StartupNorth

Category: Startups

  • Byte Club launches – Behind the scenes at b5media

    A new web video show has launched. It is called Byte Club and the first episode is a profile of Toronto based b5media.

    Here is the first episode:

  • Anthony Lacavera to speak at StartupEmpire

    I am happy to announce that Anthony Lacavera will be speaking at StartupEmpire. Anthony is an example of the kind of guy we can all learn a lot from.

    The story of Globalive is really one of true entrepreneurial hustle. Anthony, now 34 years old, has gone from graduation day at the University of Toronto, to over $125million in revenue in just under 10 years. From just himself to over 175 employees and he is now the force behind Canada’s next wireless carrier.

    I don’t have to tell you how I feel about the current state of wireless in Canada and how it has a negative effect on mobile startups in this country. Tom has been tracking a lot of that activity on WirelessNorth.ca, and wow are we hurting right now.

    There is great news for startups however, Globalive says they will likely release a variety of monthly all-you-can-eat plans, and then open their network up to other brands and cellphone companies. This means more than just a 4th national wireless carrier in Canada, it means a whole new level of competition.

    I invited Anthony because he, to me, represents the sort of ambition and vision that every startup should have. How many folks have the guts to say they are going to be the next national wireless carrier in Canada and then go make it happen? Just one, that is Anthony.

    Globalive has not been an easy ride, they have consistently iterated over their business model, have found new markets when the needed them and their brands, such as Yak, have been growing in prominence.

    The story of Globalive is also one of uninhibited ambition. When Anthony needed to raise a few billion dollars to bid in the wireless spectrum auction, he just picked up the phone. “I cold-called about 100 parties, from investors to operators to advisors, people that look at the wireless industry.”

    That takes guts.

    Anthony will be keynoting on Day 2 of the conference. This is your chance to meet one of Canada’s next great success stories.

    I would like to thank our Leadership sponsors, Microsoft and HighRoad Communications.

    We are also pleased to announce our champion sponsors,

    PriceWaterhouseCoopers
    Ontario Centers of Excellence
    and JLA Ventures.


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

  • Riffing on being a startup in Canada

    I think we sound like a couple of nerds stuck in an elevator, but we gave it our best shot.

    Dave and I were hanging out last week and decided to stand in front of a camera, this is what we had to say.

    We have some big announcements to make about the conference in the next week. New speakers, some incredible opportunities for startups one of the coolest parties all year! And don’t forget, the final schedule as well.

    Thanks to everyone who has registered so far. There was a big rush before the early bird deadline, and we are watching the remaining tickets as the go. This is going to be a lot of fun, and we hope you will walk away with everything you need to go to the next level.

    This has been a lot of work, the blood, sweat and tears kind of work you all put in to your own startups every day. Seeing your smiling faces will be the reward! 😉

    If you haven’t registered yet, head over to StartupEmpire.ca and do it now!

  • Back to the Basics

    This is a guest post by Christopher Pyper Co-founder and Lead Developer of MyWebVine.

    When I finished school and first hit the job market it was right in the middle of the dot-com bust. When I finally found a job it was at a company called Hostopia. The company sold web hosting, email, and application services for businesses through large ISPs and Telcos like Rogers, Bell, Telus, and Verizon. Working there was a very intense learning experience for me. The rapid growth meant I had to learn fast, work even faster, innovate always, and adopt as quickly as possible.

    Hostopia was almost entirely bootstrapped by it’s owners – who worked there every single day. It had a solid business model and an awesome core team of employees with whom the founders had worked with in the past (they had previously founded Tucows and Look Communications). Just a few months ago Hostopia was acquired for $124 million, not too shabby for a Canadian tech startup. There is undoubtedly something to learn from a team that can produce three successful Canadian start-ups in a row.

    This company succeeded when everyone else was failing during the dot-com bust by having solid fundamentals. Have no doubt that we as Canadians and Entrepreneurs will be hit with the repercussions of this credit crisis. Getting the basics right is even more important now that financial meltdown has tightened a lot of purse strings.

    BUSINESS MODEL

    Does the world really need another Twitter clone? Is your Facebook application going to stand out from Vampire Bites? Why in hell are you gambling on an acquisition to profit? Are you actually going to make money? If not, go do this right now: Climb to the top of the CN tower – or take the elevator – and look around, you will see businesses and consumers in every direction stretching to the horizon. The world is a big place and there is still plenty of room for good ideas.

    Most of the successful web based start-ups I have seen were great because they brought something to the web that was never there before. And they had a way of drawing profits now or in the near future from sales or advertising. In other words, they made money directly from their service. Hostopia resold it services through large ISPs and Telcos. They didn’t give away free accounts, cheapen themselves by fighting for the bottom, or over-hype their products. They simply sold a good reliable service for money.

    FUNDING

    Too many start-ups burn through too much cash with no tangible results. The fact is, many web-based start-ups actually need very little funding; at least to build their service. Whatever happened to a little sweat equity and bootstrapping? A distributed team can get a lot done collaborating through voip, email, im, and wikis; all while managing source code through tools like Git or CVS. As for hosting costs, those can be easily be kept down in early stages by using a reliable shared hosting service, or a cloud service like Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine. If you do require funding, at least try and develop something tangible to bring to the table. This shows you have enthusiasm, proves your concept, and demonstrates you can deliver – it also greatly increases your chances of securing the sought after financing.

    TEAM

    You need a great team if you really want to succeed. This goes for every department, not just technology. Your lawyer, accountant, marketing director, and sales people are just as important. Hostopia’s founders have been using the same core team through three successful start-ups (going on four now I think), that’s how important they are. I have seen first hand what a small powerful team can do.

    Make sure your team members have the four E’s: Education, Experience, Enthusiasm, and Equity (tangible direct equity in your start-up); otherwise, your just spinning your wheels. Bringing on employees that don’t have the same enthusiasm as the founders is the surest way to fail, the company is just a paycheque to them.

    Don’t forget, recessions can mean opportunity for your start-up, if you have nailed down the fundamentals.

  • Canadian entrepreneurs have to be more creative than relying exclusively on the US market.

    Jevon, I don’t have access to special finance data.

    I don’t think the biggest issue Canadian entrepreneurs has to face is not credit facilities. I think Canadian entrepreneurs have to be more creative than relying exclusively on the US market.

    Moreover, on a personal note, I refuse to admit that the tech and startup sector in Canada should suffer because of a dysfunctioning US finance sector & mortgages and home credit problems

    Originally posted as a comment by Heri on StartupNorth using Disqus.

  • The sky is falling, and so is your valuation

    I guess I can’t stay out of the conversation on this any longer.

    I am no expert in downturns, recessions or being poor. But I have a feeling a lot of us are going to learn about at least two, and possibly all three of those things. We are in for a bit of a rough ride, and contrary to what you might be hearing, we might be in for a longer and more difficult few years as startups here in Canada.

    Things haven’t be rosy lately, we have written a lot about that, but it has had very little to do with the current situation. Capital for startups in Canada has been tight for years, and the slow deaths of many of our Venture Capitalists have been because of poor performance (among other things) rather than tightening credit. Now, we have both.

    We have Venture Capitalists who were having enough trouble raising funds and who will now have almost no hope of raising capital. This is not good for anyone.

    So, what can you do? How can we work around this? What will the next few years look like? I don’t know for sure, but I can tell you what I am doing:

    Get your personal finances in order. $200 cable TV bill? Get rid of it. $70 gym membership? Gone. Constant and expensive use of your cellphone? Goodbye. It is going to be different for everyone, but you need to build up a small nest egg if at all possible. I’m not telling you to stock up on canned beans, but if there was a time to learn how to manage your personal finances, this is it.

    That bread and butter contract you do on the side to pay the bills? It could be gone tomorrow. You need to know what you are spending and why, and you need to know where you can cut when things get tight.

    Know your cash flows! Ever since you did a cash flow statement when you started your company, you may not have gone back and reworked your projections, instead you have probably just let you accountant keep them up to date, but have not looked at things too closely. You know your hiring schedule, and you know how high your expenses can be ever month, but you now need to make sure your projections a year out are still solid.

    How vulnerable is your revenue stream? Which cost-centers can you get rid of quickly and efficiently if you have to bring your burn rate down? You need to know when to pull the trigger, and where to shoot. When the time comes: Just do it.

    Just raising financing? Get to revenues fast, within 6 months, there is less time now to prove out a model over the long term, it is important to compress your cycles a bit for a few reasons. You need to be able to test and learn more, with less.

    Are there better target markets? Those of us in the Enterprise space are going to be in for a bit rougher of a ride, but we also have an advantage. If we are building a product that saves the customer money, and are selling to them based on ROI, then there is even an opportunity here. If your software creates efficiency, reduces complexity or streamlines and existing product, then you have something to sell.

    If on the other hand, your product is focused on less tangible benefits, then you are in for a slow period. This is going to effect a lot of Enterprise 2.0 startups who haven’t narrowed down their product offering yet.

    On the consumer side, things probably aren’t a lot different. If you are trying to change behavior, this is going to be a terrible time to try to do it. If however, you are making someone’s life easier or more enjoyable, then they will be able to see the value and you have an opportunity.

    These rules all apply any time, and even more so now.

    Don’t head for the hills. This is a time when a lot of people are going to have to go get jobs. Some of us will have to, there just won’t be any choice, but it is not the time to do it if you can help it.

    You are going to create some of your most incredible products and companies during down times. Hunger and frugality (the traits of great entrepreneurs) are rewarded in times like this. Flashiness and and excess will no longer be looked at in the same way they might have been in the last few years. This will be true here in Canada and everywhere.

    The need for revenue will force you to pick up the phone that much sooner, or to get your product to market that much more quickly.

    This might just be our time. Canadian Startups, who have been hungry for years now, have a chance to shine. We have been building companies that people called un-ambitious. We were told that we did not think big enough and that we were too risk averse. That may have all been true (and I think it was, when people were saying it in the last few years), but we now need to swing this to our advantage.

    Lets lead the way and teach the world how to grow great companies in the middle of an economic drought. You’ve built a capital efficient business, you have a strong customer base and a product people want.

    Don’t slow down now, this is just the time to make a break for it.

  • Toronto mobile meetup Thusday night

    Headsup! Startup and Community North’s sister site (better half?) WirelessNorth.ca is sponsoring a mobile developers meetup in Toronto this Thursday (that’s October 9th, 2008) at the Bedford Academy on leafy Prince Arthur street. There will be beer, fellow developers, tasty nachos and some prizes to give away. This meetup is focused on iPhone developers in celebration of the lifting of your NDA, but all mobile devs and startups with a mobile angle are welcome. Hope to see you there.

    Deets: Toronto Mobile Developers Meetup Thursday on WirelessNorth.ca

    Eventbright Registration link

  • echoage – evite for the environment (or anything else)

    echoage is a new Toronto, On based startup that is trying to change how we think about throwing the age old birthday party.

    A friend of mine was complaining the other day that people were bringing 150$ gifts to her son’s birthday. “What is with private school parent’s?” she wondered.

    I have no idea what is causing people to buy 150$ gifts for 5 year olds, but if that kind of money is being spent, there is a business to be made.

    Using EchoAge you send out an invitation via email to the friends of your child. When the recieve the invitation, they are asked to, instead of bringing a gift to the party, donate some amount of money to a single charity. EchoAge takes the payment online and confirms everything. The total amount of donations are then pooled and it is split up to buy one gift for the child and then the rest is sent to charity, with EchoAge taking a cut in there somewhere.

    Here?s how: Guests are invited to an ECHOage birthday party online. Instead of bringing a wrapped and packaged present, guests simply RSVP and give a secure online gift of money. Payments are pooled for the purchase of ONE special gift for the birthday child and to support ONE meaningful cause. The site provides online invitations, thank you notes, awards, allergy alerts and even keeps track of RSVPs and the money your child has raised.

    ECHOage arranges everything, so there is no need for guests to drive, shop, wrap or even pick up the phone to make a donation.

    With a recent mention in Vanity Fair co-founders Debbie Zinman and Alison Smith off to a great start.

  • fOTOGLIF partners up with Getty and Thomson

    Earlier today Toronto based fOTOGLIF, an emerging ad?supported stock photo portal, announced partnerships with Getty Images, Thomson Reuters, and Splash News. These partnerships should help deliver stock photo content, thereby solving one piece of the puzzle: inventory.

    fOTOGLIF’s business model is to provide free ad-supported stock photos. I embedded an example below. Would you use ad supported stock photos on your blog? How about if I told you Idee was monitoring unauthorized use?

  • StartupEmpire – New speakers and tickets are selling fast

    Things have been coming together quickly for StartupEmpire. I am excited to announce some incredible new speakers, and we will keep announcing others as they are confirmed.

    The interest so far has been pretty amazing. There have been so many speaker submissions that we have had to completely revisit the agenda for both days of the conference. You still have a chance to submit your proposal in the next few days, and we will still take a look for anything that we think we need to get on the program.

    We have just confirmed that Don Dodge, Hugh MacLeod and David Cohen will be joinging us as keynote speakers.

    Don Dodge is currently the Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and was recently a panelist at the TechCrunch50 conference. Don calls Microsoft ?the biggest start-up in the world? and his job is to work with VC’s and start-ups to help them build great companies.

    HughHugh MacLeod has been an inspiration to many of us. His work with English Cut and Stormhoek were some of the earliest successes in using blogs to communicate a message cheaply and efficiently, which are much needed lessons for new and old startups alike.

    DavidDavid Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars in Boulder Colorado. TechStars has been one of the most successful seed stage funds in the world. David is also the founder of ColoradoStartups.com, a blog focused on tracking Colorado Startups.

    Don’t forget to get your ticket before the early bird deadline, or ASAP before we sell out. The venue is small enough that we really can’t add more.

    Thanks for all your support, we are working hard to create something that is valuable and that you will leave from feeling energized and ready to do something great.

    We would also like to thank our Leadership sponsors, Microsoft and HighRoad Communications.