Category: Startups

Make it easy for your customers.

BTI Systems raised $15M from Export Development Canada and its existing investors: VenGrowth, BDC VC, GrowthWorks, Kodiak VP, Primaxis, Lucent VP, Summerhill VP, Wellington Financial and MMV Financial.

FreshBooks integrated with Skydeck.

Lots of events this month, check out the calendar for more details.

Any good startup has to iterate constantly. Market changes, product changes, management changes. Every part of the organization is help up to a high standard and when it does not make the cut, it has to change. With that in mind, we are announcing some changes to StartupEmpire, our conference that is just over one week away.

These are tough economic times, we are in a period where start-ups need to buckle down and manage their cash flows closely. Likewise, a lot of individuals are considering more closely where they invest their time and money.

In order to make StartupEmpire more accessible, we are reducing the conference to a 1-day event and we will be reducing the price of a ticket. This is to allow start-ups to continue to be more responsible with their finances and still have the opportunity to participate in conference designed to provide real-world education for start-ups about starting, building and growing successful companies.

Therefore we are taking the following steps to help start-ups, students and entrepreneurs attend StartupEmpire:

• Reducing StartupEmpire to a 1-day event and changing the venue to This is London, November 13th 2008
• Reducing the price of a ticket to StartupEmpire to $65/ticket + GST
• Refunding the difference to all registered attendees.

We believe strongly that this event is something that the startup community needs and we have worked hard to ensure that it is still of the same high quality as the original event.

The opportunities available at StartupEmpire are important for everyone: Real world examples of success and failure by entrepreneurs, Learn about the pitfalls of having the wrong business model, customer acquisition, financing, incorporating, getting sued, social marketing, technology selection and product development from entrepreneurs in the trenches can help you learn what to do and what to avoid with your start-up.

The lineup includes world-class entrepreneurs including: Don Dodge, Lane Becker, David Cohen, Howard Lindzon, Rick Segal, Austin Hill and others. Along with the conference program there will be social opportunities to meet angel investors, venture capitalists, lawyers, accountants and others with expertise helping Canadian startups get to the next level. The day will end with a wonderful social event hosted by Microsoft Canada.

I apologize for making these changes so close to the event. We are working to ensure the best experience for a reasonable cost for all attendees, and to make sure that as many people as possible have an opportunity to participate.

---

I would like to thank our sponsors who have been understanding and who have helped out in many ways.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Ontario Centers of Excellence,

Gowlings

and JLA Ventures.
Visit www.startupempire.ca for more information on the conference and to register.

I am sitting here watching my cat chase his tail (what does that say about me?), and it reminded me that I was going to make this post.

This time last year, just as everyone was getting the Facebook logo tattooed on their butt and while my buddies were trying to figure out the science of breaking up with someone they had listed as a relationship on their profile, I went against the grain.

Almost exactly 1 year ago, I took the time to tell you that you were all deluded, that the Facebook Platform made no business sense and that this was all going to come crashing down.

Then, just 4 months later, I got on my high horse (on which I am still firmly mounted) and I wrote that I was right. The house of cards came down even faster than the credit markets.

So, I am back again, thinking I will gloat a little more, and tell you that if you haven’t moved on yet, then you need to get over it. Your relationship with Facebook is unhealthy. It is a fine place to find old boyfriends and girlfriends from High School, but it is no place to make a business.

As your mother would say: I told you so.

Now we are at the point that even the people who were making money off of Facebook applications are willing to admit that the whole thing has gone down the tubes.

Scott Rafer, the founder of Facebook App shop Lookery, recently declared the Facebook Platform “dead” at the Facebook Developer Conference in Berlin.

“Lookery’s own statistics from Quantcast suggest that their publisher traffic has been almost halved since the new site design was released. Ultimately, I think we may see an increase in traffic as users become educated on the new design but there is no doubt that developers were impacted significantly.”

The redesign of Facebook was just the final nail in the coffin of the world of Facebook applications, but it is representatitve of a point I made in my first post on this subject: “You cannot build a business on someone else’s platform when they don’t see you as a partner.”

As an app developer, you were a customer of Facebook. A guest and a test market. You were disposible.

Build for a real platform

What is a real platform? Here are some examples:

The Web.
Yes, all those things you loved about Facebook, The Web has them too, and more, and better,. more better.

The Web has an API, it has users (a lot more than Facebook), and it is pliable and you can apply all sorts of revenue models on top of it. Yes, the web is a wonderful place to put things that have value.

Sure, the web isn’t for lazy folks. It isn’t like Facebook in November 2007 when you could get 50,000 people running your app which displayed various types of mullets, but you know what, if you put a little elbow grease in to it, you just might get 50,000 users, and you might get 5million, and they will be all YOURS.

Microsoft Outlook
I’m not telling you this is a MUST-BUILD platform, but it is worth taking a look at. Outlook has proven itself as a great platform on which to build. From a development perspective I am sure it is a total pain, but once you are in there, you have as much access to someone’s “social graph” as Facebook could ever give you, and your ability to integrate with Outlook is limited only by your imagination and the willingness of your users.

The Blackberry
I might get a rough ride for this one, but the Blackberry is the ultimate platform. Blackberry users are addicted. They are fiends and they ALL HAVE MONEY. Here is the other thing: Blackberry has been getting a lot of grief for not having an app store like Apple does for the iPhone. I have to agree that it seems silly, but there is a reason: RIM does not want to be a gatekeeper. You can install whatever you want on a Blackberry, and through that, RIM ensures that they are not the broker of success on thier hardware. The web is where Blackberry apps compete.

Now, sure RIM recently announced carrier-specific app stores, but those will probably die off, and they are about RIM pleasing the carrier. The ability for anyone to be able to install your app will still live on.

So go on, get out there and build on top of things that care about you, your users and your business.