StartupNorth

Category: Toronto

  • Don’t Panic: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Toronto Startup Ecosystem

    Rob Go published his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boston Tech Community, and it got me thinking about how much of the Toronto Tech scene has changed over the years. This is a my view of the players and contributors in the Toronto Startup Ecosystem. It is not a comprehensive list. It’s designed to be an overview. If you want more detail, seek it out.

    The first rule of this community is:

    ” Create more value than you capture.” – Tim O’Reilly

    If you can’t figure out how to add value, then you are doing it wrong. It probably means that you’re ruining the experience for someone else.

    Monthly/Semi-Regular Events

    • Mentor Mondays – hosted by Howard Gwin of OMERS Ventures. Probably the best networking event for funded and looking to get funded startups. Includes Howard’s network of CEOs, founders, consultants and other crazies that can provide real world advice. This is the best CEO event in the city if you can get an invite.
    • Founders & Funders – An invite only event hosted semi-regularly by use here at StartupNorth. It’s designed to bring together the people the start high potential growth companies and the people that fund them. It is invite only, requirements vary if you are a founder or a funder. For funders, we like to see 2 investments of >$100k in the past 12 months, and we try to vette founders to be fundable (and we’re often wrong)
    • SproutUpTO – Hosted by Jon Spencely and the Sprouter crew. Roughly monthly meetup that follows the startup demos and a big name keynote speaker. Event is approximately $12 to attend. Has hosted big names like: Daniel Burka, Tony Conrad, Matt Meeker, Sean Ellis, and others. Many of the keynote speakers and the startups are “high potential growth technology companies” but I find that  the audience and the networking is mixed.
    • TechTalksTO – Great semi-regular series of talks by technologists for technologists.
    • StartupGrind TO – Semi-regular access to startup speakers including Paul Singh, Eric Migicovsky, and others
    • Ladies Learning Code – focused on teaching development skills to newbies (of all genders).
    • DevTO – monthly developer educational events. Broad focus on industry trends and specific development environments.
    • Creative Mornings TO – Monthly breakfast series for creative types. Tends to aim more agency side but a great show.
    • Pecha Kucha TO – Pecha Kucha is the format that started it all. 20 slides x 20 seconds. It’s another event that tends to be aimed more at designers and agency folks. Presentations are always interesting.
    • Third Tuesday Toronto – Primarily for communications professionals (think PR and media types) with a focus on digital media and emerging best practices.
    • DemoCamp – I have hosted DemoCamps since 2005. They started as a way for entrepreneurs, developers and designers to get together and share what they’ve been working on. They grew to >500 person networking events. There are currently no plans to host anymore.

    Smaller Events & Meetups

    • Toronto Ruby Brigade – Great learning series primarily aimed at beginners, but becoming more advanced, includes book club series, hack nights at Influitive, and lessons/lectures about specifics of building and craft in Ruby.
    • Rails Pub Nite – Totally a social event. It’s a great way to figure out who is hiring in the Ruby scene and to meet others using Ruby. Hosted by the Unspace crew at the Rhino on Queen Street West.
    • Django/Python Toronto – This is a set of crazy Python devs. It is also not for the “recruiters” or bullshit artists. Go if you are using or considering Python on a project and you want to talk to the best. And don’t be a douchebag.
    • HTML5 Web App Developers – This is an educational event. It is broadly HTML5 and web app technologies. But the sessions are well put together and cover the craft. Good beginner through advanced.
    • Hacks/Hackers Toronto – The intersection of journalists and technologists. This is a very strong community. But it is really focused on the intersection of journalism and new tech.
    • StartupDrinks Toronto – A monthly social for entrepreneurs. Most recently hosted at Hotel Ocho on Spadina between Queen & Dundas. It’s noisy. I cofounded the event, though I don’t attend very often anymore. I don’t find that I benefit from the networking. And if I really wanted to drink with friends, well I do that.
    • NerdLearn – I have never been. It is hosted by The Working Group and Dessy Daskalov who I think is amazing. I’m still bummed out that she turned down my job offer.
    • TiE Toronto – Interesting with Haroon Mirza as part of the organization committee. Great mentoring group with startups like Cognovision and Verold participating the in the recent past.
    • MobileStartupsTO
    • LeanCoffeeTO – These happen regularly, every Tuesday at 8am. I don’t find a lot of value in the discussions. So maybe I’m doing it wrong. If you are new to the lean methodology, or you just want to talk with other entrepreneurs that are using lean.
    • Hadoop User Group  – Relatively new event. People look awesome. Focused on Hadoop, Map/Reduce and data science. I think it’s going to be good.
    • GeekGirlsToronto – Great networking group aimed at connected geek girls, tech savvy women in the GTA. Events cover everything from women founders to Arduino.

    Annual Events & Conferences

    • Canadian Innovation eXchange (CIX) – This i An event hosted by Achilles Media, has proved to be a launching ground for some of Toronto’s best acquisitions.
    • HoHoTO – Annual holiday party. It is a must attend event.
    • TiE Quest – hosted annually. $50k non-dilutive prize. Hosted at MaRS. Previous winners include Cognovision.
    • TEDxToronto – Annual event using the TEDx. Great community production.
    • Mesh – Could be described as the grand daddy of Toronto 2.0 events. Usually happens in the spring. Mesh is a 2 day event that focuses on how the web is evolving and affecting every part of our lives: government, policy, marketing, entertainment, etc. Produced by Mark Evans, Rob Hyndman, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram and Michael McDermett.
    • OCE Discovery – Event aimed at government support of local innovation. I have paid for a ticket in the past, particularly when they’ve had keynote speakers I wanted to hear. But generally this is an event for those connected with OCE. Next one will be May 27 & 28, 2013. Strong focus on companies that have been supported by OCE with strong manufacturing, ICT, and healthcare showing.
    • ThroneOfJS – was the latest in a series on Ruby and Javascript events hosted by the Unspace crew. Prior to Throne of JS, the Unspace crew hosted Future Ruby. These are great local events with world class talent.
    • AccelerateTO – hosted by the C100. Great social event. Keynote at the last one was from Google Canada, interesting but not stellar.
    • AndroidTO – hosted by the BNOTIONS crew. 3rd year. Focused on education around mobile development.

    Online Resources and Newsletters

    Recruiting Resources

    University, Government & Not-for-Profit Resources

    Coworking Spaces and Accelerators

    Entrepreneurial Design & Development Firms

    Canadian Investors

    Places to Hang

    • Sense Appeal – Great coffee. Lots of folks from Mozilla Toronto, ChickAdvisor, Nascent Digital and others.
    • Dark Horse on Spadina – It’s downstairs from the Centre for Social Innovation. Lots of
    • Jimmy’s Coffee – Very likely to run in to Rocketr, Jet Cooper, EndLoop Studios, Guardly or Massive Damage.
    • HackLab.to – great hacker space in Kennsington Market, and you’ll see something that will blow your mind, guaranteed. More anarchist hacker than startup entrepreneur. But its an amazing collective of people.

    Journalists and News

    Looking for Offices Space?

    • I used Jay Littlejohn at Cushman & Wakefield. He helped Influitive and others.
    • Centre for Social Innovation with 215 Spadina and the Annex has great brick and beam space.
    • BNOTIONS has a large space in St. Lawrence Market. They are actively looking for sublet tenants.
    • Companies are located all around Toronto.
      • Wave Accounting is near Queen & Carlaw
      • Wattpad is near Yonge & Sheppard
      • Top Hat Monocle is near Yonge & College
      • There is a big cluster near Queen & Spadina: Influitive, Guardly, Extreme Startups, Endloop Studios, Jet Cooper, Rocketr, Unspace, BuzzData, Big Bang Technology, The Working Group, and more.
      • Facebook Canada is near Yonge & Eglinton
      • Dayforce is located near Yonge & York Mills
      • Xtreme Labs is near Yonge & King St.

    Scaling Companies to Watch (probably hiring)

    Some to Follow

    Entrepreneurs, Thought Leaders, Gadflys and Others

    • April Dunford  – April is probably the best marketer in Canada. If you are a startup and you are marketing, thinking about marketing or just want to learn about marketing go read her stuff. She’s the BEST.
    • John Philip Green  – John is an EiR at Hedgewood. In the past he was the CTO at CommunityLend/FinanceIt.ca. He was also the founder of LearnHub. His style is second to none.
    • Zak Homuth  – Founder of YC alumni Upverter.
    • Farhan Thawar  – VP Engineering at Xtreme Labs. Absolutely amazing. I think he’s Hot Shit.
    • Jonas Brandon  – My friend and cofounder of StartupNorth. He’s been in at least 2 deals I wish I listened to him on.
    • Amar Varma  – Founder of Xtreme Labs, Extreme Venture Partners, hustler extraordinaire.
    • John Ruffolo  – Runs OMERS Ventures, previously at Deloitte & Touche. Connected at all levels.
    • Howard Gwin  – I’ve referred to Howard as the best VC in Canada. He has the midas touch.
    • Matt Golden  – New fund. Making waves. He’s going to go far.
    • Mark Organ  – Founder of Influitive. Just raised a massive round. Previously founder of Eloqua.
    • Mike Beltzner  – Director of Product at Wattpad. Previous ran Firefox at Mozilla.
    • Mark Surman  – Director of Mozilla Foundation. Unbelievably forward thinking in technology, community and family.
    • Scott Pelton  – I think Scott had the best IRR of any Canadian VC. He’s kicking off Round13. Someone to watch once the fund is closed.
    • Sandy Scott – Partner at Tandem Expansion Capital. Time in Boston and Silicon Valley. HBS. Very smart.
    • Sue McGill – Executive Director of JoltCo accelerator at MaRS.
    • Krista Jones – Practice Lead for ICT or ICE at MaRS
    • Andrew Peek – Founder of Rocketr, previously at Freshbooks.
    • Andy Yang  – Andy runs Extreme Startups. They had a small but amazing first class.
    • Satish Kanwar  – Founder at Jet Cooper. Founder at Lean Coffee TO.
    • Chris Eben  – Partner at The Working Group. Organizer of StartupWeekend.
    • Derek Smyth  – Partner at OMERS Ventures. Doing amazing deals. He’s the work horse.
    • Roger Chabra  – Partner at Rho Ventures. Dividing time between Montreal, Toronto, SF, NYC, and other places. New fund. Very stylish.
    • Sunil Sharma – Connector at Extreme Startups. Connected to more people than are in Canada.
    • Allen Lau  – Founder and CEO of Wattpad. Big vision. Just raised from Khosla Ventures, Union Square and GoldenVP.
    • Kirk Simpson  – Founder and CEO of Wave Accounting. Big raise from CRV, Social+Capital, and OMERS.
    • James Lochrie  – Product lead and founder at Wave Accounting.
    • Adam Goucher  – Principal at Element34. Focused on Q&A and testing. Wrote Beautiful Testing.
    • Greg Wilson  – Founder of Software Carpentry. Loves the Python. Former CS prof at UofT. Wrote Beautiful Code.
    • Heather Payne  – Founder of HackerYou and Ladies Learning Code.
    • Kunal Gupta  – Founder of Polar Mobile and Impact at UW.
    • Joseph Puopolo  – Founder of Printchomp. Previously at StickerYou
    • Mark McQueen  – President & CEO of Wellington Financial, Chair of the Toronto Port Authority. Great blog focused on Canadian growth captial.
    • Daniel Debow  – Founder of Rypple. Part of the Workbrain diaspora.
    • David Ossip  – Founder of Dayforce, Workbrain and other ventures.
    • Richard Reiner  – Angel investor and operator. Founded security firm Assurent. Sold eNomaly.
    • Saul Colt  – The Smartest Man in the World. A great PR/media hacker. Expert at word of mouth and social media.
    • Amber MacArthur  – Entrepreneur, television host, podcaster. Writes for Fast Company.
    • Leila Boujnane  – Founder of Idee and TinEye. Often host of DemoCamp, GeekGirlToronto and other events. Wickedly smart.
    • Jesse Rodgers – Founder of TribeHR, former director of UW Velocity, now running Rotman Venture Lab. Strong insights in to incubator metrics.
    • Dan Servos – CEO of Locationary. Previously sold SocialDeck to Google.
    • Rob Hyndman – Awesome startup lawyer. Founder of Mesh.
    • Mark Evans – Former/sometimes current journalist. Consultant focused on startup marketing and media communications. Founder of Mesh
    • Michael McDerment – CEO and Founder of Freshbooks. Founder of Mesh
    • Rick Segal – Founder of FixMo. Previously VC at JLA Ventures.
    • Ali Ghafour – Founder and CEO of ViaFoura
    • Suresh Bhat – Associate at ExtremeVP
    • Bram Sugarman – Associate at OMERS Ventures. Previously at Uken Games and Extreme Ventures.
    • Damien Steel – Senior Associate at OMERS Ventures
    • Jennifer Lum – Cofounder Adelphic Mobile, previously at Quattro Wireless. Extreme Startups mentor.
    • Estelle Havva – Industrial Technology Advisor at IRAP. Been involved in this community since the beginning. Practical and can help you with IRAP
    • Ilse Treurnicht – CEO of MaRS. Big budget, big real estate, big salary and hopefully big impact.
    • Albert Lai – Working on Big Viking Games, previously Kontagent, Bubbleshare and others. Original cohost of DemoCamp with me.
    • Ali Asaria – Founder of Well.ca, creator of Brickbreaker. Just awesome.
    • Tonya Suman – Centre for Social Innovation. World leading thinker and doer on social innovation and community ecosystem. Based here in Toronto.
    • Pete Forde – Founder of BuzzData, Unspace and other things. Photog, audiophile, and all round great guy.
    • Jay Goldman – Jay has moved on to Klick Health. Jay founded Radiant Core, did the UI for Firefox 2.0, helped build ZeroFootprint. If you can get his time to talk social or product, it is worth it
    • Jon Arnold – Big in the telco and smart grid space.
    • William Mougayar – CEO of Engagio. Previously Equentia. The man and the product allows him to participate in comment conversations across the web. Responsible for helping bring Fred Wilson to Toronto.
    • Follow @heygosia – CEO and founder of LearnHub. Technical, product, leadership, growth. She’s amazing. Doesn’t get enough credit.
    • Jim deWilde – Teaches in B School. Wrote much of the policy on innovation, government fund of funds, key behind the scenes player. Plus he’s awesome.
    • Zach Aysan – Big data guy. Currently 500px. Previously Algo Anywhere and Rocketr.

    Waterloo

  • Atoms are the new bits

    Today seems to be an Upverter kind of day, don’t believe me. Check out Zak’s post on the Toronto startup ecosystem.

    CC-BY-20 Some rights reserved by oskay
    Attribution     Some rights reserved by oskay

    Hardware startups are back with a vengeance. Thomas Tunguz (LinkedIn, @ttunguz) of Redpoint Ventures talks about his investments in hardware startups Sonos and Electric Imp. There are new set top boxes, watches, game controllers and entire communities around making and sharing. The rise of the Internet of things, sensors, and open hardware platforms like Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BugLabs are making it easier for activists, hackers and organizations to design, build, distribute and monetize hardware projects.

    We are lucky in Toronto to have HackLab.TO, Upverter, Media Lab Toronto, Site3 and others working on cool hardware based projects. Are you interested in learning about building hardware projects? Curious at designing, testing and building a hardware project?

    Hardware Hackathon by Upverter, Aug 10-12, 2012 in Toronto

    The Upverter team and a bunch of other from around the GTA are hosting a hardware hackathon August 10-12, 2012 at the Mozilla Opensource Space. All you need is an interest in physical prototyping and a laptop (go crazy if you want to try to do circuit board layout on a mobile phone or tablet).

    Should be an awesome time.

  • Toronto is broken

    Editor’s Note: This is a cross post from Zak Homuth (LinkedIn, @zakhomuth) originally published August 7, 2012.


    Image by John Cavacas link

    I’ve got bad news. And I don’t really know a better way to say it, so I’m just going to tear the bandaid off, one motion, no fucking around. Here goes…

    Toronto is broken.

    Ugly right? We’re the 4th most active startup ecosystem in the world. We’re the largest ecosystem in Canada. And were the best non-US city for funding.

    But there are some very serious problems under the covers.

    Toronto is a young startup ecosystem, largely because it wasn’t always possible to run a startup here. This has 2 effects as far as I can tell. The first is that most of the entrepreneurs here in Toronto are very young, the average age is definitely lower than the Startup Genome Project average of 33. And the second is that almost all of us aren’t tied to Toronto. We have all been somewhere else, worked somewhere else, and got money somewhere else.

    Weak Founder Network

    Being young & unconstrained means we don’t brag about or lean on our native networks in Toronto. We brag about our investors and mentors in the valley (like we all haven’t been), we try to impress our Toronto network instead of learning from them, and we don’t trust our peers here to help us succeed. Its ok. And its pretty normal from what I’ve seen in other fledgling startup communities.

    BUT until we can trust and work with our peers here in Toronto the community will continue to flounder. We will continue to leave (not necessarily a bad thing). We will continue to NEED other networks. And getting together will continue to be about bragging instead of helping and learning.

    Small Ideas

    I’m not sure if this is because the ecosystem is so young. Or because our service providers think they run startups. Or because we’re a largely Canadian club. But our ideas on average aren’t world changing. We dream of things that already exist. We dream of parts of other company’s visions. We dream of features. We dream of being an Instagram for Instagram rather than Facebook, Go instead of Google, CRM instead of Salesforce.

    This is a theme across the startup galaxy right now. But we aren’t helping. Why not be the place big ideas come from? Why not be known for dreaming bigger? Lets be frighteningly ambitious. Lets change something. Fuck the $25MM Google acquisition. Can we please do a little bit more than building another feature for Salesforce?

    Crossing The Scale Gap

    We have almost zero entrepreneurs and early employees experienced at scaling. It might even be the real reason for the pre-scale acquisitions lately. We can’t cross the gap. Who are you going to hire to scale your marketing? What about sales & bd? Or support? Or product management? Have they ever done it at a startup before? Better still, will they – without a question – give you an unfair advantage because of how awesome and repeatable they are at it? I doubt the list is any longer than a few names for each – and I bet most of them are running their own startups or have retired.

    There is a huge void here that doesn’t exist in SF or even NYC. We have very, very few startups that have achieved scale, cycled, and produced experienced founders or employees that want to go back out and do it again. This is why so many of our startups open offices in San Francisco or Palo Alto. Will you? Does it bother you that you have to split up your team, or move? You need to move if thats how you win – but could we ever help each other to do it here at scale?

    Mentorship

    Its pretty weak in Toronto. Its a side effect of the same lack of experience. The same lack of cycling. And there just isn’t the same kind of culture of free giving that exists in the valley. We have this sort of East Coast I work to get paid mentality that doesn’t jive so well with mentorship. All that being said I can’t fix this. This is a huge problem that has cultural roots, a lack of raw material, and well all be dead (or at least our startups will be) by the time it gets fixed.

    My advice: Get a mentor in the valley, and figure out how to use skype.

    Capital

    Don’t waste your time raising in Toronto. If you can and do raise elsewhere Toronto will pay attention. If you can’t, they still wont. And the best part is you don’t need permission to be in Toronto anymore if this is the right place to run your business.

    My advice: Raise the money where you can, run your business where you need to, and get the fuck back to work.

    But…

    There still are some pretty great things about Toronto. Hell, I haven’t left yet. The talent here is A+, the money goes further, the government helps, its one of the biggest economies in North America (ie. fuck loads of customers), and you can build a first class startup culture of first class talent that has worked at startups in the valley and abroad.

    So lets fix the broken parts. I think its still worth it.

    Too much words? In picture form!

    Problems I’m trying to fix:

    • Build a stronger founder network
    • Encourage and enable bigger ideas
    • Fill-in or otherwise enable companies to cross the scale talent gap

    Things I’m NOT trying to fix:

    • More and better mentorship
    • More and better capital

    About Me

    Upverter is my 3rd startup. I dropped out of highschool, and then university, both times to run startups. I’ve worked in Ottawa, Waterloo, Stuttgart, Bangalore, and Mountain View. I have never lived in Toronto before, so it’s a first for me, but we’re here because it’s where our team wanted to be. And I’m not ok sitting back and letting this opportunity – to make Toronto kick more ass – pass me by.

    Wanna join the cause?

    Shoot me an email ([email protected])

  • Hot Sh!t List 2012

    CC-BY-20 Some rights reserved by kyz
    Attribution Some rights reserved by kyz

    We have been tracking startups and people for a while. In 2011 was the first Hot Sh!t List, but it won’t be the last. There are a number of amazing individuals in the ecosystem like Mark MacLeod (LinkedIn, @startupcfo), Boris Wertz (LinkedIn, @bwertz), Dan Morel (LinkedIn, @dpmorel), Debbie Landa (LinkedIn, @deblanda), Chris Arsenault (LinkedIn, @chrisarsenault), Dan Martell (LinkedIn, @danmartell), Jesse Rodgers (LinkedIn, @jrodgers) and others. Over the past 7 years the community has grown, and connected, and continues to help each other.

    But this list is different.

    It’s not about the people who have raised the most money, or who have the biggest social graphs. It’s about who we expect to talk about over the next 12 months. Be it the ideas, the companies, the impact, etc. My goal was to find a mix of the unsung heroes, the founders, the developers, the doers, the troublemakers and the faces of different companies across Canada that we think are amazing/interesting. What do I mean by “interesting”? Well it depends. But these people are doing the stuff we’ll be talking about over the next 12 months.

    The list is no particular order. But there is no denying it, these folks are the:

    StartupNorth Hot Sh!t 2012 BadgeHot Sh!t List 2012

     

  • ShopLocket makes selling online easy

    Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Katherine Hague (LinkedIn, @katherinehague), co-founder and CEO of Shoplocket.com, a startup that has recently launched and which aims to help people sell anything from anywhere in minutes. Part of our efforts to highlight and support entrepreneurs and projects from Ladies Learning Code.

    After 6 months of hard work, we’re excited to announce the launch of Shoplocket..

    ShopLocket is a simple solution for anyone wanting a quick and attractive way to start selling online without the overhead of running a storefront.

    Think of it as a platform powering popup online retailers. It’s Lean Retail. Much like Lean Startup or Lean Manufacturing. It’s a platform for online retailers to find “a plan that works before running out of resources”. Just like CafePress automates the creation of customized goods, ShopLocket makes it easy for makers to sell online without investing in inventory or ecommerce solutions. It’s a way, much like restauranters testing new menus and concepts in food truck, popup restaurant or underground markets, ito test the sales of products online.

    Shoplocket Cofounders Katherine and Andrew

    During summer of 2011, I had the idea to have some quirky t-shirts printed to see whether I could manage to sell them online. I had a pretty decent blog following and a solid network so it occurred to me that if I posted them for sale on the blog, that people might buy them. For only one t-shirt, signing up for a full storefront solution seemed a little ridiculous, especially since I didn’t even know if I’d sell one to cover monthly fees. At the same time I wanted my product listing to look well designed and professional. These were really great t-shirts, and I couldn’t imagine myself just throwing them onto a marketplace like kijiji or craigslist. I couldn’t figure out why what seemed like an easy e-commerce problem like “I only have one product to sell” was actually so hard to solve.

    Using ShopLocket, sellers can be up and running in minutes and can embed their products directly on any website, or share a link to where we host their product. In some cases, ShopLocket will serve as a customer funnel for larger online stores, helping new sellers figure out whether they’ve got something worth selling. But for many others, ShopLocket will be all they ever need. For these sellers we’re a replacement for back-and-forth email transactions with buyers and unprofessional marketplaces. Think of us as the ideal “display case” for your new product.

    We’ve been in beta with about 1200 users. We’ve been accepted in the first cohort at Extreme Startups. We couldn’t have gotten to where we are today without the incredible support of the Toronto startup community. We’re now gearing up for our Demo Day on June 19th.

  • Engagio: A Canadian Startup Story and the future of the Social Web

    Editor’s Note: William Mougayar is the CEO & founder of Engagio and previously founded Eqentia. He has 30 years of experience in the high-tech industry with large and small companies. He can be reached on Twitter at @wmougayar or by visiting his engagement profile at http://engag.io/wmougayar.

    Since we were funded in early January 2012, and especially after we announced it in mid-February, I feel like I moved out of the basement and into the ground level of a building. Indeed, being part of the “Funded Club” suddenly gives you a kind of peer respect and credibility that changes the game.

    We have been in the fast lane of Startup land. We produced a minimum viable product in 8 weeks and opened access to alpha users right away. 30 days later, we were funded with a $540K seed investment from 6 VC’s and Angels in the US and Canada. A month after that, we took down the alpha and beta status and opened the service totally. Four months after the first line of code was written, we’re starting to look like a mature startup with thousands of active users.

    But this story wasn’t really an overnight success. It was 3 years in the making, and it sucked being in that basement during these 3 years. But they were the best preparation for the next 3 months that changed everything about me as a Canadian entrepreneur trying to be one of many others that can claim to have been funded by reputable investors.

    I’ve been labeled as a tenacious individual. I’ve been called scrappy, and hard working. All true.

    David Crow (@davidcrow) asked me to pen a few lessons. Take what you want, and discuss the rest in the Comment section. After all, we are entering a phase of greater social engagement, and comments are often more important that the blog post itself.

    My start-up Engagio is pretty focused on one objective: letting users manage their online conversations across the fragmented Social Web and realizing relationships from these conversations.

    There’s a story behind our evolution, and it’s tightly related to the future of the Social Web.

    Start with Social Capital

    It started in the fall of 2008 when I became inspired by Howard Lindzon (@howardlindzon), founder of StockTwits as I heard him speak at Startup Empire where he recounted how he met venture capitalist Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) a few years earlier just by commenting on his blog. Howard explained the value of Social Capital as a critical by-product of the Social Web.

    The next day, I started commenting on Fred Wilson’s AVC.com blog, and gradually increased my participation because I was seeing increasing value from interacting with the other commenters. I firmly believed that every comment was an implicit linkage to a person and a potential relationship waiting to blossom.

    Since that day, I have written about 3,400 comments on AVC.com, – that’s an average of 3 per day, received 1,800 Likes, and made dozens of real world relationships with other frequent commenters I met on that blog. This proved that if you invest in building relationships online, there are long-term benefits you can gain. That’s Social Capital at work.

    Then in September of 2011, Fred nominated 2 members of his blog community as moderators, and I was one of them. The value of Social Capital became even clearer to me, as I was seeing the value of commenting and social engagement on the web working in my favor. But my social engagement was pretty scattered on the Social Web across other blogs and social networks, and I started to realize that this wasn’t manageable anymore.

    I thought there must be a better way to manage the multiplicity of interactions across the social web. So I came up with the idea for Engagio. It was a deceptively simple idea, one based on the fact that we are entering a phase of fragmentation of the Social Web. And we needed better tools to manage this fragmentation of conversations. I ran the idea of developing an Inbox for social conversations by Fred Wilson who liked it and encouraged me to make it happen. The next day, I turned to my team and we developed the first version of Engagio 8 weeks later.

    Lessons for Canadian Startups

    Engagio is my second startup, so everything I learned, did or didn’t do in the first one is embedded in this second one. You can’t fake experience, and you can’t manufacture lessons. They are in the scars, the notches on your belt, the stars on your shoulder and they are who you are.

    Here are a few lessons I’d like to share with the Startup North readers.

    1. Don’t polish a bad idea

    The simpler the starting point and the simpler you can articulate it, the better it is. If you’re spending too much time wordsmithing the positioning statement or messaging, maybe you need to change course. Polishing a bad idea won’t make it shine.

    2. Relationships don’t matter

    They don’t. You may have hundreds of relationships that aren’t giving you benefits. Few relationships bear fruit in terms of value offered. The relationship itself doesn’t matter, but the trust in it does, therefore trusted relationships do matter. I knew a lot of people, but few were really trusted enough that they would do something for me. With trust comes exceptions and a lot of doors open in front of you.

    3. Beware of selling to the enterprise

    Unless the enterprise user is behaving like a consumer, you’ll have a tough time selling to the enterprise unless you’re a large company already, or have raised a lot of money as a startup. As enticing as enterprise users are, selling them a solution that requires group approvals and long budget cycles will kill any startup, no matter how good their product is. The only way to penetrate the enterprise is by having a simple SaaS-based product that individual users can try and purchase on their own without asking anyone.

    4. Keep all relationships open

    Keep all your relationships on a cordial level, even with the jerk VC or fellow entrepreneur who didn’t respond to your email, or didn’t give you what you asked for, or was indifferent to your request, or ignored you intentionally. I’ve encountered each one of these situations, and it’s better to keep your head high and think they are the jerk, not you.

    5. Don’t believe your own story

    Let others believe in it. That’s more powerful. You need to step outside of what you are developing and believe in the reality checks that outsiders will give you. They will see things you don’t, especially if they are users.

    6. Growth is what matters

    Startup growth is measured in dog years, and you must have a sense of urgency about it. It’s the #1 priority of a startup. If you don’t grow daily, your chances of success diminish. A startup exists to make something out of nothing. You’re a creator, and you must start to occupy a space that didn’t exist before. Growth is a daily habit, not a quarterly goal.

    7. Get out of Canada

    The Lean Startup methodology advocates that the CEO must get out of the office. But in Canada, out of the office is not enough. You need to get out of Canada and go conquer the US market. The borders are so porous from a business perspective, it’s as if it wasn’t there. Use Canada as a base, but use the US as a springboard. Get a US address and act like a US company when you pursue clients, users, media attention, partnerships and capital. The barriers will suddenly appear lower.

    8. Go help someone

    If you’re having a good day and believe you’re making progress, go help someone that needs your help. You owe it to the ecosystem that made you where you are.

    Next time you’re on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or a blog, don’t just share, re-tweet or like that piece of content or comment. Rather, engage with the other person, debate them, disagree with them, and start a conversation. You never know where it will lead you.

    Connect with me on Engagio.

    Editor’s Note: William Mougayar is the CEO & founder of Engagio and previously founded Eqentia. He has 30 years of experience in the high-tech industry with large and small companies. He can be reached on Twitter at @wmougayar or by visiting his engagement profile at http://engag.io/wmougayar.

  • 5 Steps to an Awesome Executive Summary

    Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Massive Damage Inc. written by Ken Seto,  founder of @Massive_Damage & @EndloopMobile.  He is building @PleaseStayCalm, a location based game.. Follow him on Twitter @kenseto where he tweets about Apple, music, games, food, wine & movies. This post was originally published in February 21, 2012 on MassDmg.com.

    Massive Damage Inc Header

    We’ve finally decided to post our Executive Summary to share with other founders as we’ve always had compliments and great feedback from it.

    Some folks wonder how best to use executive summaries.. basically you’ll give it to people who will be doing intros for you. That way, they can forward something that piques the interest of the potential investor without giving away the whole pitch. You don’t want your deck to do your pitch for you, you want to do the pitch.

    Here are the following guidelines I followed to create ours:

    1. Keep it to one page if possible, it’s a summary, not a pitch.
    2. If you have no eye for design, hire one or get a designer friend to help out.
    3. If you have metrics, put the good stuff front and center. Feel free to use vanity metrics for big impact but make sure you also have engagement metrics.
    4. Leave enough room for your Team section. Use pictures and previous startups/accomplishments.
    5. Include awesome visuals. Sure you can’t use zombies for every startup but give it some personality. Use bold infographics or charts.

    Here’s our Executive Summary:

    Massive Damage Executive Summary

    View more documents from Ken Seto

    Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Massive Damage Inc. written by Ken Seto,  founder of @Massive_Damage & @EndloopMobile.  He is building @PleaseStayCalm, a location based game.. Follow him on Twitter @kenseto where he tweets about Apple, music, games, food, wine & movies. This post was originally published in February 21, 2012 on MassDmg.com.

  • Toronto Startup Heatmap

    Joe Greenwood is directing a new project that pulls together data to track Ontario’s startups. One of the first data sources to be tapped was the StartupNorth Index, which in conjunction with MaRS client data has been crunched into a heatmap of 670 startups across Toronto. Not surprisingly, the ideal office is inexpensive, accessible by transit, and close to good coffee. How can you help fill in this map? Build an amazing startup of course.

  • Ctrl Alt Compete – A startup documentary

    Interesting my friends from Microsoft are hosting a screening of Ctrl Alt Compete which features our own Josh Sookman (LinkedIn, @jsookman) of Guardly and Brian Wong (LinkedIn, @brian_wong) of Kiip. It’s a documentary about building startups and the founders passion, fortitude and the shear insanity of doing this. Looks like a fun take, realistic take.

    Watch the trailer.

    Trailer on YouTube for Ctrl Alt Compete

    The movies takes a revealing look at the startup and emerging business scene through the eyes of five founders and their teams telling a story of the passion, fortitude and insanity that is bringing a startup to life. Microsoft believes tech entrepreneurship is fundamentally changing the world. The things that developers create; the ideas that they’re able to make reality; the tangible value they deliver is reshaping the way people live their lives every day. Building a startup from nothing to something is hard—REALLY hard.

    Ctrl Alt Compete

    Red Carpet Event for the Canadian Premiere of Ctrl Alt Compete Screening

    Join a networking crowd of investors, community start-ups and entrepreneurial students for the first Canadian screening of Ctrl Alt Compete – a Microsoft movie documentary on what it takes to be a start-up:Passion. Fortitude. Insanity.

    There are lots of tech startups out there taking their shot at changing the world. There’s no shortage of ideas. The infrastructure to build quickly is cheaper and more accessible than it’s ever been…there’s lots of capital floating around for the right idea. If only it were that simple! Building a startup from nothing to something is hard—REALLY hard. There is a “story behind the story” of just how hard it is to go from inception to reality and become the products and services that we use every day.

    It’s a story of the power of people pouring their passion, drive and dedication into building something that changes the world—no matter how hard.

    We believe that is a story worth telling and sharing.

    At this premier screening event, you’ll hear insights from industry executives, Start-Ups from the cast and local leaders in the Start-Up community.

  • Five-tool Players

    I loved Moneyball (the movie).  I also especially love sports analogies as they relate to technology and startups.  While well-blogged about (Fred Wilson, Dave McClure, Dharmesh Shah), I believe these analogies are representative of what it takes to create and build a successful startup.  While the premise of the book is to evaluate players based on data and metrics, I couldn’t help but tie back to the old school style of scouting in baseball to the current process we’re going through in selecting our cohort.

    According to Wikipedia, in baseball, a five-tool player is one who excels at (1) hitting for average, (2) hitting for power, (3) baserunning skills and speed, (4) throwing ability, and (5) fielding abilities.  I believe the same can be said for entrepreneurs.

    Sweetest Swing in Baseball

    Hitting for Average : Selling to Customers

    In Moneyball, Billy Beane and his sidekick focus their team (the Oakland A’s) on one thing – getting on base – because getting on base equates to scoring runs, which equates to wins.  In the startup world, scoring runs is the equivalent of getting cash, and this cash comes from customers.

    Every entrepreneur needs to sell to customers.  They need to generate revenue aka cash.  It doesn’t matter if its enterprise customers, direct to consumer, professional services, white labeling, etc.  Ultimately, if the startup is successful, they will sell to customers (which could also mean acquiring users).  Effective hitters know where to hit the ball – pulling the ball, going opposite field, hitting gaps.  Effective entrepreneurs know the gaps in the market amongst their competition and capitalize.

    Hitting for Power : Selling to Investors

    Chicks dig the longball.  So how do you generate a huge amount of cash for your startup in one shot?  You sell to investors.  Entrepreneurs should also be able to successfully pitch VCs, angels, and other shareholders.  This gives their companies cash in normally larger amounts than when selling to customers.  It takes a special person to be able to raise from VCs.  It takes a lot of time, energy, and follow-through.

    A note on specialists here.  In baseball, there are power hitters that specialize in hitting homeruns.  Traditionally, these are the most popular and most sought after players because they have a halo effect around them.  They fill seats, sell jerseys and advertising.  They are the top billers and they usually can do no wrong (unless they cheat).  In startups, this is also true because some franchises (VCs) want their own cleanup hitters at the top for the same halo effect.

    Baserunning Skills & Speed : Hustle, Agility, and Speed

    Running the bases in baseball is critical.  If you can’t run the bases effectively, you’ll hinder your ability to score runs.

    In startups, it’s critical to have that hustle and agility.  This is all about opportunity maximization once the ball is in play.  This means stretching a single into a double (crosssell / upsell, bigger contracts), stealing when possible (customers from your competition), and generally reading your competition in real-time (intuition and nuances of selling to both customers and investors).

    Throwing Ability : Teamwork

    This relates to the internal aspects of a startup.  Can you lead and work within a team?  Can you hit the cutoff man e.g. delegate when is the right time to do so?.  This is about being affective with players on your own team to maximize the position you play.  The most effective early stage startups I’ve come across have a good team rapport and play to each others’ strengths.  Especially early when there is generally chaos, playing the position you’re best at (product, sales, marketing, customer services, QA, IT, etc.) and knowing your limits is critical.

    Fielding Abilities : GTD

    Every entrepreneur can get things done, and similarly every baseball player can catch a flyball or field a grounder.  But the gold glove entrepreneurs are the ones that excel at cranking things out and simply getting things done across a broad range of domains.  JFDI (thanks @msuster)!  To borrow an American football analogy, this is the blocking and tackling that is the unglamorous and often overlooked aspect of entrepreneurialism.

    Intangibles

    There are definitely other things that make a successful baseball player and entrepreneur – experience, drive, fire, luck, durability, clutch ability, personal circumstances.  Most things have to align for someone to be in the big leagues in baseball and technology.

    Scouting

    Over the last year as a VC, I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs with different combinations of these tools.  Some were very effective at selling to customers, but just could not raise a round from VCs.  Their pitches were too technical, they got into the weeds too much.  They needed more sizzle.  They were great at selling to customers, hitting their singles and doubles.  But when it came to closing a round, they only had warning track power and process became that much more drawn out and painful.

    On the flipside, there were companies where the only thing the CEO could do effectively was raise VC money.  This left their companies with a lot of cash in the bank and a high valuation.  Now they need to execute and build a product that would attract and acquire customers.  Stay off the roids and start bunting if you need.

    We are currently scouting players for our franchise.  Are you a five-tool entrepreneur?  If so, APPLY and come see us at Sprouter today.  We’d love to help you develop into an MVP.