StartupNorth

Category: Quebec

  • Reminder: Office Holiday Party

    There are a few geekmas parties going on this December, and they are selling out quickly. Both have been organized by members of the community, and look like they will be a blast.

    Montreal has CelebrateCamp on December 18th.

    Come out an celebrate 2008 with the Montreal Technology Community. We have many things to celebrate as a community. A successfull year of Barcamps, StartupCamps, Democamps, Podcamps and a number of other community events flourished this year. We’ve seen more startups launched, more investing activity and a number of our local friends have personal & professional success created in 2008.

    and in Toronto there is #hohoto, which came together on Twitter in a matter of days. It is taking place at The Mod Club – Monday, December 15, 2008, 7pm. There will be DJs, cheap drinks and all the proceeds are going towards the Daily Bread food bank.

    Update:

    Halifax is having a Geekmas event on December 17th raising money for Feed Nova Scotia!

    Which other cities will get on board and start raising money for charity?

  • Montreal Start Up raises another $2M

    Montreal Start Up announced today the closing of an additional $2,000,000 for its venture fund from the Solidarity Fund QFL, bringing total assets under management to $5,000,000. The Solidarity Fund QFL joins Investissement Québec, la Conférence Régional des Élus, and 20 of Montreal’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors who partnered with Montreal Start Up to address the need for more early stage capital and mentoring.

    “We have met with hundreds of entrepreneurs since our launch and the quality and creativity of the ideas we are seeing is constantly improving. We were having to turn down good deals because of the limited amounts of capital available to us. The support of Solidarity Fund QFL will allow us to support more of Montreal’s best startup companies.” John Stokes, Montreal Start Up

    Also revealed were Montreal Start Up’s four latest investments: Mobilize Central, KeenKong, The Book Oven, and Oneeko all of which are based in Montreal. These investments are in addition to its previously announced investments in Standout Jobs and Akoha.

    This is all fantastic news from Montreal, easily one of the most vibrant startup communities in Canada.

  • Start Building Empires

    StartupEmpireJevon and I apparently picked a conference name that exists as a registered trademark. We have been informed by our lawyer that our usage of the name did not infringe on the existing trademark. Rather than start with a potential tenuous situation, we decided we would just rebrand the conference.

    StartupEmpire is the new name. Does it remind you of Star Wars? Or the British Empire? It is ostentatious. It is bold. It is intended to inspire entrepreneurs to start building empires. History remembers the legacy of successful entrepreneurs. JP Morgan. Andrew Carnegie. Howard Hughes. Henry Ford. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jeff Bezos. Mark Cuban. Our goal is to provide the tools to help build the next generation of entrepreneurs build their empires.

    What: StartupEmpire
    When: Thursday, November 13th and 14th, 2008 (all day)
    Where: Diesel Playhouse 

    56 Blue Jays Way
    Toronto, Ontario M5V 2A2

    We are focused on practical, real-world advice from entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts that will help early-stage companies at different stages. How do you build a cashflow statement? What does a marketing plan and budget look like for a startup with no money? What tools and services are available to set up your development, testing and production environments? How important is source control and bug tracking? What does a product roadmap look like for a startup practicing agile development? What does a basic shareholders agreement look like? How do you avoid getting sued? What do you do when you get a cease-and-desist letter? What is a term sheet from an investor? How does a developer do business development?

    We?ll be announcing the next set of speakers in the next couple of days. We?re also interested in learning about what you would like to see at StartupEmpire. Drop me a note with what would make you attend StartupEmpire in an instant.

  • CVCA – Global Customers, Investors and Acquirers – October 15th, 2008

    I will be speaking at the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s upcoming professional development day on October 15th. I will be on a panel with Rob Lane, from Overlay.TV and Maggie Fox from Social Media Group.

    Our session description is

    ?Going global” is no longer an option for many companies. It is a necessity. This session will examine issues and strategies in building international networks that will lead to business opportunities and enhanced returns. Learn how to link into international networks of customers, partners, acquirers and investors to better position your companies for global success. The role that social technologies can play in fostering these global networks will also be discussed.

    Other sessions include “THE BIG PICTURE ? KEY STRATEGIES FOR CREATING ESSENTIAL INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS” with Jennifer Brooy,Vice President, EDC Equity and Rajiv Pancholy, Chairman and CEO, TenXC Wireless as well as “RELATIONSHIPS WITH GLOBAL SYNDICATE PARTNERS AND ACQUIRERS ? THE VIEW FROM HOME AND ABROAD”

    It looks like a good day and if it is typical of CVCA events, the biggest value will be in having a chance to hang out with some of the other attendees who tend to be other startups (the smart ones go to CVCA events when they can afford them) and funders.

    The half-day event is $299 for non-CVCA members if you attend in-person in Toronto, and $70 if you watch it from one of the simulcast locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Fredricton or Halifax.

  • Akoha Starter kits – get'em while they're hot

    Montreal based Akoha, who are going on stage tomorrow at the TechCrunch50. We have previously profiled their angel round and I have been watching their progress closely. 

    We can’t say much about what Akoha is, but what I can do is give you all an exclusive invitation to get a free starter kit. These kits, which will only be available until tomorrow, will be mailed out to you right away. 

    Head over here to the Akoha store (powered by Shopify.com) and sign up for the starter kit, and remember to tune in to to Akoha’s presentation tomorrow.

    I also came across a vote for who will be the most promising startup presenting at TechCrunch50. You can vote for Akoha, as they are neck and neck for 1st place.  

  • yourteledoctor – Online Patient/Doctor Consultations

    YourTeleDoctor is a Montreal based startup that wants to transform how we think about a visit to the doctor.

    I have no doubt, absolutely zero, about the role that telemedicine will play in healthcare delivery in the future. You can search for data from Gartner, Forrester or anyone, they all predict that TeleMedicine is going to be a big deal. 

    YourTeleDoctor is trying to be one of the first providers to come to market with a consumer-ready system to allow for video-based visits to a doctor. Quebec is a good example of a province/state with a huge rural population and a government that needs to stretch every dollar in health care delivery.

    If Mehdi can be the one to bring a new level of efficiency to governments, HMOs and clinics, then there is a lot of money to be made. The flip side, however, is that this is medicine. Medicine, for all the research and great thinking that goes in to it, changes very little. It is incredibly bureaucratic, even in the private sector, and care-delivery, the component that startups like YourTeleDoctor will attempt to shake up, sees even fewer changes than other parts of the sector.

    It seems likely that the first market for a tool like this would be private clinics who are relatively autonomous and well heeled. Just a few great case studies and a decent sales team might be all you need to start breaking in to an early market.
     

  • Identi.ca – Open Source Microblogging

    You know everything you hate about twitter? Downtime, walled garden, some very poor design in places, etc.

    Well a solution launched today that seems to be technically superior in every way, but is going to be facing a tough battle ahead to attract users and get them talking.

    Identi.ca is a new open source project to build a better twitter. The actual open source project is called Laconi.ca, and it has been created by Evan Prodromou in Montreal who also founded Certifi.ca and Wikitravel (one of my favorite websites).

    When you first see this project it is easy to write it off as a mere attempt to knock twitter off it’s throne, but I don’t see it that way. By releaseing Laconi.ca as an open-source project, Evan is betting (I think) on building out the sort of long-tail of microblogging. Charlottetown based SportsTwit is an example of niche microblogging that I think has a real chance of catching on (and should consider switching to the Laconi.ca platform).

    The introduction of Laconi.ca brings microblogging from being a closed and proprietary world in to a more mass market tool in the same way that blogging is no longer just Blogger, but is instead a medium.

    By using open standards like FOAF and others, different sites running Laconi.ca can talk to eachother and federate data. That means that if you are on a niche site, say startupnorth-tweets.com, you can interact with people on Identi.ca, and they have full access to your profile and other information. This is one of the core weaknesses of Twitter, its inability to federate out some of the load.

    Good luck Evan, I have a feeling this is the start of something great, and a change that had to happen.

    You can find me here: http://identi.ca/jevon

  • Lessons in Social Media, with MediaScrape

    We have covered MediaScrape a few times, and when I joked that they might be the next Capazoo, their CEO came through with a great reference to Cocain.

    Well, they are back. Since this post is not an opinion piece, I will just link you to a recent Montreal Gazette article and quote a few bits. In the interest of presenting the other side of the startup-ecosystem argument, I present the one… the only…

    He’d rather make deals with media conglomerates and Silicon Valley giants over fancy lunches than share ideas over blogs or hobnob with venture capitalists at technology happy hours.

    He doesn’t go to local networking events where entrepreneurs talk about their projects and share feedback:
    “Why would I go? There’s no money – there’s no content at those things. I’m busy. I’m making deals. And the times I did go I just heard a lot of whining that there’s no money in Montreal.”
    He doesn’t have a blog where he logs his company’s progress, details its challenges, and invites dialog from the tech community, in the hopes of increasing his Google cred:
    “I don’t need to be a destination site. For us to use social media gimmicks, to drive traffic to our site would put us as competitors with our clients.
    “We’re a behind-the-scenes enabler.”

    Yet this hardly seems to faze Cavell. He doesn’t feel he needs to satisfy doubting bloggers.
    “Screw them,” he said. “We’re a private company. I don’t have to tell them shit.
    “Blogs are great for open-source editorials, but they’re no substitute for researched journalism.”
    One could chalk up Cavell’s philosophy to his lineage. He’s the son of Charles Cavell, the former head of what is today Quebecor World Inc., when it was still a mighty printer, and former chairman of tabloid chain Sun Media Corp.

    An in case you are wondering, yes: Comments are turned on.

  • Pride and Prejudice – Why startups need community

    I was feeling extraordinarily proud of Idée last night when I saw that they received glowing coverage on TechCrunch. It is well deserved, and it seems like they are just getting started in terms of press coverage. They recently had a huge profile in the Financial Post, written by David George-Cosh (who has been getting more and more connected with the Toronto community as of late). We have been tracking Idée for a while now.

    Then as I kept flipping through my news feeds, I came across an embarrassing update about MediaScrape, which Heri and Mathew Ingram both covered well. When we first posted about MediaScrape, Tyler Cavell, the founder, responded in a much more succinct way than he did to TechCrunch’s latest post. Heri had even convinced me to lay off and see how things work out.

    I almost feel like I am doing Idée a disservice by mentioning them in the same post as MediaScrape. Where Idée has focused on perfecting their technology and winning customers, MediaScrape seems to be prone to distraction and tends to make simple matters much more confusing and difficult than necessary.

    Heri made the point in his post yesterday that when entrepreneurs are disconnected from their local community, they seem to be more likely to go off the rails. I think Heri is on to something that investors need to take in to consideration when investing.

    Again, Leila and the crew at Idée are a great contrast and example of how to do things right. While Idée is possibly the busiest startup in Canada, and one that is spending its own money (ie: they have no time to waste), they still manage to be tightly connected to the community here in Toronto. Leila is constantly organizing, co-organizing or speaking at events, and when she isn’t doing that, she spends a lot of time each week mentoring other startups.

    Capazoo and MediaScrape, according to Heri, have never made it out to a single Montreal event and have generally kept a distance from their local startup community.

    Perhaps one of the measures that investors, both Angels and VCs, take in to account when deciding whether they want to put money in to a startup or an entrepreneur should be whether or not that person has been able to take the time to connect with a community of startups. That way you know they have a social and professional circle that will keep them accountable, demand progress and that will criticize their execution, rather than patting them on the back and telling them they are going to be rich.

    If your friends tell you that you will be rich and famous, then you have the wrong friends.

  • CVCA – "The Face of Change" – Montreal

    I am heading to Montreal next week for the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s annual conference. The theme this year is “The Face of Change”, and the idea is to look at what causes change in the VC and Private Equity worlds.

    I am excited to be going for a few reasons. The biggest one is the fact that I have been making a lot of noise recently saying that Canadian VCs need to spend more time connecting to the startup community, and Suzie Dingwell Williams recently said the same thing, so turning down an invitation to the only national VC conference in Canada would have been a little backwards.

    The other reason I want to go is to spread the word about some of the great startups that are popping up these days. We have been lagging behind on writing profiles (I know I know I know), but we are always telling people about some of the cooler ones we are seeing.

    I promise to make a few posts during and after the conference with some notes on what goes on when VCs get together. (besides Scotch tastings that is!)

    Will any of you be there, or in Montreal during those days/nights? (May 28th-30th). I would love to meet up.