StartupNorth

Author: Jonas Brandon

  • yourteledoctor – Online Patient/Doctor Consultations

    YourTeleDoctor is a Montreal based startup that wants to transform how we think about a visit to the doctor.

    I have no doubt, absolutely zero, about the role that telemedicine will play in healthcare delivery in the future. You can search for data from Gartner, Forrester or anyone, they all predict that TeleMedicine is going to be a big deal. 

    YourTeleDoctor is trying to be one of the first providers to come to market with a consumer-ready system to allow for video-based visits to a doctor. Quebec is a good example of a province/state with a huge rural population and a government that needs to stretch every dollar in health care delivery.

    If Mehdi can be the one to bring a new level of efficiency to governments, HMOs and clinics, then there is a lot of money to be made. The flip side, however, is that this is medicine. Medicine, for all the research and great thinking that goes in to it, changes very little. It is incredibly bureaucratic, even in the private sector, and care-delivery, the component that startups like YourTeleDoctor will attempt to shake up, sees even fewer changes than other parts of the sector.

    It seems likely that the first market for a tool like this would be private clinics who are relatively autonomous and well heeled. Just a few great case studies and a decent sales team might be all you need to start breaking in to an early market.
     

  • Devshop.com launches version 2.0

    Devshop.com, which was one of the first profiles we ever did, recently launched a new version of their project management application for development teams.

    The most unique aspect of Devshop is its focus on using historical data to estimate future performance. By monitoring past timelines, milestones and other aspect of a project, Devshop will estimate the risk associated with current time estimates.

    Devshop also focuses on tying project requirements to the development schedule, so things don’t get out of sync.

    Craig has methodically gone from a private beta through launch, a 1.0 and now Devshop 2.0 looks like a powerful tool for development teams of any size. I also took a look at the team that has come together in the last year and I was even more impressed. It’s not hard to tell that Craig is aiming to build a company that will scale when the opportunity comes.

     

  • Tineye now in Open Beta

    For everyone who didn’t get in on our rounds of TinEye invitations, suffer no more! The service is now in open beta and you can get a free account.

    The launch is getting a lot of coverage including Ars Technica, Information Week, and PC Pro. 

     

  • classtell.com – easy class websites

    Serve-yourself class websites aren’t entirely new. ChalkSite has come and gone, Engrade is a long-time option and there have been a mish mash of others. Toronto’s own Savvica had Nuvvo.com for a while as well, which was not quite the same, but close. They have since closed Nuvvo and have created LearnHub.com. One of the biggest new entrants in this market is Google. They have been marketing their Google Sites product heavily to educators.

    Classtell is the latest offering in this space by Kasra Kyanzadeh from Toronto. Kasra is 15 years old (and doesn’t mind advertising it) and he has a decent set of sites under his belt.

    This is a crowded space, but Kasra has built a fantastic vertical-specific CMS tool. There is a lot of room for micro-CMSs like this in all sorts of markets. Paul Graham identified sites like this in his “Startup Ideas we’d like to fund” post.

    Classtell is 20$ CAD per year, and you get a 90 day (wow!) free trial to test out and get comfortable with the site.

    The thing I love the most? Kasra has built the product on his own, established an early business model (rather than just giving it away), and to be honest: the product is fantastic. I played around with the demo, and it did everything other LMSs do and more.

  • AndyCamper.com – Get kids outdoors

    AndyCamper.com launched this week. The Ottawa based startup is a sort of “activities portal” targeted at kids. 

    The site categorizes activities in the same way that kids tend to, using broad titles like “bugs”. When you click through there are all sorts of videos, ideas and games about what you can do to learn about bugs.

    I would have been all over things like How to Create and Berlese Funnel and to be honest, it is still tempting!

    The amount of content available on this site is incredible. It sort of makes me wonder if the days of “Mom, we’re bored!” will soon be a thing of the past. “Just go to AndyCamper.com kids”

     

     

     

  • iLoveRewards closes $4.7million Series A

    Here is a company worth talking about.

    iLoveRewards took a big problem and found a quirky and economical solution to it. This is the kind of company had me gushing 10 seconds in to the pitch. I’m sure that John Albright and company saw it from a mile away.

    ILoveRewards is sort of like one of those midway games that pumps out tickets every time you get the ball in the middle hole.

    In the case of iLoveRewards, employees of a company can earn points for things like good attendance, hitting sales targets or customer satisfaction. As these points build up, the employee can redeem them through iLoveRewards.

    Todays announcement is that JLA is contributing an additional $1.5 million to the round which will be used to create a US-focused brand for the service as well as to finance more sales and marketing initiatives.

    iLoveRewards competes with more established companies such as another favorite of mine, SuccessFactors, and I have no doubt that the competition will be moving to copy some of the novel things that iLoveRewards has been doing.

  • Tip of the week . . .

    . . . do stuff with email. That gets people all hot and excited.

    For example “We are going to enable Web 2.0 collaboration via email“.

    That one is a freebie. Heads will nod.

    I even did some market research for you: 183 billion email messages are sent per day. So if you can just capture 10% of that market, and monetize each email for 10c . . . .

  • Kontagent – Deeper Social Network Analytics

    Kontagent, which straddles Toronto and San Francisco and Toronto, and is co-founded by Toronto native Albert Lai (no relation to Rick Segal), launched today at the Facebook Developers Conference. This is one of a few Canadian announcements coming out of the conference.

    The application is an analytics suite focused on social networking platforms, not unlike Refresh Analytics who we profiled several months ago.

    Kontagent claims to offer a deeper level of analytical reporting than other available tools and, based on the previews available on their website, they have taken a page from some of the larger analytics suites.

    The platform has been under development for almost a year and requires deeper integration in to the application it is monitoring than other suites might. It is also currently free, but is in Alpha testing.

    It’s good to see Albert take the shroud off of what he has been working on, he has been pretty quiet since he left Kaboose, inc., after selling his last startup, BubbleShare.

  • Canada's Undervalued Real Estate

    Howard Lindzon, the founder of WallStrip and a partner at Knightsbridge Capital Partners, made a post today that I think is worth talking about.

    Howard spends most of his time in Pheonix, is an adviser to startups at TechStars and has done a lot of his own investing in US based startups. He thinks that things are just starting to heat up in Canada and that while there may be all sorts of problems in the US, things are stable here.

    As you all know, I am very long Canada and have spent the summer getting a better feel for the landscape. I think that Toronto is the most undervalued (real estate) of the big, global cities and that combined with Fred?s thoughts above and having RIMM so close to town and the Canadian Dollar so close to par, that the Canadian web scene will thrive for the foreseeable future.

    Is Canada’s web startup scene on the brink of something great? Some days it feels like startups are getting started, investors are waking up and the whole world is at our door. Other days it feels like we have the most thankless job imaginable.

    I don’t know the answer, but what I do know is that the tide is turning and that it is starting to make more sense than ever to start something great here. We may not be tripping over VCs when we go for a walk, but we are tripping over talented, eager and creative folks who want to build things, find markets and make money, and that is worth more than anything.

    I don’t think it is just the real-estate that is undervalued here, I think it is you.

  • How Startups will save Venture Capital in Canada

    Last night I pitched the audience for the second time on How Startups Will Save Venture Capital in Canada. I first gave this talk in Moncton at Third Tuesday NB and the response was great.

    The title is “Why Startups Will Save Canadian Venture Capital”, and it doesn’t let anyone off the hook. It isn’t a criticism, but instead it is an analysis and a call to action for both Angels, VCs and Entrepreneurs. Things are pretty busted up right now and it is time to start talking about what we need to do to make a difference.

    My thesis is simple: Startups just aren’t getting started in Canada nearly as often as they should. This isn’t about education levels, creativity or even for a lack of cash floating around this country. This is about ambition.

    This is about hustle.

    Most entrepreneurs have heard that things aren’t great for VCs right now. LPs are shaky, some funds are crashing, others are just throwing their hands up, and for a lot of startups it seems like no matter how many people you pitch, you aren’t getting anywhere. I tried to put some hard number behind that, and they paint a scary picture.

    This goes two ways, and nobody wants to sit around while we all whine and moan that nobody can get funded. It’s time to build companies that are worth something.

    We need to focus on building our local startup communities more than ever. Local communities are important because they are far easier for local Angels and Entrepreneurs to connect to, and they also act as a great filter to help find people who need national and international exposure.

    Smart funders are going to see these communities as huge opportunities. There ROI for VCs getting connected to the startup community is not only obvious, but well documented. In the US we see VCs hustling in a way that you just don’t see much of here in Canada. Every time I hear a VC rant on about how Canadian entrepreneurs aren’t aggressive enough, it drives me nuts, because they are no different.

    It is great to see Third Tuesday’s taking off on the east coast, and events like DemoCampEdmonton really starting to get going (there are 90 signups for their next one!), but we also need to focus on making sure that there are Startup-focused events where people need to answer to questions about their market, operations and sales.

    If we can get early stage companies off the ground, then the outlook for VC in Canada starts to look a lot different. Canadian funds will have to compete against American money, but they will start to get to see great ideas and entrepreneurs at the early stage. There are a few missing pieces to this plan, but the point is that it is time for us all to stop fretting and just get on with it.

    If we can build amazing startups, the money will find its way.

    This is my manifesto for saving Venture Capital. It isn’t sexy, but it just might work.

    *because someone inevitably does not “get it” — the comic strip at the top is a JOKE meant to characture what some would say is the VC impression of entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs impression of VCs.