StartupNorth

Category: Canada

  • Distinctly Canadian Web Habits

    This is a guest post by CommunityLend.com CEO Michael Garrity. We have profiled CommunityLend in the past.

     

    There was a great piece in Saturday?s Globe and Mail outlining the contrast in the opinions of Canadians and Americans on who got the short end of the stick on the Free Trade Agreement. Predictably, both sides think the other is making out better (which in my own political experience is usually a good sign that things are about equal).

    Reading the story did get me to thinking about other contrasts between ourselves and our American brethren, here on the week of both of our national patriotic celebrations. Further, as the CEO of a web company focused on the Canadian market, the story specifically got me thinking about the differences between our two nations? general usage patterns on the web.

    To get some informational guidance on the issue, I went to Alexa and pulled the Top 100 most visited US sites and compared them to the Top 100 most visited Canadian sites. The net result of this imperfectly empirical study is what I?ll call ?Michael?s 5 Observations on National Web Behaviour? (just to give it a flashy and important title). I share these unique and clearly very important observations with you here in joint celebration of our National Holiday.

    Observations on National Web Behaviour:

    1. Plus ca change… : The clearest observation from the two lists is that we share most of the same online pastimes as our American web surfing neighbours, especially on the top end of the list. The majority of the top sites on both lists are predictably all the big names in Search, Social Networks, Auctions, File ?sharing?, Online Gaming and of course, Porn. Two notable Canadian distinctions; we tend to use the .ca extensions of the big names (e.g. google.ca) and our number one social network by a LONG SHOT is Facebook, coming in at the number 2 spot overall after the big G. MySpace, picks up the 11th spot, just beating …
       
    2. Peace, Order and Good Government: The biggest surprise to me on the Canadian list is that the 13th spot is the Government of Canada website. Yes, you heard that correctly, the spot right after MySpace and eBay. My only explanation I have for this distinctly Canadian behaviour is that there are just so many departments and agencies and forms and services provided by the Canadian government that these sites have become an easier way to navigate it all. By comparison, the only US government service on the US Alexa list is USPS at number 72, presumably folks trying to locate their lost mail.
       
    3. Mosaic Nation: They are the ?melting pot? and we are the ?mosaic?, or at least that?s the story we have been taught in school. The question is does it hold up online? The answer seems to be ?yes?. While 100% of sites on the US Alexa list are unilingual English, about 10% of Canadian Alexa 100 are sites that are specifically non-English (not to mention all of the sites that offer two languages as an option). Top on the list at number 56 is the French site Meteomedia.com and next is number 64, Sina.com, all in Chinese.
       
    4. Minding the Books: Canadians top the world in usage statistics for online banking and it bears itself out at Alexa. The first Canadian bank comes in at the 21st spot (TD Bank) then they pepper the list until the end. Contrast this to the US list where the first bank comes in at the 38th spot (Bank of America). Yes, it seems we are a nation of book-keepers, bouncing actively between our Facebook profile updates and our bill payment screens. An exciting lot, us Canadians. Good news is that this should bode especially well if one had, say, an internet start up focused on the Canadian financial services space … say.
       
    5. And Speaking of Start-Up?s: How do Canadian start-ups fare on the list? Well, not exceptionally well. There are three I can see. At 59 comes plentyoffish out of Vancouver, then at 91 it`s Toronto?s own redflagdeals.com, followed by Edmonton?s nexopia.com at 92. It should be noted here that there is certainly no shortage of criticism related to Alexa as an accurate measure of web usage so I?m sure other start ups will have at it for not being on the list. In the meantime, the list shows that there is still a lot to strive for in our community in getting the numbers up for our respective services.

  • Y Combinator Accepting Winter 2009 Applications

    Y Combinator is now accepting applications for the winter 2009 funding cycle happening in Mountain View, CA. It’s possible for Canadians to get accepted to the Y Combinator program. All of Canada is following the exploits of Michael Parkatti and Mike Marrone during the summer cycle in Boston. We’ve covered the story, with Austin Hill interviewing both Michael and Mike. It’s important for Canadian entrepreneurs to apply. The Y Combinator program is about the experience and connections that you can build during the three month program.

    The Winter 2009 Y Combinator is offering $5000 + $5000n where n = the number of founders in exchange for between 2-10% of the company. Assuming 2 founders and Y Combinator owning 6% of company, this works out to a pre-money valuation of $250,000 and a post-money valuation of $265,000. It’s a great way to seed a company.

    Jevon talks about startups being about execution, the Y Combinator program is all about execution.

    7. Once your company exists, we’ll write a check to it for the rest of the money. You can spend the money however you want.

    8. Y Combinator is not an incubator. We have space you can use if you need to, but we expect you to work out of wherever you find to live. It is no coincidence that so many successful startups have started this way; it’s the ideal setup for the initial phase.

    9. Throughout the 3 months we have regular office hours for startups who want to talk about what they’re building, or get advice in dealing with investors. We also have occasional open houses at YC on Thursday afternoons.

    10. From January through March we’ll have dinners every Tuesday for all the founders. At each dinner we’ll invite an expert in some aspect of startups to speak.

    It is a program that is designed to help you take an idea, and learn to execute with very little capital resources. The benefits of mentorship, guidance and a growing network of alumni and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world. You get enough cash to pay for your living expenses for 3-4 months. You get a cohort of entrepreneurs you can have a shared experience with. You have scheduled diners with the Y Combinator team and an expert about some aspect of startups. You get 2 investor days where follow on investors are brought in and use the Y Combinator to do deal flow. It’s a great opportunity.

    The original motivation for Y Combinator was benevolent, but this is not a charity. If our investments pay off, we can invest in more startups, and if they don’t, we can’t keep doing this indefinitely. So we’re looking for startups we think will succeed.

    If you’re a small team of Canadian entrepreneurs looking for a chance. You should fill out an application the deadline to apply is October 17, 2007.

  • Ten Web Startups to Watch

    Technology Review has published a list of Ten Web Startups to Watch.

    1. Pinger
    2. Pownce
    3. Qik
    4. Dash Navigation
    5. Ushahidi.com
    6. QTech
    7. 33Across
    8. Peer39
    9. Mashery
    10. Anagran

    Interesting list of companies. There is a mix from social networking platforms to packet filtering. It started me wondering who were the top ten web startups in Canada. Who were the companies that were building businesses around market opportunities and technologies that should succeed. And in true Nigel Tufnel logic my top ten list goes to eleven. None of these companies are listed on the Fast 50, yet. And the list doesn?t include non-Web companies like Rapid Mind or xkoto. But they are an outstanding group of Canadian ventures.

    1. Idée Inc.
    2. Crowd Science
    3. Octopz
    4. FreshBooks
    5. ConceptShare
    6. Viigo
    7. NowPublic
    8. Acquisio
    9. Agoracom
    10. radian6
    11. LearnHub 

  • Will you bet on VenCorps?

    The VenCorps machine has been ramping up lately and it got a further injection of excitement with some posts in the last week.

    The premise of VenCorps is this: You record a video of your “pitch” and upload it. The “crowd”, that is the Vencorps community, then votes and chooses some winners. Those winners then go on to be vetted in a traditional investment process involving angels and other sources of funding. Chosen startups then get some amount of funding.

    VenCorps isn’t the only new Canadian video-pitches-for-financing site to launch, fundfinder.com, which also connects your pitch to a “crowd” of would-be investors. The difference being that VenCorps uses the Cambrian House software to help manage the selection/voting process. The end result however (videos of startups pitching) looks quite similar.

    We first covered Vencorps in January and at that time we were told that they would be making more announcements at the end of the month, but it seems to have taken almost 5 more months to see any sort of public activity. This is no doubt the result of some of the problems Cambrian House has been having.

    I decided to poke around and, as you might have guessed, I managed to find some differing opinions. Overwhelmingly, from community members to current and former employees, the sense is that this is truly a last stand for Cambrian House, and had Sean Wise not come along with money from Spencer Trask, that things would look a lot different right now.

    One of the overwhelming reactions I did get was that Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky is a brilliant guy who took this thing as far as anyone could have. I think we need to applaud Michael and the entire team for doing something worth doing here in Canada. I have no doubt Michael will be back with something great again.

    So the question I have is: Will you bet on VenCorps? Will the best startups in the Canada, and the world, flock to VenCorps to pitch themselves? Will there be enough investors and money to make it attractive?

    I think it is possible for this to work. It takes guts to attempt something like this.

    However, the model has failed a few times already, Cambrian House has proven that it has serious flaws, so VenCorps is going to have to do more than just re-apply that model with a more direct financing spin on it. In a video that Cambrian House recently posted (included below), they say that VenCorps will focus more on teams than on ideas, and that the lack of focus on teams was one of the downfalls of Cambrian House.

    The thought that lingers in the back of my mind is whether or not VenCorps should have attached themselves to Cambrian House or not? My gut reaction was a big No, but you have to weigh that against the fact that the Cambrian House crew have probably learned a few things about community building in the last couple of years.

    Will you pitch on VenCorps?

  • 2008 ACE Exposition

    acecanadaAdvancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE) held their showcase of entrepreneurs at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.  ACE is a charitable organization that delivers programming to higher education students to inspire them to make meaningful contribution to words their community by building real world businesses and entrepreneurial ventures.

    ACE submissions are from major Canadian schools including BCIT, University of Calgary, Ryerson University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo amongst others. The Student Entrepreneur Competition requires that students be a founder (or 50% owner of a business) and are selected based on financials and subjective judging criteria. The goal is to submit an operating venture that is ready for growth.

    ACE announces 2008 National Student Entrepreneur Competition Champion – Joseph Moncada, Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium

    Since 2006 Joseph, a Business student, has owned and operated Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium, a network of stores and kiosks offering rare, unique, retro, and imported sweets from around the world. What started as a summer project through the Ontario Government “Summer Company” program has grown exponentially into a successful franchise.

    Now in operation for only two years, Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium employs over 25 people and has grown into three stores based in prominent locations around the Greater Toronto Area and Wasaga Beach.

    The focus of the ACE programs is on economic impact on local communities. The submissions are diverse ranging from software to franchises. The 2008 regional winners included software companies, an online retailer, a French language publishing company and a walking stick manufacturer.

    • Ryne Flood, 6am Software – Online Parent-Teacher Interview Scheduler
    • Grahm Watts, Nature Trails – A company that manufactures walking sticks, twig pencils, bird hourses, etc.
    • Brad LeBlanc, Engaging Entertainment – Event mangement, event production and strategic marketing
    • André Wilson, Editions Court-Circuit – A French language publishing company
    • Jill Lennox, Stuffitbag – Custom designed laptop bags with online retailing
    • Brett Patrontasch, Scholars At Your Service Inc. – a student organization offering residential and commercial painting, window washing, and on site automotive detailing to their customers

    While most of these ventures probably aren’t venture fundable, the opportunity for students to see entrepreneurship as a career path is needed in Canadian post secondary educational institutions. ACE offers a great structured set of programs for students to get involved and inspired by entrepreneurs in their communities.

  • I would like to thank . . . – ITWorldCanada names us in the Top 10

    ITWorldCanada named their list of the 10 best technology blog(gers) last week. We are honored to have been named in this list and can only hope we are still doing a good enough job next year to stay on it.

    Here is the list:

  • Presenting companies announced for CIX 2008

    If you are going to have a beauty contest (or not), the contestants may as well be good looking, and CIX seems to have delivered. I have to admit that I didn’t even think the list would turn out this well. There is a cross section of everything from startups to companies looking for follow-on rounds.

    There has been some debate recently about the value of events like CIX, and I have to admit, I have not been easy on similar events in the past, but I have to say that I think it is time to move on. If you think CIX is all about a bunch of companies getting up and presenting, then you are wrong. I think of CIX more like a DEMO or Techcrunch 50 for the Canadian community, and that is something we need.

    More than that, a lot has changed in the Canadian Startup community in the last year, and this is a chance to start putting more names to faces, and for more shy startups to start coming out of the shadows. It is also a chance for the Venture Capital community to pull back the curtains and start connecting more closely with the community.

    We are using the CIX space to put on a second StartupCamp. So if you didn’t get a chance to get your name out there at CIX itself, make sure you put your name in the hat for StartupCamp.

    The list of presenting companies was released today, you saw it here first!:

  • I love my city, and so should you

    There are dozens great cities in this country that I love to spend time in, these are cities that are making an impact on the world and which get noticed by the world. Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver are the headliners with Calgary, Victoria, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Waterloo and Halifax all staking their own claims to greatness in unique ways.

    There have been a lot of blog posts lately talking about how someday a Canadian city can be our Silicon Valley. Toronto or Montreal have been the most vocal in trying to be recognized as a great valley equivalent, and even Vancouver seems to have jumped in the fray. The bidding is in comparing the communities of each city, and the prize is the title of being the Startup Hub of Canada.

    The point is being missed completely, and I have a surprise for everyone.

    The way I see it is that our job here in Canada is different, and we should stop wasting time trying to become Silicon Valley (who really uses that term?): Canada will never have a San Francisco. We will never have a Silicon Valley, we won?t even have a Boston or a Seattle. We won?t really even have a Boulder.

    The opportunity for Canada is first to build strong communities individually, and then the job is to build strong connections between those communities. Canadians (who are still here!) are different from those who flock to San Francisco in search of the holy grail. Canadians love their own city, and they aren?t very excited about the idea of all making their way to another city in search of success. Most of us will choose to make a go of it in our own backyard, where we are connected to our great communities and where we feel like we can all have an impact.

    We need to compete fiercely with eachother for the prize of being the top city to build a startup in Canada, but we also need to start creating a larger ecosystem where we can can the egos and start to make connections.

    I regularly impress myself with my own ignorance of what is going on in Vancouver especially. We constantly miss great stories just because the connections are so weak. Hopefully this blog can start to change that, but what is more likely is a tightening connection between BarCamp communities across the country.

    Open, Creative and Connected Communities are the next Silicon Valley. No city will be able to compete.

  • CIX – Canadian Venture Capital Meetup

    cix.pngBack in June, StartupNorth was one of the first places to break the story of the death of the Toronto Venture Group. Every year the TVG had an event called the “Venture Forum”, which died when the TVG was shut down.

    It didn’t take long for the gap to get filled in however, and soon enough the CIX was announced. The premise is largely the same: Companies are pre-selected to pitch a room full of VCs who will presumably think about funding some of them. You need to apply to present, and then your company will be vetted by a selection committee. The cost to attend and present (if you are chosen) is about $1,000 in total, or $495 if you are just attending.

    Is CIX worth attending?

    This conversation got kicked off today on David Crow’s blog after David posted about CIX, Ali Asaria, the guy behind Well.ca, suggested that $500-$1,000 was actually a lot of money for a startup, no matter what stage they are at.

    It is true, $1,000 is a lot of cash, but the truth is: it isn’t too much. The question here isn’t about money, it is about value. Will you get anything out of 2 days in a conference full of other people who are trying to make this ship sail in Canada? I think you will. The thing is: It is completely up to you. You can find the agenda for the two days here.

    To make the best of this event you need to come at it with the right frame of mind: Make as many connections as possible, tell as many people as possible about your startup as you can, and finally, get as much advice as possible.

    In the run up to CIX we will have a few posts about kicking butt at CIX, for both the VCs and the Entrepreneurs.

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    StartupCamp

    There is also StartupCamp, which we are putting on for free during CIX. We decided to do this because it will give a chance for the startups presenting at StartupCamp to get exposure to a crowd that doesn’t always come out to these events.

    Where companies that present at CIX will be somewhat established and will have already figured out their pitch, StartupCamp is for companies who are still trying to work out the details of their business plan.

    You can fill out this form to apply to pitch at StartupCamp. We’d love to have some unknown but awesome startups to show off!

    You can register for CIX here.

  • Novell acquires PlateSpin for $205M

    Novel PlateSpin LogoPlateSpin, based in Toronto, has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Novell for $205M. The company, which makes a suite of solutions for the server virtualization market, was founded (for the second time) in 2003. You see, PlateSpin is a restart.

    PlateSpin1 was founded in 2000, raised $1.9M in 2002, and closed up shop in 2003. PlateSpin2 was restarted with new management in 2003, raised $3.5M from Toronto venture funds Covington Capital, Castle Hill Ventures, Skylon Capital, and Four Quarters, and another $7M in 2005 from Insight Venture Partners of New York.

    Word is that PlateSpin2 had trailing revenue of $20M, and that Citrix, Microsoft, and Unisys were all vying for the prize. Congrats to PlateSpin and its backers on the Novell acquisition. We’re chalking this up as a win. While it doesn’t put PlateSpin on the road to VMware glory ($22B, P/S 16.84) it is a solid exit for all involved… especially the funds. I am guessing they cut a nice slice of pie as part of the restart.