Ctrl Alt Compete – A startup documentary

Interesting my friends from Microsoft are hosting a screening of Ctrl Alt Compete which features our own Josh Sookman (LinkedIn, @jsookman) of Guardly and Brian Wong (LinkedIn, @brian_wong) of Kiip. It’s a documentary about building startups and the founders passion, fortitude and the shear insanity of doing this. Looks like a fun take, realistic take.

Watch the trailer.

Trailer on YouTube for Ctrl Alt Compete

The movies takes a revealing look at the startup and emerging business scene through the eyes of five founders and their teams telling a story of the passion, fortitude and insanity that is bringing a startup to life. Microsoft believes tech entrepreneurship is fundamentally changing the world. The things that developers create; the ideas that they’re able to make reality; the tangible value they deliver is reshaping the way people live their lives every day. Building a startup from nothing to something is hard—REALLY hard.

Ctrl Alt Compete

Red Carpet Event for the Canadian Premiere of Ctrl Alt Compete Screening

Join a networking crowd of investors, community start-ups and entrepreneurial students for the first Canadian screening of Ctrl Alt Compete – a Microsoft movie documentary on what it takes to be a start-up:Passion. Fortitude. Insanity.

There are lots of tech startups out there taking their shot at changing the world. There’s no shortage of ideas. The infrastructure to build quickly is cheaper and more accessible than it’s ever been…there’s lots of capital floating around for the right idea. If only it were that simple! Building a startup from nothing to something is hard—REALLY hard. There is a “story behind the story” of just how hard it is to go from inception to reality and become the products and services that we use every day.

It’s a story of the power of people pouring their passion, drive and dedication into building something that changes the world—no matter how hard.

We believe that is a story worth telling and sharing.

At this premier screening event, you’ll hear insights from industry executives, Start-Ups from the cast and local leaders in the Start-Up community.

2011: Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty for Canadian VC?

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Mark Evans Tech written by Mark Evans of ME Consulting. Follow him on Twitter @markevans or MarkEvansTech.com. This post was originally published in February 14, 2012 on MarkEvansTech.com.

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First, the good news about Canada’s venture capital landscape. In 2011, investment activity climbed to the highest level in four years ($1.5-billion), a 34% increase from 2010, although it is still significantly below the record activity ($2.1-billion) reached in 2007.

The bad news is there’s still not enough supply to meet rising demand, plagued by “continued weakness” when it comes to fund-raising.

The good news-bad news scenario was spelled out in the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s annual report. For those of us in the glass half-full camp, the increase in investment and the number of deal is cause for optimism.

As well, 2011 saw a spike in M&A activity with 34 deals, including two each by Google, Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.com. And there was a flurry of incubators and accelerators established, including Extreme Startups last week.

Before anyone gets carried away, Canada’s venture capital landscape is a long, long way from being solid, let alone robust. There’s still not enough venture capital for seed, series A or major rounds. And don’t expect U.S. investors to pick up the slack.

In a press release, CVCA president Gregory Smith said there is concern about whether enough fund-raising can be dong to support the demand for investments. This situation was illustrated by the fact new commitments to Canadian VCs were flat last year at $1-billion.

“Canada has a historic opportunity to become an innovation leader,” Smith said, adding that “in order to act decisively on this opportunity, we must first overcome challenges to supplying VC funds that, in turn, supply entrepreneurs.”

So what’s the solution? How can Canada’s venture capital community do a better job of supporting the startup community? There is not easy answer to a problem that has been around a long time and doesn’t look to be changing any time soon. It’s not going to be an easy fix from government or U.S. investors or institutional investors waking up to the idea of venture capital investing.

Perhaps the answer to the problem is this: success. If more startups and mature high-tech companies are acquired, that could (emphasis on “could”) encourage investors (angels, VCs and institutional) to get more involved. Success has a strange way of helping people to see the light or new opportunities that they otherwise would have dismissed or not seriously considered.

That said, success is a double-edged sword. Without enough financial support, it is hard for startups to have enough powder to become acquisition targets. If they’re not interesting targets, there’s no acquisitions and, likely, less interest from investors.

So which side of the fence do you sit on? Are you bull or a bear about Canada’s VC landscape?

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Mark Evans Tech written by Mark Evans of ME Consulting. Follow him on Twitter @markevans or MarkEvansTech.com. This post was originally published in February 14, 2012 on MarkEvansTech.com.

There are two types of startup incubators in the world: YCombinator or TechStars

Note: This is a guest post by Jesse Rodgers who is a cofounder of TribeHR. Jesse specializes in product design, web application development and emerging web technologies in higher education. He has been a key member of the Waterloo startup community hosting StartupCampWaterloo and other events to bring together and engage local entrepreneurs. Follow him on Twitter @jrodgers or WhoYouCallingAJesse.com.

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Incubators and accelerators [Eds note: and cyclotrons] have but one purpose: move startups along in their life cycle at a faster pace than they would normally and increase the likelihood of a return by providing that service. If you are a startup looking at applying to an incubator you need to understand that the differences in how these programs differ go beyond the money they give you in exchange for equity.

An oversimplification of the incubator/accelerator space is to classify them as either a Y-Combinator (YC) or a TechStars (TS). If you really look at the booming world of incubators for high tech startups you see a model that either based on education and peers that is driven by a strong personality (YC) or a model that is more institutional, follows a script, and feels less personal but is more in line with how VC’s work (TS) (I would place 500 Startups right in the middle between YC & TS which is arguably representative of a third type). There is plenty to be found about the differences but here is a bit of a deeper exploration into the differences.

Startup lifecycle

Startups have a number of key phases in development that is best outlined in Fred Destin’s presentation on startup lifecycle.

  1. Start
  2. Launch
  3. Build
  4. Chasm
  5. Scale

With the 12-14 week cohort models, like YCombinator and TechStars, the focus should be on moving through starting and on to launch phase. There may be some that get into a build phase. The incubator or accelerator hopes that once they are done a 12-14 week program the startup will be in a much better position to move quickly through the build stage and at least take on the chasm phase.

Where I see the key difference between YC and TS is that YC seems to be able to get companies to go through stage 1 to 3 and they accept companies mainly in the start phase. TS seems to not attract a cluster of companies in a particular phase or not care about what phase a company is in.

The basics of an incubator/accelerator (whatever you want to call it)

Within the execution of any incubator or accelerator program there are, in my mind, 4 core stages in a typical cycle:

  • Recruitment
  • Onboarding
  • In the program
  • After the program

Within each of these of these stages there are a number of specific activities that all incubators do but in general they aren’t all that different.

Recruitment

YC currently leads the thought leadership with Hacker News, Paul Graham’s (PG) blog, and it’s success. Applicants fill out a form and once told they have an interview, travel to YC in Mountain View for an interview. They get just 15 min with a small panel and the panel does a bunch of tricks to the founders like carrying on side conversations – there are a lot of blog posts about that.

TechStars has adopted a more consistent process over it’s many affiliated programs (it appears) but they lack YC’s Hacker News or thought leadership (although they would claim otherwise). With Techstars there appears to be an affiliation with the Kauffman Foundation and the role they are taking in promoting the incubator model in general they have made themselves an authority in the space. From people I know that have been in the program it is a fairly standard process similar to raising Angel capital.

Onboarding

I am not sure on TS on-boarding but YC has a very short interview to decision to start of program window. YC has a little book that is like a long Wikipedia article written by Paul Graham that offers insights and baseline knowledge. From what I have been told the YC machine is pretty much immediately available to you when they say “you are in” — startups decide when to tell others. What is really interesting is that YC doesn’t announce it. They generally let a company know they are YC funded on the interview day but they don’t make a big announcement or anything.
Not having a big incubator announcement is a key difference here though. I will assume that with TS it is just like YC in that they have decided to fund you, they are now available to you. However, TechStars (it appears) doesn’t approach announcing the cohort in the same way as YC — they announce them ahead of the program.

In the program: peer mentorship, startup culture

Each program runs for roughly 3 months, 12-14 weeks, where mentorship, various events, and a demo day to close it off normally occur. Each week is important given that each team only has 3 months. Over three months there are phases you can generally identify:

  • Teams becoming familiar with each other, their mentors, and what they need to do (first 2 weeks).
  • The heads down getting stuff done phase (8-10 weeks).
  • Funding mode going into Demo Day (2 weeks).

Other incubator programs are fairly similar with any given week involving office hours (optional or required) and a speaker/dinner. The office hours are used to check in and place goals on the teams. Throughout the term there are demo nights, which are used by YC as a way to put peer pressure on other teams that might not be moving as fast as others.
Where they differ here is in the education of the founder(s). From everyone I have talked to that has gone through YC it seems to me it is a very challenging but rewarding relationship for a certain type of founder. That would make sense as a certain personality type will work best with Paul Graham’s way of doing things and will excel. I am not entirely sure it is simply a hacker/coder persona as most assume. I think it is a personality and learning style that goes a bit deeper.
TechStars has a co-working model with parts very similar to YC. The key difference is that TS doesn’t have the Paul Graham approach to educating founders so you will get very different details depending on who is running the program. TS also gives the startups a place to work where YC leaves them to find a house and work out of it.

After the program: Alumni network

The key value any incubator or accelerator provides after the program is the alumni network of companies that are now a few steps ahead (depending on the age of the incubator there could be alumni with very large companies) of the current cohort in the program. Over time these alumni are your best mentors and connectors.

It is at this phase where the greatest value is for the startup, I believe. You now have access to what the old folks call a big rolodex (social graph) that will open many doors which essentially leaves it up to the entrepreneur whether their company will succeed or not. There are few to no barriers, generally speaking.

Any alumni of YC or Techstars still have contact with the folks in their cohort and all cohorts along with Hacker News. Techstars Network is so big they have a conference just for alumni while YC taps its alumni for all kinds of things. Also, founders seems to find going through the program a second time is different but just as valuable. These massive networks of successful alumni with a flock of high profile admirers is very similar to that of Higher Education alumni networks, so much so it convinces me that this entire process is a form of higher education.

Programs that work copy YCombinator, even TechStars did

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The current culture of education focused incubators started in my mind with YCombinator (started in 2005). I believe what we are seeing with the success of YC and TS is new take on graduate school. Both are different, both work, and people can have strong opinions either way. They feed a need that I don’t think people outside of incubators quite understand yet, learning to be a founder is really hard. Being a successful founder is even harder. The bet is that if you help young founders focus on what is important they will see success earlier or just simply see what success looks like.
If you are looking at an incubator anywhere (there are lots of great programs out there) you need to understand that the money is secondary. You need to find a program that will fit with the way you learn and has companies that you want to work with. It is just like how you picked your University or College except this time it can cost you a lot more (in equity) if you are successful.

Note: This is a guest post by Jesse Rodgers who is a cofounder of TribeHR. Jesse specializes in product design, web application development and emerging web technologies in higher education. He has been a key member of the Waterloo startup community hosting StartupCampWaterloo and other events to bring together and engage local entrepreneurs. Follow him on Twitter @jrodgers or WhoYouCallingAJesse.com.