Why isn’t there a commuter train from Toronto to Waterloo? Ok, you might ask actually ask why Toronto doesn’t have a train from downtown to the airport but let’s leave that for a conversation with more educated politicians and policy wonks.
If the assumption is that UWaterloo is a top ranking university (possibly my alumni delusions that cause me to overlook UWaterloo’s non-placement on Times Higher Education rankings). And with more startups like Kik raising money with powerhouses like OpenText, RIM, MKS and Christie Digital. There are less reason for students to have to leave the reason. It makes it more attractive to rent an apartment for the year and stay in Waterloo to manage your costs on your coop program.
Maybe the argument is that the capital is better spent on more programs for entrepreneurs or road infrastructure. But it seems that one of the greatest assets to the Toronto startup community (UW Coop students and graduates) are disconnected by public transportation. I wonder what my UW alumni brethren like Farhan Thawar (@fnthawar), John Green (@johnphilipgreen), Amar Varma (@extremevp), Brydon Gillis (@brydon), Ali Asaria (@aliasaria), Razor Suleman (@iloverewards), Kunal Gupta (@kunalfrompolar) think about the need for better connections between Waterloo (assuming a stop in Guelph) and Toronto.
It’s nice. It’s concise. It’s clean. There is choice but it’s not overwhelming. It feels like there is a consolidated effort to make Montreal the hub for startups and technology in Quebec. There are other activities and groups but there seems to be a core group of influencers, activities, and events where high tech entrepreneurs can go to find others like them, potential employees, potential investors, etc.
I look at Ontario and I am concerned. We have what should be the building blocks for a great entrepreneurial soup. And we’ve seen some spectacular successes (Bumptop, Sysomos, Pushlife among others). But there is a lot of noise. Efforts divided between regions.
I’m not suggesting a “one ring to rule them all” strategy. There are grassroots efforts, there are provincial government efforts, there are local economic development efforts like:
It leads to the murky waters that are the entrepreneur community and support infrastructure in Ontario. There is no segmentation. There definitely isn’t self-selection. They use similar words to describe their activities: entrepreneurship, startups, technology, media, growth, etc. As entrepreneurs there is a paradox of choice about who to listen to, where to go for advice, support, mentorship and guidance.
We started StartupNorth as a way to document our experiences finding, using, evaluating other startups in Toronto and across Canada. It was a way to connect with others interested in startups, emerging technologies and business models, and to talk about the things in a context specific to Canada.
Waterloo = University of Waterloo + Wilfred Laurier University
Kingston = Queen’s University + Royal Military College
Guelph = University of Guelph
Halton Region = Sheridan Institute of Technology & Applied Learning
Durham Region = University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Hamilton = McMaster University
Toronto = University of Toronto + Ryerson University + OCAD
St. Catherines = Brock University
Sault St. Marie = Algoma University
North Bay = Nipissing University
Sudbury = Laurentian University
Ottawa = University of Ottawa + Carleton University
Mississauga = University of Toronto Mississauga Campus
London = University of Western Ontario
Markham = York University + University of Toronto Scarborough Campus
Windsor = University of Windsor
It’s interesting that California with an estimated population that is 3.7 times larger [1] than Ontario[2] has less innovation hubs than Ontario (12 in California to 14 in Ontario). (Sure from a per capita GDP calculation, Ontario is higher (Cdn$43,847 vs US$38,956) but it’s probably not entirely a relevant metric unless you’re a politician which I am not).
Photo by postbear eater of worlds – Some rights reserved CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I’m wondering if rather than satisfising constituents with perceiving innovation benefits for votes, that we need to look toward innovation, education and economic growth programs that benefit citizens. I keep wondering what we are missing because of the existing programs and repackaging of programs for Ontarios entrepreneurs. Look at the job creation from a single venture firm, Union Square Ventures has portfolio companies with over 557 open jobs around the globe (128 are in NYC + Brooklyn). This is job creation. It’s focused on creating new positions, in a variety of rolls, that hopefully will attract new talent to the location.
Everyone loves to hates Toronto
Let’s all hate Toronto. It’s not uncommon for Canadians to dislike Toronto. But I don’t hear the same disdain for Montreal or Vancouver. But maybe that’s because I don’t live with their large gravity well pulling me closer. I choose to live downtown in Toronto because it’s where I want to be. I understand the lifestyle choices that others make to live elsewhere. There are days when the traffic, the people, the crazy, all get to me, but I love the collision of people, cultures, and ideas (go read Richard Florida for more thoughts on the Creative Class).
Are we missing an opportunity to raise the profile of Ontario companies because we don’t want to embrace the fact that Toronto is one of the major technology/media hubs? Are we diluting efforts by spreading the love and effort across 16 regions?
StartupWeekend is coming back to Toronto this June 3-5. After an excellent kick-off event last September, Toronto is primed to bring it again. If you don’t believe that you can get started building real companies in a weekend then take a closer look. The Toronto community showed its stuff and did some amazing work last time around: TaskAve, RateHub, N20, Vuru.
StartupWeekends are cropping up around the world, the movement is gaining momentum. Only a couple of months back, Zaarly was born at StartupWeekend LA – Zaarly has since raised $1M and was ready for launch at this year’s SXSW. More and more stories like this are emerging as these events gain traction and participants come ready to build. This June’s StartupWeekend is going to be held at the historic Burroughes Building at Queen and Bathurst and will provide an environment to promote true collaboration – not just within the teams but across teams as well.
We will be working hard at creating an even better environment for all of you to learn, be inspired, and build great things. Just come ready to work hard and have fun. Start getting your pitches ready and watch space for more. Follow us online and via twitter (@startupwkndto) for updates.
Tickets are on sale now, the first 20 StartupNorth readers to register receive a 20% discount – use the code: STARTUPNORTHSW
A lot of people talked shit about the recent valuation of Kik. It all seemed a bit insane and I admit the numbers I heard seemed wild. That was until word dropped that Union Square Ventures has joined the deal alongside RRE.
Today Techcrunch is reporting that Ted Livingston is using a chunk of the money that he took off the table in the recent financing in order to further back UWs Velocity dorm/program.
Say what you want to but Ted Livingstongets it and the moment he had the chance to do it: he gave back. That is all too rare a thing. He obviously did well in the transaction that generated the extra $1million, but not THAT well. He is obviously just an incredibly generous person. I am totally inspired.
If we can continue to back and inspire entrepreneurs as passionate as Ted then we just might get somewhere.
The one day bootcamps are being help in April and May 2011 from Halifax to London. The bootcamps are interesting, they provide entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch and get feedback from trusted experts (yeah right I think I served as an “expert” in 2009 ;-). But it is a great opportunity to get a different set of eyes on your pitch. And it plays to the old adage, “how do you know when an entrepreneur is dead? he stops pitching”.
London: April 29th, 2011 – Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
Toronto: May 2nd, 2011 – Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
Ottawa: May 3rd, 2011 – Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
There is also the upcoming April 6th, 2011 11:30EST seminar with Mike Grandinetti (he’s also a TechStars mentor) focusing on “Lean and Mean Startups”.
April 6th: 11:30 EST (Upcoming Webinar – Soon)
Lean and Mean Start-ups – Presented by: Mike Grandinetti, Managing Director, Southboro Capital, Boston.
So you think you are ready? – 10 things you need to know before presentation day – A candid talk on presentations gone horribly wrong and how you avoid that – Presented by: Coby Schneider – Miller Thomson & Others.
These are great opportunities to learn about expanding into specific US markets. The DFAIT team brings key players to local markets and makes it easy to establish relationships that allow companies to grow. There are lots of opportunity to criticize some of the efforts, but the team at DFAIT have run this program for the past few years with varied success. It’s worth the time of startups actively looking to expand their customer base (this means that you’re beyond seed stage, you probably have customers, you have a product, you’re looking for a scalable business model) to explore how DFAIT can help.
The event is co-hosted by our sponsors and friends at KPMG are corporate partners helping DFAIT and startups. There are a lot of cross-border issues concerning corporate structure, financing, taxation and other where KPMG can leverage their experience to help early and growth stage companies.
Editor’s Note: This post was written by Jesse Rodgers. Jesse is the CEO of TribeHR, the Director of the VeloCity Residence at the University of Waterloo, organizer of StartupCamp in Waterloo and an allround great guy.
Jesse stopped by my offices in Toronto to chat about sales, marketing and PR (convenient of @jevon to write about the same topic recently). Jessementioned that the TribeHR team had left Waterloo and were holed up in a hotel room in Niagara Falls. They were living together, working together, writing code and being more productive than they could with the distractions of family, friends and the strong community in Waterloo. I was amazed at the commitment of the team to step away from their personal lives and get the next version of TribeHR built before they head to SxSW for the Small Business Party. You can read the update or watch the caffeine and other stimulant-driven vacation summary. There’s lots startups can learn about improving productivity by going on vacation together.
Barrel to go over the Falls
Over the month of February the TribeHR team has been taking advantage of low hotel prices in Niagara Falls and turned a suite at the Hilton into our office (we were at the Marriott, but the Hilton is $20 less a night and has king size beds). The goal for this little retreat to the romantic city of Niagara Falls: get TribeHR polished off, implement our new user interface, get our go to market strategy figured out, and start executing on all cylinders.
If it works, we will be a stronger team (who can put up with each others snoring) and will have made some awesome progress. If it fails, then we know our team isn’t as good as we thought.
Other cities we thought about were Montreal and Toronto. Toronto would have far too many distractions for us so we had settled on Montreal (we would have loved to work out of the Knotman house). The problem there was that those of us with young kids would be too far away to head home if we had to. So here we are in Niagara Falls, in a tiny hotel suite, working our asses off.
In terms of work hours put in, when you do this, it’s pretty crazy. While in a hotel room, assuming you ignore the casino across the road, you work from around 8am to 12am, take out eating time, it is around 14 hrs or so of ‘work’ per person. It is a crazy amount of focus and the results are great, at first. Once all the easy stuff is taken on, we then have to address the bigger problems and we start to slow down. But we can work through it and it’s a heck of a lot easier when you have completely removed yourself from your routine.
At the end of week 2 we have learned the following:
It takes 5 min to turn a hotel room into an office but the wifi sucks, the tv can’t use a PS3, and anything but pizza is way overpriced.
Not having kids wake you up at 6am doesn’t mean you won’t be awake at 6am.
The US side of the falls gets a rainbow in the afternoon.
The Starbucks coffee is never hot, Tim Horton’s wins
As a team we can take each others grumpy moods and swear it out until everyone is laughing again.
Hotel chairs spin really well, and provide a great distraction near the end of the day
Why have we done this? Because we are still a very much a bootstrapped startup with plenty of distractions (wives, kids, other commitments) in Waterloo, and if we are going to get anything done while things are still so early, we have to immerse ourselves and get to work. It’s uncomfortable and exhausting, but it’s productive, energizing and we love it.
Christopher Dingle has also joined Chango from his role as EIR at iNovia (although he seems to have joined in October, so I am just catching up it seems). Notably absent from this round as well as the Series A is MantellaVP, who seem to be participating in the form of sweat equity but not in the form of capital placements as Duncan Hill is actively operating on the management team. Perhaps I am unclear as to Mantella’s model, I thought they were operating as a traditional fund but perhaps their model is changing. That could make sense as both Duncan Hill and Robin Axon have a lot to contribute in terms of operating capability.
Chango is an AdWords style platform for display (banner) advertising which is focused on low-latency ad targeting and serving across networks. As inventory has become realtime they are able to distribute highly targeted ads across that inventory. This sort of targeting was not possible in past models and Chango seems to be utilizing capital to stay ahead of the curve as more players enter the space. Chango also has the unique ability to automatically generate the banner ads being served.
The most important aspect of this deal is that Canadian capital is being put to work to power a high-potential company that otherwise likely would have closed a US focused deal. This type of growth capital was much less active just up until recently and it represents the critical role that iNovia, Rho and others are going to play in the Canadian landscape in the coming 5 years. The health of these funds is critical to our ability to create value based in Canada that can attach US and international markets with a comparable amount of resources. Albert Lai famously made a splash about the lack of growth capital in Canada in 2008 and it is my hope that the situation is now changing.
Our friends at Rogers Ventures are hosting a DEMO day with VentureBeat on January 13, 2011. This is part of a east coast swing that includes New York and Toronto. They are looking to finalize the presenting companies. If you are interested in being one (1) of the ten (10) companies make sure you apply to present.
The great news is that even if you don’t/can’t pitch for the full day session there are still lots of opportunities. You can join the social happening at the Century Room on King St W starting at 7:30pm. You need to register to attend.
It’s great that we’ve built a strong community of entrepreneurs, marketers, designers and developers in Toronto. It’s attracting world-class folks like Matt Marshall (@mmarshall) and Nate Werlin to brave the cold and snow (though still way less than NYC) and find great startups in Toronto. We even have DEMO alumni and DEMOgods like Scott Annan and Alec Saunders (though both are from Ottawa, hmmmm). It’s got me thinking we need to host another DemoCamp at some point in the near future. Stay tuned and I’ll see you on Jan 13th.
UPDATE: We are hearing that the acquisition price tag is closer to $30m and possibly even higher.
Another great exit for the Toronto startup community and some great news in advance of CIX in a few weeks. Toronto based Cognovision has reportedly been acquired by intel. According to DailyDOOH, which covers the digital out of home market, the pricetag was $17m.
I have to admit that when I first heard the Cognovision pitch, it felt holodeck cool. It also seemed “too good to be true” — Turns out I was wrong and the company shot to ~$1m in revenue pretty quickly. Using a camera on top of a digital display, Cognovision could give you some rough estimates that covered:
Actual Impressions – The number of people who look at your displays
Length of Impressions – How long people look for
Potential Audience Size – The number of people who walk by
Dwell Time – How long people stay near your displays
Anonymous Demographics – Demographics of your audience (gender and age bracket)
I have been using kikpretty much since it launched last April. It was particularly useful for me because I was spending most of my week in the US at that time and kik allowed me to TXT back home while avoiding Rogers/Fido/Telus/Bell’s atrocious $1/message TXT roaming fees.
The kik app was always very solid and rarely crashed, but there were often delivery problems, even on kik-to-kik messaging. It also seemed to eat up a lot of battery on the IPhone and Blackberry. Those problems seem to be in the past however and it doesn’t seem to affect my battery life anymore.
kik seems to have finally taken off. So much so that they are signing up an average of 3 users per second and the team is struggling just to keep their servers online. They have published a few graphs showing their signup volume and it is impressive. The sudden drop resulted from kik having to take their servers offline and their app out of the app store.
As it stands, kik is Blackberry Messenger, but it works on Blackberry, IPhone and Android. I have tried it on all platforms, and they all seem to be equally good.
There are a handful of other multi-device messengers, such as whatsapp, and it is hard to figure out exactly what the kik business model might be in the end. They originally talked about some sort of music streaming/sales business, but it is hard to tell if that is still the plan, and frankly I am not sure that my private messaging and music worlds should be mixed up like that.
Whatever model kik does eventually settle on, it is probably worthwhile for them to focus on continuing the growth they are now achieving.
Some rights reserved by Danielle Scott
A lot of people talked shit about the recent valuation of Kik. It all seemed a bit insane and I admit the numbers I heard seemed wild. That was until 
