StartupNorth

Category: Startups

  • Marketing, Robots and Startup Hacking

    Chuck Norris Approved

    These events are Chuck Norris Approved.

    The best part about a health entrepreneurial ecosystem is the diversity of events. Toronto is rocking a variety of events, ranging from conversations to socials. But there are a lot of grassroots events where designers, developers, marketers, and technologists can get involved. There are lots of things going on beyond the usual social activities. My request, is that you refer a student or a colleague that you think might be interested. This is a great way for someone to start participating and get to the next level.

    Mesh Marketing

    This one is aimed at marketers. It is happening November 7, 2012. It is not purely a startup marketing event, i.e., there is not an abundance of focusing on core core value proposition and user engagement. It is an event where there is distinct benefit to companies in the learning about Acquisition and Activation and Referral. There are a crazy number of marketers that have built and sold startups (see Jennifer Lum think Quattro Mobile) and those that are defining new techniques (see Kristina Halvorson think content strategy) and others that I think are doing a great job (see Hicham Ratnani think Frank And Oak).

    “Canada has good engineering and technical talent but a shortage of sales and marketing talent.” Kunal Gupta, TechVibes

    So, here’s a chance to gain access to world class marketing content. It’s relatively inexpensive, there are a few tickets left. And the after party is a fundraiser for our friend Michael O’Connor Clarke’s family.

     StartupWeekend Toronto is happening November 9-11, 2012. It is an event where designers, developers, marketers can come together and explore. The idea is that the artificial time constraints create the right environment to experience and understand what working in a startup is like. It might or might not produce a fundable startup, but it will produce potential founders that have experience working with each other. It’s a great event. At last check, there were a few wait list spots for non-technical individuals to participate.

    Get Your Bot On!

    CC-BY-NC-SA-20 Some rights reserved by STCroiss
    AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by STCroiss

    Hardware is cool again. I love seeing a rise of hardware, manufacturing and physical bit based startups in Toronto. Did you know there are companies like Upverter? Panda Robotics? Pebble (alright Allerta was a Waterloo company but headed to greener pastures before their Kickstarter campaign)? Get Your Bot On! is a three day event where you can learn along side newbies, hobbyists, and pros to build a robot. Let me repeat, you can build a robot. That’s amazing. Read Leila’s blog post about it. They will provide everything you need to build a robot.

    Friday Nov 23 – Sunday Nov 25, 2012. Register to attend.

    AngelHack Toronto, Dec 1-2, 2012

    Still looking for an opportunity to hang with Leila Boujnane, Dan Martell, Amber MacArthur, Jesse Rodgers and me. Then AngelHack is a great way to build something in a 24 hour window and have the chance to get feedback and be entered in the larger AngelHack contest. Winners will get 6 weeks of mentorship in Silicon Valley (and the prizes include travel). It’s a great way for young developers to either kickstart a company and start to build a network beyond their local community.

    “All participants are expected to work on the honor code and respect the rules below. Overall, if you come with a great idea, build something on the spot, and present us a meaningful new hack that can improve peoples lives (even if only in a humorous way) then we are pretty impressed.”

  • Respect the Game, Love the Grind!

    You have David saying we can’t all be founders, you have Jevon being honest about why he’s a founder, and then you have me ranting about vomiting on your footwear and then there’s Debbie Landa‘s “club of crazy“. Start reading the comment sections on those posts and things get even muddier…..You have to love problems or not, know your role, find your motivation? If you’re considering being an entrepreneur and starting your own business, how do you decide whether to make the leap?

    There is a game to this entrepreneur deal. It’s a thing, you can point at, and you have to respect that game. In my opinion, it is the greatest game out there, period.

    Creating something from nothing is the most difficult thing you can do. In business, I have the utmost respect for anyone who is able to create a viable business out of nothing. A few stories to add some colour….

    In a previous life I rock climbed. It’s likely the coolest sport I’ve ever participated in. Few other sports require the mix of physical requirements, mental fortitude, training, preparation, and ability to deal with plain old fear. I know lot’s of folks who consider themselves climbers. They bought nice gear at MEC and hit the indoor gym every week.

    Those people don’t love climbing, they love the idea of climbing. They love the way it looks in a magazine and on tv but that’s not climbing. There’s a filthy grind to climbing. It’s constant cardio work, training in the indoor gym, stretching. It’s packing up all your camping gear every Thursday night in order to leave town as early as you can Friday to get to the crag and setup camp before it gets dark. It’s getting up with the sun, climbing all day. It’s getting home late Sunday night, dropping your gear on the kitchen floor and crashing. Then Monday night you spend the evening cleaning ropes, gear and tents. And on and on.

    Pick another sport, ice hockey. Yes we all dream about raising the cup, skating in front of massive crowds, making millions but that’s not hockey. Hockey’s being in the gym five days a week, 6 am practices, lost teeth, chipped elbows. Very few people have the raw skill but even less have the determination required to survive the grind.

    What do NHL players say when they retire? Almost universally they say something along the lines of “I still love the game, I love coming to the rink, I love my team, my fans. But I realized I couldn’t put my body through another off season of preparing”.

    Creating something from nothing isn’t about TechCrunch, billion dollar exits, multi-million dollar acquisitions and launch parties. Those may come and when they do, the best will enjoy the moment and then sneak away from the party, head back to the office to return to the grind. If you’re going to do this, remember to respect the game we play and love the grind!

  • 6 Tips for Selling to Big Business

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by entrepreneur Aydin Mirzaee (LinkedIn, ), who is a cofounder and the Co-CEO of Chide.it creators of  FluidSurveys.com and ReviewRoom. 

    CC-BY-20 Some rights reserved by paul bica
    Attribution Some rights reserved by paul bica

    When founding a startup, everyone involved gets used to being told “no”. They are told no for their ideas, no for funding and no for sales. There are two ways to react to no, either get discouraged and give up, or realize that eventually there will be a “yes” and continue working towards that end goal.

    The successful startups are those that both persevere through discouragement and try something different

    “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson

    Stepping out of a comfort zone and doing things that others might not, is the thing that can lead to success.

    This was the case when I founded FluidSurveys.com. FluidSurveys.com is an online survey and form building tool. Back in 2008 when we launched, there were already thousands of survey tools available on the market, including a well-known and well financed market leader, SurveyMonkey. It was the focus on selling to large organizations in the early days that has led to FluidSurveys.com becoming one of the top survey providers in Canada and it’s adoption by customers in large organization in over 50 countries including governments, educational institutions and Fortune 500 companies. These are my six tips on selling to large organizations.

    1. Get Customer Testimonials Early On

    Most of the time, large organizations are skeptical about buying from a startup for a number of reasons. Validation is the best way to get around this issue. Getting positive testimonials from beta customers who were involved in the product development phase and presenting it to large potential clients is an excellent way to validate the product and the company.

    2. Try a Pilot Project

    Pilot projects are popular with large organizations. FluidSurveys regularly performs pilot projects with large organization and has had successful sales as a result. “Get the targeted organization on a reduced rate pilot project and have them use your product for 6 months to a year. After that, why wouldn’t they buy from us instead of the competition? They are already familiar with us and our work at that point.”

    Essentially you want to have the company use you on a smaller scale first, which is a small step towards the goal of establishing a strong relationship. From there, they are comfortable with the product and they will be able to move to using the product on a large scale, and the big steps will be much easier.

    3. Understand the Buying Process

    With large organizations, the product user will not necessarily be the purchaser. In Business-to-Business sales especially, there are almost always several people to consider in the buying process:  initiators, users, influencers, gatekeepers, and deciders.

    When contacting a company, try to understand who your main contact is. While they may not be the decision maker, they could play an incredibly important role in whether or not your product is purchased.

    Another important point to consider is the buying timeline your customer may be on. Consider if they will be more likely to purchase at a particular time of year and how long the process may take.

    4. Pitch to as Many People as You Can

    As a general rule, the product should not be pitched to just one person. Because there are a number of people involved in making decisions, if they can hear the pitch from you, you can be confident they received the right information

    Tip: Avoid talking about price until the key purchasers are present. Rough numbers are fine but the final quote should be given after the full presentation.

    I would often have to speak to not only the people within the company that make the buying decisions, but also the managers of the IT department. The reason for this is because large organizations are interested in central management: the ability to control the product themselves instead of having you come into the company. The IT department was an influencer in the buying decision since they had expertise with software products.

    5. Consider Tiered Pricing

    The way that the product is priced is another key component in landing sales with large organizations. The concern is always pricing too high vs. too low. If you’re priced too high, you might lose a bid to the competition. If you’re priced too low, prospects may not value the product. So what do you do?

    Here the advice is to implement tiered pricing. Tiered pricing tends to work best for large organizations because their requirements may vary. For example, access for the first 100 users may cost $200/year and the next 100 users may cost $150/year. This is applicable to all sorts of products, not only software. You have to give the impression that you are not coming up with pricing on the spot and keep in mind that large organizations need all the numbers to plan for budgetary concerns. Prepare this information before you initiate a conversation with a potential client.

    6. Address the Bankruptcy Concern

    One last hurdle for startups to jump is the bankruptcy concern. Large organizations tend to worry about what would happen to their data in the event that the startup should go bankrupt, or has other financial issues. The best way to reassure these enterprises is to have good measures in place in the event that bankruptcy does happen, and be able to easily explain them to large organizations.

    The most favorable way to alleviate these concerns from organizations is to give them the ability to download all of their data at any time or keep all of the data (and possibly the software itself) with a 3rd party (this is called escrow). The agreement and the conditions for the release of that data would then depend on the end situation.

    In the end

    The key is to be able to answer every question that big customers have. Better yet, covering their concerns before they even ask is a sales tactic that demonstrates your previous experience in working with other large organizations.

    These sales tips for selling to large organizations have helped FluidSurveys.com more than double in staff, users and revenue in the past 6 months. Selling to large organizations is the key factor that I attribute to our current product and corporate success.

  • A Conversation with Brad Feld

     

    Oct 30, 2012 A Conversation with Brad Feld on Startup Communities

    We’re excited to be hosting a conversation with Brad Feld tonight in Toronto. There is still time to grab tickets before the event. The conversation is based around Brad’s Boulder Thesis and specifically how we as individuals, entrepreneurs can participate in meaningful ways to make Toronto a strong startup ecosystem. If you are interested in emerging technology, or emerging business model companies in the Greater Toronto Area this is an excellent chance to learn about how Foundry Group and Brad Feld build a vibrant startup community in Boulder, CO.

    PS Hope to see you tonight.

    Sponsors

    Tickets

  • Rush Week

    CC-BY-NC-SA-20 Some rights reserved by garretkeogh
    AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by garretkeogh

    The next week has a set of crazy awesome events for  startups, founders, marketers, community builders and the like in Toronto. (Check out a fuller list of events at Toronto Startup Fall Event List 2012). Personally it looks like I will be attending JoltCo Demo Day, Royal Canadian Mint Challenge Awards Ceremony and A Conversation with Brad Feld about Startup Communities. If you’re interested in understanding Toronto’s startup landscape and participating, you could consider this rush week without the complete stupidity.

    It feels like a crazy two weeks. I was in Halifax for HPX Digital last week. I skipped Hacking Health this weekend (Thing 1 learned to ride her bike this weekend, so it was totally worth skipping this event). This doesn’t event take into consideration that I’m going to see New Order on Oct 23 and there is a second show on Oct 24 with tickets still available.

    Oct 23 – JoltCo Demo Day
    Looks like an amazing cohort of startups presenting. Includes eProf, GreenGauge Mobile, ShelfLife, SlingRide, tout.it, Venngage. I’m excited to see the pitches/presentations and the progress that each of these teams has made. 
    Oct 25 – Royal Canadian Mint Challenge Awards
    What can I say I’m a judge…But seriously this event has an amazing lineup. David Wolman and some other big thinkers in commerce, currency and the future of money. The Royal Canadian Mint has done a great job.
    Oct 25 – AndroidTO
    This is a great lineup. Boris Chan of XtremeLabs who is on our 2011 Hot Sh!t List; Mike Beltzner of Wattpad; Oleg Kosteur of Pair – back after raising $4.3MM, etc. If you are building on Android and in Toronto. Get tickets to this event!
    Oct 25 – Startup Grind Toronto
    A fireside chat with Nikhil Kalghatgi, an NYC-based VC with Softbank Capital, whose portfolio includes Huffington Post, Zynga (back when the model was working), Gilt Groupe and Buddy Media.
    Oct 26 – TEDxToronto
    Always inspiring talks this year includes Steve Page formerly of the Bare Naked Ladies, Dr. Joseph Cafazoo of eHealth Innovation, Sonya JF Barnett and Heather Jarvis of Slut Walk (ok not purely startup but it should be interesting)
    Oct 29 – HackerNest Social
    A fun, laid back social event to connect with developers, designers, marketers, and others. Hosted by ex-Extreme Labs participant Shaharris Beh (LinkedIn) and others.
    Oct 30 – A Conversation with Brad Feld on the Starutp Community in Toronto
    We’re hosting this event. Do you love or hate the Toronto startup community? Lots of people talk crap, but this is an opportunity to participate in a conversation with Brad Feld. Brad wrote the “Boulder Thesis” about growing, building and sustaining an entrepreneurial community in Boulder, CO. Join us and help make Toronto a better place for startups.
    NOv 1 – Startup Ping Pong TO
    Ping Pong, startups, do I need to say any more? Get your tickets! And come out and hustle.

    “Community is the platform on which all of our individual actions stand.“

    There are a lot of great events happening in the next 7 days. My advice is pick one or two events to attend and participate. A long time ago, Mark Kuznicki quoted me as saying “The Community is the Platform” and others have elaborated. My advice is get out there and participate.

  • Event – Mint Chip Challenge & David Wolman #mustattend

    Interested in changing financial services, identity and the changing role of currency. The folks at the Mint Chip Challenge are hosting their awards ceremony this week. I was fortunate to be a judge for the submissions. And the awards are happening in Toronto this week. The event is open to everyone. There is a chance to talk with submission developers, the judges, and the folks at the Royal Canadian Mint. The group of attendees is unbelievable!

    It is going to be a very interesting night. The invited guest speaker is David Wolman who is a Contributing Editor at Wired and author of The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers–and the Coming Cashless Society. It is going to be an awesome night talking about the future of currency, digital technology, and identity.

    Guest Speaker – David Wolman

    David Wolman

    David Wolman is a nonfiction author and a contributing editor at Wired magazine. He has also written for publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Nature, Outside, Time, Newsweek, and Discover, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science Writing series. His long-form feature about revolutionaries in Egypt, “The Instigators,” was nominated for a 2012 National Magazine Award for reporting. Wolman’s latest book, The End of Money, is a globetrotting exploration of a topic that many readers have always taken for granted: the cash in their pockets. His previous books are A Left-Hand Turn Around the World and Righting the Mother Tongue. He is a graduate of Stanford University’s journalism program and a former Fulbright journalism fellow in Japan.

    BTW how did I end up on this panel of judges:

    The group will be in Toronto at this event. It is a small intimate event. If you are interested in commerce, currency or mobile tech, I’d attend just to get access to these people.

    Reserve your spot!

  • The gale of Creative Destruction at University of Toronto

    CC-BY-NC Some rights reserved by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
    AttributionNoncommercial Some rights reserved by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

    University’s play a role in startup communities. Brad Feld’s Boulder Thesis (and I bring it up because he is coming to Toronto on October 30th) says that the people that attend and work at the university are the most important contribution to the startup community a university can make. The institutional components (labs, programs, and technology transfer offices) are less important according to Feld and when they are done wrong they are more damaging than helpful to startups.

    In Toronto you have a number of schools to feed the community; Ryerson, George Brown, York, OCAD, Sheridan, and of course the University of Toronto.

    The University of Toronto is the top ranked school in Canada and around the top 20 mark globally according to various rankings. As one of the oldest institutes of higher learning in Canada where some of the proudest scientific discoveries in the country’s history have been made (Insulin, stem cells, etc) there is a lot to talk about in terms of research. It is 21st globally in engineering and computer science yet it feels like it is hardly part of the conversation with regards to the startup community in Canada. That should be ok, they are a feeder to the community as Brad Feld defines it. I disagree with it being ok. I believe if there is a lack on entrepreneurial activity on campus that campus likely does not feed the community anywhere close to its potential.

    Beyond those that would feed the community there are many potential leaders on the campus from faculty (many have founded companies and had exits) to students that are confined by the silos that naturally occur in large institutions. Outsiders might point to MaRS as the main effort related to the university, it’s not, although it certainly has helped. There are a load of new programs that are working on building entrepreneurial culture on campus. The following is a non-comprehensive list:

    • Hatchery – The Entrepreneurship Hatchery is a hothouse for the best ideas of entrepreneurial undergraduate engineers.
    • UofT Hackers – a community of University of Toronto students who build great products.
    • Techno – “the flagship event of the IOS’s entrepreneurship education program, which also includes year-round programming for physical sciences and engineering students, faculty, and alumni at the University of Toronto.” This program has some amazing science focused companies.
    • Techna – “to shorten the time interval from technology discovery and development to application of such technologies for the benefit of patients and the health care system, and to facilitate the convergence of basic investigation, technology development and translational research”
    • UTEST – recently announcing it’s first cohort, UTEST “provides nascent software companies with start-up funding, work space, mentoring and business strategy support.”
    • Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman – Is focused on helping people build massively scalable companies. Folks like Nigel Stokes, Dan Debow, Dan Shimmerman, Tomi Poutanen, Dennis Bennie, Nick Koudas.

    All of these programs represent a positive focus on entrepreneurship and commercialization that is gaining momentum. The last one, Creative Destruction Lab, is particularly interesting (disclaimer, I am involved there) because it is located in the Rotman School of Management and is being designed to build a bridge across the silos as well as into the Toronto startup community. It also hosted a DemoCamp event at Rotman for the University community that attracted over 300 people (two thirds engineers) and 44 people applied to present in September. More are being planned and applications to be part of the lab program itself are open to all UofT students and Alumni until October 14th.

    As the entrepreneurial momentum builds on the University of Toronto campus I believe it will fill one of the gaps that currently exists in Toronto’s startup community by both educating students that feed the community and attracting faculty (and their spouses) from abroad that could be globally connected leaders in the community.

     

  • Crowdfunding for Notman House


    We’re big fans of Montreal.

    There is a lot of really exciting things going on in Montreal. Founder Fuel. Real Ventures. c2mtl. Rho Ventures. iNovia Capital. MtlNewTech. Next Montreal. Grand Prix du Canada.  And Notman.

    Notman is conceived as a community space for the web community in Montreal. I remember John Stokes talking about his vision for this space in 2006. And how the efforts of Montreal Startup have demonstrated the value and benefits to the city when founders, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and others have something to rally around. Montreal doesn’t have a Communitech or a MaRS. This is the efforts by local entrepreneurs to bootstrap a central place. John, Alan, Mark, JS and Austin have led this vision for over 6 years. And it’s very close.

    Over the last year the Notman House  has hosted over 125 events, including user group meet-ups, hackathons, and learning events, been home to over 50 Startups, and been visited by over 10,000 entrepreneurs, investors, students, and others involved in the growing Montreal tech scene. It’s an incredible place.

    Our top priority is to connect the already existing community. Hundreds of groups, meetups and events are being created and take place every year in Montreal. They are loosely connected and aware of each other, but still essentially fragmented. The Notman House wants to bring them all together.

    We want to bring startups, students, investors, developers and artists all together in the same spirit that characterized the Montreal of the past.

    Notman and OSMO Foundation is looking to raise $100k in private funding. They need to raise this $100k to unlock the a combined $1.7M in grants from the municipal, provincial, and federal government. In addition a $4.3M loan has been committed by Investissement Quebec and the BDC. However, to access these grants we need to raise $1.1M in private contributions. $1M of this is being pledged by corporate entities such as Teralys Capital, Claridge, Telesystem, McCarthy Tetrault, and Fasken Martineau.  We are looking to the community to help close the $100K gap currently faced in the funding process.

  • Brokers, Smokers and Midnight Tokers

    CC-BY-NC-ND-20 Some rights reserved by hollowcrown_
    AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by hollowcrown_

    In the past couple of days, I have seen a few emails from what could be best called funding brokers. They “facilitate” deals between early stage companies and potential investors. All for a consulting fee, usually for a percentage of the amount of funding raised. They have connections to high net worth angel investors and relationships with venture capitalists. Typically the fees and the engagement are model on investment banking particularly as related to later stage M&A deals.

    It’s not a surprise. It’s a well established model. The Lehman model (we all know how well Lehman Brothers worked out for the rest of us) is 5% on the first $1MM raised, 4% on the second $1MM, 3% on the third $1MM, and 1% for capital above $4MM. It changes with equity versus debt financing, reducing to a 0.5-2% fee on debt rounds.

    And particularly in later stage deals and M&A it is probably more accepted (acceptable?). In the transaction there are 3 potential parties:

    • Startup
    • Funder
    • Broker/Finder

    Typically the person contracting the broker pays the fees. This means that it’s either the VC paying the fee, but if you are the startup it means that you’re paying the fee. And that fee is either increasing your dilution or decreasing the amount of the round. You can look at it as just paying fees like you pay your accountant or lawyer.But why, oh, why are you willing to give up chunks of your company this early to do things you are capable of doing yourself.

    What does a VC think about brokers/finders?

    Jason Mendelson published his take on “finders” back in 2007:

    “Most venture firms don’t like the idea of brokers being involved and most venture financing documents have a clause that the company warrants that there are no brokers involved. Remember, the company’s money that is paying the broker is, in fact, the VC’s money that they invest in you.”

    Jason continues “good VCs have plenty of proprietary deal flow, so they aren’t relying on brokers to show them deals”. If you can’t get in front the right investors, you are probably doing it wrong. There are a very limited set of high tech, emerging business model, high potential growth investors in Canada. Need a ‘show me the money’ list? There are other ways to raise your profile as a startup and get in front of investors. Andy Yang wrote a great piece about getting the most out of AngelList as a startup. If these channels aren’t working for you, you might want to go back and ask yourself is it the funders or is it me? What do I need to do to make my company more attractive to potential investors? Customer development? Product development? Etc.

    How do you spell MBA?

    We love to heckle MBAs, mostly because we’re all jealous that we don’t have one. But is it a requirement to raise funding.

    “On the other hand, skills i bet won’t be important as much in the future:

    • having (only) a big rolodex or (offline) network
    • having a traditional MBA or investment banking background

    Both of these are still important, but will become commoditized and marginalized by the availability of such information from online systems for social networks & reputation, and by the relentless advance of access to capital from a variety of channels.” – Dave McClure

    No one is arguing that brokers shouldn’t get paid. The model is relevant. People work hard to build trust, reputation, networks and knowledge. With later stage deals the relationship, private placements, increased valuations, connections with CEOs and funders, it makes sense. But as Dave McClure rightly points out the value of the specific skills are changing. Particularly at the very earliest stage.

    There is a great discussion on OnStartups about the finder’s fees. You can see the tension between entrepreneurs and investment bankers.

    Social Anti-Proof

    I don’t like finder’s fees for early investment rounds. Whether you call that seed and series A, I don’t know. I just don’t like seeing that capital taken out of the hands of the entrepreneur from operations. So just don’t do it.

    As the company matures, the existing investment banking model doesn’t feel wrong. Many of the relationships, matchmaking, guidance feels like something you pay for, only after the deal closes. I feel like really early stage companies that have hired a broker must be broken, i.e., there must be something fundamentally wrong with the  team, the market, the advisors, etc. if they are unable that might explain why they are having difficulty raising an early round.

    So it’s very wrong early. Ok later.

  • Toronto Startup Event List Fall 2012

    Getting ready for startup event fatigue? Toronto is an active ecosystem (based on total activity in the Startup Genome database). But there are a lot of upcoming events, here is my inital tracking of Toronto startup events list for fall 2012. The question is which events to attend and which ones to stay heads down and work. An actual guide would breakdown the benefits of each of these events. But I’m being lazy, I’ll add some commentary around each event. Or please feel free to add events and commentary. I’ll update the post.

    And for those of you thinking about attending everything, go read Mark Suster’s Be Careful not to become a Conference Ho.

    September 2012

    October 2012

    November 2012

    December 2012