StartupNorth

Category: Toronto

  • Lean Startup Day @ MaRSDD on Dec 3, 2012

    Lean Startup Day Toronto - Dec 3

    The team at MaRS and JoltCo are providing local access to The Lean Startup Conference Livestream. Sure they’ve been crazy enough to invite me to host the event and a panel, but that shouldn’t keep you from attending. This is a full day event, it starts early (because we’re EST) and continues late (because the conference is PST).

    The event is divided into 2 streams:

    1. Stream 1 – Hands on stories, workshops and discussion with people in the local ecosystem
    2. Stream 2 – Livestream of the conference from California and the program looks outstanding with Matt Brezina, Danny Kim, Jocelyn Wyatt, Stephanie Hay as well as the usual luminaries (Eric Reis, Steve Blank, etc.)

    Great opportunity to connect with other founders and entrepreneurs. Talk about what is working, what hasn’t worked, and what else you can try. The benefit of having a strong community like we do in Toronto, is that we can get together and share. The community is not an end in of itself, it is a means to an end. And while entrepreneurship can be lonely, there is an accessible community of other entrepreneurs, mentors and others that can help.

    First, you need to put yourself in a path for these unexpectedly good things. Second, you have to be able to see these serendipitous events — you have to make the connections. And third, you have to be able to act them. The definition of luck is that you were willing to do something.” Lane Becker

  • Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, where is Montreal?

    Startup Genome Ecosystem Ranking

    The state of the Canadian cities in the StartupCompass Startup Ecosystem Report 2012 (Get the Report) is interesting. The Startup Ecosystem Report 2012 lists 3 Canadian cities:

    • Toronto # 8
    • Vancouver # 9
    • Waterloo # 16

    It leaves Montreal out of the top 20, it might very well be # 21. But it is very hard to determine without the full report that is due out later in the year. I also find it very strange, given the strong Montreal supporters in the  “Local startup ecosystem supporters” listed in the document:

    The data reminds me of other analyst driven research companies (think Gartner, Altimeter, etc.). The methodology leaves it open to bias. But it is a great stick in the sand based on our own community survey responses.

    “The index is based on data from more than 50,000 startups around the world who are using the Startup Genome’s Startup Compass, an automated analyst in the cloud that helps businesses make better decisions via benchmarks and actionable recommendations.”

    It will be interesting to continue to read the report and lessons for Canadian entrepreneurs.

  • Rush Week

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    The next week has a set of crazy awesome events for  startups, founders, marketers, community builders and the like in Toronto. (Check out a fuller list of events at Toronto Startup Fall Event List 2012). Personally it looks like I will be attending JoltCo Demo Day, Royal Canadian Mint Challenge Awards Ceremony and A Conversation with Brad Feld about Startup Communities. If you’re interested in understanding Toronto’s startup landscape and participating, you could consider this rush week without the complete stupidity.

    It feels like a crazy two weeks. I was in Halifax for HPX Digital last week. I skipped Hacking Health this weekend (Thing 1 learned to ride her bike this weekend, so it was totally worth skipping this event). This doesn’t event take into consideration that I’m going to see New Order on Oct 23 and there is a second show on Oct 24 with tickets still available.

    Oct 23 – JoltCo Demo Day
    Looks like an amazing cohort of startups presenting. Includes eProf, GreenGauge Mobile, ShelfLife, SlingRide, tout.it, Venngage. I’m excited to see the pitches/presentations and the progress that each of these teams has made. 
    Oct 25 – Royal Canadian Mint Challenge Awards
    What can I say I’m a judge…But seriously this event has an amazing lineup. David Wolman and some other big thinkers in commerce, currency and the future of money. The Royal Canadian Mint has done a great job.
    Oct 25 – AndroidTO
    This is a great lineup. Boris Chan of XtremeLabs who is on our 2011 Hot Sh!t List; Mike Beltzner of Wattpad; Oleg Kosteur of Pair – back after raising $4.3MM, etc. If you are building on Android and in Toronto. Get tickets to this event!
    Oct 25 – Startup Grind Toronto
    A fireside chat with Nikhil Kalghatgi, an NYC-based VC with Softbank Capital, whose portfolio includes Huffington Post, Zynga (back when the model was working), Gilt Groupe and Buddy Media.
    Oct 26 – TEDxToronto
    Always inspiring talks this year includes Steve Page formerly of the Bare Naked Ladies, Dr. Joseph Cafazoo of eHealth Innovation, Sonya JF Barnett and Heather Jarvis of Slut Walk (ok not purely startup but it should be interesting)
    Oct 29 – HackerNest Social
    A fun, laid back social event to connect with developers, designers, marketers, and others. Hosted by ex-Extreme Labs participant Shaharris Beh (LinkedIn) and others.
    Oct 30 – A Conversation with Brad Feld on the Starutp Community in Toronto
    We’re hosting this event. Do you love or hate the Toronto startup community? Lots of people talk crap, but this is an opportunity to participate in a conversation with Brad Feld. Brad wrote the “Boulder Thesis” about growing, building and sustaining an entrepreneurial community in Boulder, CO. Join us and help make Toronto a better place for startups.
    NOv 1 – Startup Ping Pong TO
    Ping Pong, startups, do I need to say any more? Get your tickets! And come out and hustle.

    “Community is the platform on which all of our individual actions stand.“

    There are a lot of great events happening in the next 7 days. My advice is pick one or two events to attend and participate. A long time ago, Mark Kuznicki quoted me as saying “The Community is the Platform” and others have elaborated. My advice is get out there and participate.

  • Event – Mint Chip Challenge & David Wolman #mustattend

    Interested in changing financial services, identity and the changing role of currency. The folks at the Mint Chip Challenge are hosting their awards ceremony this week. I was fortunate to be a judge for the submissions. And the awards are happening in Toronto this week. The event is open to everyone. There is a chance to talk with submission developers, the judges, and the folks at the Royal Canadian Mint. The group of attendees is unbelievable!

    It is going to be a very interesting night. The invited guest speaker is David Wolman who is a Contributing Editor at Wired and author of The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers–and the Coming Cashless Society. It is going to be an awesome night talking about the future of currency, digital technology, and identity.

    Guest Speaker – David Wolman

    David Wolman

    David Wolman is a nonfiction author and a contributing editor at Wired magazine. He has also written for publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Nature, Outside, Time, Newsweek, and Discover, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science Writing series. His long-form feature about revolutionaries in Egypt, “The Instigators,” was nominated for a 2012 National Magazine Award for reporting. Wolman’s latest book, The End of Money, is a globetrotting exploration of a topic that many readers have always taken for granted: the cash in their pockets. His previous books are A Left-Hand Turn Around the World and Righting the Mother Tongue. He is a graduate of Stanford University’s journalism program and a former Fulbright journalism fellow in Japan.

    BTW how did I end up on this panel of judges:

    The group will be in Toronto at this event. It is a small intimate event. If you are interested in commerce, currency or mobile tech, I’d attend just to get access to these people.

    Reserve your spot!

  • The gale of Creative Destruction at University of Toronto

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    University’s play a role in startup communities. Brad Feld’s Boulder Thesis (and I bring it up because he is coming to Toronto on October 30th) says that the people that attend and work at the university are the most important contribution to the startup community a university can make. The institutional components (labs, programs, and technology transfer offices) are less important according to Feld and when they are done wrong they are more damaging than helpful to startups.

    In Toronto you have a number of schools to feed the community; Ryerson, George Brown, York, OCAD, Sheridan, and of course the University of Toronto.

    The University of Toronto is the top ranked school in Canada and around the top 20 mark globally according to various rankings. As one of the oldest institutes of higher learning in Canada where some of the proudest scientific discoveries in the country’s history have been made (Insulin, stem cells, etc) there is a lot to talk about in terms of research. It is 21st globally in engineering and computer science yet it feels like it is hardly part of the conversation with regards to the startup community in Canada. That should be ok, they are a feeder to the community as Brad Feld defines it. I disagree with it being ok. I believe if there is a lack on entrepreneurial activity on campus that campus likely does not feed the community anywhere close to its potential.

    Beyond those that would feed the community there are many potential leaders on the campus from faculty (many have founded companies and had exits) to students that are confined by the silos that naturally occur in large institutions. Outsiders might point to MaRS as the main effort related to the university, it’s not, although it certainly has helped. There are a load of new programs that are working on building entrepreneurial culture on campus. The following is a non-comprehensive list:

    • Hatchery – The Entrepreneurship Hatchery is a hothouse for the best ideas of entrepreneurial undergraduate engineers.
    • UofT Hackers – a community of University of Toronto students who build great products.
    • Techno – “the flagship event of the IOS’s entrepreneurship education program, which also includes year-round programming for physical sciences and engineering students, faculty, and alumni at the University of Toronto.” This program has some amazing science focused companies.
    • Techna – “to shorten the time interval from technology discovery and development to application of such technologies for the benefit of patients and the health care system, and to facilitate the convergence of basic investigation, technology development and translational research”
    • UTEST – recently announcing it’s first cohort, UTEST “provides nascent software companies with start-up funding, work space, mentoring and business strategy support.”
    • Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman – Is focused on helping people build massively scalable companies. Folks like Nigel Stokes, Dan Debow, Dan Shimmerman, Tomi Poutanen, Dennis Bennie, Nick Koudas.

    All of these programs represent a positive focus on entrepreneurship and commercialization that is gaining momentum. The last one, Creative Destruction Lab, is particularly interesting (disclaimer, I am involved there) because it is located in the Rotman School of Management and is being designed to build a bridge across the silos as well as into the Toronto startup community. It also hosted a DemoCamp event at Rotman for the University community that attracted over 300 people (two thirds engineers) and 44 people applied to present in September. More are being planned and applications to be part of the lab program itself are open to all UofT students and Alumni until October 14th.

    As the entrepreneurial momentum builds on the University of Toronto campus I believe it will fill one of the gaps that currently exists in Toronto’s startup community by both educating students that feed the community and attracting faculty (and their spouses) from abroad that could be globally connected leaders in the community.

     

  • Toronto Startup Event List Fall 2012

    Getting ready for startup event fatigue? Toronto is an active ecosystem (based on total activity in the Startup Genome database). But there are a lot of upcoming events, here is my inital tracking of Toronto startup events list for fall 2012. The question is which events to attend and which ones to stay heads down and work. An actual guide would breakdown the benefits of each of these events. But I’m being lazy, I’ll add some commentary around each event. Or please feel free to add events and commentary. I’ll update the post.

    And for those of you thinking about attending everything, go read Mark Suster’s Be Careful not to become a Conference Ho.

    September 2012

    October 2012

    November 2012

    December 2012

  • Waterloo Region StartupFest

    Update: The team at Communitech recognize the gafoo. They are rebranding the event Tektoberfest (which I think is an amazing fun brand that is a fun play on Oktoberfest). Great work by Phil, Iain and a group of people that should be collaborating. 

    Update 2: Looks like the Communitech folks have updated their branding. Calling the event Techtoberfest and the previously mentioned Tektoberfest. They’ve also rounded out the line up with more great speakers including Devon Galloway and Michael Litt from Vidyard, Carol Leaman of Axonify. This means you’ll get 2 Hot Sh!t Listers (Devon and Eric) and 2 more incredible CEOs as part of the line up. Shaping up to be a great event.

    Techtoberfest, Waterloo Region, Oct 11-13, 2012

    Apparently the Communitech team went to the rip, mix and burn school of branding. Founders & Funders – check. StartupFest – check. I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I gave permission for the Communitech team my support for using Founders & Funders in Waterloo Region. No bitching about that. Not sure how Phil Telio feels about his trademark being reused. I’d be upset. But I digress, maybe serves as evidence that more of the operational money goes directly to entrepreneurs and companies that Communitech helps, because it’s not going into new branding.

    It looks like an amazing event!

    They have a great line up featuring:

    Given the strong history of Entrepreneur Week. And the speakers and types of events lined up, it is set to be a fantastic week.

  • Waterloo mafia invade Toronto

    I’m guessing this is confirmation that Waterloo Region is really just part of the Toronto ecosystem.

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    I have seen The Communitech HubSpot space. Not a bad name given the facility that houses Communitech is called The Hub, calling a smaller zone in Toronto “The HubSpot” would make sense. Other than one of the leading CRM vendors based in Boston that has raised a combined $65MM in financing is also called HubSpot. That’s got to be bad for SEO.

    I first saw the Communitech HubSpot space when I looked at moving the Maintenance Assistant offices earlier this year. It’s space located on the 2nd floor of 170 University Ave, that doubles as offices for Phil Deck. Phil was previously the CEO and Chairman of MKS Inc. which was acquired by PLC for $305MM in 2011. Phil is also on the Board at Communitech, which features other key players in the Waterloo and Toronto ecosystem including John Ruffolo of OMERS Ventures, Carol Leaman of Axonify, Ali Asaria of Well.ca and John Baker of Desire2Learn.

    “It’s been a lot of hard work and even more fun putting Waterloo Region tech on the map with the help of a hugely supportive community.”
    Iain Klugman, Communitech Marks 15 Year Anniversary of Supporting Waterloo Tech

    Communitech in Toronto

    It’s great news as Well.ca already has offices in Toronto. Previously Waterloo-based companies like Top Hat Monocle have moved to Toronto. There are a large number of Waterloo alums actively working in the Toronto startup ecosystem (I’m a UWaterloo alum along with Farhan Thawar, Zak Homuth, Zach Aysan, John Phillip Green, Dan Holowack, Oshoma Momoh, Bruce Chin, Garry Seto, Mike Rhemtulla, Monica Goyal and that’s just off the top of my head).

    Too bad they chose to leverage an existing StartupNorth brand for the event. The least they could have done was invite us. Oh well, they stuck with our own “invite only” model.

     

  • How to get the most out of AngelList: As a VC and as an Entrepreneur

    I love AngelList.  I truly believe it is disrupting the way early stage deals are being discovered and funded.

    When I was with BlackBerry Partners Fund (now Relay Ventures), I used AngelList to virtually meet and screen tons of companies.  I set up Super Fridays for myself, filling my mornings and/or afternoons with back-to-back 30 minute calls with 10-12 companies.  I really recommend this to any young VC looking for both dealflow and honing their game.  The velocity and juxtaposition of all these entrepreneurs, pitches, and companies really taught me how to evaluate deals along the VC spectrum:

    • (NO) polite and immediate no thank you
    • (NOT YET) check back with traction
    • (NOT SURE) send me your pitch deck so I can another set of eyes on this
    • (POTENTIALLY) let me bring this up at the next Monday partner meeting and see if someone bites
    • (YES) holy moly let me get John Albright right now

    All told, I probably screened 150-200 companies every three months on AngelList alone.  Ultimately, after all those Super Fridays, the firm funded two great companies: PubNub and ClearFit.

    Now as I sit somewhat on the other side, running Extreme Startups, I am spending time trying to get VCs to view our companies’ AngelList profiles.  To help figure out what companies should be doing on AngelList to help maximize their exposure, we at Extreme Startups recently had a session with Ash Fontana from AngelList to get his advixe.  Ash shared some best practices that I’d like to share with our community.  His advice included a lot of great tips and some common sense details that time-crunched entrepreneurs might glance over.

    Company Profiles

    1. Fill it out completely.  All the sections and tabs.  Comprehensive profiles are definitely the best so that there is both pertinent and substantive information.  One good tip is for the Founder Bios – include university info as well as some investors search for key schools.
    2. Be open / generous with information.  Specifically for the Fundraising tab, the Deal Terms should be filled out.  You don’t need to put valuation, but some indication helps investors looking for certain price ranges or structures (convertible note vs. equity).
    3. Use graphics – slides, screenshots, graphs, and videos to make a static page pop.

    Key tips to stand out

    • State the most original thing or function your product and company does.
    • Information about the market size is key.
    • Name something extraordinary about your company or founders.
    • State the hardest problem you solve.

    How do you get featured?

    For those lucky four startups on the feature page on the front page of AngelList, what is the process to get there?  It’s curated by Ash, who uses a number of different tools to track interest and traction.  Note that there are now over 80,000 startups on AngelList, with ~100 getting added every day.  Only five get featured per week – so only top 0.5% have the chance to be featured.  We are lucky to have our alumnus Granify on the feature page!  ShopLocket, SimplyUs, and Verelo all have great profiles as well (shameless plug).

    So what should you do after your profile is up?

    1. Be active.  It’s a social network.  Start and engage in conversations.  Follow interesting companies, entrepreneurs, and investors.  Comment on people’s status updates.  Refer interesting deals to other people.
    2. Be proactive.  Reach out to investors and advisors.  Ask for referrals and recommendations!
    3. Match your offline activity to your online profile.  Add an advisor or investor?  Make sure you AL profile reflects that.  Have your network post and share your traction and successes online!

    Other AngelList resources recently launched

    • AngelList Docs is in beta, but only for US incorporated companies for now.  It’s a great resource to close your deal online, industry standard docs and no legal fees.
    • AngelListTalent recently launched and helps startups recruit, and talent identify great jobs.  It uses a double opt-in structure, so you only get shown the jobs of the companies you follow.  It’s a great resource for recruiting.

    Hacking AngelList articles

    Lastly, Ash mentioned he loved and supported the hacking AngelList posts.  Somewhat analogous to the black art of gaming the iTunes stores, there are ways to succeed on AngelList outside of what is included in this post.  I just googled and found a couple of hits.  There are the most useful imho.

    Final thoughts

    I really hope more Canadian companies use and publish on AngelList, Gust, and others.  It’s a great way to get your profile out to Canadian, US, and international investors.  Not to mention its a great way to help entire cities and regions get noticed for great deal flow.  Maybe some young VC down south will start arranging their own Canadian Super Fridays…

    Please follow me on AngelList! (and Twitter).

  • Startup Ping Pong TO

    Startup Ping Pong TO - Nov 1, 2012 at SPiN Toronto The team at massively scaling Wattpad is hosting a ping pong tournament. The event is intended to bring together the startup community in Toronto by creating a inter-company ladder for ping pong.

    “We really want to start creating a dialog between startups in the city – no better way than to create some healthy competition!” – Tarun Sachdeva

    Companies will compete at the main event will be at SPiN Toronto on November 1st.

    There’s two ways to participate:

    1. Register a startup team
      The top 2 players will represent the startup in a single-elimination tournament. These are $50/team and are on sale now.
    2. Attend for casual play
      Anyone can buy tickets just to come play and network with others in the community. These are $10/person, and go on sale once team registrations are complete.

    In case you’re wondering, both of these include drink tickets and appetizers too.

    The bracket is filling up quickly. This includes Wattpad, Zynga, Jetcooper, FreshBooks, BNOTIONS, and others.