StartupNorth

Author: Jevon MacDonald

  • Weblo Raises $3M – Brooklyn Bridge for Sale

    WebloWeblo.com, founded by Rocky Mirza, has raised $3,300,000 in a second round of funding from Vantage Point Ventures.

    Based in Montreal, Weblo is some kind of horrible cross between MySpace, Second Life, and Monopoly. You can spend real money to purchase profile pages of property (e.g. California), non-trademark domain names (e.g. Cars.com), and celebrities (e.g. William Shatner). Then as the owner of these virtual assets you get a revenue share of advertising on the profile page (usually less than a dollar). You can also sell these profile page assets to the next fool (don’t count on it).

    Interested? Me neither… Weblo has all the appeal of a ponzi scheme. Listening to Sean Morrow, Weblo’s Director of Marketing, describe Weblo as a business opportunity for users makes my stomach churn. This is not to say someone isn’t making money. The first time an asset is sold all the proceeds go in Weblo’s pocket (e.g. someone purchased California according to Weblo for $53,000). Weblo hopes each of the profile pages move up in the search engine rankings to collect some SEO advertising dough. And of course members are encouraged to upgrade to a monthly paid membership to earn a larger cut of the advertising revenue. Yeah…

    I am not the first one to call the site a modern version of the Brooklyn Bridge ruse, where a con man sells the Brooklyn Bridge to a sap. Yes, someone purchased the Brooklyn Bridge from Weblo.

    It is not just that proclaiming oneself the virtual owner of Toronto, Madonna, or thebestpageintheuniverse.net is delusional. Weblo, essentially a collection of empty profiles pages, lacks the adventure of a 3D MMOG like Second Life. Will Weblo profile pages move up the search engine rankings and prove as indispensible as Wikipedia articles? Doubtful. Wikipedia works because everyone can contribute to a page. On Weblo each profile page is controlled by one unmotivated individual looking for easy money.

    “There’s a sucker born every minute…and two to take ’em.” Prior investors in Weblo include: Richard Rosenblatt, former chairman of MySpace.com; Fred Harman, managing partner of Oak Investment; Matt Hill, founder of eForce Media; and William Woodward, managing director of Anthem Venture Partners.

    Way to sell ’em Rocky.

  • JobLoft post Dragon's Den

    JobLoft2All this talk of Dragon’s Den got me thinking about Job Loft, a map based job website for the retail, food service, and hospitality industries.

    For those of you who don’t know… Job Loft made a great pitch on Dragon’s Den, was offered $200,000 for 50% of the company, and had a bad first date with the Dragons, who by the end of the meeting tore up the $200,000 check. The clips are embedded for your viewing pleasure after the jump.

    All’s well that ends well… and despite the Dragon’s Den debacle, Job Loft is doing great.

    After one year in business they have already sold over 12,000 job postings – targeting industries with 67% turnover was a good idea. Job Loft is expanding across Canada – localizing the site into French to conquer Quebec. And a new hosted / embeddable job site has been added to the product mix. What about funding you ask? Well after the check was torn up on national tv, a number of investors came knocking – with a much higher valuation.

    An exception to the Dragon’s Den Curse? Maybe. I would attribute it to their positive attitude. From their blog: “So what did we do the day after that boardroom meeting? Business as usual.” And sure, Job Loft is in a monstrously competitive industry, but a laser focus on being “the #1 destination in Canada for online recruitment within retail, food services, and hospitality” has served them (and their customers) well. My guess is that the dragons are kicking themselves for not investing in Job Loft.

    Contact: Chris Nguyen, Director of Business Development

    (more…)

  • Last auction for Mighty Bids

    Mighty BidsMighty Bids, a Montreal based auction site, is calling it quits and get this… taking the ‘eBay exit’. Pretty ironic given the site’s founders, Peter Michaud and Jeff Ramaglia, routinely criticized eBay seller fees.

    The site attempted to differentiate itself by providing free basic listings, but still charged a percentage of the final sales price and premium listings fees. The free listings, promises to donate 5% of profits to charity, and silly eBay protests were not enough to pull in significant numbers of sellers from eBay. Over the past four years Mighty Bids garnered 100,000 registered members and acquired 9 domain names. In case you are interested… the eBay auction ends July 1.

    Mighty Bid’s new owners will have to make some drastic changes if they plan on successfully competing with eBay. What strategy would you take if you won the auction?

  • BunnyHero Widget is Taking Over

    A big congrats to Bunny Hero (aka Wayne A. Lee), whose widget is topping the charts!

    comScore’s recently launched Widget Metrix places Bunny Hero Labs in the top five widgets worldwide (and get this… #1 if you exclude photosharing widgets)! According to comScore, Bunny Hero widgets reach 3% of the world online audience with 24,984,000 unique viewers a month.

    Wayne has created a quantifiable hit! The only question now is how he will capitalize on this early success. The world is his oyster (pet idea) at this point. Hint: Click “more” and feed our Bunny!

    Think these virtual pets are silly trinkets? Think again…
    Club Penguin – priced north of $500 million by Sony and News Corp
    Neopets – acquired for $160 million in 2005 by Viacom

    How do you see Bunny Hero Labs developing?

    Contact: Wayne A. Lee

  • Reflections on MESH 2007

    MESH Logo The MESH gang pulled it off. There were some interesting sessions this year. Jim Buckmeister of Craigslist gave us the inside scoop including the number of pages served per kilowatt hour and why Craigslist will be sticking with their simple design. Austin Hill of Akoha is focusing on social entrepreneurship these days and we are eagerly awaiting Akoha?s launch. Ted Murphy of PayPerPost who Mike Arrington called ?the most evil man in the room? faced off with Mike for the first time in person. Christine Herron of First Round Capital discussed porn affiliate programs and got everyone?s attention. Will Pate our Community Evangelist Extraordinaire shared his Theory of Awesomeness. Rick Segal of JLA Ventures provided an interesting breakdown on the natural evolution of startups. But the best sessions were held in the hallways; next year, rather than pay $400 for a ticket, you might just want to hang in the lobby.

    At MESH there were 15 minutes of fame sessions that gave promising startups an opportunity to strut their stuff. We are going to be checking in with the featured startups at 15 days, 15 weeks, and 15 months to monitor their progress ? so stay tuned!

    Wild Apricot ? membership management web service.
    Contact: Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

    SneakerPlay ? invite only social network for urban youth into street culture.
    Contact: Robleh Jama, Co-Founder

    ConceptShare ? online collaboration for creative professionals.
    Contact: Scott Brooks, Co-Founder

    Demofuse ? easily create and maintain website tours.
    Contact: Greg Thomson, Founder

    Octopz ? online collaboration for creative professionals.
    Contact: Barry Fogarty, Co-Founder

    Five Limes – user submitted eco-friendly products and services.
    Contact: Chris Sukornyk, Founder

    Throughout the conference a recurring thought went something like this: MESH is a once a year event. Nice as it was, it does not compare to what is really driving Toronto these days: the TorCamp Community. I am not sure what I would do without our DemoCamps, OpenCoffees, Skype Swarm, and OtherCamps. What I do know is that I am thankful, very thankful. We have a great community that is building something week in and week out. So the very first Startup North Golden Compass goes to? drum roll? the TorCamp Community.

    Golden Compass

  • Red Flag Deals – 100,000 Registered and Growing

    RFD Logo Red Flag Deals has a passionate bunch of users ? they love to save.

    Founded back in 2000 the site has grown from a handful of page views a month to over 18 million. They recently hit 100,000 registered users and now serve over 750,000 unique visitors. Red Flag Deals can in all earnestness claim to be ?Canada?s Bargain Hunting Community.?

    Congratulations to the Red Flag Deals Team on hitting this milestone. We look forward to following this Toronto company’s continued success.

    Contact: Ryan McKegney, VP of Business Development

  • Infonaut – Mapping Healthcare

    Infonaut Infonaut is in the bird flu business. The Toronto startup (incubated at MaRS) provides governments with a Health Informatics GIS solution for pandemic preparedness and emergency response planning. Plain English: Healthcare Map Mashup, on which one can layer predictive indicators such as emergency response times, demographic data, hospital service areas, and even poultry density reports (don?t ask).

    The Canadian Government knows all too well about dealing with pandemics (remember SARS), but don?t write off Infonaut as just making a quick sale using scare tactics. The web service is employed by a diverse set of clients; health insurance companies are using it to target populations interested in supplemental insurance plans.

    I saw a demo of the product and it looks like a full featured web app. While other epidemiology GIS tools are available, few if any have preloaded data sets, map relative rss news feeds, markup tools, multi format import / export, streamlined document sharing, and most impressive – automated information propagation to healthcare providers.

    Prevention is the best medicine and Infonaut is on the path to success.

    Contact: Niall Wallace, CEO

  • Skymeter takes on Insurance, Tolls, and Meters

    Skymeter Logo Skymeter is set on replacing parking meters, toll booths, and monthly insurance bills. Talk about big aspirations!

    A prototype location payment system (think GPS black box) has been developed and the Toronto company is forging development relationships from Holland to Singapore. London?s congestion pricing program has perked the interest of governments around the world. Insurance companies such as Aviva and Progressive are considering implementing pay per mile vehicle insurance. And what city wouldn?t want ticketless parking? Greens are excited about Skymeter, as road use charges have the potential to reduce automobile emissions.

    The business model is to capture a percentage of payment just like credit card companies. Sure getting the systems into vehicles is going to be a challenge, but we have high hopes for this MaRS incubated company.

    Contact: Kamal Hassan, CEO
    Blog: Bern Grush, Founder

  • slumberland.ca – Tourism Reservation and Statistics Platform

    Internet Works Planning a summer vacation on Prince Edward Island? You might not know it, but you?ll be booking a B&B using the Slumberland reservation system. And the B&B operator will be reporting their numbers to the tourism marketing authority using Tourism Stats. Internet Works is busy building web services for the tourism industry.

    Internet Works’ pilot customer, Tourism PEI, was so pleased with the Slumberland reservation system and Tourism Stats data collection and analysis service that they?ve been showing it off to tourism authorities in other provinces. The company now has 5 employees, who are finishing off a conversion reporting module to track advertising response rates. Internet Works leases the web services individually or as a package. An enthusiastic pilot customer is a great start as Internet Works begins their journey to be the provider of choice for small to medium size tourism destinations.

    Contact Dico Reyers

  • Work Hack – To Do List

    Work Hack LogoAre you a GTD Junkie? Work Hack might be the To Do List you?ve been looking for? Rami Nasser, of Halifax Nova Scotia, had simplicity in mind when he designed this web based To Do List, which has the look and feel of a whiteboard.

    Recently launched, the site already has a number of potentially useful features: RSS feed, drag and drop arrangement of to do items, and best of all no registration is required to create and access your to do list.

    I have a feeling the already simple site (a plus) will become even simpler as Rami iterates on the design. All in all, the site is well on its way to accomplishing what it sets out to do, and already counts over 10,000 users from around the world.