StartupNorth

Year: 2008

  • yourteledoctor – Online Patient/Doctor Consultations

    YourTeleDoctor is a Montreal based startup that wants to transform how we think about a visit to the doctor.

    I have no doubt, absolutely zero, about the role that telemedicine will play in healthcare delivery in the future. You can search for data from Gartner, Forrester or anyone, they all predict that TeleMedicine is going to be a big deal. 

    YourTeleDoctor is trying to be one of the first providers to come to market with a consumer-ready system to allow for video-based visits to a doctor. Quebec is a good example of a province/state with a huge rural population and a government that needs to stretch every dollar in health care delivery.

    If Mehdi can be the one to bring a new level of efficiency to governments, HMOs and clinics, then there is a lot of money to be made. The flip side, however, is that this is medicine. Medicine, for all the research and great thinking that goes in to it, changes very little. It is incredibly bureaucratic, even in the private sector, and care-delivery, the component that startups like YourTeleDoctor will attempt to shake up, sees even fewer changes than other parts of the sector.

    It seems likely that the first market for a tool like this would be private clinics who are relatively autonomous and well heeled. Just a few great case studies and a decent sales team might be all you need to start breaking in to an early market.
     

  • Devshop.com launches version 2.0

    Devshop.com, which was one of the first profiles we ever did, recently launched a new version of their project management application for development teams.

    The most unique aspect of Devshop is its focus on using historical data to estimate future performance. By monitoring past timelines, milestones and other aspect of a project, Devshop will estimate the risk associated with current time estimates.

    Devshop also focuses on tying project requirements to the development schedule, so things don’t get out of sync.

    Craig has methodically gone from a private beta through launch, a 1.0 and now Devshop 2.0 looks like a powerful tool for development teams of any size. I also took a look at the team that has come together in the last year and I was even more impressed. It’s not hard to tell that Craig is aiming to build a company that will scale when the opportunity comes.

     

  • Tineye now in Open Beta

    For everyone who didn’t get in on our rounds of TinEye invitations, suffer no more! The service is now in open beta and you can get a free account.

    The launch is getting a lot of coverage including Ars Technica, Information Week, and PC Pro. 

     

  • classtell.com – easy class websites

    Serve-yourself class websites aren’t entirely new. ChalkSite has come and gone, Engrade is a long-time option and there have been a mish mash of others. Toronto’s own Savvica had Nuvvo.com for a while as well, which was not quite the same, but close. They have since closed Nuvvo and have created LearnHub.com. One of the biggest new entrants in this market is Google. They have been marketing their Google Sites product heavily to educators.

    Classtell is the latest offering in this space by Kasra Kyanzadeh from Toronto. Kasra is 15 years old (and doesn’t mind advertising it) and he has a decent set of sites under his belt.

    This is a crowded space, but Kasra has built a fantastic vertical-specific CMS tool. There is a lot of room for micro-CMSs like this in all sorts of markets. Paul Graham identified sites like this in his “Startup Ideas we’d like to fund” post.

    Classtell is 20$ CAD per year, and you get a 90 day (wow!) free trial to test out and get comfortable with the site.

    The thing I love the most? Kasra has built the product on his own, established an early business model (rather than just giving it away), and to be honest: the product is fantastic. I played around with the demo, and it did everything other LMSs do and more.

  • PoolExpert acquired by Rogers

    Pool Expert LogoToronto based PoolExpert, one of Canada’s leading fantasy sports providers, announced their acquisition by Rogers Media earlier this week. While financial details were not released, this has to be a nice little exit for co-owners Ron Watson and Steve Hulford. Ron and Steve acquired PoolExpert in 2005 (the site was founded back in 1999) and grew the company over the last three years to hundreds of thousands of registered active players.

    The duo are already onto their next venture, Filemobile, an on-demand social media platform company. Word is that Filemobile is growing fast and already profitable with clients such as: CTV, TSN, CBC, MTV, MuchMusic, and Molson. Starting a company is a tremendous amount of work and exiting PoolExpert should allow these two to focus their full attention on growing FileMobile as fast as possible.

    Congrats on the exit guys! We’re looking forward to posting about the next win soon!

  • AndyCamper.com – Get kids outdoors

    AndyCamper.com launched this week. The Ottawa based startup is a sort of “activities portal” targeted at kids. 

    The site categorizes activities in the same way that kids tend to, using broad titles like “bugs”. When you click through there are all sorts of videos, ideas and games about what you can do to learn about bugs.

    I would have been all over things like How to Create and Berlese Funnel and to be honest, it is still tempting!

    The amount of content available on this site is incredible. It sort of makes me wonder if the days of “Mom, we’re bored!” will soon be a thing of the past. “Just go to AndyCamper.com kids”

     

     

     

  • Weekend Reading – August 2, 2008

    The Up-sell.

    On sales. And how much to charge.

    Y Combinator, seven weeks in. On work.

    There is no place like home.

  • iLoveRewards closes $4.7million Series A

    Here is a company worth talking about.

    iLoveRewards took a big problem and found a quirky and economical solution to it. This is the kind of company had me gushing 10 seconds in to the pitch. I’m sure that John Albright and company saw it from a mile away.

    ILoveRewards is sort of like one of those midway games that pumps out tickets every time you get the ball in the middle hole.

    In the case of iLoveRewards, employees of a company can earn points for things like good attendance, hitting sales targets or customer satisfaction. As these points build up, the employee can redeem them through iLoveRewards.

    Todays announcement is that JLA is contributing an additional $1.5 million to the round which will be used to create a US-focused brand for the service as well as to finance more sales and marketing initiatives.

    iLoveRewards competes with more established companies such as another favorite of mine, SuccessFactors, and I have no doubt that the competition will be moving to copy some of the novel things that iLoveRewards has been doing.

  • 30 Ideas that need to be Funded

    Paul Graham has published Startup Ideas We?d Like to Fund at YCombinator.

    1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom
    2. Simplified browsing
    3. New news
    4. Outsourced IT
    5. Enterprise software 2.0
    6. More variants of CRM
    7. Something your company needs that doesn?t exist
    8. Dating
    9. Photo/video sharing services
    10. Auctions
    11. Web Office apps
    12. Fix advertising
    13. Online learning
    14. Tools for measurement
    15. Off the shelf security
    16. A form of search that depends on design
    17. New payment methods
    18. The WebOS
    19. Application and/or data hosting
    20. Shopping guides
    21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses
    22. A web-based Excel/database hybrid
    23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia
    24. A buffer against bad customer service
    25. A Craigslist competitor
    26. Better video chat
    27. Hardware/software hybrids
    28. Fixing email overload
    29. Easy site builders for specific markets
    30. Startups for startups

    It?s a great list for entrepreneurs to start thinking about what to build next. The best part is that a number of folks have been building this software in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and other places in Canada. Here is my quick feedback about stuff that I can think of that fits the Canadian criteria.

    5. Enterprise software 2.0 ? Jevon has been talking about this for ages.

    6. More variants of CRM ? Dan McGrady is building integrate. Scott Annan and Scott Lake are building MercuryGrove. I love applications that focus on improving customer interactions, increasing the resolution of the interaction, these are products that small businesses drool over because they have an immediate impact on the bottom line.

    9. Photo/video sharing services ? Terry and Jeff at ParkVu are doing some really cool things.

    13. Online learning ? John and Gosia have drawn a line in the sand with LearnHub (my view of their opportunity).

    19. Application and/or data hosting ? Reuven Cohen is working at building some of the tools for Enomaly. While not Canadian, I?m intrigued with 10gen, Joyent, GoGrid, EngineYard and others. I wish there were some additional strong Canadian contenders in this space.

    20. Shopping guides ? Omar Ismail is leading the charge for open shopping reviews at ProductWiki. Candice Factor is working on building OurFaves inside the TorStarDigital network.

    21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses ? Mike McDerment and the kick ass team at FreshBooks are taking a stab at financial management tools for small business. George Favvas is building SmartHippo to enable better mortgage and financial information for consumers.

    22. A web-based Excel/database hybrid ? Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton are building a great tool, DabbleDB

    Kevin Leneway, who apparently is part of my brethren in DPE at Microsoft, has started going through each idea on the list one-by-one. He has decided to address each of the 30 ideas to generate ideas for a startup. It?s a great series of posts.

    Are there other Canadian companies that are solutions to one of the 30 ideas? Share them with us!

  • Tip of the week . . .

    . . . do stuff with email. That gets people all hot and excited.

    For example “We are going to enable Web 2.0 collaboration via email“.

    That one is a freebie. Heads will nod.

    I even did some market research for you: 183 billion email messages are sent per day. So if you can just capture 10% of that market, and monetize each email for 10c . . . .