Month: May 2011

  • DemoCamp with Howard Lindzon – June 9, 2011

    DemoCamp Toronto # 28 by hyfen
    AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved photo by Andrew Louis (@hyfen)

    DemoCampToronto # 29 – The Dirty Details #dct

    Date:
    June 9, 2011
    Time:
    6:30 – 9 PM EST
    Location:
    Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, 55 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON
    Register to attend:

    Keynote Speaker – Howard Lindzon

    Howard LindzonHoward Lindzon is co-founder and CEO of StockTwits® – a social network for traders and investors to share real-time ideas and information. StockTwits was recently named “one of the top 10 most innovative companies in web” by FastCompany and one of the “50 best websites” by Time magazine.

    Mr. Lindzon has more than twenty years experience in the financial community acting in both an entrepreneurial and investing capacity. With a unique vision for starting and successfully managing innovative companies, he is the Managing Partner of Social Leverage, a holding company that invests in early stage web businesses. Howard continues to manage a hedge fund he started in 1998.

    He created Wallstrip, and more than 400 original web video shows, which was purchased by CBS Corp. in 2007. He is an active angel with many success angel investments including: Rent.com, (purchased by Ebay in 2005 for $415 million), Golfnow.com (purchased by Comcast in June 2008), and Lifelock (lead investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). Mr. Lindzon’s new media and internet business investments also include: Limos.com, Blogtalkradio.com, Buddy Media, Ticketfly, Assistly, Bit.ly and Tweetdeck.

    Mr. Lindzon received an MBA at Arizona State University and an MIM from The American Graduate School of International Management.

    We are looking for amazing entrepreneurs & demos

    The goal at DemoCamp has been to provide a platform for local companies to launch, get product or pitch feedback, to establish a presence for recruiting, to help with PR and social media awareness. We try to get a group of highly connected and apparently highly cynical entrepreneurs, developers, designers, marketers, investors and others in a room to watch entrepreneurs in a safe environment. It’s something between a graduate seminar and a show. The goal is to demo your product and get feedback about your demo, your design, your market, etc. You decide. (It’s a work in progress, but it’s a social event).

    We’re also looking for up to 5 startups or entrepreneurs to demo a new technology. Selected presenters get 5 minutes to show us the best of their application and then ask the audience for feedback, coaching, and insight from a highly connected cynical crowd. You get market advice, technology advice, pitch/presentation advice. Startups seeking advice should apply to demo.

    Apply to Demo »

    Sponsors

    We need a few sponsors to help cover the cost of food and travel. If you are looking for coverage in the newsletter, blog and at the event ping me at david at davidcrow dot ca for details. Sponsorships start at $500.

    • KPMG
    • Thunder Road Capital
    • Research In Motion
    • Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
    • National Angel Capital Organization
    • Ontario Centres of Excellence
    • StartMeUpRyerson

     

  • Week in Review

  • Incubators, incubators, every where

    Photo by Jurveston
    Attribution Some rights reserved by jurvetson

    Is there an incubator bubble? Perhaps it’s an incubator arms race. When I wrote Incubators, Accelerators, and Ignition in 2009 there were not a lot of Canadian based incubators (the now defunct BootupLabs was the only one listed in the ReadWriteWeb article).

    Incubator Index +18

    There has been a rise of support for early-stage entrepreneurs across the country. Yesterday’s announcement of GrowLabs in Vancouver along with the launch of Foundery, Multiplicity Accelerator in Toronto, FlightPath in Edmonton, YearOneLabs in Montreal. There are existing players including Extreme Venture Partners, Mantella Venture Partners, Wesley Clover, Innovacorp and Real Ventures/Notman House. The are university incubators like UW Velocity, MEIC, LeadToWin, Ryerson’s DMZ, Next36. There are Communitech, WavefrontAC, CoralCEA, MaRS, NBIF among others.

    There are companies like Jet Cooper, Teehan+Lax incubating people and ideas (Rocketr & TweetMag). There are new programs like the Under 20 Thiel Fellows that had 2 Canadian students: Gary Kurek (LinkedIn, @gskurek) & Eden Full (LinkedIn, @roseicollistech).

    There is competition from YCombinatorTechStars and 500StartupsAndrey Petrov YC10 (@shazow), BackType YC08 – Christopher Golda (LinkedIn, @golda) & Mike Montano (LinkedIn, @michaelmontano), Rewardli 500Startups- George Favvas (LinkedIn, @georgefavvas) & Jean-Sebastian Boulanger (LinkedIn, @jsboulanger); A Thinking Ape YCW07 – Eric Diep (LinkedIn, @ediep), Kenshi Arasaki  (LinkedInarasakik) & Wilkins Chung (LinkedIn), InPulse YCW11- Eric Migicovsky (LinkedIn, @ericmigi), Vanilla Forums TechStars09 – Mark O’Sullivan (@navvywavvy) and others.

    There has been an explosion of support for existing organizations, there has been a rise of a new breed of incubator/accelerator/catalyst.

    How does an entrepreneur evaluate an incubator?

    Photo by Chris Devers
    AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by Chris Devers

    Do you pick the incubator? Or does the incubator pick you? This is a business decision. It’s somewhere between chosing an investor and a service provider and picking where to go to graduate school. There are implications for incubators about which startups they choose to help. Their reputation, alumni and talent pool are determined by the people they let in.

    There is no magic formula and rationalization or justification can make any decision sensible. But when I advise entrepreneurs, I want them to think about:

    Pedigree & Reputation
    What are the exits? Who are the alumni? What do others think about the program? One of the big reasons that YCombinator has become so successful is the success of it’s alumni. It has been reported that the YCombinator portfolio is worth almost $3B. They have an strong history of helping companies succeed like crazy. Think about this in terms of post secondary education. What is your opinion of a computer science graduate from: Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Stanford, UWaterloo, Slippery Rock University? The quality of the education might not be any different. But you need to consider the external optics of an incubator program, just like you do in picking a school.
    Alumni, Mentors and Advisors
    Who do you have access to? Does the pedigree or alumni network change your access to people? Think about YCombinator grads, they get access to Yuri Milner and Ron Conway and $150,000. That’s something most of us don’t have access to. What doors and connections that aren’t available to you today can be enabled by attending an incubator. Who are the mentors what have they built? For example, look at the great talent behind GrowLab – Debbie Landa (Dealmaker Media), Boris Wertz (Abe Books), Michael Tippett (NowPublic), Leonard Brody (NowPublic) and Jason Bailey (SuperRewards). These are some people with impressive histories of building, promoting, operating and selling startups. You need to think about your vertical, your customers, the connections to potential acquirers, etc. Are the people connected with the incubator beneficial to me.
    Culture
    You need to make sure that the culture is something you can work in. I can only describe the culture of places I’ve seen, but I look at Extreme Venture Partners and Mantella Venture Partners in mentoring, motivating and growing entrepreneurs. What is important to you? I watched the Like A Little video on TechCrunch Cribs, and there is no way I could live through that again. There’s nothing wrong with the culture, it’s amazing (disturbing), but I could not do it because my stage in life just would not allow it. My advice is that you visit the incubator, meet the people that are in residence, ask questions, observe, form an opinion.
    Funding or equity stake
    What do you have to give up? Equity? A board seat? How does it compare to other incubators? How much will you benefit from the network and pedigree, from the connections and mentors? This is a decision about do you believe the costs match the benefits? Do you have to move? How long can you survive on the capital?
    Free stuff
    This is a funny thing. What do you get for participating? SwagBag? Press? Boardroom for customer meetings? Hosting? Design services? Legal services? Templated documents? Do you get to attend StartupSchool? Do you get press coverage at your demo day? Do you get coffee? Dinner every other week. You’re in it to get the best deal to help your startup grow.

    Do you need an incubator?

    I’m curious about the feelings and opinions about incubators from:

    • Scott Pelton (@spelton) – GrowthWorks has previously invested in BootupLabs. Scott has worked with companies from incubators including Bumptop. Does having an incubator change your opinion or evaluation of young companies?
    • John Philip Green (@johnphilipgreen) – John has started LearnHub, been part of the early or founding teams of companies in Silicon Valley and now the leadership team at CommunityLend.
    • Leila Boujnane (@leilaboujnane) – Leila is a pillar of the community. She is the founder of Idee & TinEye. She advises startups and hosts events like HackDays.
    • Ryan Holmes (@invoker) – Ryan is a founder of HootSuite, he is also an advisor at GrowLab. Wasn’t HootSuite incubated at Invoker? What is the role of the incubator or companies in organic growth of new ideas? How should entrepreneurs evaluate an incubator vs being an employee versus something else?
    • Evan Prodromou (@evanpro) – Evan is the founder of Status.net and has raised seed money from MontrealStartup and continued to build an amazing product. I’m curious about his opinion on starting in an incubator.
    • Patrick Lor – Patrick cohosts DemoCamp in Calgary. He is on the board at Fotolia. He is an active angel investor. To the best of my knowledge outside of his involvement in SIFE he is not affliated with an incubator.
    • April Dunford (@rocketwatcher) – April is the best B2B Marketer in the world! I just said it on the Internets so it must be true. April has worked with lots of startups including NexJ and Janna. I wonder what her advice to a startup considering an incubator would be.
    • Rob Lewis (@robertslewis) – A drunken rumor says that Rob is starting his own media incubator in Toronto (possibly with ExtremeVP). And since Rob is a W Media Ventures portfolio company, I don’t want to see any puff PR pieces on TechVibes about GrowLab companies.
    • Chris Arsenault (@chrisarsenault) – One of the Jacques’ Mafia and an incredible investor. He has portfolio companies like Chango that have been incubated at Mantella VP. Are incubated companies better?
    • Danny Robinson (@dannyrobinson) – Now running BCIC and I’m curious at his opinion about what is rising out of  the ashes of BootupLabs and his thoughts on the incubator business model.

    More importantly, what do you think about this new bumper crop of incubators?

  • Don’t Overpay Developers

    The cost of an engineer is inflated right now. Informally, I poll salary expectations each semester from Waterloo co-ops. 2-3 years ago it was $65k-$70k. Last year/this year its $95k (the base Google, Facebook new grad offer). On top of that lots of engineers are able to source funding for their own social-mobile-cloud startup, more incentive not to join your own startup. Its not even a North American phenomena, in India I know technology managers making $120k+, in China I know guys turning down $100k offers now. There’s really no such thing as low cost development anymore.

    So, whats a startup looking to build product to do?

    “Ideally, to protect against inflation, you want a royalty on someone else’s sales so you don’t have to invest any more capital—you license it to them and you make money as their volume grows.” Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway AGM, April 30th 2011

    Don’t build new stuff and overpay inflated development costs if you don’t have to. Find partnerships so you can sell more product to your customers. Find more channel to resell your product. And so on. Maybe its time for more hustle and less hack??? (I’m a hacker, so writing this hurts a little bit).

  • Hack/Reduce Toronto

    Hack/Reduce Toronto - June 18, 2011

    We are pleased to be supporting Hack/Reduce Toronto. The rise of real-time computing, distributed sensors and big data have provided the ground work for development of a way to distributed the processing of these emerging large data sets across a cluster of computers. There are lots of Toronto and global companies leveraging the processing and analysis of large data sets to discover unique relationships in their data (Backtype, Postrank, BuzzData, Attachments.me, Google, and others. This is a wonderful opportunity for technical cofounders to get experience leveraging Map/Reduce, Hadoop and the shared expertise of local experts with some hands-on learning about big data.


    What is Hack/Reduce?

    Hack/Reduce is a free one-day big data hackathon. The goal is to extract valuable information from large datasets and learn how to work with big data. The event brings together Developers, Companies, Entrepreneurs and Students interested in Big Data.

    Provided:

    • Free access to Amazon EC2 clusters that can be scaled up according to your needs.
    • Pre-loaded datasets (participants are encouraged to suggest datasets)
    • Introduction to Hadoop and Map/Reduce and the infrastrucure
    • Support from Hadoop and Map/Reduce experts
    • Food and drinks

    At the end of the event, participating teams and developers get to present what they have done, what they learned and what problems they faced. It’s an opportunity to develop something great, learn Hadoop MapReduce and meet people interested in big data.

    Who is it for?

    Developers, researchers and students in big data or interested in working with big data. The best thing is if you have something you want to get done that requires a lot of computing power. Alternatively, you can come to learn to use Hadoop. Basically Hack/Reduce is about developers, working with new people, pizza, unlimited computing power and large data sets.

    Who is involved?

    Get Involved


  • Smart or Lucky? What Differentiates Successful Technology Companies?

    I will be on a Focus.com panel tomorrow discussing whether it is better to be smart or lucky.

    I know which one I would pick. What do you think is more important? Share your answer of on Focus.com before the panel.

    Join us for a roundtable teleconference moderated by Judith Hurwitz, author of the newly published Smart or Lucky? How Technology Leaders Turn Change into Success, with panelists Chris Selland, Jevon MacDonald and Jeff Nolan. We will discuss approaches and recommendations on how to win in competitive technology markets.

    Creating successful technology companies that stand the test of time is never easy. No matter how smart an entrepreneur is timing is everything. Having the right idea and right execution at the time when the technology infrastructure is in place and the market is ready can be the difference between success or failure. But even this lucky isn’t enough. A successful technology company needs to have a well defined growth strategy that takes into account changing customer needs. The failure rate is indeed high but there are techniques and strategies that can help turn great ideas into sustainable companies.

    Updated to include proper link.

  • Startup Weekend Toronto

    Some rights reserved photo by Seattle Municipal Archives

    Startup Weekend Toronto, which kicks off June 3, is almost sold out; if you’re on the fence, don’t wait much longer, StartupNorth readers can save 20% by using discount code: STARTUPNORTHSW

    This June’s event will have a strong focus on lean startup principles. A fantastic set of speakers are lined up to provide practical advice so you can take what you learn well beyond the weekend itself. While there is no “right” way to start a company, Startup Weekend is here to help provide you with as many tools and connections as possible to help you succeed.

    A great set of speakers for Friday night will kick things off and prepare you for what’s ahead. Throughout the weekend there will be mentors dropping in helping teams with their projects. Saturday night, founders will share war stories. The judging panel includes experienced investors and entrepreneurs who you will have a chance to connect with. Startup Weekend  will round up with dinner and awards at an awesome venue to be announced shortly.

    The winner of Startup Weekend will enjoy more than just street cred, in addition there will be a cash award to help move the project forward, entry into the Ryerson DMZ for 4 months, video production to help on the marketing front, pro bono legal services, a chance to demo at the next Democamp Toronto (June 9), and more.

     

  • The Art of the Pitch

    There are a lot of different formats and presentations about how to create a pitch for investors. I’ve included my favourites about the structure and template – the resources include Viagra, Sequencing, Hacks and the Art of it all. These are great resources about the structure of your presentation and about what to do (or not to do) in your presentation.

    “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

    For me one of the best ways to learn is to see real world examples and to rip, mix and burn these into my one words and formats. And we are trying to gather a list of great sample pitches. I’ve included Mint.com, Zapmeals, and an awesome angel pitch from Ali Asaria at Well.ca. But we’re looking for additional examples of great pitch decks to help entrepreneurs see what has worked for others.

    The Art, Hacks and Dysfunctional Love of the Pitch

    Sample Pitch Decks

    Submit example pitches

    [gravityform id=5 name=TheArt of the Pitch ajax=true title=”false”]

  • Week in Review

  • Hustle & Flow

    Once upon a time in my startup life, we stumbled across the deal of a lifetime. A large company was spinning off a subsidiary, and they were paying someone a few million bucks to take it off their hands.

    Most folks looked at the numbers and said “no thanks” – $7mm in revenue and spending about $20mm… yuck. But these guys were running the exact same business as us, similar subscriber counts and all, and we knew they could be run spending $3-$5mm per annum (which is what we were spending). For instance their CEO was getting $4mm/annum and ours was making $1/annum (perfect example of why big companies can be bad at launching new products). So we put in a bid for -$2mm (yes thats a minus in front). I.e. pay us $2mm to take your company, and have it generate $2-$4mm a year in cash for us. Booya. You could imagine how excited we were. We basically re-enacted this Monty Pyton scene every day in the office for 2 weeks (word of caution – this is 10 minute video and there’s a part 2):

    Yaaaaar, corporate raiders be we.

    Until, sadly, of course, somebody outbid our -$2mm offer. Damn. I suppose -2mm isn’t that hard to outbid.

    I’m telling this story to give another “meme” to startupdom. Lean product development, social marketing, customer development, iterations, pivots, etc – these are the more popular memes of today. Well there’s another one thats not mentioned enough – Hustle and Flow – doing deals, business development, partnerships, strategics, m&a, etc. There are many big famous startups who had deals with a big elephant: Google powering Yahoo, Amazon powering Target, the Microsoft/Apple/IBM/Xerox tangle, RIM’s pager deal with Ericsson. Its a crucial part of growing your startup, you gotta be able to do deals.

    One of the current killer “deal-oriented” startups in Toronto right now is Kobo Books (@mserbinis). Kobo got frickin’ Li Ka Shing to back them, the guy is a business legend! Why waste time with tiny business punks like Paul Graham and Dave McClure (I joke) when you can have a business God invest in you. Plus Kobo has done huge, killer deals from top to bottom in every category of their business – checkout their partner list in here. That my friends is big pimpin’ Canadian startup style.

    Here’s another one, check out the list of deals Fixmo (@ricksegal, @shyamsheth) has done. They acquired a company (Conceivium) as a year and a half old startup! How many of you entrepreneurs in your first year or so wake up and say “lets buy a company”. On top of that, as an unknown one year old startup they walked into the Department of Defense in the US and nailed a massive deal. That is pure brass-balled, biz dev game.

    Would love to hear some other great Canadian business hustler success stories from folks (or near misses, or disasters), or give us your favourite links/resources for networking, bd, m&a, hustling, pimping, whatever. We’ll be following up with some resources and tips to help your biz dev game.