StartupNorth

Author: David Crow

  • 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.

     

  • 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.

  • Atoms are the new bits

    Today seems to be an Upverter kind of day, don’t believe me. Check out Zak’s post on the Toronto startup ecosystem.

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

    Hardware startups are back with a vengeance. Thomas Tunguz (LinkedIn, @ttunguz) of Redpoint Ventures talks about his investments in hardware startups Sonos and Electric Imp. There are new set top boxes, watches, game controllers and entire communities around making and sharing. The rise of the Internet of things, sensors, and open hardware platforms like Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BugLabs are making it easier for activists, hackers and organizations to design, build, distribute and monetize hardware projects.

    We are lucky in Toronto to have HackLab.TO, Upverter, Media Lab Toronto, Site3 and others working on cool hardware based projects. Are you interested in learning about building hardware projects? Curious at designing, testing and building a hardware project?

    Hardware Hackathon by Upverter, Aug 10-12, 2012 in Toronto

    The Upverter team and a bunch of other from around the GTA are hosting a hardware hackathon August 10-12, 2012 at the Mozilla Opensource Space. All you need is an interest in physical prototyping and a laptop (go crazy if you want to try to do circuit board layout on a mobile phone or tablet).

    Should be an awesome time.

  • June 2012 in Review

    Market Analysis & Industry News

    “2.3 billion people are now globally connected by the Internet. There are 1.1 billion mobile 3G subscribers. Almost 30 percent of all US adults now own a tablet. Mobile is cited as source of 8% of all e-commerce.” from Forbes citing Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends

    A must read post by Rick Segal on the Secret VC Handbook. If you are considering raising institutional money, you should read Rick Segal’s (@ricksegal) The Secret VC Handbook:

    “The debate between building native applications vs. mobile web sites has raged.” from Adam Nash’s (@adamnash) User Acquisition: Mobile applications and the Mobile Web

    “Global population 7 billion. Mobile phone subscriptions 6 billion. Internet users 2.3 billion.” from The App Generation

    What are the typical top sources of customers for early-stage SaaS companies?

    Company Announcements

    Mike Beltzner joined Wattpad as Head of Product.

    Extreme Startups Demo Day featured keynotes from 500 Startups Paul Singh (@paulsingh) and Mayfield Fund’s Tim Chang (@timechange), with launch of Shoplocket, Granify, Gijit, and SimplyUs and Verelo.

    Plug and Play Tech Center announces cohort of Canadian startups for StartupCamp that includes Pinerly and Willet.

    Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone announced four new tech startups moving in including: Komodo OpenLab, YC grad KytePhone, Electric Courage and Virtual Next.

    Financings

    Company Description Amount Investors
    Wattpad Wattpad is the world’s largest online community of readers and writers. $17.3MM Khosla Ventures, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Union Square Ventures, Golden Venture Partners
    Lightspeed LightSpeed’s technology provides retailers with powerful tools that reinvent the shopping experience using Mac computers, iPads, and iPhones for retail management tools $30MM Accel Partners
    BuildDirect BuildDirect is North America’s largest online destination for heavy weight building materials $16MM OMERS Ventures
    Blacksquare BlackSquare is a leading market innovation for direct to consumer wine ecommerce globally. Seed Undisclosed
    CommunityLend $3MM non-brokered private placement from a single investor
    Novidev Santé Active Novidev Santé Active is a Québec agri-food business that has developed Vegetal IntelligenceTM, a unique process that preserves all the fruit’s natural bioactive compounds, and will be marketing its first ’super fruit juices’ under the Anti+ brand. $1.3MM 15 private Anges Québec investors including Charles Boulanger and Desjardins Innovatech

  • A few slides for every Canadian startup

    With a little help from my friends

    I think that every Canadian startup could throw a couple of slides in their presentations and pitch decks that could help themselves and help build a stronger ecosystem in Canada. I was struck by the story of Jon Medved in Startup Nation including other startups in his pitch deck. It’s a simple thing. It demonstrates entrepreneurial density, provides social proof, and potentially helps create some FOMO in foreign investors. All from including 2 or 3 slides at the end of your presentation or pitch deck, particularly when you are travelling.

    At StartupNorth, we’ve always believed that we as entrepreneurs should help each other out. The goal here is to raise the noise around Canadian startups and your friends and colleagues when you are travelling. There is a lot of amazing stuff going on in Canada. We don’t need public sector programs and not-for-profits to support us, we already do the things to grow our companies. And a little bit of extra effort to raise the attention of those around us. It won’t hurt, it will help.

    Here are basic un-styled PowerPoint slides that include a set of recent fundings in Canada by US VCs and a second slide that lists a set of other local companies that the audience might find interesting. (I have added 24 companies I think are interesting).

    Help us. Add the following slides to your presentations.

    StartupNorth.ca Slides for Canadian Startups

    View more PowerPoint from David Crow

  • Microsoft, WPC and Entrepreneurs in Toronto

    Microsoft <3 Entrepreneurs - WPC Party

    Did you know that 15,000 global players in the Microsoft ecosystem are descending on Toronto in July? Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is happening July 8-12, 2012 at the ACC and the MTCC. That’s a lot of people building on the stack. The BizSpark One program was one that I championed during my time at the Microsoft, and there are a lot of Canadian companies that are building on the Microsoft stack:

    Mark Relph (LinkedIn, @mrelph) and the Redmond and Silicon Valley crews will be in Toronto. Mark used to be my boss at Microsoft Canada, and has subsequently caught the startup bug. He’s helping startups through BizSpark and BizSpark One programs. Along with the folks from a far, Christian Beauclair (LinkedIn, @cbeauclair) and Shane Davies (LinkedIn) will also be around to support Canadian startups.

    And whether you love or hate the Microsoft stack, they are trying to move to greater independence to enable developers. Microsoft is looking for ways to help startups, BizSpark, Azure and other programs like Kinect Accelerator make it easier to understand why.

    Why not join WPC attendees and other startups on July 10 at MaRS?

     

  • We can’t all be founders

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    AttributionNoncommercial Some rights reserved by Swamibu

    “We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” – Will Rogers

    It’s true now even more than when Joe Kraus (@jkraus) wrote in 2005 (original post), “it’s a great time to be an entrepreneur” (see Mark Suster’s brillant post on the startup explosion and on changes in the software industry). But is there too much of a good thing? Mark Evans asks if there “are too many startups?”. I think the question that Mark is really asking is not are there too many startups, but is it too easy to become a founder.

    We put a lot of focus on the founders of early stage ventures. But let’s face it, not everyone is or should be a founder (See: Founders versus Early Employees). We need to start and grow companies. This is more than just a whole bunch of 1 and 2 person pre-seed startups. We need people to want to cut their chops at Wattpad, Wave Accounting, Well.ca, Lightspeed Retail, Fixmo, Shopify, Kik, Hootsuite and other startups. People that can grow a company to 500 million users and beyond.

    “Being an early hire at a startup gives an individual the ability to make tremendous impact on an organization as it grows – and both the founders and those hires should know it.” David Beisel

    We need to create companies that create opportunities for employees to become their Chamath Palihapitiya and Andy Johns or Adam Nash. There are a number of Canadian startups that are poised to break out. All they need is a few key people to make a huge difference. I tried to highlight a mix of founders and the people behind the scenes on the Hot Sh!t List (2011, 2012). There are the founders that we always talk about, but there are people behind the scenes that are driving.

    “Cross-pollination among companies is what drives so much of innovation, so I would not project a lot onto this event” – Brett Taylor (@btaylor)

    We’ve seen a number of young founders build brillant products and then move to new roles. Josh Davey (@joshdavey, LinkedIn) founded BurstN and is now killing it at Chango. Daniel Patricio (LinkedIn, @danielparticio) founded Pinpoint Social and is building products at Jet Cooper. Ben Yoskovitz (LinkedIn, @byosko) founded StandoutJobs and NextMontreal, is now the VP Product at GoInstant. There are lots of opportunities at Canadian startups for entrepreneurial employees to make a huge impact!

    Looking for a gig at a Canadian startup? Check out the StartupNorth Job board which features jobs like:

    More reading on starting your own vs joining a startup:

     

  • Round13 Capital puts founders first

    Scott Pelton, Bruce Croxon and John Eckert - Round13 Capital

    Round 13 CapitalWhat’s interesting about the Round13 Capital announcement today isn’t the size of the fund – they are targeting $100MM. It isn’t the people who are involved – they are amazing. It isn’t the LPs – they are different. The team, Bruce Croxon, John Eckert and Scott Pelton, are bringing together a group of entrepreneurs to serve as mentors. This is not uncommon in the US with a number of funds like SoftTech VC, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund and similar to Founder Collective (if you are interested read the Kauffman Foundation’s Do Entrepreneurs Make Good VCs? [PDF]).

    “Venture capital firms with a greater fraction of entrepreneur VCs have better firm performance. The positive relation between entrepreneur VCs and performance is stronger for venture capital firms specializing in high-tech industries and in early-stage investment.”
    — Do Entrepreneurs Make Good VCs – Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation Conference – The Kauffman Foundation

    The Round13 Capital team has done an amazing job of bring together founders with exits as both LPs in the fund, and more importantly as mentors for their portfolio companies. This is a critical differentiator for Canadian entrepreneurs. Hopefully the Round13 fund will close and they can start funding Canadian entrepreneurs soon.

    Round13 Investors/Founders

    This is great new for Canadian entrepreneurs!

  • Extreme Demo Day

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

    Extreme Startups has announced the Demo Day for the first cohort of companies. We’ve written about Extreme Startups in the past, we’ve covered some of the cohort including Shoplocket, and we think a number of cohort qualifies as Hot Sh!t (Jeff Lawrence (LinkedIn, @datajeff) of Granify; Michael Curry (LinkedIn, @mikecurry) of Verelo and Andrew Louis (LinkedIn, @hyfen) of ShopLocket).

    Extreme Startups

    Companies presenting at Demo Day are:

    Get a ticket or an invite

    There are no shortage of events for startups in Toronto, ranging from the originator but currently offline DemoCamp to the reinvigorated SproutUpTO. But DemoDay is shaping up to be an exciting event, with a full house, I heard that there were over 400 confirmed attendees with a large number coming in from Montreal, New York, Boston and the Bay area.

    The demos are happening on June 19, 2012 from 1-4pm. There is a post demo social happening starting at 8pm. StartupNorth is proud to be supporting both the demo event and the evening social.

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  • Go big and stay home

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    Wattpad announced today a $17.3MM raise from Khosla Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures and Jerry Yang. This is huge.

    “It has been recognized as highly significant due to having two top-tier US funds investing at this level in a Canadian-based consumer internet company.”

    We are seeing Canadian entrepreneurs build companies and demonstrate global traction. The changes to foreign investment related to Section 116 changes in the Tax Act, have allowed Canadian companies to go big and stay home.  The changes to Section 116, coupled with the desire of Canadian entrepreneurs to go big and stay home. Evidenced by Wattpad’s big raise, Wave Accounting’s $12MM series B from Social+Capital, Hootsuite’s $20MM round from OMERS (sure they’re not foreign capital but its a big round), Shopify’s $22MM ($7M series A + $15M series B from Bessemer), Beyond The Rack’s $36MM raise, Fixmo’s $23.4MM Series C from KPCB, Achievers’ $24.5MM Series C from Sequoia, and others. There are startups and there is capital. It’s possible to build a growth company in Canada and raise foreign capital. The game has changed for Canadian VCs, geography limitations can help these funds identify early but it potentially will relegate many to second tier status if they can not enable their startups beyond their geographies.

    The great thing in talking with many of these entrepreneurs is that they want to build successful companies in Canada. Allen Lau, CEO of Wattpad, mentioned that his desire was to grow a large successful company in Toronto. He is not looking to move the company. The same is true of my conversations with Kirk Simpson at Wave Accounting, Tobi at Shopify, Mike at Freshbooks, etc. There are a lot of reasons to want to be way from the tensions and pulls the exist in the Bay Area. Canadian startups have access to great talent. While there is some pull between the different startups, many of these companies aren’t competing with each other for employees or mindshare. Just check out Shopify’s recruiting video and tell me why you wouldn’t choose to work for Harley and Tobi instead of a financial institution or a government organization.

    It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur in Canada. It’s a great time to work for a startup. You should check out the opportunities on the StartupNorth job board.