StartupNorth

Author: Jonas Brandon

  • identi.ca gets funding, and a case of bad timing

    I learned through GigaOM this morning that Montreal-based Identi.ca has taken a round of funding from Montreal Startup. I was, and remain, a big supporter of Identi.ca and first covered it back in July, 2008.

    It appears that Montreal Startup is the sole funder in this round so I will assume that GigaOM is right and the amount of funding is probably in the $200,000 to $400,000 range.

    This is exciting news for the Canadian startup community, but just after hearing it this morning I came across this announcement from Google. In November 2007, Google acquired Jaiku, a “lifestreaming” service that resembles Twitter and which preceeded services such as Friendfeed which largely copy its functionality, and it was founded even before Twitter.

    Google is announcing today that they are going open-source and will be making Jaiku freely available. On top of that, you will be able to easily deploy it to the Google App Engine.

    I am not sure of the exact impact of Jaiku going open-source, but it no doubt has some impact on Identi.ca’s plans. I am confident that Evan and Montreal Startup will take this development in to account, and I certainly believe that there is more than enough room for a few open source applications to thrive.

  • More Crowdsourced Capital – Colektivo readies for launch

    ColektivoColektivo is a new debt-financing startup that appears to be attempting to bridge peer-to-peer loans with crowdsourced investing. A sort of Kiva for entreprenurs, bridging the concepts behind startups like CommunityLend and Vencorps. Startups are asked to fill out a loan application, and a group of lenders then decide if they want to make a loan to that startup.

    Colektivo runs the first investment fund on the Internet managed by a group of investors. The investment fund sole purpose is to supply local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with debt financing. This synergy between SMEs and savers represents a real alternative to banks and traditional investment products. The incomes of interest generated by the loans are redistributed to the savers whereas the principal portion is reinvested in other SMEs. With a minimum investment of 100$, investors are able to buy investment fund units

    My first impression is that Colektivo is taking the worst from both worlds and attempts to bring them together to form an idea that seems full of risk and that promises minimal reward.

    The peer-to-peer loans industry has been under a lot of pressure and has lived under a cloud of uncertainty in almost every jurisdiction so far. Prosper.com was shut down by the US SEC in November 2008, and in Febuary 2008, IOUCentral launched and was then quickly shut down here in Canada. My sense is that they are trying to avoid regulatory hell by managing it as an investment fund, which may or may not work, I am not qualified to say.

    So, take the peer-to-peer model, and then layer on the further uncertainty of the crowd-sourced investment model and I get jittery. I hope they can prove me wrong though.

    I am, however, feeling more and more bullish about Vencorps, which uses crowdsourcing to find good investment opportunities, but which uses its own money to make the actual investments. I have been watching some of the pre-launch contests they have been running, and I do see the potential.

  • #hohoto – A Legend is Born

    Occasionally you hear about an event and you know right away it is going to be a big deal.

    #hohoto was one of those things. I could not be more proud of everyone who put this together, over $20,000 was raised for the Daily Bread food bank. The local CBC Station brags about raising $100,000+ for the food bank, so it shocks me that in just one night the Toronto Tech and Startup communities were able to do so much.

    I think the team can do $80,000 at least next year. Ticket prices should go up. I would say 40$ but others might disagree, and sponsorship will certainly be more expensive.

    Rob Hyndman was the driving force behind this, but a gigantic group took ownership and made this happen.

    And a legend was born: (video embedded)

  • CIX now accepting applications – Takes place March 3rd and 4th

    picture-4The Canadian Innovation Exchange is taking place on March 3rd and 4th again this year in Toronto. The event appears to have been compressed mostly in to 1 day with some pre-event socials taking place on March 3rd.

    This is a tough time for Canadian startups, we certainly heard that loud and clear during StartupEmpire, but it is also the chance to focus on our strengths and to take advantage of what makes Canada’s startups great.

    Registration opens in January, but in the meantime, fill out the submission form and start working on your pitch.

  • Kontagent is a big winner – $250,000 from the fbFund

    kontagentKontagent, who we wrote about back in July, is one of the winners of $250,000 from the fbFund.

    The company is based in San Francisco and Toronto, which has seen co-founder Albert Lai doing a lot of traveling.

    The problem of measuring and understanding behavior within social networks is still generally unsolved. There are no ready-to-go analytics packages as you would expect and the problem is only going to keep growing in coming years. I am placing long bets on Kontagent.

    I can’t wait to see Kontagent grow in the next few years. Perhaps even Rick will pull up a lawn chair, open a beer, and watch the game.

    Kontagent is the leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. The Kontagent platform has been built from the ground up to provide deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.

    The Kontagent platform works directly with the Facebook API, and will soon support OpenSocial and the MySpace platform. Kontagent was founded in 2007 by serial entrepreneurs Albert Lai/CEO (5th startup, most recently founder/CEO of BubbleShare) and Jeffrey Tseng/CTO (2nd startup, most recently founder of Aevena) . The company is headquartered in the SOMA district of San Francisco, California with a presence in downtown Toronto, Ontario.

  • Reminder: Office Holiday Party

    There are a few geekmas parties going on this December, and they are selling out quickly. Both have been organized by members of the community, and look like they will be a blast.

    Montreal has CelebrateCamp on December 18th.

    Come out an celebrate 2008 with the Montreal Technology Community. We have many things to celebrate as a community. A successfull year of Barcamps, StartupCamps, Democamps, Podcamps and a number of other community events flourished this year. We’ve seen more startups launched, more investing activity and a number of our local friends have personal & professional success created in 2008.

    and in Toronto there is #hohoto, which came together on Twitter in a matter of days. It is taking place at The Mod Club – Monday, December 15, 2008, 7pm. There will be DJs, cheap drinks and all the proceeds are going towards the Daily Bread food bank.

    Update:

    Halifax is having a Geekmas event on December 17th raising money for Feed Nova Scotia!

    Which other cities will get on board and start raising money for charity?

  • MaRS Phase II in the Deadpool

    The MaRS Center is seeing the second phase of development go on hold.

    Phase II, which involved the development of a second tower on the west side of the property, has been cancelled, despite having been ahead of schedule so far. The reason given by Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc, the American developer behind the project, is that they just couldn’t secure enough leases to make the project move forward.

    I first heard about this a few days ago when an unsubstantiated rumor was posted on Urban Toronto (a great forum that I lurk in). Then when I was up in the area yesterday I noticed that the site was pretty quiet, but still wasn’t sure. That was until I looked at the National Post this morning and it was right there on the front page.

    The MaRS center is a confusing thing for tech entrepreneurs. There are a few startups in there, and it is home to a Celtic House office and RBC Ventures. They also have some really fantastic people working there, such as Peter Evans and Allen Gelberg, who have reached out to the startup community in a big way and who have provided a venue for things like Mesh and the Facbook Developer Garage.

    My sense is that MaRS has a much bigger impact on the medical research and commercialization community, but I am not connected to that community and have no way of knowing.

    MaRS was never a center for the tech community however. Simple economics make it impossible for such a high-cost building to truly have an impact at a community level. There are three old garment factories at Spadian and Queen that have had more of an impact. This isn’t a new phenomenon either, when I was building some of my first startups in Charlottetown, the provincial and federal government spent almost $35million building something called the Atlantic Technology Center.

    In terms of the size of the city and community, the Atlantic Technology Center was even more ambitious than MaRS, and it was even more disconnected from the community. While some of the best startups were moving in to great historic office spaces, government contractors and service firms piled in to the Tech Center. It was high-cost, anti-septic and too ambitious.

    The truth is, if you want to transform the tech community in a place like Toronto or any other city, you don’t need $20million, or $200million. For all the dreams of trying to turn some city in to the “next valley”, the point gets missed every time. You could put Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Calgary or Vancouver on the world map with almost no money. Put a couple million together and find the right people to deploy it. We need to start loving our cities and the communities that are coming to life in them.

    The problem is that government officials can ascribe value to real estate. We all love to build big things that people can see, touch and talk about. Until those same people can understand the value of a vibrant and productive community, then we will never get the participation that we truly need.

    It is worth pointing out that MaRS has billed itself as a home for academic research and eventual commercialization, not simply a home for the tech community. I believe that the same fundamental principals are in play however, and that the task of building a commercialization engine in this city is not a real estate problem, but a social one.

    I don’t know what this means for MaRS and their efforts in the community, but I hope it is a chance for them to step back and refocus. They have a great team that I believe will still do great things.

  • Clutterme.com is for sale, on ebay

    Clutterme.com a do-it-yourself website builder and domain purchasing site is for sale, on ebay. This isn’t the first startup to put themselves up on Ebay, Toronto based Tucows bought kiko.com in an ebay auction for almost $260,000 a few years ago.

    Will Clutterme get bids well past $200,000? Probably not, but I think the service is worth something, and a registrar such as Tucows, GoDaddy or another could really make good use of it. Clutterme is what they say it is: A really, really, easy way to make a website. It is the kind of really simple website builder that your mom would be happy to use. They also have a really slick domain purchasing system set up that lets people get their own domain and website builder all wrapped in to one.

    I have had a chance to hang out with Mark and Alex and I know they are going to be successful. They are hard working and passionate guys and they have stuck with this project through thick and thin. It is too bad that ClutterMe isn’t going to be their winner, but I will be the first one waiting to see what their next project is.

    So head on over and place your bids. Someone with the right sales channel and a little elbow grease could make this thing work.

    You can try a demo of the tool here.

  • StartupEmpire: Thanks, that was fun.


    Well, it’s over. StartupEmpire was, by most measures, a success. Almost 300 people in total come by to either the conference and/or the after party and we didn’t lose our shirts in the process.

    I would be lying if I told you that putting StartupEmpire together was easy or even fun (despite the title of this post!). It wasn’t. We struggled with the format, got it wrong, and then had to re-iterate the whole thing in the final stretch. Taking a conference from 2 days to 1 day, and changing venue basically doubles the work.

    We stubbornly pushed forward with the conference for a few reasons, but the biggest one was because of what we saw by the time everyone had piled in to those just-a-little-too-small chairs on the dance floor of This Is London at 9am. The crowd everything I had hoped it would be, a mishmash of students, entrepreneurs, angels and VCs.

    A few people pointed out to me how this wasn’t the typical conference crowd, most people were taking notes like they were going to be tested on it, and the buzz during the breaks was unmistakable.

    There are some people I want to thank, personally, for what they did to help make StartupEmpire happen:

    Michele Perras put up with David and I and kept the rudder of the ship on course. Michele can run the entire operational side of a businessnes, but she is completely unique in that her abilities as an organizer/operator aren’t even her greatest strength: She is one of the most creative and biggest thinkers I know. When I dove in to minutia, she pulled me out.

    Jonas, who has written this blog with me for the last year and a half has been incredibly busy with his own startup these days. When I called him and said “I need your help”, I wasn’t sure he would even have time to step up for the all-hands-on-deck call, but he did. He swooped in and took over contract negotiations, managed a few pages of TODOs and logistics and was there with me unfolding chairs and carrying in stage boards on the night before the conference.

    David Crow, who couldn’t print name badges if his life depended on it, but who still takes the job every time. I’m not sure how Dave and I get ourselves in to these messes, but they usually work out. Dave is one of those guys who does what he says he will every time and comes back with more ideas.

    Rick Segal who stepped up with the idea for StartupSchool and said “let me run with it”. Rick took some of the most dry content of the day (legal, term sheets, etc) and made them a conversation.

    Howard Lindzon who said “do it” back in August when I mentioned the idea of a conference and put his name up to help lead the way.

    Robert Montgomery who helped me navigate a few mishaps and provided support when we needed it.

    The Student Volunteers. Wow, this was one of the most hard working and impressive group of folks we could have hoped for. They took the iniative as soon as they got there and filled in gaps we had left. From creating an ad-hoc system of responsibilities to a make-shift coat check, they handled it all and left me in awe. I’d hire these folks in a heartbeat. A few of them are involved with the upcoming Impact Conference, which looks fantastic.

    The Veterans, those in the crowd who have raised money, knew how to pitch and frankly just didn’t need some of the early-stage content that was on stage. It made me so proud to see some of the tech community’s most seasoned entrepreneurs who get it and were there not for who or what was on stage, but so that they could meet and help the other folks in the audience who are just getting started.

    Our sponsors, who got on board for this event before they knew what would happen with it, and who stuck around when things were changing daily. These companies and organizations are some of the few who truly believe in the tech community and who have proven they are ready to stick by it. When everyone is talking recession and doom and gloom, it is easy to run away and keep your money. Microsoft, HighRoad, Gowlings, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, JLA, OCE all have my gratitude. I dreaded making some of those phone calls two weeks before the event, but they all said the same thing: The community needs this, we want to see it happen.

    Finally, all of you who bought tickets and believed we’d pull it off. I hope you weren’t dissapointed. I met some incredible people through the day and can’t wait to find out more about what you have up your sleeve.

    Most of all, I am thankful to my wife Laurel, who did nothing but support me as I was going between making this conference happen and bringing Firestoker in to one of its most exciting periods yet. At times it was 2+ full time jobs.

    Startups in Canada are not dead, investment in Canada is not dead, smart ideas and innovative companies are not gone. We are just getting started, that is something I believe more than anything right now.

  • Tales of the ridiculous – PickupPal gets slapped

    It has been well covered today, and I am guessing it is going to hit the mainstream press tomorrow. PickupPal, yet another carpooling site, seems to have been the straw that tickled the legal team at the bus companies.

    They were fined $11,000 and now have to restrict their service inside of Ontario to almost nothing. There is an old (well, not that old) law in Ontario that defines what a “carpool” is and it basically forces you to drive with your neighbor Joe to work, everyday, and you are only allowed to pay him once a week.

    A bus company sued PickupPal based on this law and won.

    This case is very simple to me: Greedy bus companies and a meddling government. Bus companies need to innovate and they are either too cheap or too scared to do it. The funny thing about this is that they have now given so much free press to PickupPal that I have no doubt people will be flocking to the site.

    PickupPal is not the only startup here that is dealing with endless beaurocracy and regulatory silliness. I hope they continue to take a stand.