Category: Startups

Startup Marketing: Does the Competition Matter?

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur and marketing executive April Dunford who is currently the head of Enterprise Market Strategy for Huawei. April specializes in brining new products to market including messaging, positioning, market strategy, go-to-market planning and lead generation. She is one of the leading B2B/enterprise marketers in the world and we’re really lucky to be able to share here content with you. Follow her on Twitter @aprildunford or RocketWatcher.com. This post was originally published in April 12, 2012 on RocketWatcher.com.

Some rights reserved by Paolo Camera

I have heard people make the argument that startups shouldn’t think about their competitors. I agree that many spend too much time worrying about how their feature set stacks up against another offering’s feature set. On the other hand, prospects are evaluating your solution against alternatives (which may not be products) and communicating how you are better than those alternatives is a key part of great startup marketing. Simply put – you should care about competitive alternatives if your prospects do.

Startups are not Big Companies

I very rarely see useful competitive analysis done by startup marketers, mainly because they are trying to do it like big companies do it. The big companies I’ve worked for have had departments dedicated to creating large detailed check mark matrices that showed how our feature set compared to competitive offerings. These matrices almost never included any feedback from customers. Needless to say, the products and their markets were very mature.

This approach completely falls apart within the context of a startup. Your competitors, from a customer point of view are almost never so easily defined. For startups, your offering is often competing with “do nothing”, “hire someone to do it”, use spreadsheets/documents/paper, or some other solution that might be completely unsuited to the task but is free/easy/what has always been used. Comparing features of one of these alternatives to your startup’s offering to makes absolutely no sense in this context.

A More Customer-Centric Approach

In the context of a startup the only competitive analysis that makes sense is the one that is happening in side the heads of your prospects. The more you understand about that, the more you can use that knowledge to improve your marketing.

Instead of the traditional competitive comparison matrix, a more useful competitive alternatives snapshot for a startup would look at what customers perceive to be the major benefits of the alternative, what risks they see that might stop them from choosing your solution and how you might address these issues in your messaging.

An Example

Here’s an example for CRMster, a fictional solution aimed at mid-sized consulting businesses to help them manage their customer information. The points here are just to give you some ideas about how this might look:

Competitive Alternative	Benefit customers perceive	Risk in selecting your offering	Value of your offering	Proof points
Do nothing – we don’t use a CRM tool and that’s fine by us	Free Zero effort required	Budget spent on this will mean less money for other thingsConsultants will have to learn the tool and record data they don’t today	More accurately predict future workloads so you can budget/staff accordingly and increase your profitability.Gives consultants access to more complete customer information making it easier to do their jobs.	3^rdparty data: Research shows companies using CRM are X% more profitable.Customer data: CRMster customers have x% average increase in revenue/profitabilityEnd user quote “CRMster makes collaborating easy. I want to marry it! ”Customer case studies
Manage customer data in spreadsheets	FreeEveryone knows how to use a spreadsheet	Budget spent on this will mean less money for other thingsConsultants will have to learn the tool	Eliminate the need to consolidate spreadsheets – a process that is time consuming and introduces errorsEasier, more effective team collaboration means projects are delivered on time, on budget.	Customer quote: “Consolidating spreadheets was a pain and our data stank. CRMster lets us accurately forecast our business.”Customer quote: “CRMster got our teams working together better so we could deliver projects on budget”End user quote: “So fun to use I gave up playing Angry Birds at work!”Analyst opinion: “Folks using spreadsheets are big losers”
Use CRMFree, a free CRM tool	Free	Budget spent on this will mean less money for other things	Expert customer supportProvides features for consulting companies that generic CRM tools don’t have.	Analyst data: X% of CRM deployments fail because end-users don’t get good support.Customer quote: “Their support is so great we send them chocolates on valentine’s day”Press quote: “If you are a consulting company you are an idiot if you buy anything else”Customer logos, case studies
Use BigWig CRM, a CRM tool for mid-sized businesses of any type	A safe bet: an established brand	CRMster might go out of businessThe software might be unproven, buggy crap	CRMster is way cheaper.Provides features for consulting companies that generic CRM tools don’t have.	Pricing and guarantees.Screen shots, product demosTeam bios – emphasizing successes and background in this market.Investor profiles, investment announcementsCustomer logos, case studies

For this example, only the last couple of rows get into any discussion of product features and even there those aren’t the only considerations. The other thing to notice is that the feature discussion can happen as part of a higher-level theme (we’re better because we are cheaper, more targeted to this market, or a more elegant solution) rather than a checklist of niggley esoteric features like you would for mature products in a mature market. If you are going head to head with an established player in the market you’re doing it because you have something radically different.

The Output: Better Messaging

The next step is to look at the themes and develop key messages that highlight your differentiated value while addressing the potential big concerns. I’ve written about messaginghere and here and I’ll talk more about how you would take the next step and construct messaging upcoming post.

April 13, 2012

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.

April 12, 2012
Canada’s Next Five Years
1997-2012: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.

2012-2020: Optimism, Opportunity, Execution.

I’ve been bullish for a while now, it’s no secret. It was 5 years ago that I was writing off VC in Canada and explaining how startups needed to step up to create an environment to bring them back.

And like a bowl of Sea Monkeys, the VCs have emerged from stasis.

Do you realize that I can’t even conjure up a single VC financing in Canada in 2008.

This week OMERs stepped up in a big way with a $20million financing for HootSuite. This, along with the recent $30 million (debt) financing of Halifax based Unique Solutions, represent some of the first real, and stable, “acceleration capital” that we have seen in Canada.

Five years of uncertainty about startups in Canada. Uncertainty about whether we could really start them. Uncertainty about whether we could really build them. Uncertainty about whether we could really scale them.

5+ years that I am happy to say good riddance to.

The last 5 years we have focused on:
- Seed stage financing
- Removing section 116 from the tax code
- Waiting for shitty VCs to go away
- Welcoming good VCs on to the scene
- Getting rid of any idea of building a startup “for the Canadian market”
- Making “Startup” an understood thing
- Telling good news stories when they came along
When I wrote a the post about 2011 being a big year I was focused on 2012 as the next step. What I realize now is that we aren’t just living year-to-year like we used to, the startup community in Canada now needs to start thinking in larger timeframes, with bigger goals and a far more ambitious strategy.

This is the time to double down.

I believe strongly that the values, infrastructure and growth of Silicon Valley are becoming better understood and slowly commoditized. Our challenge is not to try to recreate Silicon Valley, but to take the elements of what make it good and to apply it in our own communities. We are getting much closer to that.

A half-decade is a long time to think about, especially for entrepreneurs. Here’s what I think we need to think about that we haven’t done much about in the last 5 years. What do you think we need to focus on for the next 5 years?

Education

Children need quality education in the fundamentals of the Web. Right now we have an education system which tried to teach students about computers but almost completely neglects the Web. A shift to Web-oriented education would mean:
- Understanding the role of many devices (computers, tablets, phones, etc) in education
- Web-infused curriculum in all topics. Such as: Web-focused research skills in science courses. Social Media in Language Arts. Etc.
- Programming skills which are introduced early on and are a required component of curriculum.
A focus on education should imply the participation of students in the startup community. We need to find ways to include younger and younger would-be entrepreneurs the web startup community.

Community as the framework

There are a lot of efforts underway to “professionalize” the management of the startup community in Canada. Watch out for people who claim to know what is best for the Canadian startup community but who haven’t felt the need to immerse themselves in it by being a part of it. The reason that Canada has managed to standup a respected and vibrant startup community is largely because the effort has been decentralized and grassroots. It has not been because of centralized programs or PR focused exercises.

We need to maintain this focus because developing a strong social network of individuals who are able to contribute to and support the development of Canadian startups is critical. It’s why I like the C100, Startup Festival, Grow Conference, CIX and others. They are efforts that have come from people who are entrepreneurs themselves and who understand that the health of the community is critical.

Tighter Silicon Valley links

The vast majority of startup hub cities in Canada are within a short flight of San Francisco. We need to take advantage of that link and make exposure in Silicon Valley an expected thing for Canadian Startups. This is easier than ever and it is getting easier. We need more Debbie.

Policy

Web Startups are not yet on the radar of policy makers. This has resulted in disjointed policy development which has sometimes harmed startups who develop and compete globally. I believe that the current government has actually made some changes such as the changes to Section 116 of the tax code. Startups benefit from very specific parts of the legislative and tax codes and we must continue to seek as many advantages from these as possible. I mentioned Education above but policy influence also needs to extend to Immigration, R&D programs, procurement and anything else that can be used to give startups in Canada an advantage.

Grow like hell and don’t stop

The final thing we need to do is to make even bolder moves. We have our feet under us and now it is time to double down again and again and again. Rather than being the companies who are getting picked off for $20million here and $50million there we need to find opportunities that let Canadian startups become the acquirer and growth engine, rather than the other way around. Hootsuite is a start, but we need to chalk up a few more before the process will become well understood in Canada.

Welcome to the next 5 years.
April 9, 2012
Early stage companies don’t need money, they need customers
Note: This is cross posted from WhoYouCallingAJesse.com by Jesse Rodgers, who is a cofounder of TribeHR. He has been a key member of the Waterloo startup community hosting StartupCampWaterloo and other events to bring together and engage local entrepreneurs. Follow him on Twitter @jrodgers or WhoYouCallingAJesse.com.

Some rights reserved by wallyg

The popular belief in Canada is that the tech startup world has been fairly light on investment dollars relative to other industries in Canada. Because there is such a disparity in seed or angel round investment size in Canada vs the US people tend to point to that as a reason people go south. The perceived result of the funding problem (and likely the weather) is that there are 350 000 Canadians in the Valley. No one can argue the talent to build global calibre tech companies exists in Canada (or at least has Canadian passports) but you can certainly argue Canada lacks that certain something to keep them here.

Five years ago Paul Graham observed that the total cost to get a tech startup started had dropped dramatically and will continue to do so.

So my first prediction about the future of web startups is pretty straightforward: there will be a lot of them. When starting a startup was expensive, you had to get the permission of investors to do it. Now the only threshold is courage. – Paul Graham, 2007

There is a lot of attention around getting young people money but does that help them? Does that keep them in Canada? I would argue that the ones that do need and can use capital don’t pull up stakes and leave town for the investment. They leave town (or the country) because they are missing something more valuable than money — customers, mentorship that helps them get customers, and a network of peers.

Know thy stage

The problem with comparing funding deal levels in Canada and the US is that it ignores the stage the company is in relative to the stage of US startups raising money for the first time. The Startup Genome report 01 and the Startup Genome Compass offers startups an excellent way to measure themselves against a benchmark of over 3 000 startups. In the report there is a table (shown below) that gives you some overall averages for all startups.

From the Startup Genome Report 01.

In last seven years of being involved in the Canadian startup community (mostly in Waterloo) and in the last three years leading what is arguably the best student focused incubator in Canada while founding my own startup. I saw dozens of companies peek into the Discovery phase, a few move on through to the Validation phase.

What I have seen happen before the discovery phase:
- Talk of raising money is used to pull in a large group of talent.
- Focus is not on customers, it is on technology or raising money.
- There is little help by way of mentorship that takes the time to understand the dynamic of the group.
- Mentors focus on finding a way to get them money so they can work full time.
What founders fail to do:
- Define the problem.
- Find out what people are looking for.
- What else do they need in a system?
- Determine what they might pay for it by getting them to pay for it and talking to our customers.
- Measure, iterate, repeat.
Startups need to focus more on customer acquisition and growth in Canada, enough talk about raising money

There are so many business plan and pitch competitions one could make a career out of attending them. This gives a false sense of success because the ‘winner’ is determined on a lot of factors except their ability to actually get customers. The game becomes about (and has been it feels like) how to put together a report on an idea (business plan) and present in a way that makes you look confident.

The game is really about getting lots of people to give you their money because you provide value to them. What makes you better than others is that you are chasing a much bigger problem that will provide value to a full percentage of the world’s population. Bonus points if you change the world.

Note: This is cross posted from WhoYouCallingAJesse.com by Jesse Rodgers, who is a cofounder of TribeHR. He has been a key member of the Waterloo startup community hosting StartupCampWaterloo and other events to bring together and engage local entrepreneurs. Follow him on Twitter @jrodgers or WhoYouCallingAJesse.com.
March 27, 2012
Do Startups Need Community Managers?
Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Mark Evans Tech written by Mark Evans of ME Consulting. Follow him on Twitter @markevans or MarkEvansTech.com. This post was originally published in March 26, 2012 on MarkEvansTech.com.

Some rights reserved by leg0fenris

Do start-ups needs community managers to operate their social media activities…and a whole lot more?

It’s an interesting question. On one hand, social media is seen as a low-cost marketing and sales channel for lean and mean start-ups. On the other, every full-time hire is a major decision so start-ups need to decide whether having a community makes sense, or whether having another developer or salesman is a more pragmatic option.

If the right person is hired, a community manager can be a valuable asset for a start-up. There are, however, several important skills a community manager needs to possess. These include:
1. Have in-depth knowledge of social media strategy and tactics. It’s more than knowing how to tweet or post an update. It means knowing how to execute, when to get involved in a situation and when to lie low, and how to build relationships and connections.
2. Excellent communication and writing skills given so much of what a community manger does is engage and talk with a variety of people in a public forum. A good community manager has the ability to prepare blog posts, presentations, case studies, and speak at conferences.
3. Understand and appreciate the business development process. In talking with lots of people and consuming tons of information, community managers have the ability to discover, identify and nurture prospects, which can then be passed along to the sales team.
4. Provide top-notch customer service. It means having the knowledge and patience to deal with all kinds of issues and problems – big and small – that emerge. Some of them can be handled online, while some needs to be tactfully taken off-line.
5. Sell and, even, close a deal: There are potential customers who make it clear about the products they need. A savvy community manager will be all over these opportunities with the goal to complete a sale.
Like a stellar five-tool baseball player, community managers require a variety of skills to not only be effective but provide startups with maximum bang for the buck. They need to multi-task AND be good at all of the tasks that pop up during the working day.

Community managers who have these skills can completely justify their hiring and, in the process, serve a startup in many ways to support its operations and growth.

What do you think? Is there a right time for a startup to hire a community manager?

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Mark Evans Tech written by Mark Evans of ME Consulting. Follow him on Twitter @markevans or MarkEvansTech.com. This post was originally published in March 26, 2012 on MarkEvansTech.com.
March 26, 2012
Nail it before you scale it
Editor’s note: This is a cross post from The Meaford Group written by Peter Smith (LinkedIn). This post was originally published in January 28, 2012 on The Meaford Group.

I love working with Robin Hopper, my co-EIR at the Innovation Factory, for the simple fact that the guy has more catchy cool acronyms and phrases that make me sound so smart when I repeat them. “Nail it before you Scale it” is one of his latest.

Put simply, too many start-ups try to scale their marketing and sales organization before they have nailed their value proposition and the sales story that goes along with it. The consequences can be disastrous. Over a beer, ask Robin about the story of how he blew through $3,000,000 in investment capital on one of his early start-ups because he expanded too early without really having the customer-compelling value proposition figured out.

Howard Gwin talks about the need for first time founders to create momentum and velocity in order to overcome the investor bias against funding first-time teams. (The Three P’s of a Technology Company). If you haven’t read his blog, do so now. He offers sage advice to wait before seeking VC funding until you have “proof points and a traction story that is damn near breathtaking”. Beyond that, don’t fall into the trap of trying to create that momentum before you fully understand why the market wants your technology and how you package it for consistent, reliable and predictable sales.

At the Innovation Factory, we work with many start-ups. Most go through one or more “Pivots” before they find the kernel at the core of their product or idea that will really sell. Unfortunately, some will never find it because even though the idea or technology was interesting or cool, the product will never be compelling to an intensely competitive marketplace. Good entrepreneurs figure this out fast and kill the idea but then move on to another.

I recently met one of these entrepreneurs. He built and sold his first company when he was 19 for $100,000. (It may not sound like much but I wish I had a hundred grand when I was 19). His second company was a professional services company. He built it, had success and then killed it because he realized he could never scale it fast enough to fulfill his dream. His third company was a software company and dealt with project management infrastructure. The idea and technology were good but the market was crowded and more importantly, the sales process would be long. There also were too many factors out of his company’s control in the value chain of customers getting value from his product. He had arranged Angel funding and was ready to launch but instead he listened to advice and killed the company before taking the investment. His fourth company looks like a winner. It is in a hot space, has uniqueness, has the ability to scale quickly around a solid value proposition and he has surrounded himself with a good team. He has also already pivoted at least once on his value prop in order to get ready for traction.

So, if you are early in your game, my advice to you is simple:
1. Figure out your value prop
2. Keep pivoting it and your company until you have proof points that you can create massive momentum and traction quickly
3. Use Friends & Family and Angel funding to keep you going through these phases
4. Then go talk to VC’s.
In other words, “Nail it before you Scale it.”

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from The Meaford Group written by Peter Smith (LinkedIn). This post was originally published in January 28, 2012 on The Meaford Group.
March 21, 2012
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.

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.
March 15, 2012
Ladies Learning to Code is Not About Women

There is this small but fierce not-for-profit called Ladies Learning to Code. It has pretty straightforward but profound ambitions: “designed to help girls see technology in a whole new light – as a medium for self-expression, and as a means for changing the world.” (Girls Learning to Code camp).

I started my first tech company while I was still in grade school. That experience changed the path of my life forever and I was able to do that because when I was in 7th grade I started to learn to program.

My family couldn’t really afford a computer, so I used the ones in the computer lab at school a lot. There was a math teacher, Mr. Murley, who would basically be there to open the lab and help teach programming 24/7. I also had some neighbours who had a computer and I would stay there until midnight many weekend nights.

Learning to code early on taught me a few things I am forever grateful for. I learned that I could create whatever I wanted. At that age and in that time you really did have the sense that you could change the world with a few hundred lines of code. All you had to do was find something that was broken or an idea that had potential and you could just build it. I think you can build even more today and because there are better ways to distribute you can have an amazing impact.

A lot of navel gazing here, I know.

There is no more important challenge for the tech community in the next decade than to find a way to make programming accessible to as many children as possible.

We need to do that for a lot of reasons. We need future employees of course, and we need a more tech-savvy population to market in to, but we also need a broader and more diverse pool of ideas and inspiration.

We need kids to believe that they can change the world so that they can grow in to adults who do change it. There may be no better way to enable them to do that than helping them learn to code.

So, when I saw Ladies Learning to Code for the first time I had no small hope that this wouldn’t be just about teaching women to program. My hope is that we can take the model that works for Ladies Learning to Code and that we can find ways to apply it to help make programming a less mysterious endeavour for every curious mind out there.

It’s true that not every child will want to program and I am sure only a fraction will pursue it as a career choice. I also know however that no child who learns will be unchanged. They will learn that they can create something from nothing, that there is nothing they can imagine that they cannot build, and that every tool they possibly need is available and free.

My home province recently took the X-ACTO-knife to the public school IT budget. As if growing up in the most rural province in Canada doesn’t make it hard enough for kids to pursue a future in startups, software development or IT, now there is a provincial government which is actively dismantling IT in education. (Note: Premier Ghiz– who the hell thought that was a good idea?)

I have little hope that our governments will figure this out in the next 20 years and so while school budgets are slashed by uncompromising governments, we have a job to do.

Ladies Learning to Code gets us off to a fantastic start, but the work is just beginning.

February 26, 2012
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.

February 22, 2012
If you want to change the ecosystem you need to build an amazing startup

At Founders and Funders this week we took some time to interview Dan Debow. It was a bit of a love-in I admit but that is just because I really love how much passion Dan has for helping those around him. He has made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. I’ve benefitted from it and so have dozens of others in the Canadian startup community.

One thing that Dan said really struck me. A little context might help though.

A lot of folks have been working hard to build a startup ecosystem in Toronto. For over half a decade guys like Dan have been pouring energy in to helping anyone with an idea and a glimmer in their eye to start a startup. There are of course formal organizations that do this on behalf of the government, but the fact is that making Toronto a viable city for startups has been a mostly clandestine movement. People working on the fringes to do what they believe in.

Sometimes you hear complaints about the ecosystem. Whether it is Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver or Halifax you can find complainers.

“How can we fix the local ecosystem?”

Dan said it best this week and he was clearly passionate about it: You can’t fix your ecosystem. Just get out there and build something great. More accurately he said:

That’s your job. Your only job. Get out there and build something great.

You can stop being shy, coy and tepid about it. Everyone around you wants you to do something great. They just want you to step up a little and say you are going to do it.

I want you to do something great. I want you to put a ding in the fucking universe.

Take your vision and make it even hairier, bolder and broader. Take your product and get obsessed with it. Change the world for people around you and every single one of us will step in line and push behind you.

Dan did it and this week we got to shine the spotlight on him a bit. There are hundreds of folks out there pushing to do it. Stop worrying about the community. Go big and the community will be right there behind you.

The next time we plan a Founders and Funders I want it to be you that’s up there telling your story.

You can be next. JFDI

February 18, 2012