Category: Toronto

  • Wanted: Startups for a research study

    microsoft-office-vision

    Our friends at Microsoft are looking to Toronto as a hot bed of startup activity. Don’t take my work for it, the Startup Compass folks ranked Toronto number 8 on their Startup Genome report for startup activity. The study is being conducted by our friend Sam Ladner (LinkedIn), a Senior User Researcher in Microsoft’s Office Envisioning team. Sam is ex-Toronto, she joined Microsoft six months ago in Redmond. She researches trends in the future of work, and helps builds prototype productivity technology based on that research.

    She is looking for participants for this study to help Microsoft learn more about how startups organize themselves, choose technology tools, and their organizational culture. The data will be used to build technology for the next generation of Microsoft products.

    About the Study

    Participants would need to sit down with a researcher and possibly a note-taker for a 1-hour interview, but for observation they would go about their work day as normal. The researcher and note-taker would stay out of the way and simply observe and take notes.

    The researcher would take handwritten notes and some audio recording. With participants’ permission, the researcher would also record video and take still photographs.

    All data collected during the research would be used internally at Microsoft. The data would be held on a secure server that sits behind Microsoft’s firewall. This server is only accessible with valid Microsoft employee credentials.  Raw data such as photographs, fieldnotes, audio recordings and unedited video will only be accessible to the immediate research team. Edited video and/or photo slideshows will be shared with other Microsoft employees. The research report will not be published publicly, though the researchers may refer to the aggregated and anonymous findings in professional conferences or symposia. Participants may opt to have video of their offices and themselves to be included in these conferences or symposia, but by default their identities will only be known to internal Microsoft employees.

    We will build prototype technologies, based on these findings. We hope to build the next generation of tools that startups themselves need.

    Participate in the Study

    Microsoft is currently recruiting for an ethnographic study of startups and freelancers. The belief is the number of these workers will continue to grow, and Microsoft wants to know more about how self-employed information workers use technology. If you are a startup founder, Microsoft wants to meet you. The study involves face-to-face interviewing and some job shadowing. Microsoft offer a cash or software incentive in appreciation of your participation.

    Fieldwork will take place in early July.

    If you want to participate or would like additional information, please complete the form below:

    [gravityform id=”11″ name=”Microsoft Office Envisioning Research” title=”false” ajax=”true”]

     

     

  • Bay Street & Natural Resources – FinTech in Toronto

    TL;DR

    Toronto is a center of gravity for financial services. There aren’t a lot of financial technology startups in Toronto. There is a new Toronto FinTech Meetup. FIrst meeting is Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at the MaRS Commons (Suite 230, 101 College St.) hosted by Blair Livingston of Quantify Labs.

    Bay Street and Natural Resources

    [Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Blair Livingston LinkedIn , founder of Quantify Labs. Full disclosure: I’m an investor in Quantify Labs. Blair and I share a view that given the technology and talent available on Bay Street there should be a strong financial tech and startup community in Toronto. It is sad that my typing “toronto fintech” into Google results in a Montreal conference as the first result. ]

    Google Search for Toronto FinTech

    Great cities prosper and thrive, in part, because of their proximity to valuable resources. Arguably, the nearby resources were likely the main reason the city or village was situated in that location to begin with. However, it’s not enough to simply be near resources – gold still has to be mined – and we need to put those resources to work. Indeed, Canada is a country rich in resources; we have diamonds, gold, lumber, oil, gas and everything in-between. Canada’s strong economy is fuelled in part by this abundance of resources.

    However, over the last hundred years (or so) new types of resources have emerged – communities, technologies, groups, industries and people. Many of these resources don’t take the familiar form of something tangible and malleable, and for that reason can go unnoticed for a long time.

    One Hub to Rule Them All

    When we talk about finance, we invariably talk about New York City. We talk about Wall Street, the 1%, and a concentration of capital, services, people and technology that makes NYC one of the financial industry capitals (if not THE capital). It is the density of entrepreneurs, emerging companies and people that are one of NYC’s greatest resources. Consider the effects on start-ups built to service financial companies – this industry has supported, nurtured and allowed some of the biggest financial technology companies in the world to grow and flourish in its ecosystem.

    Bloomberg LP, with estimated yearly top line revenues of $10 billion, was started in New York. The city is host to a number of trading venues, back office technology providers, data aggregators and other interesting and innovative companies built on the resource of this community concentration. They even have an accelerator dedicated solely to financial services technology (appropriately named the FinTech Innovation Lab).

    In New York, FinTech flourishes by connecting the community and building an ecosystem that leverage existing resources. Financial institutions play a role in supporting the new ecosystem by acting as customers, acquirers of startups and hiring talent that develops in each of the early stage companies. Demonstrated by the support, both financial and at very high management levels, that FinTech Innovation Lab receives. It’s no wonder a large portion of all leading financial technology, especially institutional tech, is coming out of New York.

    Where is FinTech in Toronto?

    Toronto has a booming financial industry. Our banks are in excellent shape. The combined market capitalization of Canada’s six leading banks is more than $323 billion. And with that kind of market capitalization comes new problems, new opportunities and potentially new tech. The difficulty lies in the regulation, legislation, risk standards and software/hardware requirements. This poses challenges for developers and entrepreneurs in selling to financial services firms. It doesn’t matter if the solution is aimed at the retail (bank branches or individuals), corporate (the mother ship) or institutional (sales & trading, investment banking). Selling to financial institutions is not an easy process. It requires assistance in process, guidance (legal, technical, financial), support, experience and a depth of knowledge that is greater than just hustling.

    It is because of the complexity in the go-to-market and technical requirements, why very little innovation happens in financial services technology (aka fintech). It’s like the shadow cast on a wall – it looks menacing, like a panther or some dangerous beast – but in reality it’s only a little kitten. If you understand how to deal with the issues, and properly approach them, they aren’t all that scary (and a little help never hurts).

    But, with little innovation comes massive opportunity – there is so much opportunity in financial technology that it’s hard to decide where to begin.
    What Toronto needs is to start taking advantage of these resources – a thriving financial services industry. It’s already happening in pockets around the city, but it’s about time we started getting aligned to make a consolidated push together. I have had the opportunity of meeting with/hearing about/noticing some interesting financial tech companies in the city, who include:

    • D+H (payment/lending solutions)
    • Market IQ (data/social sentiment analysis)
    • FINMAVEN (data/social sentiment analysis)
    • eDYNAMICS (salesforce integration and consulting/cloud computing)
    • OANDA (FX trading platform)
    • Quantify Labs (institutional content/CRM platform)

    Who else should be on this list? Who are the startups, developers, investors and entrepreneurs that are interested in FinTech in Toronto? If the community is the framework, let’s get the community going. Let’s share stories and guidance on selling, building and launching financial technology. Let’s offer insight and experience into usage and problems. Let’s discuss. Let’s take advantage of one of this city’s most abundant resources. That’s what we want to do, and if you have any interest in financial technology, I would encourage you to sign up for the Toronto Fintech Meetup. We’re having our first ever meeting next Wednesday, April 10th, at the MaRS Commons, just a ‘get to know you’ – no speakers, no schedule, just an introduction to the financial tech community in Toronto.

    When I started in finance ask a desk analyst, I was repeatedly told – “it’s too bad, the low hanging fruit is gone” – well I took a walk out of that orchard, down the lane, and stumbled into another called Financial Technology. The fruit just isn’t low hanging, it’s on the ground – we just need a few more people to come help us pick it up.

     

  • Dog Yogurt or Why angel invest in Toronto

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    [Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Chris Maeda LinkedIn . Full disclosure, Chris as he mentions in the article, was an investor in Influitive, a company I co-founded. Chris is the CEO of Brick Street Software and an active angel investor. He’s looking for deal flow and we will be hosting a series of Founders & Funders in Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver and a few other cities to connect those that start high tech, high potential growth companies with those that fund them. Subscribe to Founders & Funder$ notification list for updates. If you’re looking to connect with Chris, my advice, is to reach out to him on AngelList, but hey, it worked for me and I’m a sucker for patterns.]

    I’ve been an angel investor in Toronto since 2011.  Towards the end of the dot.com days, I traded my SOMA loft for a New Hampshire cottage, partly as a by-product of some public company M&A transactions.  I began investing with a New Hampshire angel group in the mid-aughts.  I like living in NH, but the deal flow you see there is quirky.  There weren’t very many software deals, and New Hampshire has a lot of trees and cows, so the angel group ended up looking at non-software deals, like online wood pellet distributors and dog yogurt manufacturers.  When I was hearing the dog yogurt pitch, I had a what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here moment of clarity and quit the angel group.

    Then two things happened.  First, my company, Brick Street Software, decided to set up a customer support center in Toronto so I started coming to Toronto for business on a regular basis.  Second, Influitive was advertising a round on AngelList.  I met the Influitive founders (Mark Organ and David Crow) and, after verifying that they were not planning to enter the dairy products business [Ed. Note: I have a dairy allergy so I’m kind of anti-dairy], I invested in their pre-venture rounds and joined their board.  I recently invested in a second Toronto company and am working on a third.  I’m starting to see patterns for why Toronto is great place to invest.

    1. Activity, talent pool, and competition:
      As I tell my American friends, Toronto is the New York and Los Angeles of Canada.  So almost everything that happens, happens in Toronto.  I’m sure I just ticked off a bunch of people outside of the GTA, but this is reality when viewed from the US.  The software talent pool is pretty good; there are lots of startups but everyone complains about a shortage of capital.  So this forces Canadian entrepreneurs to have a bootstrap mentality and means that valuations are not outrageous.  The seed funding bubble has come to Canada but its not as gassy as the US.
    2. Lots of public money and assistance:
      the US does not have SR&ED credits, IRAP grants, refundable HST, or the network of publicly-funded innovation centers that you find in Ontario.  A Toronto company that I’ve invested in has probably raised as much money in grants as it has from investors.  This means the Canadian government is reducing my dilution and (hopefully) goosing my investment returns.  Thanks, guys.
    3. Corporate customers are nearby:
      Many of the large corporate buyers are headquartered in Toronto.  I rode along on a sales call to a large Canadian company.  I usually have to get on an airplane for something like this; in Toronto I can take a cab.   I can even take transit if I’m not in a hurry.
    4. Better for international business:
      There are a number of little things that make Canada a good place for an international business hub.  For a variety of reasons, Canadian employees are less expensive than Americans, and the NAFTA treaty makes it easy for Canadian companies to expand into the US with minimal US headcount.  You can have bank accounts in foreign currencies (e.g. US Dollars and Euros). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Canadian market is so small that startups have to plan for international expansion from day 1.
  • Finding next at the University of Toronto

    I’m guilty. I’ve been pandering to my alma mater, the University of Waterloo. I love Waterloo and UWaterloo startups. There is so much to love. There are Vidyard, Thalmic Labs, TribeHR, Desire2Learn, PostRank (acquired by Google), . There is even a Waterloo mafia in Toronto with Upverter, Top Hat Monocle, SocialDeck (acquired by Google), PushLife (acquired by Google), Xtreme Labs (Amar, Sunny, Farhan are all UWaterloo 1998 grads along with Social+Capital‘s Chamath) and others.

    But have you seen the awesomesauce that is originating at the University of Toronto:

    • Bumptop acquired by Google, founded by UofT CS Masters student Anand Agarawala
    • Sysomos acquired by Marketwire, founded by UofT CS prof Nick Koudas and Nilesh Bansal (UofT CS PhD candidate)
    • BackType acquired by Twitter, founded by Christopher Golda and Michael Montano, both UofT Electrical Engineering Grads
    • CognoVision acquired by Intel, founded by Shahzad Malik (UofT CS PhD)
    • ScribbleLive cofounder Jonathan Keebler is a UofT CS grad
    • Rypple acquired by Salesforce, founded by Daniel Debow (JD/MBA UofT) and George Babu (Engineering, MBA and JD)
    • Canopy Labs founded by Wojciech Gryc a UofT grad
    • Wattpad founded by Allen Lau (UofT Engineering) and Ivan Yuen (UofT MBA + UWaterloo Engineering)
    • DNNresearch Inc. acquired by Google was founded by UofT prof Geoffrey Hinton and 2 graduate students

    There are a number of spots on the UofT campus to find high potential growth startups and engineers. You can look at Creative Destruction Lab in the Rotman School of Business. You can look to the Entrepreneurship Hatchery in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

    You can also attend the Computer Science Department’s Research In Action Showcase on April 17, 2013.

    Add your events to our calendar.

    Research In Action 2013

  • An Apology to Laura Fitton

    Last week, I hosted GrowTalks in Toronto, a conference for entrepreneurs focused on metrics, marketing and growth. The conference brought an amazing set of speakers to Toronto. And personally I was excited to finally get a chance to hang out with Brant Cooper, someone I have been connected to digitally, but until last week had never met in person.

    Then something happened after the conference, that put Toronto, our community and our values as Canadians in a very negative light. I am hoping that there is lesson, perhaps a “teachable moment“, around treating folks with respect and what we should do when we mess up.

    Laura was wearing a dress with her company’s logo on it when she gave her talk. This exchange happened on Twitter:

    twitter.pistachio.conversation

    My goal is not to vilify the individual but to highlight the subtle interactions that often happen in the community that can make it more closed and less approachable (this is not the first time we’ve had a similar conversation). The goal isn’t to ostracize or vilify the individual, so please don’t start a witch hunt.

    I know this interaction does not represent what my Toronto startup community is all about. My community is generally respectful of people. I believe we are great hosts when folks from out of town visit to share their time, expertise and insight with us. My community understands people like Laura and Brant are rare and valuable and have a choice in how they invest their time and when they choose to invest it in us, we’re grateful.

    But I also believe a community is defined by how it reacts when folks do things that fall outside of what the community defines as acceptable. After seeing this interaction I worried that unless someone from Toronto made it clear that this isn’t what we’re about, our public silence would be seen as a statement that we think it’s OK to be disrespectful to conference speakers (or heck, anyone, for that matter). I’d like Laura (and anyone else watching from the sidelines) to understand that we noticed, and we are appalled.

    Which brings me to the second part of this teachable moment. None of us are perfect. I personally have a colorful history of amazing screw-ups. Miraculously, people forgive me. I think they forgive me because I let them know I’m not TRYING to be a jerk, but sometimes I hurt people anyway and if given the chance I will try hard not to do it again. They forgive me because I’m trying to be better.

    If you were the Tweeter in this particular incident there are things you could do to avoid the inevitable backlash caused by your poor behavior.  You could delete the Tweet. You could change your Twitter handle. You could remove your photo. But that doesn’t really convince anyone that you weren’t trying to be hurtful and it certainly doesn’t make Laura feel better. Apologizing does.

    In the future I hope we treat our speakers with more respect and if we blow it, we have the good sense to say we’re sorry and try better next time.

  • Growing successful companies

    Mark Evans (LinkedIn) wrote a blog post about my tweet. The blog post captures much of my sentiment and frustration around entrepreneurs. I commented about entrepreneurs learning about how to build a successful, high growth emerging technology companies. And there are lots of ways to learn what is considered a successful company. And a great way to learn is to learn from others that have been in the trenches. Debbie Landa (LinkedIn) and her team at Dealmaker Media have done most of the hard work for you.

    GROWtalks

    They have brought together a great event. Attending the event won’t bring you investment. It won’t make you a successful company. But it might increase the odds. They are bringing together an amazing set of entrepreneurs. And they are bringing them to Toronto and Montreal to share their experiences, stories about what worked and didn’t work for their companies.

    Local Events Matter

    You can and should get your ass on plane and head to New York City and San Francisco to attend events. But you don’t always have to. There are advantages to attending these events locally.

    1. Local connections can help you see The First Rule of Real Estate – you can find and connect with local talent. Whether that is for funding, moral support, hiring, etc. There will be people you do not know yet. Easy way to find them out.
    2. Travel costs are less for regional travel. If you live in Ottawa or Montreal or Halifax, you can make it to Toronto or Montreal by plane, train or automobile for a lot less than travelling elsewhere.
    3. Travel time is lessened. You can spend a day.

    This all assumes that the event is providing amazing content that you would travel to consume.

    World Class Content

    The content that Debbie and team have assembled is unbelievable. If you don’t know who these people are, my advice is take a little bit of time and use the GOOG. These are entrepreneurs that have seen the ups and downs, the ins and outs of successful businesses.

    Every single person is worthy of a keynote presentation at a larger conference. This is not a vanity presentation. They are on stage sharing information about their specific expertises in building successful businesses. It’s not Mark Organ talking about random things, which is fun, but Mark Organ talking about leveraging disruptive technology in fund raising. Holy crap! You want to learn how Mark used AngelList, LinkedIn and other tools to raise 2 of the most impressive rounds of capital in Canada…quickly.

    Every single person speaking, every one, will be providing expertise about what they did to build a successful company.  Here is the list of presenters in Toronto:

    You want more details, check out my first post. Do your homework. But this is an amazing opportunity.  The lineup is different in Montreal. It includes 2 of my close friends, but they are 2 of the best people in helping startups become successful. Mark MacLeod and Alistair Croll . Unbelievably kind and intelligent people, who beyond that know WTF it is startups need to do to become successful. They like the others are the best of the best.

    Our Commitment to Successful Companies

    There are initiatives like Startup Visa Canada and the Upside Foundation that we strongly support. And we’re committed to helping provide education to entrepreneurs to help them to build successful companies.

    We’ve committed to provide a limited number of $100 discounts. I am not going to tell you how many. If you are building a successful startup, and you want to hear the tactics and advice of other entrepreneurs that have been massively successful in building their startups, sign up now and save $100 before the discount expires.

    • GrowTalks Montreal – February 19, 2013Register use promo code: startupnorth
    • GrowTalks Toronto – February 21, 2013Register use promo code: startupnorth

     

  • The White North – It’s Great for Seed-Stage Startups

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    Sit down with any Canadian entrepreneur and you’ll often hear similar grievances about the Canadian startup community. The consensus seems to be, “It’s getting significantly better, but we’re risk-averse, funding is hard to come by, and the US is a bigger market.” We are a a startup that decided to move from Silicon Valley (as part of the Y Combinator Summer 2012 cohort) to Toronto. We’ve seen a wider  range of startups and startup hubs than most. We’ve been able to compare and contrast the communities, and have a lot of faith in the Canadian startup scene as a whole. We want to share why.

    As Canadians, it’s easy to look South and feel overwhelmed. The United States is ten times bigger in terms of economy and population. It’s difficult to fault an ambitious entrepreneur for wanting to move South and capture a significant chunk of a significant market. Likewise, no maturing startup can avoid the US as a potential market…

    The question for us was: what are the pros and cons of being a seed-stage startup in Toronto, or Canada as a whole?

    Why Toronto? And Why Now?

    Seed-stage startups rejoice — the Toronto/Waterloo community is a great place for seed-stage startups. Before I begin listing the benefits, I do want to iterate that it’s all one big place [Ed.: Can’t disagree here, when you fly in to SFO or SJC, it’s still the Bay area]. At times, it seems unfortunate to me that Toronto and Waterloo are treated as two separate entities in which a startup would operate. Sure, driving down Highway 401 isn’t the most enjoyable experience, but your startup will face bigger challenges than congestion during rush hour.

    1. Talent Pools

    The universities spanning the Greater Toronto Area and surrounding cities boast over 200,000 undergraduate students, many of which are studying engineering, computer science, or other technical fields. The Universities of Waterloo and Toronto both boast high quality math, computer science, and engineering departments, many of which are regularly hounded by big and small companies for potential recruits.

    Hiring was a key factor for us when choosing our base of operations. Being able to pick from so many students, let alone professionals and developers working for large corporations, helped make this an easy choice. Better still, few startups actively approach this population — most of the keen, startup-oriented folks end up traveling to San Francisco to look for jobs. By bringing the opportunity to their doorsteps, we made the sometimes frightening decision of jumping into a startup significantly easier. Our recruits get all the joys of working for a Silicon Valley-funded startup without the hassle of immigration, relocation, and saying “goodbye” to towns they know and love.

    2. Excited Customers

    Few people realize that Toronto was the first city in North America to surpass 1 million Facebook users. Move over New York, and see you later, San Francisco! Not only are Canadians notoriously friendly (collecting feedback on your product will be easy!), they are also hungry and interested in innovative products. Others have argued that Canadian cities are good grounds for experimentation as well, citing the fact that we tend to focus on stable techological trends and avoid fads that might only survive in more stereotypically tech-crazy startup hubs.

    While I wouldn’t go so far as to cite this as a reason for basing your startup in Toronto, it means that you don’t risk finding a product-market fit by being based here. Combined with our own strong network and following here, it was a safe bet for us to settle down and start experimenting with an initial set of corporate customers or pilots.

    3. Low Cost of Operations

    Compare your average salary, apartment rental, and parking spot in Toronto to those of US startup hubs like Silicon Valley or New York, and you’ll see a noticeable difference in pricing. The Toronto/Waterloo area enjoys a significantly lower cost of living than many other hubs, which often means that your own expenditures will be significantly lower — if you’ve already raised angel or seed funding, this essentially boils down to a longer runway for your company.

    Pair the low cost of living with Canada’s many government-supported startup programs, and your cost of developing a product can be 40% of what it would cost in the US. Better still, basing your operations in Toronto/Waterloo mean you have a 90-minute flight to major American cities, which could easily become your next point of contact or expansion for your products. All the benefits of a large global city, and few of the costs!

    4. A Changing Startup Landscape

    Startup entrepreneurs are often goaded by their investors to ride waves of industrial changes and take advantage of major societal shifts. A quick look at AngelList valuations by city and startup hub shows startups in Toronto/Waterloo are holding their own, on a global scale. Our own seed-stage round had investors from both sides of the border, and many regularly told us they see Canada as a great opportunity to expand their market reach outside Silicon Valley (or the US as a whole).

    As more Canadian companies have fantastic and successful exists — think Radian6, Eloqua, or BufferBox — we’ll see more investor interest in our region. If you’re an entrepeneur keen on surfing an investor wave, getting ready for what interest might come to Toronto is a great place to start.

    Planning Ahead

    As with any discussion on the benefits of a major and complex decision such as base of operations, one should not forget what they do give up by being based here. It’s important to plan ahead, and any startup choosing a base of operations in Toronto, particularly when planning to expand to the US, should plan around this.

    1. Don’t forget your friends down South

    It’s easy to limit yourself to your geography. Remember that expanding into a city or market in the US means you first need to develop a network there. Are you planning to raise a VC round in three months? Planning to expand from Toronto to the New York City market in six? Start building those networks now. It is amazing (or gloriously terrifying!) how important serendipity is to the success of some startups. Ensure you have a network in these cities, even if the connections are only digital.

    In our case, we keep in touch by attending conferences on a regular basis, maintaining e-mail contact with the companies and VCs we admire, and constantly ask ourselves if it’s time for an in-person visit.

    2. Use Global Benchmarks

    One of the most important things a startup can do is to do is benchmark itself against its industry, or other startups. Know what valuations your competitors are getting, and what sorts of employees they are hiring. Most importantly, ensure you’re using global benchmarks. While being the best “Canadian” startup is nice, remember that to truly achieve global scale, you’re competing against the best startups in the US, China, Israel, and everywhere else. It’s easy to become complacent by forgetting about these massive centers of innovation.

    Indeed, one of the biggest benefits of our being in the Y Combinator program has been seeing how our batchmates work, move quickly, and succeed at nearly any cost. Seeing this hunger and drive has left us with no excuse for avoiding success. We use our network of VCs, friends around the world, and startups we admire as a way to regularly benchmark ourselves and ensure we’re progressing at a decent pace. Case in point: the Big Data industry is growing over 40% every year — and we aim to outperform it.

    3. Pay It Forward

    And please, remember to pay it forward. If you choose to grow, develop, and succeed in these fine, frigid cities of ours, ensure you give back to the communities. As Brad Feld so eloquently wrote in “Startup Communities”, the only way to make a startup hub successful and grow is through having entrepreneurs leading the community, to have them involved for the long run, and to be inclusive.

    Sometimes that’s easier said than done, as evidenced by Zak Homuth’s view on Toronto startups in the Startup Genome: “We have all been somewhere else, worked somewhere else, and got money somewhere else.” Success breeds success, and it is important that for those of us who grow and succeed through the benefits of our community also give back to it.

    To us, building a successful community is as rewarding as building a successful startup. We aim to ensure that every single person passing through or working with Canopy Labs will leave with better career prospects, more ambition, and the necessary training to succeed in whatever they do. Not only does this make it easier to hire great, talented individuals, it also ensures we’re constantly developing as a team.

    Conclusion

    While the Toronto startup community is getting more attention in recent times, there is still a great deal of work to be done. Toronto is a fantastic place for startups and Canopy Labs is a case in point. We’re a six person startup with a significant runway and exciting customers, and all of this is enabled by our being in Toronto. At the same time, we’ve got a global mindset: we benchmark ourselves against all players in our industry, and are constantly building and growing our networks in new cities and countries.

    We’re proudly Canadian, comfortably Toronto-based, and our office is on Richmond / Spadina in the heart of Toronto’s startup hub. We’re excited and happy to be here, and feel we’re growing faster here than we could hope to grow anywhere else. Drop by any time!

  • GROWtalks in Toronto Feb 21

    GROWtalks

    Debbie Landa, Clare Ryan and the Dealmaker Media team are part of the reason that I love GROWConf and GROWtalks. They put on amazing events by putting entrepreneurs first, foremost, and front and centre. They are bringing GROWtalks to Toronto (Feb 21) and Montreal (Feb 19). And we have a discount code at the end of the post.

    “A hands-on playbook for creating startup success”

    I like learning by example. It’s a mixture of seeing what worked for someone else, and then trying the appropriate tactics customized for my situation. The challenge is trying to do with more efficiently than 9 or 10 coffee meetings. GROWtalks brings together the best entrepreneurs, who are killing it, and has them present what is working for them. THis is what GROWtalks is, an event for entrepreneurs with entrepreneurs sharing their strategy, tactics, metrics and successes, even the failures. (Full disclosure: I am MCing the GROWtalks event, however, I am not being compensated for this, but I do get the opportunity to participate and learn).

    Check out photos from the 2012 GROWtalks event in Vancouver:

    It’s rare we get this many awesome startup founders all talking about the hard part of their business. I know that all of these folks will be around throughout the day, they’ll be hanging out, answering questions. It’s going to be a fantastic day. Check out the line up:

    I might be biased. My employer is an investor in some of the presenters. My cofounder is one of the presenters. But I’m honestly stoked about the speakers. I’m really looking forward to hearing Beltzner, Rutter, Fitton and Morrill. The mix of product, early customer acquisition and understanding lifetime value are converations I have with almost every founder. I’m very curious to hear the opinons, experiences and thoughts of this group.

    Part of my MCing was to request StartupNorth logo tattoos for all the speakers (we’ll see if that happens), and a discount code. Register before Februrary 1, 2013 and get 10% off (use promotional code: startupnorth). It reduces the ticket price from $195 to $175.50.

    GROWtalks Toronto

    February 21, 2013, 10am-4pm

    Size: 200-300 people
    Speakers: 9 Industry leaders
    Time: 10am-4pm
    Website: www.growtalks.com
    Toronto: http://www.growtalks.com/events/toronto/

    GROWtalks is a one day conference focused on how to create simple, actionable metrics, and use them to make better product and marketing decisions for startup success. Industry experts will share actionable advice to startup teams on how to improve design, product and customer development, acquisition, retention, and more.

    Topics Covered:

    • Customer Development
    • UX/UI Design
    • Growth Hacking
    • Customer Retention
    • Fundraising
    • Customer Engagement
    • Product Development
  • It’s indescribably beautiful!

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    On the surface this might not seem like a Canadian success story, Eloqua was acquired by Oracle for $871MM. Eloqua by all appearances is a publicly traded company with headquarters in Vienna, VA. But they are probably the best kept secret in the Toronto technology community. Eloqua was founded in Toronto in 1999 by my friend and co-founder, Mark Organ (LinkedIn,) along with Abe Wagner (LinkedIn) and Steve Woods (LinkedIn, ). This is nearly a $1B dollar deal that was born and breed in Toronto (yes, I can do basic math it’s $129MM short but that’s pocket change and unlike when Siebel acquired Janna in 2000 for $975MM at the time of the deal the price changing with the Siebel’s stock price, this is an all cash deal). I had started figuring that it would be Salesforce that acquired Eloqua, so I am surprised that it is Oracle, and so soon after their IPO. Here is a great analysis of the marketing automation industry and the assessment for Marketo, Act-On, ExactTarget, etc.

    Congratulations to all of the Eloqua employees. I continue to hear stories about an amazing group of people including:

    It’s an amazing story that still has a big chunk of the product development team based in Toronto. Congrats to the entire Eloqua team and alumni.

  • All roads lead to Toronto

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    Regardless of where we fall in arbitrary rankings, Toronto is an amazing city. And it seems that all roads lead to Toronto. With the amazing teams from both StartupFest and GrowConf arriving in the dead of winter.

    StartupFest Elevator Tour

    Check out the crazy awesome pitches and feedback from StartupFestival in Montreal.

    Just look at it this way. Here is an amazing chance to get to hang out with entrepreneurs, founders, investors and other crazies in our ecosystem at the top of the CN Tower. Let me repeat that, at the top of the CN Tower. Before you do the math about how much fun this is going to be, just realize that a ticket to ride up the tower is $23.99 + HST. For essentially the price of the ride up, you get an event focused on entrepreneurs. I do some basic math, you add a drink and some h’orderves  and your at break even. Great chance to have some fun, make some meaningful connections, and potential generation press and relationships that pay off.

    GrowTalks

    GROWtalksGROWtalks is happening in Toronto and Montreal. I know that Clare, Debbie and team are bringing some amazing entrepreneurs to share and educate. Just like they for GROWtalks at GrowConf 2012 in Vancouer.

    GROWtalks is a one day conference focused on how to create actionable metrics, and use them to make better product and marketing decisions for startup success. Industry experts share advice to startup teams on how to improve design, product and customer development, acquisition, retention, and more.

    I hear that the list of speakers is set to include the likes of Brant Cooper, Dan Martell, Rand Fishkin and other amazing speakers. This is a great one day event at a reasonable price point, I’m hearing $199 for entrepreneurs, so get access to entrepreneurs and experiences.

     

    We’ll have more on both of these events. Get your tickets early!