microsoft Canada.

    I apologize for making these changes so close to the event. We are working to ensure the best experience for a reasonable cost for all attendees, and to make sure that as many people as possible have an opportunity to participate.

    I would like to thank our sponsors who have been understanding and who have helped out in many ways.

    PriceWaterhouseCoopers

    Ontario Centers of Excellence,

    Gowlings

    and JLA Ventures.
    Visit www.startupempire.ca for more information on the conference and to register.

  • Weekend Reading – November 1, 2008

    The BlackBerry Partners Fund invested in 3 startups. $8M in MobiMate (a mobile travel planning system – Israel), $5.5M in Digby (a mobile commerce platform – Austin), and $3.2M in Buzzd (a mobile city guide – New York City).

    Bumptop gets some love from Danish VC Morten Lund. “I just love when I see someone presenting his product – being proud like a king!!” Now that’s a compliment you don’t hear everyday! (Guess you have to dress for success…)

    My favourite rejections by VCs.

    Vengrowth and JLA Ventures scored with portfolio company Q9 Networks being acquired for $355M by ABRY Partners.

    W Media Ventures’ Boris Wertz, pipes in with his thoughts on “why these tough times are good for Canadian Internet start-ups.” Read this.

    And finally a collection of resources you should take a look at.