Earlier today Toronto based fOTOGLIF, an emerging ad?supported stock photo portal, announced partnerships with Getty Images, Thomson Reuters, and Splash News. These partnerships should help deliver stock photo content, thereby solving one piece of the puzzle: inventory.
fOTOGLIF’s business model is to provide free ad-supported stock photos. I embedded an example below. Would you use ad supported stock photos on your blog? How about if I told you Idee was monitoring unauthorized use?
Things have been coming together quickly for StartupEmpire. I am excited to announce some incredible new speakers, and we will keep announcing others as they are confirmed.
The interest so far has been pretty amazing. There have been so many speaker submissions that we have had to completely revisit the agenda for both days of the conference. You still have a chance to submit your proposal in the next few days, and we will still take a look for anything that we think we need to get on the program.
We have just confirmed that Don Dodge, Hugh MacLeod and David Cohen will be joinging us as keynote speakers.
Don Dodge is currently the Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and was recently a panelist at the TechCrunch50 conference. Don calls Microsoft ?the biggest start-up in the world? and his job is to work with VC’s and start-ups to help them build great companies.
Hugh MacLeod has been an inspiration to many of us. His work with English Cut and Stormhoek were some of the earliest successes in using blogs to communicate a message cheaply and efficiently, which are much needed lessons for new and old startups alike.
David Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars in Boulder Colorado. TechStars has been one of the most successful seed stage funds in the world. David is also the founder of ColoradoStartups.com, a blog focused on tracking Colorado Startups.
Don’t forget to get your ticket before the early bird deadline, or ASAP before we sell out. The venue is small enough that we really can’t add more.
Thanks for all your support, we are working hard to create something that is valuable and that you will leave from feeling energized and ready to do something great.
We would also like to thank our Leadership sponsors, Microsoft and HighRoad Communications.
I am hanging out at Idee where they are demoing their new iPhone application.
I have to say I am impressed. The application allows you to take a picture of a CD (books and other products coming soon) and the app will then come back with pricing and other information. In the case of a CD, you can sample the tracks and buy them directly from the iTunes store.
After seeing TinEye, a lot of people have asked “what is the killer app for search?”, I really don’t have an answer, because it isn’t really the kind of stuff I think about, but this represents the kind of innovation and interesting applications that can come out of this kind of technology. This might not be the killer app itself, but it shows that there are dozens of problems that Visual Search can solve.
The message I got tonight was that Idee is just getting started in building tools that make use of their core visual search technology, and that we are going to be seeing a lot more in the months and years to come.
This iPhone application should be available within a few weeks, depending on how quickly the iTunes store approves it.
Leila Boujnane, Idee’s CEO, will be speaking at StartupEmpire in November.
HomeZilla, a real-estate companion site, is launching publicly today. When I first saw the site back in February of this year, it still had a long way to go in terms of usability, and it looks like they have really been working hard in the time since then.
It is practically impossible to do anything worthwhile online for the real-estate market in Canada. The Multiple Listings Service is a monopoly and the ultimate gatekeeper of listings data. They protect themselves with anti-competitive contracts and stifle any sort of innovation. They regularly shut down websites and startups who come up against them. The most famous of which was the Real Estate Plus project by Bell Canada.
So, what do you do if you are passionate about this market, but can’t play fair? You go around the bullies and provide value in other ways.
HomeZilla provides neighborhood information that helps you make a decision about where you want to buy. Where are my local pubs? Schools? Child Care? LCBO? It is all in there.
The Toronto based company has a lot of work ahead of them to get exposure during a time that has seen real estate purchased drop like a rock in Toronto (down 22% to 30% by some estimates) and other cities. That said, I think HomeZilla will play an even more important role for a new type of buyer who will be a lot more picky about where they are purchasing, and they will have time to browse around, rather than bidding on every house that comes on the market.
I do not know exactly what HomeZilla’s revenue model is, but I can think of a handful of obvious opportunities to provide add-on value for real estate agents.
Personally, I think we need more startups like this, who demonstrate the possibilities of what can be done in the real estate space, and who I hope will collectively give a big middle finger to the MLS monopoly.
HomeZilla was founded by former Yahoo! manager Sandy Ward, who recently returned to Toronto from San Francisco.
After what seems like a very short summer break, things have started up again at the Maple Leaf Angels. We held our first investment breakfast of the season in September and look forward to another great season of seeing great companies and closing deals. Since the group was started in early 2007, Maple Leaf Angel members have made investments in over 10 companies.
One of the functions of the board is to do company screening and select the companies that will present at our investment events. Having seen pitches ranging from very good to very bad, I thought I would start off my first post of the season with my top 5 do?s and don?ts of securing investment.
1) Do start early – raising money takes time
Remember that the timeline in the referenced article assumes you go from start to finish and close the deal. You may very well find you get part way through the timeline with one investment group only to be turned down. That means you need to start over again with alternate groups. The best time to look for financing is when you are in a position of strength (i.e. things are going well with your company) and not when you are in dire need of financing to survive.
2) Do ensure you have the fundamentals down pact (product, market, competition, management, financials, goto market)
Throughout the funding process investors will want to gain a comfort level with a potential investment in your company by assessing these areas. Not being prepared with details will seriously weaken your prospects of getting funded.
3) Do be memorable for the right reasons
During the early stages of the investment process, the goal is to stand out from the other companies pitching and get people interested in your company to want to spend the time to undertake a due dilligence process. At any organized investment event you will be one of many companies presenting to a group of investors. All will be pitching with the same message (our company has a great new idea, that can be sold to a large market, and make a lot of money). Often time the amount of interest you garner is largely dependent on the person who is presenting. You have probably all been to industry conferences & events where you have sat through presentations where you had to try hard not to doze off. But every once in a while you have attended a presentation with a great speaker that you leave feeling energized and challenged. This is the type of person you want to give the pitch to get people interested and excited about investing in your company.
4) Don?t have an unrealistic idea on valuation
Valuation can be complicated and difficult to determine an exact value for your company. However, when you are first asked what your valuation is, do not give an unrealistic number if you are an early stage company (i.e. a pre-revenue company is generally not going to support a valuation in the 8 figure range). Also, if asked about valuation during your initial meeting, always preface it that it is open for discussion. At this point each side is only just beginning to get to know each other and what they bring to the table. Being adamant about an unrealistic valuation number (usually mistakenly rooted in the belief of not wanting to give up more than 51% of the company as to retain control) will quickly cause people to loose interest.
5) Don’t have people walk away from your pitch presentation without having a clear idea on what your company does and how it makes money
Even if your product is a very technical product, you need to be able to clearly articulate what it does, what pain point it is solving, and how your company makes money. You would be surprised how many pitches I have sat through and left without having a clear idea on what the company did. If you cannot cross this basic hurdle, your chances of getting investment are going to be very slim.
Seems pretty basic – right? You would be surprised how many pitches get passed over as a result of tripping up over one of the above points. The ability to secure funding will play an important role in your company?s strategy and growth. Make sure you put your best foot forward!
I attended some of the sessions on Wednesday for Toronto Tech Week, here are my notes from Albert Behr’s session on exit strategies:
“If you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there”. Was the headline advice at the “Designing for Liquidity” startup day event of Toronto Tech Week. Kudos to the organizers for pulling together some great startup content, the day was a great warmup for startupempire soon to come.
The Liquidity event panel had good stuff from Tim Lee of Gowlings on the legal side of selling your company (hint: you’ll need a lawyer), Tim Lee of GrowthWorks on the VC perspective (yes virginia, there still is VC activity in Canada, just as much as pre-bubble …but… to fewer companies and you can forget about early stage, how you raise your first 0-4M is your problem, learn to love angels, government handouts and your bootstraps). But the real barn burning presentation was Albert Behr on how to get from zero to sold in three years. Here’s my hasty notes:
First off: the IPO is dead. SOX killed the IPO, so did the bubble. There’s only two ways to a happy ending these days, keep running your company into the sunset or get bought out.
Tech is still a great market. 3 Trillion a year. But here’s the challenge. We’re 30 years into the industry and it’s now an oligopoly. Doesn’t matter what tech you build there are only, maybe 30 players out there that matter that are your exit strategy for acquisition. And the list is getting smaller, the list of companies on the Nasdaq is down 25%.
And the tech cycles are getting faster. You are only hot when you are hot, you will never be hot again. There’s only one company in the history of tech that has been hot twice, and that’s Apple. You are not Apple. You have maybe 3 years, or 30-36 months to make it. So build a 3 year business plan and get the hell out there. Forget 5 year plans.
Here’s the strategy. Choose you 2-3 likeliest suitors and and “antagonize” the hell out of them until they buy you.
But remember we are Canadian we have to play to our strengths. Everyone makes the same mistake and tries to sell direct. Canada is great at producing engineers, we are not good at scaling. Do not go toe to toe with direct sales forces of your American competitors, they will have 3 times as much money, they will blow you out of the water (anecdote, one time I raised 27M, a lot of money for a canadian company right? Wrong, my one competitor raised 90M, the other 140M. I had one sales guy in NYC, they had 14. Don’t take the market head on.
Instead, build your channels, license your technology, go the OEM route. Don’t worry about margins 100% margins of nothing is still nothing. All that matters is footprint, getting your stuff distributed. You’ve got only 30months to get your product on to every “Walmart shelf” [insert top three distribution channels for your industry here].
So first, lock down your IP. This is very important. Provisional file everything, it’s not free but it’s not that expensive either. Provisional filings are cheap, do it in Canada, the US and Europe. In Albert’s companies he gives the CTO’s quota’s of 1-2 IP filings a quarter.
Canada is good for starting out, build your first 0.5M in revenue here, not to prove that the distribution works, but that the technology works. The dogs will eat the dog food. That the product/beta is ready. Then look south, focus on (only) the US and western parts of Europe. You need the distribution deals here to drive you to the 5-10M revenues where you start to become interesting to acquisitors.
Tightly integrate your stuff with 2-3 existing players, both technically and businesswise. Create the app that gives blackberry an edge over iphone, give microsoft an edge over IBM etc.
Then go to the big guys with a deal. Don’t be a Canadian wimp, use linkedin and go straight to the general manager or VP in charge. In the US they do deals, if you have something that might grow their business, they will give you 10 minutes of their time. White label your technology, let them slap their brand on it. (Only after you’ve locked down the IP). Make it a product that brings them incremental sales, and or a competitive edge.
Use exclusivity deals, but tie it to revenue targets and make it time limited so they have incentive to move it and you get your product back if they don’t.
Then, this is how you antagonize them. They’ve now outsourced engineering to you by proxy. As the sales grow and they keep having to pay royalties, they will see where this is going and you’ll drive their CFO crazy. The company will come to you to buy you out. Sell at 4x revenue multiple and move on, next company…
easy right?
Jevon and I apparently picked a conference name that exists as a registered trademark. We have been informed by our lawyer that our usage of the name did not infringe on the existing trademark. Rather than start with a potential tenuous situation, we decided we would just rebrand the conference.
StartupEmpire is the new name. Does it remind you of Star Wars? Or the British Empire? It is ostentatious. It is bold. It is intended to inspire entrepreneurs to start building empires. History remembers the legacy of successful entrepreneurs. JP Morgan. Andrew Carnegie. Howard Hughes. Henry Ford. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jeff Bezos. Mark Cuban. Our goal is to provide the tools to help build the next generation of entrepreneurs build their empires.
| What: | StartupEmpire |
| When: | Thursday, November 13th and 14th, 2008 (all day) |
| Where: | Diesel Playhouse
56 Blue Jays Way
Toronto, Ontario M5V 2A2 |
We are focused on practical, real-world advice from entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts that will help early-stage companies at different stages. How do you build a cashflow statement? What does a marketing plan and budget look like for a startup with no money? What tools and services are available to set up your development, testing and production environments? How important is source control and bug tracking? What does a product roadmap look like for a startup practicing agile development? What does a basic shareholders agreement look like? How do you avoid getting sued? What do you do when you get a cease-and-desist letter? What is a term sheet from an investor? How does a developer do business development?
We?ll be announcing the next set of speakers in the next couple of days. We?re also interested in learning about what you would like to see at StartupEmpire. Drop me a note with what would make you attend StartupEmpire in an instant.
We have launched the official call for speakers for StartupEmpire (more on the name change from Dave later tonight — you are going to have a chuckle).
We are looking for great workshop and panel proposals as well as keynote nominations. You can fill out the form here to make your submission. We have already had an overwhelming amount of submissions, so if you have emailed us already, please consider re-submitting through this form. I will try to dig through my emails, but I am bound to miss some.
I will be speaking at the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s upcoming professional development day on October 15th. I will be on a panel with Rob Lane, from Overlay.TV and Maggie Fox from Social Media Group.
Our session description is
?Going global” is no longer an option for many companies. It is a necessity. This session will examine issues and strategies in building international networks that will lead to business opportunities and enhanced returns. Learn how to link into international networks of customers, partners, acquirers and investors to better position your companies for global success. The role that social technologies can play in fostering these global networks will also be discussed.
Other sessions include “THE BIG PICTURE ? KEY STRATEGIES FOR CREATING ESSENTIAL INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS” with Jennifer Brooy,Vice President, EDC Equity and Rajiv Pancholy, Chairman and CEO, TenXC Wireless as well as “RELATIONSHIPS WITH GLOBAL SYNDICATE PARTNERS AND ACQUIRERS ? THE VIEW FROM HOME AND ABROAD”
It looks like a good day and if it is typical of CVCA events, the biggest value will be in having a chance to hang out with some of the other attendees who tend to be other startups (the smart ones go to CVCA events when they can afford them) and funders.
The half-day event is $299 for non-CVCA members if you attend in-person in Toronto, and $70 if you watch it from one of the simulcast locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Fredricton or Halifax.
This weekend: The Design Edition. A number of Canadian Startups (PlanetEye, b5media, LetsCube, etc.) have been working on redesigns. These overhauls are more than a coat of hex paint… in many cases, they reflect a evolution of the business thesis.
First, let’s head on over to PlanetEye. They’ve noticeably cleaned up the site and reorganized around the travel pack. The idea being that users will research trips, build up travel itineraries, and then book their trips. We’ve written about PlanetEye before, so you probably already know the genesis related to sharing of geo-tagged photos and travel plans. Things now seem to be shifting towards travel booking. They are also working hard on content partnerships to backfill listings. My only concern is that getting to ‘booked’ is way more work than on other travel sites. For example, compare the booking experience at TripHarbour.
Going through the re-design process is really interesting because it’s not just the look and feel but how the site meets the needs of users. In many ways, it forces you to re-think a lot of things. – Mark Evans, Director of Community for PlanetEye.
Next, let’s gather around b5media’s latest creation: the Starked entertainment portal. As familiar as most of us are with RSS readers, my guess is that the general population has no clue how to use those odd little orange icons. The central question b5media seems to be addressing is how to pull users across its network. They’ve already organized channels and now are presenting these channels as portals. Will these portals be able to aggregate the long tail readers? For example, will a Britney fan want to read about Alba? And if so, why not visit a mainstream site? We’ll have to wait and see… But I would bet that at the very least these portals help attract advertisers.
As one of the most successful channels in our network, entertainment was a natural choice for b5media to build a destination website for the constant flow of new information published on each individual blog. In the next few months, we will be launching more b5media portal websites. – Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media.
At an earlier stage is Let’s Cube. Much like PlanetEye and b5media they are working on refining the product, albeit without OPM (other people’s money). I asked the founders recently to describe their site in 140 characters or less. Here is what they had to say: “”Discover what your friends find exciting. Share what you find interesting. Let Let’s Cube recommend you what you’ll find fascinating.” Give *cubing* a try and let the guys know what you think!
We have been working on making the UI as clean an possible. We have deployed the first iteration. What do you think? – Shahzad Salim, Cofounder of Let’s Cube.
And finally, I would be remiss without pointing you to three excellent recent ‘redesign’ posts by members of our local tech community:
Dan McGrady, founder of Integrate Sales and Contrastream, put together a list of 10 Inspiring SaaS Website Designs and shared his thoughts on what each site achieved.
Mike McDerment, founder of Freshbooks, shared the story of how the team surrendered to process and elected a Design Dictator (less scary than it sounds)!
Jeff Fedor, founder of ParkVu (still in stealth mode), wrote about his early days quantifying the ?right? amount of change in shoe cushion and how those lessons carry over to software design (less boring than it sounds and a lesson innovators need to pay very close attention to, lest they find themselves ahead of the curve).
Love the redesigns? Hate them? Your startup been making design changes also?
Constructive critique in the comments 🙂