We’re heading to Grow Conference in Vancouver. You should join us at the Portside Pub on August 14, 2013.
With our friends at Communitech, we are hosting Ontario Startup House during Grow Conference. The goals is to build a “house party” that highlights the amazing things that are going on in Ontario.
The details are starting to shape up, but here is the plan as it stands. We’re aiming to bring all things that are amazing and Ontario with us to Vancouver. We’ll be brining amazing startups, amazing founders, and amazing investors with us. We’ve managed to secure an amazing venue, The Portside PubFollow @ThePortsidePubGoogle+, in Gastown.
“On August 14, we’re taking over the hottest bars and restaurants in the historic Gastown area, home to Vancouver’s tech scene, and inviting you to host your very own “House Party” to show off the very best your technology community has to offer. All Houses will be within walking distance so attendees can easily move from House-to-House. Who doesn’t love a good house party?”
We are looking for startups and sponsors. We have great partners in Communitech, OMERS Ventures and we are actively looking for others that want to participate.We have the biggest and best venue for startups and founders to congregate during GrowConf. We’re aiming to bring the best startups, the best founders, the best beer, the best band, the best crowd to celebrate in Vancouver.
The event is open. We’ll have amazing startups, founders and investors hanging out – guarranteed. We’re planning a few surprises that should make for an exciting night.
Details
When: August 14, 2013
Where: Portside Pub, 7 Alexander Street, Vancouver, BC V6A 1E9
What: House party featuring the best startups in Ontario at GrowConf
A couple weeks ago I tossed and turned for hours, unable to sleep because of a TechCrunch article announcing the launch of a potential competitor. This happens once every month or two, and I’m sure everyone can relate.. This occasion was particularly annoying. A friend forwarded the techcrunch article to me which I opened while settling into bed for the evening. An hour of research on my iPhone later, I’m back downstairs coffee in hand, still doing research.
The funny thing is that the logical part of me realizes that startups worrying about other startups is irrational. But yet I can’t help myself from trying to find chinks in their armour and points of differentiation.
The good news is that I’ve gotten good at waking up the next day and realizing that a startup worrying about another startup competitor is like a 2 year old worrying about another 2 year old making the deans list instead of them.
It’s a war, not a battle, and chances are, both startups will evolve in a way that makes them no longer competitive. Some will be competing for the deans list. Some will be competing for the track team, but most will have dropped out.
But still … in my last startup, I can’t tell you how many hours of sleep I lost mulling over Xobni, Dropbox, Threadsy, reMail, ClearContext and others. With the exception of Dropbox and maybe Xobni, have you heard of these others? Probably not. In hindsight, they’re actually really good examples of why you shouldn’t worry that much about startup competitors.
1. They’re guessing … just like you
We were scared of Xobni, largely because of their uber connected and super alented team. Specifically Jeff Bonforte. But everyone’s guessing in Startups. Everyone. Including Jeff. Cofounders backgrounds, vanity metrics, and techcrunch articles mean nothing. Xobni was iterating like crazy at the same time we were. In the end, it looks like they might be acquired by Yahoo in a deal that doesn’t represent a huge win for investors. Everyone’s guessing.
2. Some pivot
Threadsy was building an all one one messaging system – combining facebook, twitter, email, etc. We thought it was genius … so much so that we were doing the same thing. Turns out Threadsy (like us) couldn’t make a business out of it, started building social graph analytics, and eventually were acquired by Facebook. Most times your competitor won’t be building what they’re currently building in another 6 months. Most times, you won’t either.
3. A lot die
Most competitors will die before they hit product market fit. A lot of times, that has nothing to do with the product and everything to do with cofounder squabbles, life getting in the way, bad investors, and the million and one other things that can go wrong.
4. Some acquired and stop innovating
We thought reMail and Gabor Cselle were onto something. They were former google / former YC, so easily intimidated us. We were building something similar called All My Mail and had visions of making the iPhone’s mail app not suck Google eventually acquired reMail but didn’t exactly use the technology to innovate and several years later, it’s mailbox that’s innovating the mobile mail experience.
5. Markets can support multiple players
Dropbox scared us. Former YC (again), great founding team, great investors. But our product (and I’d bet a half dozen others) was ahead of theirs. But we got scared and pivoted away. In hindsight, that market is massive, able to support more than one player. Box.net has obviously proven that..
Competition in startups is an interesting thing. It’s something we can’t help but stress about. But it’s illogical. Because in startups, there really are no Goliaths. We’re all Davids, and the real fight that we have is with convincing users to change their existing habits. Back in the day, our biggest competitor wasn’t dropbox. It was email, and the people that used it to share documents, too lazy to change their habits. That’s the case for most all startups.
I keep seeing entrepreneurs that complain to me after the fact that they took an investment with bum terms. It comes in many different ways, usually something like, “here’s my cap table what do you think?” or “I have this term sheet what do you think of the terms?”. The terms are usually appalling. But the entrepreneurs asking don’t know this until it is too late, they signed the documents, they spent the money, and now they want advice raising the next round.
https://twitter.com/rhh/status/344232460533518337
It looks like I’m not alone. If you can’t figure out this is war. This is information warfare. I forget that I work with a lot of great investors. They look for deals that work for them, their portfolio, for their investments and the potential investments. But I long ago realized that my interests and the interests of existing investors or potential investors were not always in my interest, particularly when things start to go bad. I wish all investors were as honest as Brad Feld with their desired investment rights. But there are bad investors out there. They look to use an information asymmetry to gain greater advantage over uninformed entrepreneurs. It allows them to buy large ownership percentages at reduced rates with additional rights that are not always in the favor of entrepreneurs. They tell entrepreneurs that it is ok, their capital brings additional non-dilutive government capital and the entrepreneur will have the cash to grow. They are trying to maximize their returns by exploiting the information asymmetry.
And I don’t like seeing people being exploited.
It is not the first time that someone has used both simple and sophisticated tactics to take advantage of people. Part of the creation of the Securities Exchange Commission to allow, in this case, the US government to bring civil actions ” against individuals or companies alleged to have committed accounting fraud, provided false information, or engaged in insider trading or other violations of the securities law.” Before the enactment of the commission, consumers were protected by “blue sky” laws, but Investment Bankers Association told its members as early as 1915 that they could “ignore” blue sky laws by making securities offerings across state lines through the mail. Many investors are money grubbing capitalists and that’s the way I like it. But as an entrepreneur the only person looking out for you is you. So rather than leave yourself ignorant and uninformed it is your responsibility to reduce the information asymmetry. After all, it is your company and…
Knowing is half the battle
The person that is responsible for your success and the success of your company is YOU!
So stop blaming bad investors. Stop blaming lawyers. Stop blaming others. You need to take proactive steps to reduce the information asymmetry
Get educated
Due diligence on your investors
Participate and share
1. Get educated
Fifteen years ago, this information was very difficult to access. The first book that I read about venture capital was High-tech Ventures: The Guide For Entrepreneurial Success that was written in 1991. Part way in to my second venture (I was employee number 6 for the record) John Nesheim released High Tech Start Up, Revised And Updated: The Complete Handbook For Creating Successful New High Tech Companies in 2000. This was my early education about venture capital, high potential growth companies. But most of the lessons came from the school of hard knocks. But things have changed. There are a tonne of resources available to entrepreneurs. Here is a short list:
This is your business. You are taking outside funding. You need to understand what is happening in the process and why.
2. Due diligence on investors
The investor is doing diligence on you and your company. They are going to talk to your previous investors, your employees, your customers and maybe your prospects. They will take to people in their circle of trust to learn about the market, expected performance metrics, and your reputation. It is incredibly important theyunderstand the risks and accretive milestones before presenting you to their investment committee.
You must do your own due diligence on the investor before taking any money. This is going to be a partner in your company. It has often been described as a work marriage. You should need/want to understand more about this person, the firm they work for, and how they treat their existing companies and CEOs. Go for dinner, have a glass of wine, talk about your company, and figure out if you can work with this person for the next few years. Talk to other CEOs that they’ve invested at a similar stage as your company. Talk to the ones that succeeded, to the ones that failed. Talk to the people that the investor sends to you to do diligence. There are so many tools to expose social relationships that didn’t exist: LinkedIn will allow you to send InMails to past CEOs; Clarity allows you to connect with a lot of entrepreneurs and mentors that have a connection with the investor; AngelList is a great tool for discovery but it is also becoming a great way to see investments and help you in your diligence.
“the diligence factor was that I knew them, but had never taken money from them. It’s hard to know how people are going to react when they are at risk of losing money because of something you are directly responsible for until you are actually at that point.” – Brandon Watson
The above resources are amazing. However, I often learn best from the examples of others. I learned a lot from Mark Organ at Influitive. Mark shared stories about the good and the bad decisions he made in the early days at Eloqua. You learn a lot when you share a hotel room on the road as grown ups.
There are formal meetups like Founders & Funders. But seriously in order to have the trust, you need to get out of the office and the formalities of these events. The conversations come over a poker game. But you’ve got to put yourself out there, be vulnerable, and find people that can teach you something.
I believe so much in this that I’m renovating my house. I want a big kitchen for family dinner. All of my startups will be getting an invitation to Sunday night dinner. Why? Because I’m betting my family’s future on them, and I want them to be a part of the family. This includes the ones that I’ve invested in already and any of the companies that I’m looking at investing. I want them to hang out. I want them to help each other. Share metrics and tactics. I want them to tell you that I’m slow to invest. I’m slow even after I’ve said yes (but I hope they understand that it is because sometimes I have to do some consulting work to have investment dollars). (Now I just need the renovations to finish).
Feeling screwed?
I’m starting to think about publishing shitty term sheets, depending on the risks our lawyer identifies, with investor names. I’m not sure public shaming is right model, and my lawyer might tell me it is not. But I think that we need to elevate the conversation we as entrepreneurs are having with each other and our investors.
I’ll be publishing prospective term sheets in the next few days.
We can all gripe about why founders and startups should not attend events, and they should get down to figuring out if there is quantified market demand for their product.
"Traction is your story of momentum told through quantified evidence of market demand for your product" @brendanbaker@hnshah#awesome
But lets face it, summer feels like it is here in Toronto (it’s hot). And we all need to blow off some steam. So why not take some 2-3 days and connect in Montreal (or Vancouver more on that soon). Startup Festival early bird tickets sales end tomorrow (June 1, 2013). There is an amazing lineup full of local, national and international recognizable talent. Come to Montreal. Be prepared to listen to amazing stories from real founders and investors about how they figured out traction for their companies.
Folks I’m looking forward to hearing stories from:
I’m going for the opportunity to learn from other people’s experiences. I’m going to connect with folks I’d otherwise have to travel to multiple places to connect with. And probably most importantly, I’m looking forward to strengthening the connections I have with folks I already know.
Our friends at Microsoft are looking to Toronto as a hot bed of startup activity. Don’t take my work for it, the Startup Compass folks ranked Toronto number 8 on their Startup Genome report for startup activity. The study is being conducted by our friend Sam Ladner (LinkedIn), a Senior User Researcher in Microsoft’s Office Envisioning team. Sam is ex-Toronto, she joined Microsoft six months ago in Redmond. She researches trends in the future of work, and helps builds prototype productivity technology based on that research.
She is looking for participants for this study to help Microsoft learn more about how startups organize themselves, choose technology tools, and their organizational culture. The data will be used to build technology for the next generation of Microsoft products.
About the Study
Participants would need to sit down with a researcher and possibly a note-taker for a 1-hour interview, but for observation they would go about their work day as normal. The researcher and note-taker would stay out of the way and simply observe and take notes.
The researcher would take handwritten notes and some audio recording. With participants’ permission, the researcher would also record video and take still photographs.
All data collected during the research would be used internally at Microsoft. The data would be held on a secure server that sits behind Microsoft’s firewall. This server is only accessible with valid Microsoft employee credentials. Raw data such as photographs, fieldnotes, audio recordings and unedited video will only be accessible to the immediate research team. Edited video and/or photo slideshows will be shared with other Microsoft employees. The research report will not be published publicly, though the researchers may refer to the aggregated and anonymous findings in professional conferences or symposia. Participants may opt to have video of their offices and themselves to be included in these conferences or symposia, but by default their identities will only be known to internal Microsoft employees.
We will build prototype technologies, based on these findings. We hope to build the next generation of tools that startups themselves need.
Participate in the Study
Microsoft is currently recruiting for an ethnographic study of startups and freelancers. The belief is the number of these workers will continue to grow, and Microsoft wants to know more about how self-employed information workers use technology. If you are a startup founder, Microsoft wants to meet you. The study involves face-to-face interviewing and some job shadowing. Microsoft offer a cash or software incentive in appreciation of your participation.
Fieldwork will take place in early July.
If you want to participate or would like additional information, please complete the form below:
The Modest Tree Suite of eLearning software represents a revolutionary method of creating 3D interactive courseware that will significantly reduce the amount of time and cost to create quality, interactive 3D training.
The suite of authoring tools provided by Modest Tree can be used directly by experts across many different fields to produce realistic simulations and walk-throughs of complex procedures and tasks, greatly simplifying the process of creating interactive lessons for training.
Bits of Knowledge: Scaling
Join us for lunch (sandwiches and pop provided) and over 30 minutes learn
what it takes to successfully scale a web service and what to think about
when you are building a product that needs to scale quickly.If you plan to
attend, please register at: http://bok-scaling.eventbrite.ca
Who is giving a talk on this: Tim Chipman
When is it: 4th of June 2013 from 12PM to 12:45 PM
CTO Peer 2 Peer Meetup
Tech CTOs from start-up to mid sized companies come together to
talk frankly about common issues. Topics include how to manage
growth, evaluate technologies, best implementation practices,
how retain and motivate technical talent etc. Moderated by
GoInstant CTO Gavin Uhma
Who: CTO’s and Lead Developers When: 6 June 2013 from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM Where: Volta Event space
Today, developers everywhere are migrating in droves to the
exciting Git platform. Users reference its blistering
performance, usage flexibility, offline capabilities, and
collaboration features as their motivation for switching from
Subversion and CVS. Let’s get started with Git. You’ll be using
it like a master in no time at all.
When: 11th of June from Noon to 1 PM
Where: Volta Event Space
Who: Volta Network Members interested to
learn more about Git and best repo management practices
Share ideas and best practices or partake in roundtable discussions
on topics of relevance such as branding, advertising, promotions,
publications, metrics, social media and public relations and hot
issues for a rapidly evolving global tech startup. Moderated by
TitanFile’s Greg Poirier (ex. Radian6, Empire Theaters..)
When: 13th of June at 5 PM
Where: McInessCooper Boardroom
Who: Marketing execs, Metrics zealots and
lean startup practitioners looking to get the most out of their
marketing buck.
Come together to learn about best practices in product and web design
and to discuss current trends as well as disect and analyze each
other’s design work. Moderated by 26ones Brian
JeffcockWho: Designers and geeks interested in design,
visual identity & typography. Where: Volta
Event space When: 19th of June 5 PM to 6 PM
Take 5 minutes to teach others something from your experience (results
of a split test, good design pattern, a neat trick) or share a short
educational story. If you have something to share (and I hope you will)
send the summary in the following format to [email protected] (or just reply to this
email).Name: (eg. Patrick Hankison) Topic: (eg. “What not to do in A/B
testing”) Have slides: (eg. No)Slides are optional.
When is it: 22nd of June 2013 from
5PM to 6 PM
Ladies Learning Code: Introduction to Python
Python is a great language for beginners. Its beautiful and
clean-looking syntax means you’ll spend less time being confused (it
looks sort of like English!), and more time understanding and applying
the fundamentals of programming. Plus, even as a beginner, you can do
fun things with Python, like make games and draw shapes!
In this Introduction to Python workshop, you will create an app that
sells tickets, a “Guess the Number” game (Price is Right, anyone?) and
as part of your final project, you’ll re-create the schoolyard classic,
Hangman.
Where: Volta Event space When: 22nd of June
2013 from 10
AM to 5 PM
It’s almost time to shave off yer playoff beards. Summer time is upon us. And summer’s in Canada mean cottages and startup events.
Our friends at the C100, who are continually helping to build the Maple Syrup Mafia across the globe, are hosting a series of events in Alberta, Ottawa and Montreal (invite only). The C100 does a great job making sure that connected Canadians from the Silicon Valley attend these events. It’s a great way to meet and connect socially with Canadians who are transplanted in the Valley or who are doing a stint there, but who still have strong interests in seeing a stronger set of Canadian companies. These local events are great low social capital ways to begin building your social network of people that might care (if you aren’t a douche).
Our other friends (and Hot Shit List 2013 awardees) Tobi and Harley at Shopify have put together an amazing event in Ottawa. As you are driving back to town with working on your mind. Take a side trip from Bobcaygeon, and see the constellations. There is an amazing group of speakers including:
Update: The event date has changed to June 10, 2013.
In partnership with Via Rail consider this your official invite to our Ontario Startup Train wine and cheese on June 10th at Union Station in Toronto. We hope to get all our train attendees, alumni from last year and anyone considering coming this year together to start connecting and meeting before we even board the train. If you haven’t bought your ticket, come out and meet us.
If you don’t have your train ticket yet, grab one now as we will sell out again this year. Our early ticket purchasers get dibs on spots for our on-train mentoring with the likes of Jim Estill, Zak Homuth, Brian Kobus and many more.
You remember the roadtrips of your youth, some with your parents, some with just friends. For our greatest roadtrips, we remember the journey the rest of our lives but often pause and think “where were we headed?”
“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”, ZAMM, Robert Pirsig
Last year we organized a roadtrip for startup founders and funders. We reserved our own car on a Via train and packed it full of entrepreneurs. Our destination was The International Startup Festival in Montreal for three full days of meeting, conversing, learning and working with a truly international audience of startup people.
This July, we’re aiming to have three cars, two passenger cars along with a bar car that we’ll use for our on-train events.
Startup conferences are very different beasts compared to their corporate cousins. People aren’t attending “because my boss sent me”. Instead the majority have spent what little pocket change they have to get there. The result is a conference filled with hustlers motivated to get a ton of value out of being there. We hope to help.
Instead of wasting your travel time, join us on the Ontario Startup Train and let’s get organized before we’re even registered for the conference. Our hope is to get you thinking and sharing what you need to get out of attending this conference before hand. Sharing that with other people on the train means it won’t be just you hunting for an introduction to Dave McClure or speaking to that potential partner you want to invite into your new project.
Are you waiting impatiently for Dreamforce? Why Dreamforce? Where else could you have seen: Red Hot Chilli Peppers (2012), Metallica (2011), Stevie Wonder (2010), Black Crowes (2009), Foo Fighters (2008), Inxs (2007), Train (2006), etc. It’s an amazing list of bands but you have to head all the way to San Francisco to find out who’s headlining 2013. Why not try something a little more local and a little sooner.
Ok, it’s not Dreamforce, but the folks at KPMG have put together the KPMG GTA Tech Leaders Concert Series – AmaTour (password: KPMG). The event is Thursday, May 30, 2013 at Sound Academy on Polson Pier. It features bands from Ceridian (formerly Dayforce), KPMG, Smithson Martin, Intelex and others. Rumor is there might be a big name or two that take the stage. Alan Smithson Follow @alan_smithson is MCing/DJing. If you aren’t familiar with Alan, his Emulator is used by Linkin Park and Infected Mushroom and others. It’s going to be fun.
The Toronto startup community lost a good friend in Michael O’Connor Clarke to cancer on October 14, 2012. And we will not forget, and we continue to support fundraising efforts. This is a great opportunity to get out of the office for a social evening with some tunes and make some connections.
Patrick Keefe is announcing his new fund today called Build Ventures, a $50m early and mid stage fund based in Halifax.
The guy is a Harvard MBA, an Oxford grad, former Atlas Ventures principal, Boston Consulting Group executive and he built over a dozen Starbucks coffee franchises which he then sold back to Starbucks corporate. When you meet Patrick and dig in to his background you start wonder where the hell this guy came from.
What’s even better is that Build is the in-house fund at Volta, a new startup crash pad in Halifax that currently houses 10 startups. The fund has taken up residence at Volta and has been a key part of getting it started.
The fund has just launched so it hasn’t announced any investments yet, but we are excited to see which deals they do first.
Volta and Build are two big leaps for the startup community in Atlantic Canada and when you consider it alongside what has been happening in New Brunswick with Launch36 and Startup Week, as well as a recent string of big exits, it seems like things are accelerating incredibly quickly.
The next major event is the Atlantic Venture Forum in June which is being keynoted by Paul Singh.
that was written in 1991. Part way in to my second venture (I was employee number 6 for the record) John Nesheim released 
Dulcie Madden
Joe Chernov
Jen van der Meer
Michael Baum
