StartupNorth

Category: Waterloo

  • Has KIK finally arrived?

    I have been using kik pretty 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.

    Kik came out of Velocity at The University of Waterloo, which we have covered in the past.

  • Year One Labs "Office Hours" in Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa

    The Year One Labs team will be in Waterloo and Toronto tomorrow, September 28th for “Office Hours” and follow that up with a visit to Ottawa as well (on Wednesday.)

    “Office Hours” gives entrepreneurs the chance to meet the partners, talk about the program we offer and connect with fellow entrepreneurs. It’s extremely informal. We’re not doing formal pitches, but we do encourage entrepreneurs (regardless of the stage you’re at with your startup!) to pitch us and talk to us about your ideas.

    You can learn more on the Year One Labs blog.

    Here’s the quick itinerary:

    • Waterloo – Tuesday September 28th 1:00PM – 3:30PM (Velocity Centre – U Waterloo) RSVP
    • Toronto – Tuesday September 28th 5:30PM – 8:00PM (Jet Cooper offices – 20 Maud Street) RSVP
    • Ottawa – Wednesday September 29th 4:00PM – 6:00PM (Code Factory – 246 Queen Street – 2nd floor) RSVP

    If you can, please RSVP. But you don’t need to RSVP – all entrepreneurs are welcome.

    Year One Labs is an early stage accelerator. StartupNorth wrote a brief post about Year One Labs when we launched.

  • VeloCity Start-up Day – Dec 1, 2009

    velocity

    We’ve written about the awesomesauce that is VeloCity in the past, and about the Project Exhibition. They have renamed the event Start-up Day. Huge improvement. I’m hoping that the quality of the projects and demos continues to grow. Velocity offers students at Waterloo an opportunity to really see entrepreneurship as a potential career path. Like the cooperative education program, VeloCity is leading here. This is a great opportunity to see the progress of the current crop.

    Velocity Start-up Day is a great opportunity to:

    • Connect with VeloCity students displaying current business projects
    • Interact with other UW entrepreneurial students representing their projects at our exhibition
    • Inform students about your company/services
    • Talk to students who may be interested in working for your organization

    Startups should be heading for the day to find talent. Funders should be heading to see if there are any opportunities. I’ll be heading there to continue to support my alma mater and this program. 

    Details

    What: VeloCity Start-up Day
    When:Tuesday, December 1, 2009 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM
    Where:Student Life Centre
    200 University Ave West
    Waterloo, ON   Canada

  • The Communitech Hub

    Communitech is getting $26.4m from the Ontario Government towards the creation of The Communitech Hub: Digital Media & Mobile Accelerator.

    “Located in Waterloo Region and serving technology companies provincewide, The Hub will help hardware and software entrepreneurs bring new tools, technologies and applications to market. The Hub will focus on commercialization, business development, access to financing and connecting clients with other digital media hubs across Ontario and Canada.”

    It looks like it is a physical space with resources to help entrepreneurs.

    “The Hub [is] a new centre that will help emerging digital media companies grow and succeed in the global market. In particular, The Hub will look beyond the entertainment sector to focus on companies creating hardware and software for industries, including advanced manufacturing, healthcare and finance.”

    It’s great news for Waterloo Region. Further support of a great organization with Communitech as a leader. Additional attention and awareness to a growing tech sector with companies like OpenText and RIM. And additional real estate development and construction jobs.

    What I am curious about is the relationship of the Accelerator Centre to The Hub? And what is the relationship to nGen? to MaRS? to RIC Centre? to OCRI? to Innovation Synergy Centre? Ontario Centres for Excellence? Is there a plan for where each of these pieces fit together? How about where these programs fit relative to local Economic Development Corporations? Is this really about creating an innovation and entrepreneurship based economy? Or is it about investing in third-party, arms length, pseudo-government agencies without looking like big government?

    So it’s a mixed bag. This announcement continues to show technology entrepreneurship is a focus of the Ontario Government’s plan to help seed a new economy by bring new companies to market. But there seems to be a focus on real estate as the first step in enablement. Any thoughts?

  • Impact National Conference & Impact Ventures

    Impact Entrepreneurship GroupImpact_blog_redlogo started life as a student group designed to help promote entrepreneurship as a career path. It was started by Kunal Gupta, now the founder & CEO of Polar Mobile. It started as a conference for students, “a one-day event in Kitchener, Ontario attracting 150 delegates”. It is still primarily a conference/event machine for student entrepreneurs. However, with the creation of Impact Consulting and now Impact Ventures (see below) this is changing very quickly.

    The next INC_logoImpact National Conference is happening November 20-21, 2009 at the Westin Harbour Castle on Queens Quay in Toronto. The conference features some interesting speakers including some familiar faces: Andy Nulman, Sunjay Nath, Ali Asaria, Jordan Banks, Saul Colt, Austin Hill, Mike McDerment and others. It looks to be a great conference with a great list of speakers in Toronto.

     

    What is most interesting to me is the announcement of the Impact 2010 Programs, including Impact Ventures.

    Many talented youth with innovative ideas steer away from an entrepreneurial path due to the numerous challenges, including funding and guidance, which they inevitably face; Impact Ventures was created to remove these obstacles. Impact Ventures strives to provide youth entrepreneurs with the seed funding, advisory services, workspace tools, and strategic resources they need at the crucial idea stage to create a successful business. Based on the successful Y Combinator model used in Silicon Valley to bring the next generation of ideas to life, Impact Ventures will help propel new startups to achieve their business objectives.

    The selection process consists of an application form and an interview; there is no business plan required. During the pilot, three to four ventures showing the most opportunity for growth and long term sustainability will be chosen for the first batch. This three-month program will bring these budding entrepreneurs to Waterloo, the technology hub of Canada, to present them with all the components each entrepreneur needs to help build their venture.

    Components for each selected Venture:

    • $15,000 in seed funding for an average of 6% stake in the company
    • Mentors available for hands-on help as well as advise
    • Advisory services including Legal, Accounting, Banking and more
    • Office Space in Waterloo to create an environment of collaboration
    • Themed weeks where experts related to starting a business will provide their insights and advice
    • Consultants to help a new company fill gaps in its initial organization

    Impact Ventures is dedicated to the implementation of the entrepreneurial spirit amongst Canadian youth and values the independence of each entrepreneur. We are not interested in controlling the direction of the company as we trust in the entrepreneurs to make the best decision for their company. We believe in a non-regimented and friendly atmosphere where you are allowed to develop your startup with little interference, numerous resources and advice when you need it. Impact Ventures is set to revolutionize the startup industry by giving entrepreneurs an excellent spring board that will launch them to their success.

    I’ve been talking with members of team creating Impact Ventures including Taimur Mohammad and Ray Cao since my post "Incubators, accelerators and ignition” back in April 2009. It looks like the Impact team has taken up the challenge and will be using their network of advisors, past members to help guide and mentor new companies. It also looks like they’ll be providing funding and consulting services to help kick start these early ventures.  There is a Waterloo residency requirement, which potential a detractor for many students actually enables students in the VeloCity program a formalized incubation phase beyond their residence. For many non-University of Waterloo students this provides students access to the ridiculous support network available in Waterloo (I’m looking at you TechCapital and Communitech and BarCampWaterloo). This is something that is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

  • J2Play Acquired by Electronic Arts

    J2PlayThat was fast! Earlier today Electronic Arts announced the acquisition of J2Play in their latest quarterly report. Congratulations to Rob and the entire J2Play team!

    Waterloo based J2Play was founded by Rob Balahura in 2006 to create the world’s first mobile multiplayer game and SDK. The product that ultimately emerged was a “social wrapper” for online games, the first incarnation, a Facebook App that enabled games to be embedded within the social network and extended with chat and leaderboards.

    While the J2Play powered games themselves garnered limited user interest, Facebook having reined in on Apps in a catastrophic way for most, the team was hard at work establishing relationships with industry leaders who wanted in on some social network pixie dust.

    extremevpJ2Play was funded by Toronto’s Extreme Venture Partners. Running with the new fund was a smart move on Balahura’s part, they were instrumental in getting the company in front of fbFund and helping secure an additional $250,000 in follow on grant funding. Worth note, ExtremeVP has also since been able to secure follow on funding for Kontagent.

    The terms of the acquisition were not released, but ExtremeVP’s LPs have to be pleased. This early exit bodes very well and has demonstrated some savvy investing by partners, Amar Varma and Sundeep Madra.

  • Backbone Magazine’s Top 20 Web 2.0

    Backbone Magazine announced their “PICK 20 round of Canada’s leading Web 2.0 pioneers” that includes 4 companies form our list of web startups to watch, it’s a great list of Canadian technology companies and startups.

    The List

    1. FreshBooks, Toronto
    2. Myca Health, Quebec City
    3. CoveritLive, Toronto
    4. Viigo, Toronto
    5. Radian6, Fredericton
    6. Filemobile, Toronto
    7. BoardSuite, Toronto
    8. NowPublic, Vancouver
    9. Tungle, Montreal
    10. HootSuite, Vancouver
    11. ThoughtFarmer, Vancouver
    12. AfterCAD Online, Vancouver
    13. TeamPages, Vancouver
    14. The Manufacturing Innovation Network, Kitchener
    15. Well.ca, Guelph
    16. Clarity Accounting, Vancouver
    17. Voices.com, London
    18. Taglocity, Vancouver
    19. PollStream, Toronto
    20. Pixton, Vancouver

    The majority of the startups on the PICK20 list are in Vancouver (8) and Toronto (5). It’s a great list of Canadian startups.

  • ParkVu launch iTunes to Blackberry app

    i2b - iTunes Library on your BlackBerry Jeff Fedor and Terry Goertz of ParkVu launched i2b service today. The service allows BlackBerry Bold, Curve and Storm users to remotely retrieve their music their iTunes libraries.

    i2b makes some assumptions about user behaviour that allows the application to automatically sync users music to their BlackBerry. The i2b service is limited to 1Gb or 100 files. This requires users (and the applications’ designers) to make a decision about which music to sync by default. The i2b application makes some initial assumptions that Favorite Playlists, 25 most played tracks, and most recent iTunes library additions are the files that should be sync’d out of the box. It’s a great starting point for users and can be configured by users after the fact.

    The service creates a sync’d intermediate store of up to 1Gb or 100 songs in the cloud allowing users to access the sync’d files on their BlackBerry devices.

    Songs on their home computer can be retrieved even when it’s off. Up to 100 tracks (1GB maximum) from the i2b user’s iTunes library will be replicated to the Internet cloud, making them available from their BlackBerry even when their desktop or laptop is turned off. When their computer is on and connected to the Internet, all of their iTunes playlists are available on demand to their BlackBerry. Users can easily set i2b not to receive updates in areas where extra roaming charges would apply. i2b combines a BlackBerry application with a small application for the user’s home computer that works in the background with iTunes to allow users to replicate their playlists on their BlackBerry. i2b maintains any DRM restrictions and preserves the integrity of the user’s iTunes library.

    Hopefully the ParkVu team is able to quickly get i2b into the BlackBerry App World to enable broader distribution for their $2.99/month service. It would be fantastic to see them get similar exposure and distribution as Viigo in the BlackBerry App World’s Featured section.

  • Shutterborg launches

    shutterborg Earlier this week ReadWriteWeb covered the launch of Waterloo based Shutterborg. Shutterborg is the work of Jason Miller at developIT who specializes in design and development of web applications and RIAs. Shutterborg is built using JMDWiki and ameobaOS in PHP, Javascript against a MySQL database.

    Shutterborg is a basic online word processor. It lacks many of the features of it’s online competitors Google Docs, Zoho, and Buzzword. ReadWriteWeb hits the button about the key feature and its’ best uses.

    However, Shutterborg, a new online word processor does one thing really well which makes it a unique tool in this space: it lets you open any URL on the internet and edit it like an Office document.

    …the "Open from Web" option that is presented to you upon launch is a pretty clever invention. Here, you can enter in any URL on the internet to open an exact replica of that web page, with the CSS and images intact. You can then edit it as you desire which could obviously lead to some humorous creations.

    Shutterborg look  like an interesting self-promotion tool for developIT. It is an interesting execution and implementation of an AJaX application. It shows the strength and flexibility of the development frameworks used by developIT. Shutterborg also looks like a great proof-of-concept rich editing application for small businesses and non-technical users that need the familiarity of a word processor for editing web content. Great work by a small design firm to garner some online press and traffic of tools that will be useful in attracting and retaining clients.

  • VeloCity Project Exhibition

    Joey offers his summary of the University of Waterloo VeloCity Fall 2008 Project Exhibition.

    DSC_0105

    Velocity is a student residence, it is a dorm for 70 University of Waterloo students that encourages students to form teams and build projects to be showcased at the end of term Project Exhibition. This was the first group of students in the dorm and there were 16 student projects created. Each team of students provided a 3 minute pitch to the audience in the lobby of the Davis Centre. Amar Varma from Extreme Ventures had a Cdn$1000 prize for the “project team deemed worthy”.

    Sparknav was the winner of the $1000 from Extreme Ventures.

    1. Grocerus – A location-aware web app that matches grocery lists against hand entered grocery store data. Built in PHP.
    2. Gruup – A group buying service.  Built on Pligg in PHP.
    3. Sparknav – A mobile navigation application for use in enclosed (non-GPS) spaces. Prototype build for Android.
    4. Emoshion – A mobile application for location-based fashion news.
    5. Find It Off Campus – A web application for helping UW students use geography and location to find housing. Built in Rails.
    6. Szello Mobile – A mobile consultancy focusing on mobile user experience and UI design.
    7. Fading Hearts/Magical Aces – An anime styled choose your own adventure.
    8. Ufansi – A web application that helps connect donors with charities. Built on Drupal in PHP.
    9. Giftah – A web application that creates a marketplace for gift card exchange.
    10. ClassAlbum – A web application for managing classroom schedules and finding vacant rooms.
    11. Comic Battle – A multiplayer online fighting game built in Flash.
    12. My Story – A publish platform for authors.
    13. CashIn – A wallet with an electronic financial advisor that tracks your spending and provides warnings based on personal budgeting.
    14. inPulse – “Send email to my watch”. A Bluetooth watch that connects to your mobile device to display email, SMS, caller ID on your watch.
    15. Threadband – A causal game for the iPhone.
    16. Metacast – A YouTube or Blip.TV competitor. Allows users to create channels of existing RSS feeds. Built in PHP.

    The projects ranged from a series of ideas expressed on posters; to functioning software. As Rick Segal and Austin Hill conveyed at StartupEmpire, it is great to see entrepreneurs get up in front of an audience and give their pitch. One of the main reasons that entrepreneurs in other locations (particularly Silicon Valley) are better at giving pitches is the number of times they give the pitch and the amount of feedback they receive.

    Generally, the projects and the presentations were uninspiring. This is not to say that the entrepreneurs should be discouraged. But that I was underwhelmed by both the content and the presentation style. It leads me to one of the key takeaways from StartupEmpire. It is that we need to build a better formalized mentoring network for young entrepreneurs. When I look at programs like Techstars in Boulder, CO they are built on the notion of mentorship. Just look at their Mentors (there are 59 listed on the dang page): Brad Feld, David Cohen, Howard Lindzon, Jeff Clavier, Stewart Alsop. The mentors are from all over the US and cover a wide range of expertises in different industries and functions. If an entrepreneur can’t find a mentor that can listen to their situation and coach them on how they could perform, then the entrepreneurs shouldn’t be in the TechStars program. To this end, Jesse Rogers called me out on providing mentorship to the VeloCity students. I will be following up with Sean Van Koughnett to offer my time to mentor any of the teams or students.

    For the hell of it

    “If you build it, they [sic] will come.” – Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams 

    My first piece of advice for any of the VeloCity student is be realistic about what you are building. So many entrepreneurs appear to take the “Field of Dreams” approach to project selection. There is nothing wrong with this approach, however, just because you’ve built software that solves your problem doesn’t mean that there are customers, a potential market or any reason to raise funding. A programming exercise does not by default equal a multi-million dollar company. There are a great number of projects and tools that were developed as to solve problems for a developer (look at rake, ant and Capistrano) that are not businesses. They enable developers to be more productive but are not great businesses.

    Glimmers of hope

    Some of the projects like Sparknav, Emoshion, Find It Off Campus showed the first steps to becoming real businesses. They demonstrated the ability of the team to deliver functioning, stable code. They demonstrated a need in the community – Find It Off Campus already has 108 rental properties after less than 2 weeks of being live. And Emoshion, while too narrowly focused as pitched by the founders to be a great business, it demonstrates a potential white-labelable mobile social networking application that I’ve seen requested by ad agencies and marketers. These startups could benefit from time with experienced technologists, business development persons, investors, and marketers about how and when to monetize and grow their offering.

    It was great to see 16 short presentations from the residents of VeloCity. It will be interesting to see if the quality of the projects and outcomes increases at the end of the Winter 2009 term.