StartupNorth

  • For the love of failure

    One of the main cultural innovations in Silicon Valley is the acceptance of failure. It is an acceptance that extends almost to the point where if you don’t have at least one specatacular mess-up in your past, you haven’t truly lived.

    A healthy acceptance of failure goes hand-in-hand with a passion for risk taking. No one searches out failure, of course, but if you find it and live through it, then that implies you’ve taken a valuable risk and (hopefully) learned from it.

    The traditional view is that Canada is very risk-averse and while this stance has served the country well in some markets (banking sector, anyone?) it isn’t so great for fostering building start-ups.

    Basically, the equation is no failure means no risk. And no risk means no entrepreneurship.

    But again, this is the traditional view of Canada, and one that seems to changing

    So talk about your failures. Heck, begin to celebrate them and wear then as a badge of honor. But in doing so make sure you also mention what you learned and how there is no way you’re gonna do that again.

  • Connect with Wired.com's Evan Hansen

    Interested in attending next Monday’s session with Wired.com’s Evan Hansen? StartupNorth has secured 20 seats, which would otherwise cost $85 each. Register for a free pass through StartupNorth while tickets are available: http://guestlistapp.com/events/24501

    Gone are the days when we scrambled to the set to catch our favourite shows in their scheduled timeslot. Today’s viewers want personalized, on-demand access and a host of high-tech innovators are giving them exactly that. Join Wired.com’s Editor in Chief, Evan Hansen for a discussion on the new realities of entertainment and all things digital.

    Date – Monday, June 21, 2010
    Location     – Events On The Park, 1095 Leslie Street, Toronto, ON
    Breakfast     – 7:30am
    Session – 8:00am to 9:00am

  • Cisco looking for Canadian innovation

    We understand that the good people at Cisco are poking around up North for some start-ups to play a role in the company’s expanded focus  into the datacenter, virtualization and smart grid markets.

    These are key new markets for Cisco and clearly they want to know what the most innovative start-ups are up to (isn’t the hunt for innovation why all leading companies come poking around here?)

    Cisco’s got a few criteria (big companies love their processes!) but it should be pretty easy. To summarize: :

    1)      Companies must be active in the datacenter, virtualization or smart grid markets

    2)      Must have existing VC investment

    3)      Ready/able to take their business to the next level

    4)      VC-pitch PowerPoint will be accepted only. (they can’t review websites, datasheets or whitepapers)

    The people doing the poking are Cisco’s Corporate Development team, who are responsible for investment, acquisition, strategy and partnerships for the company. So if any of these options sound appealing to you, forward your slides to Tab Borden of the Canadian Consulate < [email protected]>

  • C100 sees the SUN

    The C100 is now coming at you live and in 3D right here on Startup North.

    What does that mean for you? Well, as if Startup North wasn’t already an indispensible source of news, insights and opinions on the rapidly expanding  Canadian start-up and venture capital scene, you can now check this space for regular news and views on innovation from the unique perspective of the successful Canadian tech entrepreneurs, company execs and VCs in Silicon Valley who make up the C100.

    What is the C100 you ask? Remember in Pulp Fiction when Jules Winnfeld (Samuel L. Jackson) refers to Vinnie Vega (John Travolta) as “my man in Amsterdam?” Well, that’s us. We’re your man in Amsterdam.

    Except we’re a group of men and women… and we’re in Silicon Valley.

    But more importantly, C100 is a huge fan of both technology and of Canada and we’re here to share our thoughts, insights and contacts with the established and the up-and-coming, with the best dreamers, entrepreneurs and innovators Canada has to offer.

    So check us out online, visit our blog, get mentored, but most importantly stay tuned to StartUp North where we’ll be looking for new ways to increase the connections and communications between Silicon Valley and Canada.

  • Week in Review

  • Twitter acquires Smallthought (the dabbleDB people)

    Twitter announced today that they are acquiring Smallthought, the company behind DabbleDB and Trendly.

    About 4 years ago, Avi Bryant landed at Democamp 5 and blew us all away. Not only did he show off one of the sexiest apps we had seen yet, his demo set the bar for everyone that came after.

    This does not seem to be a large acquisition by any stretch, and neither side is playing it up as such, but it is a well deserved kudos to Avi and the team for what they have built.

    It is hard to argue: For Canada: it sucks. More of our top talent going south and disappearing from the Canadian scene.

    Those days are over however, with the C100 and an increasingly healthy startup community here in Canada, there will be many opportunities for the Avi’s of our community to contribute back, and perhaps return some day better than ever.

  • Week in Review

  • Grow – A Conference – Aug 19-21, 2010

    Grow 2010
    Our friends at C100 and Bootup are bringing Dealmaker Media to Vancouver for a great event in August. If you don’t know Dealmaker, you should. It’s run by a Canadian, Debbie Landa. They produce 2 of the most valuable events for startups in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles – check out Under the Radar for a list of events and companies.

    Dealmaker MediaThey are producing an event, Grow 2010, in Vancouver on August 19-21, 2010.

    The event is a 3 day event with an invite-only Day 1 to connect Canadian founders with the best and brightest from Silicon Valley and across CAnada. Days 2 & 3 feature great speakers and the opportunity to build unique lasting relationships.

     If you’re an entrepreneur and you missed MeshU in Toronto (and it’s really too bad, this was one of my favourite events of the past 2 years), you should attend Grow 2010. Buy your ticket today and it’s $185, if you miss the super early bird (or as I like to call it the just getting in from a late night), you can grab an early bird ticket for only $230. This is unbelievable! Add in an approximately $700 flight it’s possible to do this for less than $1500. It’s worth the opportunity to meet the companies, build the connections, and help grow your company.

    We’ll be coordinating shared hotel rooms for entrepreneurs from Toronto, Montreal, Waterloo, Ottawa, Halifax and anywhere. If you’re not local to Vancouver we’ll help you find a shared room to manage your costs. Add a comment if you are attending and we’ll try to help you find a roommate.

  • Engines for Massively Scaleable Startups

    I was excited to attend MeshU (maybe a little too excited). I love it when events over deliver. MeshU was a fantastic conference. I saw two of the best in-the-trenches startup sessions with Sean Ellis and Dan Martell. They both presented ideas that are changing how I think about product design and go-to-market activities. April Dunford then added an updated framework  for product marketing which was a great evolution of traditional product marketing. Sean Ellis added his model for Key Elements of Massively Scaleable Startups that presented a new idea of the marketing basics that need to be present for high potential startups.

    Key Elements of Massively Scalable Startups – A Marketing Framework based on April Dunford & Sean Ellis

    The breaking down of 4 elements coupled with traditional strategy and tactics make for a very effective marketing evaluation of most startups.

    Gratification Engine

    The Gratification Engine was a new piece of the marketing activities. What differentiates must have products and services? How do you reward your customers? How does your application turn “cold prospects into highly gratified customers”? This is a change in my thinking about the role of making your users feel like rockstars.  

    “you can’t force customers to want, need or like what you have created.  Building an effective gratification engine is an iterative process driven by a lot of prospective customer feedback.  Once you get the basics right, your process of gratifying users can be optimized with tools like Performable for landing pages and KISSmetrics for full funnel tracking/improvement (I’m an advisor to both).” – Sean Ellis

     It builds upon seminal work of Kathy Sierra about engaging users. The Gratification Engine pushes this out beyond the existing experience but treats the conversion and effectiveness of new users.

    Making a Bestseller
    Making a Bestseller by Kathy SierraHow fast and how far can you take your users? by Kathy Sierra

     Where this hit home for me was starting to think about the game mechanics used for upsell and cross sell offers for new customers. Dan Martell, Dave McClure, Marc Gingras and I had breakfast at StartupCampMontreal and discussed how to build effective offers for existing customers to invite their friends to an application. There was a great discussion about using game mechanics around the offer. You have existing users that if they invite new users, i.e., their friends, where if the friends sign up that both the friend and the user get new unique functionality. It changed my thinking about many times I’ve received an offer to sign up from a friend for a service, and how the effectiveness of this would change with some basic game mechanics:

    “Jevon has invited you to join X. Jevon is 1 sign up away from enabling the super awesome next level feature. Sign up now and enable the feature for both you and Jevon”

    This all has to be done in an open, honest and unintrusive manner. But it’s about how do you enhance the lives and experiences of customers and potential customers. There are great opportunities to use game design and mechanics to help improve the experience and conversion rates in web and mobile applications.

    Putting the Fun in Functional

    View more presentations from amyjokim.

    Power to the Players

    View more presentations from amyjokim.

  • Marketing metrics

    Photo by Darren_Hester

    Mike McDerment from FreshBooks gave  a great presentation on the basics of web application marketing metrics. He focuses on the metrics, systems and reporting that all companies should be building into web and mobile applications. It is a must read for any entrepreneur building a web application.

    Metrics

    Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
    How much does it cost you to get a customer? It’s a simple enough calculation, how much do you spend on sales and marketing to acquire each customer. Roll up your staffing costs, your ad buys, your outbound marketing, etc.
    Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
    How much revenue do users generate? How do you track it? Does it change based on segment? How do you increase it?
    Churn
    What percentage of your existing customer base leave every month? This is different than CPA because this is about customer satisfaction and retention. Don’t think this is important? According to April Dunford churn is a killer. “The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%”
    Lifetime Value (LTV)
    How long does a customer continue as a subscriber? Does their ARPU change over time? Do you have ways to increase their spend or reduce their churn?

    These basic metrics are expanded by Dave McClure in AARRR! Startup Metrics for Pirates. Where the metrics are divided into 3 main categories:

    1. Get Users (Acquisition, Referral)
    2. Drive Usage (Activation, Retention)
    3. Make Money (Revenue)
    Startup Metrics 4 Pirates (Montreal, May 2010)
    View more presentations from Dave McClure.

    It seems so simple on surface, but as CEOs and startups we need to be committed to building the systems and metrics into our products. I was just floored at MeshU when I heard Dan Martell talk about the Flowtown.com Startup Immune System where they are beginning to use the lower level business performance metrics to automatically rollback design changes based on performance against the baseline. You can only start doing if you’re building on top of metrics. The idea of having automated your software deployment and sufficiently built business metric baselines that you could autoroll back poor performing changes. At Nakama, I wanted this so much. Not because I had bad developers but because we often made design decisions based on limited customer feedback and I wanted the system to protect me from my own hubris.

    Metrics are good place to start. One of the best ways to understand how your company is performing is to begin measurement. Mike has done a great job