StartupNorth

Year: 2012

  • How to get the most out of AngelList: As a VC and as an Entrepreneur

    I love AngelList.  I truly believe it is disrupting the way early stage deals are being discovered and funded.

    When I was with BlackBerry Partners Fund (now Relay Ventures), I used AngelList to virtually meet and screen tons of companies.  I set up Super Fridays for myself, filling my mornings and/or afternoons with back-to-back 30 minute calls with 10-12 companies.  I really recommend this to any young VC looking for both dealflow and honing their game.  The velocity and juxtaposition of all these entrepreneurs, pitches, and companies really taught me how to evaluate deals along the VC spectrum:

    • (NO) polite and immediate no thank you
    • (NOT YET) check back with traction
    • (NOT SURE) send me your pitch deck so I can another set of eyes on this
    • (POTENTIALLY) let me bring this up at the next Monday partner meeting and see if someone bites
    • (YES) holy moly let me get John Albright right now

    All told, I probably screened 150-200 companies every three months on AngelList alone.  Ultimately, after all those Super Fridays, the firm funded two great companies: PubNub and ClearFit.

    Now as I sit somewhat on the other side, running Extreme Startups, I am spending time trying to get VCs to view our companies’ AngelList profiles.  To help figure out what companies should be doing on AngelList to help maximize their exposure, we at Extreme Startups recently had a session with Ash Fontana from AngelList to get his advixe.  Ash shared some best practices that I’d like to share with our community.  His advice included a lot of great tips and some common sense details that time-crunched entrepreneurs might glance over.

    Company Profiles

    1. Fill it out completely.  All the sections and tabs.  Comprehensive profiles are definitely the best so that there is both pertinent and substantive information.  One good tip is for the Founder Bios – include university info as well as some investors search for key schools.
    2. Be open / generous with information.  Specifically for the Fundraising tab, the Deal Terms should be filled out.  You don’t need to put valuation, but some indication helps investors looking for certain price ranges or structures (convertible note vs. equity).
    3. Use graphics – slides, screenshots, graphs, and videos to make a static page pop.

    Key tips to stand out

    • State the most original thing or function your product and company does.
    • Information about the market size is key.
    • Name something extraordinary about your company or founders.
    • State the hardest problem you solve.

    How do you get featured?

    For those lucky four startups on the feature page on the front page of AngelList, what is the process to get there?  It’s curated by Ash, who uses a number of different tools to track interest and traction.  Note that there are now over 80,000 startups on AngelList, with ~100 getting added every day.  Only five get featured per week – so only top 0.5% have the chance to be featured.  We are lucky to have our alumnus Granify on the feature page!  ShopLocket, SimplyUs, and Verelo all have great profiles as well (shameless plug).

    So what should you do after your profile is up?

    1. Be active.  It’s a social network.  Start and engage in conversations.  Follow interesting companies, entrepreneurs, and investors.  Comment on people’s status updates.  Refer interesting deals to other people.
    2. Be proactive.  Reach out to investors and advisors.  Ask for referrals and recommendations!
    3. Match your offline activity to your online profile.  Add an advisor or investor?  Make sure you AL profile reflects that.  Have your network post and share your traction and successes online!

    Other AngelList resources recently launched

    • AngelList Docs is in beta, but only for US incorporated companies for now.  It’s a great resource to close your deal online, industry standard docs and no legal fees.
    • AngelListTalent recently launched and helps startups recruit, and talent identify great jobs.  It uses a double opt-in structure, so you only get shown the jobs of the companies you follow.  It’s a great resource for recruiting.

    Hacking AngelList articles

    Lastly, Ash mentioned he loved and supported the hacking AngelList posts.  Somewhat analogous to the black art of gaming the iTunes stores, there are ways to succeed on AngelList outside of what is included in this post.  I just googled and found a couple of hits.  There are the most useful imho.

    Final thoughts

    I really hope more Canadian companies use and publish on AngelList, Gust, and others.  It’s a great way to get your profile out to Canadian, US, and international investors.  Not to mention its a great way to help entire cities and regions get noticed for great deal flow.  Maybe some young VC down south will start arranging their own Canadian Super Fridays…

    Please follow me on AngelList! (and Twitter).

  • Startup Ping Pong TO

    Startup Ping Pong TO - Nov 1, 2012 at SPiN Toronto The team at massively scaling Wattpad is hosting a ping pong tournament. The event is intended to bring together the startup community in Toronto by creating a inter-company ladder for ping pong.

    “We really want to start creating a dialog between startups in the city – no better way than to create some healthy competition!” – Tarun Sachdeva

    Companies will compete at the main event will be at SPiN Toronto on November 1st.

    There’s two ways to participate:

    1. Register a startup team
      The top 2 players will represent the startup in a single-elimination tournament. These are $50/team and are on sale now.
    2. Attend for casual play
      Anyone can buy tickets just to come play and network with others in the community. These are $10/person, and go on sale once team registrations are complete.

    In case you’re wondering, both of these include drink tickets and appetizers too.

    The bracket is filling up quickly. This includes Wattpad, Zynga, Jetcooper, FreshBooks, BNOTIONS, and others.

  • Don’t Panic: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Toronto Startup Ecosystem

    Rob Go published his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boston Tech Community, and it got me thinking about how much of the Toronto Tech scene has changed over the years. This is a my view of the players and contributors in the Toronto Startup Ecosystem. It is not a comprehensive list. It’s designed to be an overview. If you want more detail, seek it out.

    The first rule of this community is:

    ” Create more value than you capture.” – Tim O’Reilly

    If you can’t figure out how to add value, then you are doing it wrong. It probably means that you’re ruining the experience for someone else.

    Monthly/Semi-Regular Events

    • Mentor Mondays – hosted by Howard Gwin of OMERS Ventures. Probably the best networking event for funded and looking to get funded startups. Includes Howard’s network of CEOs, founders, consultants and other crazies that can provide real world advice. This is the best CEO event in the city if you can get an invite.
    • Founders & Funders – An invite only event hosted semi-regularly by use here at StartupNorth. It’s designed to bring together the people the start high potential growth companies and the people that fund them. It is invite only, requirements vary if you are a founder or a funder. For funders, we like to see 2 investments of >$100k in the past 12 months, and we try to vette founders to be fundable (and we’re often wrong)
    • SproutUpTO – Hosted by Jon Spencely and the Sprouter crew. Roughly monthly meetup that follows the startup demos and a big name keynote speaker. Event is approximately $12 to attend. Has hosted big names like: Daniel Burka, Tony Conrad, Matt Meeker, Sean Ellis, and others. Many of the keynote speakers and the startups are “high potential growth technology companies” but I find that  the audience and the networking is mixed.
    • TechTalksTO – Great semi-regular series of talks by technologists for technologists.
    • StartupGrind TO – Semi-regular access to startup speakers including Paul Singh, Eric Migicovsky, and others
    • Ladies Learning Code – focused on teaching development skills to newbies (of all genders).
    • DevTO – monthly developer educational events. Broad focus on industry trends and specific development environments.
    • Creative Mornings TO – Monthly breakfast series for creative types. Tends to aim more agency side but a great show.
    • Pecha Kucha TO – Pecha Kucha is the format that started it all. 20 slides x 20 seconds. It’s another event that tends to be aimed more at designers and agency folks. Presentations are always interesting.
    • Third Tuesday Toronto – Primarily for communications professionals (think PR and media types) with a focus on digital media and emerging best practices.
    • DemoCamp – I have hosted DemoCamps since 2005. They started as a way for entrepreneurs, developers and designers to get together and share what they’ve been working on. They grew to >500 person networking events. There are currently no plans to host anymore.

    Smaller Events & Meetups

    • Toronto Ruby Brigade – Great learning series primarily aimed at beginners, but becoming more advanced, includes book club series, hack nights at Influitive, and lessons/lectures about specifics of building and craft in Ruby.
    • Rails Pub Nite – Totally a social event. It’s a great way to figure out who is hiring in the Ruby scene and to meet others using Ruby. Hosted by the Unspace crew at the Rhino on Queen Street West.
    • Django/Python Toronto – This is a set of crazy Python devs. It is also not for the “recruiters” or bullshit artists. Go if you are using or considering Python on a project and you want to talk to the best. And don’t be a douchebag.
    • HTML5 Web App Developers – This is an educational event. It is broadly HTML5 and web app technologies. But the sessions are well put together and cover the craft. Good beginner through advanced.
    • Hacks/Hackers Toronto – The intersection of journalists and technologists. This is a very strong community. But it is really focused on the intersection of journalism and new tech.
    • StartupDrinks Toronto – A monthly social for entrepreneurs. Most recently hosted at Hotel Ocho on Spadina between Queen & Dundas. It’s noisy. I cofounded the event, though I don’t attend very often anymore. I don’t find that I benefit from the networking. And if I really wanted to drink with friends, well I do that.
    • NerdLearn – I have never been. It is hosted by The Working Group and Dessy Daskalov who I think is amazing. I’m still bummed out that she turned down my job offer.
    • TiE Toronto – Interesting with Haroon Mirza as part of the organization committee. Great mentoring group with startups like Cognovision and Verold participating the in the recent past.
    • MobileStartupsTO
    • LeanCoffeeTO – These happen regularly, every Tuesday at 8am. I don’t find a lot of value in the discussions. So maybe I’m doing it wrong. If you are new to the lean methodology, or you just want to talk with other entrepreneurs that are using lean.
    • Hadoop User Group  – Relatively new event. People look awesome. Focused on Hadoop, Map/Reduce and data science. I think it’s going to be good.
    • GeekGirlsToronto – Great networking group aimed at connected geek girls, tech savvy women in the GTA. Events cover everything from women founders to Arduino.

    Annual Events & Conferences

    • Canadian Innovation eXchange (CIX) – This i An event hosted by Achilles Media, has proved to be a launching ground for some of Toronto’s best acquisitions.
    • HoHoTO – Annual holiday party. It is a must attend event.
    • TiE Quest – hosted annually. $50k non-dilutive prize. Hosted at MaRS. Previous winners include Cognovision.
    • TEDxToronto – Annual event using the TEDx. Great community production.
    • Mesh – Could be described as the grand daddy of Toronto 2.0 events. Usually happens in the spring. Mesh is a 2 day event that focuses on how the web is evolving and affecting every part of our lives: government, policy, marketing, entertainment, etc. Produced by Mark Evans, Rob Hyndman, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram and Michael McDermett.
    • OCE Discovery – Event aimed at government support of local innovation. I have paid for a ticket in the past, particularly when they’ve had keynote speakers I wanted to hear. But generally this is an event for those connected with OCE. Next one will be May 27 & 28, 2013. Strong focus on companies that have been supported by OCE with strong manufacturing, ICT, and healthcare showing.
    • ThroneOfJS – was the latest in a series on Ruby and Javascript events hosted by the Unspace crew. Prior to Throne of JS, the Unspace crew hosted Future Ruby. These are great local events with world class talent.
    • AccelerateTO – hosted by the C100. Great social event. Keynote at the last one was from Google Canada, interesting but not stellar.
    • AndroidTO – hosted by the BNOTIONS crew. 3rd year. Focused on education around mobile development.

    Online Resources and Newsletters

    Recruiting Resources

    University, Government & Not-for-Profit Resources

    Coworking Spaces and Accelerators

    Entrepreneurial Design & Development Firms

    Canadian Investors

    Places to Hang

    • Sense Appeal – Great coffee. Lots of folks from Mozilla Toronto, ChickAdvisor, Nascent Digital and others.
    • Dark Horse on Spadina – It’s downstairs from the Centre for Social Innovation. Lots of
    • Jimmy’s Coffee – Very likely to run in to Rocketr, Jet Cooper, EndLoop Studios, Guardly or Massive Damage.
    • HackLab.to – great hacker space in Kennsington Market, and you’ll see something that will blow your mind, guaranteed. More anarchist hacker than startup entrepreneur. But its an amazing collective of people.

    Journalists and News

    Looking for Offices Space?

    • I used Jay Littlejohn at Cushman & Wakefield. He helped Influitive and others.
    • Centre for Social Innovation with 215 Spadina and the Annex has great brick and beam space.
    • BNOTIONS has a large space in St. Lawrence Market. They are actively looking for sublet tenants.
    • Companies are located all around Toronto.
      • Wave Accounting is near Queen & Carlaw
      • Wattpad is near Yonge & Sheppard
      • Top Hat Monocle is near Yonge & College
      • There is a big cluster near Queen & Spadina: Influitive, Guardly, Extreme Startups, Endloop Studios, Jet Cooper, Rocketr, Unspace, BuzzData, Big Bang Technology, The Working Group, and more.
      • Facebook Canada is near Yonge & Eglinton
      • Dayforce is located near Yonge & York Mills
      • Xtreme Labs is near Yonge & King St.

    Scaling Companies to Watch (probably hiring)

    Some to Follow

    Entrepreneurs, Thought Leaders, Gadflys and Others

    • April Dunford  – April is probably the best marketer in Canada. If you are a startup and you are marketing, thinking about marketing or just want to learn about marketing go read her stuff. She’s the BEST.
    • John Philip Green  – John is an EiR at Hedgewood. In the past he was the CTO at CommunityLend/FinanceIt.ca. He was also the founder of LearnHub. His style is second to none.
    • Zak Homuth  – Founder of YC alumni Upverter.
    • Farhan Thawar  – VP Engineering at Xtreme Labs. Absolutely amazing. I think he’s Hot Shit.
    • Jonas Brandon  – My friend and cofounder of StartupNorth. He’s been in at least 2 deals I wish I listened to him on.
    • Amar Varma  – Founder of Xtreme Labs, Extreme Venture Partners, hustler extraordinaire.
    • John Ruffolo  – Runs OMERS Ventures, previously at Deloitte & Touche. Connected at all levels.
    • Howard Gwin  – I’ve referred to Howard as the best VC in Canada. He has the midas touch.
    • Matt Golden  – New fund. Making waves. He’s going to go far.
    • Mark Organ  – Founder of Influitive. Just raised a massive round. Previously founder of Eloqua.
    • Mike Beltzner  – Director of Product at Wattpad. Previous ran Firefox at Mozilla.
    • Mark Surman  – Director of Mozilla Foundation. Unbelievably forward thinking in technology, community and family.
    • Scott Pelton  – I think Scott had the best IRR of any Canadian VC. He’s kicking off Round13. Someone to watch once the fund is closed.
    • Sandy Scott – Partner at Tandem Expansion Capital. Time in Boston and Silicon Valley. HBS. Very smart.
    • Sue McGill – Executive Director of JoltCo accelerator at MaRS.
    • Krista Jones – Practice Lead for ICT or ICE at MaRS
    • Andrew Peek – Founder of Rocketr, previously at Freshbooks.
    • Andy Yang  – Andy runs Extreme Startups. They had a small but amazing first class.
    • Satish Kanwar  – Founder at Jet Cooper. Founder at Lean Coffee TO.
    • Chris Eben  – Partner at The Working Group. Organizer of StartupWeekend.
    • Derek Smyth  – Partner at OMERS Ventures. Doing amazing deals. He’s the work horse.
    • Roger Chabra  – Partner at Rho Ventures. Dividing time between Montreal, Toronto, SF, NYC, and other places. New fund. Very stylish.
    • Sunil Sharma – Connector at Extreme Startups. Connected to more people than are in Canada.
    • Allen Lau  – Founder and CEO of Wattpad. Big vision. Just raised from Khosla Ventures, Union Square and GoldenVP.
    • Kirk Simpson  – Founder and CEO of Wave Accounting. Big raise from CRV, Social+Capital, and OMERS.
    • James Lochrie  – Product lead and founder at Wave Accounting.
    • Adam Goucher  – Principal at Element34. Focused on Q&A and testing. Wrote Beautiful Testing.
    • Greg Wilson  – Founder of Software Carpentry. Loves the Python. Former CS prof at UofT. Wrote Beautiful Code.
    • Heather Payne  – Founder of HackerYou and Ladies Learning Code.
    • Kunal Gupta  – Founder of Polar Mobile and Impact at UW.
    • Joseph Puopolo  – Founder of Printchomp. Previously at StickerYou
    • Mark McQueen  – President & CEO of Wellington Financial, Chair of the Toronto Port Authority. Great blog focused on Canadian growth captial.
    • Daniel Debow  – Founder of Rypple. Part of the Workbrain diaspora.
    • David Ossip  – Founder of Dayforce, Workbrain and other ventures.
    • Richard Reiner  – Angel investor and operator. Founded security firm Assurent. Sold eNomaly.
    • Saul Colt  – The Smartest Man in the World. A great PR/media hacker. Expert at word of mouth and social media.
    • Amber MacArthur  – Entrepreneur, television host, podcaster. Writes for Fast Company.
    • Leila Boujnane  – Founder of Idee and TinEye. Often host of DemoCamp, GeekGirlToronto and other events. Wickedly smart.
    • Jesse Rodgers – Founder of TribeHR, former director of UW Velocity, now running Rotman Venture Lab. Strong insights in to incubator metrics.
    • Dan Servos – CEO of Locationary. Previously sold SocialDeck to Google.
    • Rob Hyndman – Awesome startup lawyer. Founder of Mesh.
    • Mark Evans – Former/sometimes current journalist. Consultant focused on startup marketing and media communications. Founder of Mesh
    • Michael McDerment – CEO and Founder of Freshbooks. Founder of Mesh
    • Rick Segal – Founder of FixMo. Previously VC at JLA Ventures.
    • Ali Ghafour – Founder and CEO of ViaFoura
    • Suresh Bhat – Associate at ExtremeVP
    • Bram Sugarman – Associate at OMERS Ventures. Previously at Uken Games and Extreme Ventures.
    • Damien Steel – Senior Associate at OMERS Ventures
    • Jennifer Lum – Cofounder Adelphic Mobile, previously at Quattro Wireless. Extreme Startups mentor.
    • Estelle Havva – Industrial Technology Advisor at IRAP. Been involved in this community since the beginning. Practical and can help you with IRAP
    • Ilse Treurnicht – CEO of MaRS. Big budget, big real estate, big salary and hopefully big impact.
    • Albert Lai – Working on Big Viking Games, previously Kontagent, Bubbleshare and others. Original cohost of DemoCamp with me.
    • Ali Asaria – Founder of Well.ca, creator of Brickbreaker. Just awesome.
    • Tonya Suman – Centre for Social Innovation. World leading thinker and doer on social innovation and community ecosystem. Based here in Toronto.
    • Pete Forde – Founder of BuzzData, Unspace and other things. Photog, audiophile, and all round great guy.
    • Jay Goldman – Jay has moved on to Klick Health. Jay founded Radiant Core, did the UI for Firefox 2.0, helped build ZeroFootprint. If you can get his time to talk social or product, it is worth it
    • Jon Arnold – Big in the telco and smart grid space.
    • William Mougayar – CEO of Engagio. Previously Equentia. The man and the product allows him to participate in comment conversations across the web. Responsible for helping bring Fred Wilson to Toronto.
    • Follow @heygosia – CEO and founder of LearnHub. Technical, product, leadership, growth. She’s amazing. Doesn’t get enough credit.
    • Jim deWilde – Teaches in B School. Wrote much of the policy on innovation, government fund of funds, key behind the scenes player. Plus he’s awesome.
    • Zach Aysan – Big data guy. Currently 500px. Previously Algo Anywhere and Rocketr.

    Waterloo

  • Creating a Referral Engine for Your Startup

    This post is recap on some of the highlights from a how-to created by Ilya Lichtenstein of mixrank.com. I feature some of the most impressive startup strategies we encounter at StartupPlays and share them free, here at StartupNorth.ca. Enjoy.

    We recently did some work with a brilliant young guy named Ilya Lichtenstein from Mixrank.com, a company which has seen early investments from 500 Startups, Y-Combinator, and Mark Cuban. While in college Ilya was working side jobs with startups and getting deep into the affiliate marketing world. He grew a $300 investment into six figure revenue numbers in his first year. He has applied the behaviours and characteristics of major affiliate programs and adapted them to  smaller scale customer referral programs for startups, this is his “best practice manual for building a customer referral program”:

    Major Affiliate Programs

    Websites like Amazon and Netflix have elaborate affiliate networks anyone can join and receive an affiliated commission from a signup or purchase on their websites. This works because these companies have determined some of their most important baseline metrics, things like:

    • Cost per acquisition of a customer
    • Lifetime value of a customer
    • On page conversion rate
    • Variants between traffic sources
    • Cost of buying traffic within the industry
    They use these metrics to determine what affiliate commissions they can set for the business to turn the channel into a profitable one. If affiliates can purchase traffic at a cheaper price than the payout (typically between $0.50-$4.00 per click) then the program is sustainable. You’ll need to determine what these numbers are for your startup, even if you ball park it, here is an excel template that will help you do it.

    How Building your Referral Engine is Different

    A customer referral engine is a lot like an affiliate program only scaled down and involves much higher participant engagement. Building a referral program is not for the light of heart but has massive payouts for everyone involved. When creating a referral engine you won’t want to label participants “Affiliates”, but instead something like “Partners”. Your “Partners” will be composed of two segments:

    1. Existing Users
    2. Content Producers within your Niche

    Existing users are easy advocates since they’re already familiar with your brand and understand your offering. Incentivizing them to tell others what they may already be telling people is a win-win.

    Content Producers within your niche have clout and often an engaged audience on the web, they may even be looking to monetize their content and this provides them with a non traditional medium that has higher revenue potential and that sucks a lot less than one site ads.

    Compensating your Partners

    As an early stage startup your base metrics probably wont warrant a direct flat fee compensation for a new lead, you’ll be compensating partners in your referral program based on a percentage of or flat fee per paid conversion. Be careful to avoid revenue share in perpetuity, this may hurt you down the road when approaching investors. Major Affiliate programs will payout anywhere from  $30-$40 for a credit card submit on their site (this is what you’re aiming for). If you have the ability to set up coupon codes on your website, give your partners a custom coupon code, this instantly creates a value add for their audience and makes it easier for them to share with people they know. (People LOVE sharing deals)

    1. You’re an e-commerce vendor: Give partners a commission on each sale they drive.
    2. You’re a SaaS vendor: Give partners straight cash per transaction, if your offering is tiered your affiliate commission can be as well.

    When you setup an affiliate program you are effectively sharing the risk and the reward.

    If your sales funnel is: visit page -> email submit -> purchase

    You can compensate affiliates for either the page visit, the email submit, or the purchase. You will need to compensate the affiliate more for actions that are further into the funnel, as you are placing the risk on the affiliate to convert the user. If you compensate them at the start of the funnel, you can pay them less and the risk is on your side to convert them.

    You will need to determine the right risk / reward ratio to determine which action will be most profitable – and attractive – for both you and the affiliate.

    Tracking Referrals

    You need to use a third party to track referrals, this guarantees no foul play on your side ands building confidence in your program into your program. It also helps limit fraudulent activity, you can review partners as they apply, and send payouts once customer payment has been confirmed on your end.

    Here are some third party services you can use to set up a program like this:

    1. Zferral – I prefer Zferral to others because of its ease of use, and support. If you’re having issues with setting up you can use their support centre to screencast your issue and have it resolved within a few hours.
    2. HasOffers – Custom referral programs, easy setup.
    3. LinkTrust – This is a costly alternative, but is the undisputed gold standard within the industry.

    White Glove the Entire Program

    Send your partners a monthly recap, keep them updated on how other partners are doing, and how the program is a smashing success! It will keep them involved and give them a benchmark for how well they can do, and how much money they can make by being part of your program.

    The customer referral engine is a win-win channel for driving online sales generally untouched by most early stage startups. If you have a startup that could benefit from a referral program, talk to us in the comments!

    photo credit – armando cuéllar

  • CIX Top 20 – 2012

    CIX Top 20 Canada's Hottest Innovative Companies

    We’ve written about CIX Top 20 Follow @CIXCommunity in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. So you’ll be shocked to find that I’m writing about it again in 2012.

    What is CIX?

    “The CIX Top 20 is an elite index of the most forward-looking companies in the Canadian innovation ecosystem, and connects the key players driving technology-based business both in Canada and beyond.”

    Who should apply?

    “The CIX Top 20 is open to any Canadian company working in Digital Media or Information and Communication Technology with annual revenues under $10 million.”

    Why do you care?

    These are some of the leading companies in Canada. Don’t believe me, past participants include:

    Alright, there probably is a correlation between the success of these companies and their CIX submission and attendance. But CIX is an amazing opportunity for Canadian startups to generate attention, drive awareness with investors and media, get input and feedback in a safe environment and start to build connections.

    “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky

    Nothing is foregone conclusion, as in past performance is not an indicator of future success. But you can’t win if you don’t apply (follow the directions on the bottom of the page).

  • We want you! – Looking for contributors

    Finish Line, CopperDog 150, Calumet, Michigan by Lina Blair (linainyoop) on 500px.com
    Finish Line, CopperDog 150, Calumet, Michigan by Lina Blair

    I was talking to April Dunford . It’s was a private message, so I am hoping April will forgive me for sharing, but it indicated how Jonas , Jevon and I have felt about our role and the role of StartupNorth.

    “We’re all making this shit up on our own when we should be sharing best practices.” April Dunford

    We can talk about how Toronto is broken, as long as “this is not a complaints department, but a solutions playground” (great quote from Mark Kuznicki at the first TransitCamp in 2007). When we started StartupNorth in 2007 because there were not a lot of people talking about high potential growth, emerging technology companies and emerging business models (if it is easier, you can think venture backable technology startups). There was a lot of great technology companies being built in Canada. We wanted an easier way to bring together people who were interested in the new companies and the ecosystem to support them.

    “We launched TechStars NYC with the goal of enriching the New York City entrepreneurial ecosystem; tapping into the rich resources and energy of NYC and galvanizing the community through mentorship.” David Tisch

    We launched StartupNorth in 2007 after 2 years of a completely unorganized effort (that supposes that this effort approximates organized vs the anarchy that it is) of hosting events like BarCampToronto, DemoCamp, a public Skype chat, and a Google Group. We didn’t have a fund. This wasn’t our full time jobs. We’ve never thought of StartupNorth as a high potential growth technology business. We thought of it as a way to help other entrepreneurs like ourselves. We tried to build what we thought was missing.

    • Funding in Canada
    • Getting access to foreign markets
    • The amazing talent in Toronto and across Canada
    • Events that bring together others interested in the same space to enable collisions (finding cofounders, hiring employees, business relationships, potential mentors, etc.)
    • Events like StartupEmpire, DemoCamp and StartupCamp

    We are contributors to both the solutions and the problems that exist. But that doesn’t mean we can’t contribute.

    We are Canadian entrepreneurs.

    Back in 2008, Jevon told us about “how startups will save venture capital in Canada“. You can look at the recent acquisitions (including Jevon’s GoInstant) are providing liquidity and bigger better investment opportunity. (OMERS Ventures has participated in rounds totalling >$112MM in the past 2 weeks alone: $80MM Desire2Learn, $20MM Vision Critical, $12MM Hopper Travel). Canadian entrepreneurs

    We want you!

    We are looking for new contributors to StartupNorth. We don’t want puff pieces. We don’t want press releases. We want to highlight Canadian startups, founders and technology. We want interesting stories. Let me help all y’all, launching is not an interesting story. I’d like to see posts on:

    • Cost effective solutions to common back office problems, tell us about how your financials, payroll, A/R works.
    • Look at the Upverter Under-the-Hood article and tell me about your infrastructure, personally I’d love to hear about Hopper’s Hadoop or Wave Accounting, etc.
    • Marketing automation and optimizing customer engagements. What tools are you using?
    • We’ve heard about Facebook’s Growth Team and their decision making, what about Freshbooks? Or Dayforce?
    • The impact that CRTC and Competition Bureau rules have on Canadian startups? I’d love to get Michael Garrity to tell the Community Lend/FinanceIT story. But there are more.
    • Examples of effective use of Facebook, mobile or other early customer marketing

    This list is no way comprehensive. There are lots of interesting stories. Got an insight, tip, cobbling together of tools that can help startups save money, grow faster, go further. We want to share. As April said, “We’re all making this shit up on our own when we should be sharing best practices.” and we want to help share.

    Just send me an email (davidcrow at gmail ) with a draft of your post. I will read, provide initial feedback, socialize with Jonas and Jevon and then we will set up an posting schedule.

     

  • 7 Ways To Rock a Startup Accelerator Mentor Day

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur and marketing executive April Dunford who is currently the head of Enterprise Market Strategy for Huawei. April specializes in brining new products to market including messaging, positioning, market strategy, go-to-market planning and lead generation. She is one of the leading B2B/enterprise marketers in the world and we’re really lucky to be able to share here content with you. Follow her on Twitter  or RocketWatcher.com. This post was originally published in August 31, 2012 on RocketWatcher.com.

    I spent the day yesterday at FounderFuel for their Mentor Day. If you aren’t familiar with FounderFuel they are a very successful startup accelerator based in Montreal. And what a day it was – 8 startups pitched and then did roundtable breakout sessions with over 50 mentors including VC’s, angel investors, entrepreneurs and senior executives. Here’s my mentor’s perspective on how a startup can really get the most out of a day like that:

    1/ Pick your Target Mentors Ahead of Time: 50 mentors is a lot and they represented a wide cross section of folks that have deep experience in different consumer and business markets, and have a range of skills from technical expertise to sales, marketing, finance, and legal experience. Selecting a subset of the mentors with experience relevant to your business will help you target your discussions.A handful of the teams that needed marketing help reached out to me by email before the day and that helped to make sure that we connected at the session which I thought was pretty smart.

    7 Ways Rock a Startup Accelerator Mentor Day2/ Ask for Feedback on your Pitch: The mentors are both experienced pitch artists, and listen to pitches a lot. What better folks to give feedback on what worked and what didn’t work with the pitch you just gave? In this case the companies are all still in the early stages of the accelerator program so it’s a great time to get feedback that will improve the ultimate pitch you give on demo day. The feedback will also give you a feel for the differences in what an Angel investor might be looking for over what the more traditional VC’s are looking for in a pitch. “Tell me one thing that would have made my pitch better” or “What was missing from my pitch?” would both be great ways to start that discussion.

    3/ Ask for Specific Help: The mentors are ready and willing to help but they can’t guess what you need. Coming with a set of specific requests helps shape the discussion in a way that is most helpful to you. Don’t be afraid to ask for specific introductions – even if the folks in the room don’t have the answers you need, chances are they know someone who does.

    4/ Listen, Ask Questions (and Filter later): – The mentors yesterday came from really different backgrounds and had worked in a broad range of industries (consumer, gaming, retail, enterprise, financial services). Sure we’re all smart folks but you wouldn’t believe how different our opinons were about questions the startups were asking. For example, at my session with Openera – a tool for automatically organizing files and attachments –  we got into a discussion about selling to consumers versus enterprises as a starting point. I ALWAYS tilt toward enterprises when people ask me that because I know/love enterprise sales. The mentor beside me, Yona Shtern, the CEO from Beyond the Rack on the other hand thought selling B2C (or B2C2B) was just fine. Only Openera can decide who’s got smarter advice for their business (yeah OK, in this case it’s probably the smarty-pants Beyond the Rack guy but hey you get what I’m trying to say here). Another example – in the discussion with InfoActive (a very cool tool that lets you easily create beautiful interactive data visualizations), I immediately saw the applicability to creating interactive marketing materials. I’m a marketer, that’s the obvious use case for someone like me.  The mentor beside me (James Duncan, CTO at Inktank) on the other hand saw the value in selling to IT departments that needed a way to easily create good looking dashboards to help IT communicate to the business side of the house. That’s a great use case that a marketing person like me would be unlikely to immediately think of. Both ideas might be worth investigating but only InfoActive can really decide that. Avoiding “mentor whiplash”, as the FounderFuel gang refers to it, is a critical skill for startups in accelerators that have deep rosters of active mentors. Remember too that time is limited so you don’t want to waste it having a long debate with a single mentor over a specific point. Listen, probe a bit if you need to, and then move on. You can always schedule follow-on time with a specific mentor to explore an idea later.

    5/ Take Notes:  You put a couple of CEO’s a VC, a senior exec and a CTO at a table together and guess what happens? We talk. A lot. Not only that but the conversation moves very quickly from one point of view to the next. Some teams were recording the sessions but the room was loud (did I mention we talk a lot?) and figuring out who said what later might be a challenge by voice alone. Having someone taking notes is a good idea to make sure that you’re capturing ideas as they are flowing.

    6/ Work the Edge Time: By far the best way to get 1 on 1 time with a mentor yesterday was to do it over the break or over lunch. That also gives the mentor a chance to ask questions they might not get a chance to in a round table session.

    7/ Don’t Forget Everyone’s a Potential Investor : The VC’s are easy to spot (and there were a lot of them there) but most of the mentors I talked to are also doing a bit of angel investing as well. For companies at this stage anyone that’s willing to invest time with your company might also be likely to invest cash as well.

    So there’s my advice. I’m sure the other mentors all have different opinions – yep, we’re funny that way.

  • ‘Small’ ideas are not the problem

    Editor’s Note: This is a cross-post (possibly some sort of reblogging) from Momoko Price’s blog originally posted on August 13, 2012. Momoko Price  is a web writer, editor and communications consultant based in Toronto. She runs a communications consultancy called Copy/Cat and frequently blogs about startup culture and web communications at http://copy-cat.co/.

    In a recent blog post called ‘Toronto is Broken’, Upverter co-founder Zak Homuth wrote that Toronto’s startup community suffers from an overabundance of ‘small ideas,’ implying that ‘thinking small’ is somehow intrinsically less valuable than ‘thinking big.’

    I’m not a web startup founder, but I am an entrepreneur and many of my clients are web startups. And as a writer, sometimes I can’t help but focus on how the wrong word ends up detracting from the soundness of someone’s argument. This is one of those times.

    So let’s clear something up right now: There is a world of difference between a ‘small’ idea and a shitty idea. Let’s please stop equating one with the other; it’s not helping to solve the problem (ie: a cultural aversion to creative & original ventures).

    CC-BY-20 Some rights reserved by pasukaru76
    Attribution Some rights reserved by pasukaru76

    Zak isn’t the first person to complain about small uninspired ideas, and derivative product pitches certainly aren’t unique to Toronto. But trying to combat an epidemic of ‘small ideas’ by being ‘frighteningly ambitious’ instead is, well, not exactly great advice. Here’s why:

    1. ‘Small ideas’ can be built and launched more quickly.

    Creating a successful product involves much more than just the idea, or even the product itself. Testing, marketing, financing, selling, scaling, management — these factors will often end up playing a far more critical role in determining your startup’s success over the long run.

    So rather than worry about whether or not your idea is ‘big’ or ‘game-changing’ enough, why not bite off something you know you can chew now, whatever it is, and start getting some real-market experience as soon as possible? That way, you’ll actually know what to do (and what not to do) when that crazy, once-in-a-lifetime idea strikes you.

    2. Traction, not ambition, defines a ‘world-changing’ idea.

    I often help entrepreneurs structure and refine their pitch decks, and it never ceases to amaze me how frequently they include 5 or more slides about their idea or product, and none about whether the idea is actually taking hold with anyone.

    Meanwhile, most experienced investors don’t really care what your solution is, as much as they care about whether lots of people want it.

    A product or service doesn’t have to be complicated or even tech-based (as Derek Sivers points out in his popular ‘Ideas vs. Execution’ clip). The important thing is to gauge its market traction.

    After all, an idea or product can only change the world if people actually use it. In business, if your solution takes off, then it was a great, world-changing idea. If it doesn’t, then it wasn’t. Simple as that.

    Editor’s Note: This is a cross-post (possibly some sort of reblogging) from Momoko Price’s blog originally posted on August 13, 2012. Momoko Price  is a web writer, editor and communications consultant based in Toronto. She runs a communications consultancy called Copy/Cat and frequently blogs about startup culture and web communications at http://copy-cat.co/.

  • Book Review – Startup Communities: It’s About the Entrepreneur

    Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group, is no stranger to the Canadian tech startup scene – he was a speaker at the C100’s AccelerateMTL event in 2011.

    Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to get to know him and he has been a source of inspiration and support to me professionally. Brad is one of those rare VCs, his contributions don’t stop with the money. He is very generous with his advice and has been on a passionate mission in the past year to crack the code on how to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem in any city, hence the title of his new book: Startup Communities
    .

    Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
     (pre-order available) isn’t a book you that you will put down easily, but is one you will pick-up often. In fourteen chapters and one fell scoop; Brad makes us smarter and wiser about what it takes to nurture a vibrant startup ecosystem in any community.

    Startups are Everything

    Feld sets the tone early in the book by stating that “Startups are at the core of everything we do.” Feld implies that it’s easier today to create and evolve startup communities “as a result of our networked society”, and he tosses away long-drawn old-school frameworks and previous theories that were primarily based on macro-economics, socio-demographics or geographical parameters. His thinking is framed around what he labels as “The Boulder Thesis”, a fresh framework that is based on pragmatism and lower barriers of entry. It’s all about on-the-ground reality as a lever to making things happen.

    The Boulder Thesis

    “The key to every successful startup community is startups. If you do nothing else, make sure all the founders and founding teams are visible and connected to each other.” That’s a golden statement to be reminded of. Remember, his message is aimed at the entire community.

    Feld doesn’t mince words when he places the role of the entrepreneurs as the most critical component. “Lots of different people are involved in the startup community and many non-entrepreneurs play key roles. But unless the entrepreneurs lead, the startup community will not be sustainable over time.” Amen.

    The Boulder Thesis is grounded in four key components: a) entrepreneurs that lead, b) leaders that commit, c) an all-inclusive mentality, and d) activities up and down the entrepreneurial stack. The book details them.

    A 17-year resident of Boulder, Brad observed that while Boulder didn’t have a lot of local VC’s, it did have a large number of VCs that viewed companies in Boulder as attractive to invest in. This fact alone means that any city cannot complain about not having a lot of local VC’s. Rather, they should focus on making themselves attractive to VC’s wherever these VC’s may be.

    Rightfully so, Brad advocates that activities such as “hackathons, New Tech Meetups, Open Coffee Clubs, Startup Weekends, and accelerators” are more important than “entrepreneurial award events, periodic cocktail parties, monthly networking events, panel discussions, and open houses” because they engage deeper into the entrepreneurial stack. To each city that’s listening, take inventory and assess your gaps.

    Leaders and Feeders

    Then comes a key tenet of the book: there are Leaders and there are Feeders to any ecosystem. If you’re in a startup community, know who you are, and what your role is, but don’t confuse the two. So, who is a Leader and who is a Feeder? “Leaders of startup communities have to be entrepreneurs. Everyone else is a feeder into the startup community. This includes government, universities, investors, mentors, service providers, and large companies.” Entrepreneurs, rejoice.

    Driving the Leaders vs. Feeders point hard, Brad asserts that “the absence of entrepreneurs as leaders, or the overwhelming leadership by feeders, will doom a startup community.” Message aimed at the Feeders mostly.

    Classical Problems

    Chapter Six gets at the crux of the community build-out, and something that every city wants to know: What are we doing wrong? Brad nails the classical problems:

    1. The Patriarch Problem, when those who made their money many years ago are still running the show.
    2. Complaining about capital, because there will always be an imbalance between supply of capital and demand for capital.
    3. Being too reliant on Government. This is self-explanatory, but there’s a whole chapter on it entitled: “Contrasts between entrepreneurs and government.”
    4. Making short-term commitments. Well, it takes a long time to build a startup community. Twenty years to be exact.
    5. Having a bias against newcomers. Instead, swarm the newcomers.
    6. Attempt by a feeder to control the community. Why? Feeders retard the actual growth of the startup community.
    7. Creating artificial geographic boundaries. They don’t matter much at all at the state and city level. Waterloo-Toronto: are you listening?
    8. Playing a zero-sum game. This means stop thinking that “Our community is better than yours”.
    9. Having a culture of risk aversion. Make sure you learn something from what didn’t work.
    10. Avoiding people because of past failures. Rather, embrace the failed entrepreneur because it encourages more entrepreneurs to take more risks.

    Brad goes on to list in great details the many activities that make-up Boulder’s community what it is. My advice: when you get the book, use it a checklist and see what your city is missing.

    Accelerators and Universities

    In Chapter Eight, Brad takes us on the case study of TechStars, and in it he rubs in the fact that there is a distinction to be made between Accelerators and Incubators because they are formed differently and have different objectives.

    Chapter Nine focuses on the role of Universities and it ends with this advice for the entrepreneur: “The relationship between a startup community and a university can be a powerful one, but is often complicated. By focusing on specific activities and remembering that the university is a feeder to the startup community, great things can happen.”

    Myths of Community Building

    Aided by Canadian Paul Kedrosky, one of the ending chapters lists the common myths about startup communities. I’ll highlight two of them:

    1. We need to be like Silicon Valley. “If that’s really your goal, save yourself a lot of heartache and simply move to Silicon Valley.”
    2. We need more local venture capital. “Venture capital is a service function, not materially different from accounting, law, or insurance. It is a type of organization that services existing businesses, not one that causes such companies to exist in the first place. While businesses need capital, it is not the capital that creates the business. Pretending otherwise is reversing the causality in a dangerous way.” That fits well within the Leaders vs. Feeders theory.

    Startup Communities is a call for introspection aimed at any city, community, entrepreneur, developer, funder, leader or feeder. The book makes you think about whether you’re doing the right thing. It should prompt every city or ecosystem to answer the tough questions: Do we have enough leaders as entrepreneurs? Are we going to stop making excuses? Can we work better together?

    If you’re involved in technology startups, this book will not just touch a nerve. It will run through your spine.

    How do you think Canada is doing in regards to building entrepreneurial ecosystems in the major cities?

    Editor’s Note: The author, William Mougayar is CEO of Engagio, a universal Inbox and Discovery Network for social conversations. You can pre-order Brad’s book on Amazon and ensure delivery as soon as it’s published in September.

  • Win a Ticket to GrowConf 2012

    We at StartupNorth are huge Grow Conference fans. We’ve been lucky to be involved since it’s inception in 2010. There are great industry events around the globe (think Mesh in Toronto, ad:tech in SF and NYC, OSCON in Portland, Dreamforce in SF, SxSW in Austin, etc.) there are only a few events aimed at enabling Canadian emerging technology companies (Grow, StartupFest, CIX). It’s not to say there aren’t events focused on emerging technology entrepreneurs: Under the Radar, Launch, Disrupt, Demo. It is the focus on empowering and enabling Canadian entrepreneurs that make Grow special.

    As part of this we’re working with Debbie, Clare and the Dealmaker team to give away a ticket to Grow Conference and a Nokia 800 phone.

    If you want a shot at winning the phone and a free ticket to GROW2012 on August 23rd, all you have to do is the following:

    1. on Twitter
    2.  on Twitter
    3. this post (including the hashtag #GROWNokia)

    This contest starts now and ends August 13th at 3pm PT.

    Winners will be notified via Twitter on August 13th at 5pm PT.  Your ticket and Nokia 800 will be waiting for you when you arrive at the registration table at GROW 2012. Good luck! (*You must be in attendance to get the phone, will not ship).

    The GROW Conference is one of North America’s leading technology conferences and is the place to meet your future business partners, investors, and mentors. This year’s speakers include Cheezburger Network, Box.net, Modcloth, Zendesk, and more speaking about how they’re keeping up and staying relevant in a new era.

    If you don’t win, we have a $100 discount using the promo code: SN when registering for Grow.