StartupNorth

  • The Code Factory – Ottawa Co-Working Space

    The Code Factory is having its grand opening tonight in Ottawa. The Code Factory is a shared office space for startups and freelancers.

    Here in Toronto we had The Indoor Playground for a few years, but due to some problems with their landlord, they had to close up shop. Co-working spaces tend to be indicators of healthy entrepreneurial communities and it is nice to see Ottawa get such a great looking option.

    The grand opening takes place tonight, at 5:30pm at Suite 200 – 246 Queen Street (between Bank and Kent).

    David Crow recently covered co-working in Canada on our sister site CommunityNorth.ca where is also included a list of other known co-working spaces in Canada.

  • 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.

  • Angel Financing – Investor Management

    “Investor Management” is probably the area of most complaint that investor’s have about companies they are involved in. Basically the scenario typically goes something like this:

    The company is pitching for funding. Throughout the pitch & due diligence process it is the number one priority of management & management takes the time to work through the funding process with prospective investors.

    Upon closing, the company gets the funds & management goes about applying them to help grow the company by ramping up development, executing marketing campaigns, etc. As there are never enough hours in a day for people involved in a startup, this takes up management’s total focus in time. Investors do not hear anything.

    As with any startup, things do not go exactly according to plan. Development takes longer, sales cycles take longer, etc. The original financial plan goes out the window and more money is required. Management then goes back to its investors looking for more money. Investors are lukewarm given they have been in the dark and wonder it its worth investing more of their money.

    What separates the good companies from the rest are ones that appropriate manage investor relations. This boils down to 2 aspects. First, know your investors and second, establish a consistent communication channel & frequency.

    As I discussed in a previous article, angels have a variety of backgrounds and motivations for funding companies. Some want to play a hands-on role in helping to grow a company, others are more passive. For the investors who are not directly involved in the company (i.e. not on the board), get to know them. In your first round of funding, you will probably have a small number of investors. Get to know their backgrounds and discuss how closely they want to be involved in helping the company. For those that do want to be involved, tap into their expertise/network when you are looking to find a supplier, get an introduction to a client, etc. As most angels are well established in their professional careers they have an enormous wealth of knowledge and expertise that can be tapped to help. If they are actively looking to be involved, it’s in everybody’s best interest to take advantage of this.

    For the overall group of investor’s in the company, you should establish a regular communication mechanism and stick to it religiously. This could be something along the lines of a monthly or quarterly investor newsletter. In it, topics such as the following can be covered:

    • Sales successes
    • Sales pipeline
    • Product development updates
    • Issues & challenges
    • Up-coming events or conferences

    This would be in addition to financial statements or other required deliverables as specified in the term sheet. The main thing is to establish consistency so the investors know when they can expect to receive a communication. This will help align investors to the company as it grows. Their investment makes them important stakeholders in the company and offers a pool of expertise that can be leveraged to help the company grow.

    As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future articles feel free to contact me: craig at mapleleafangels.com

  • 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.

  • MeshU: One day developer mini conference that rocked

    This is a guest post by Chris Long, the lead developer of Well.ca and a partner in the launch of the StartupIndex.

    MeshU, which took place on the day before the Mesh Conference here in Toronto, was a developer focused mini-conference with 3 streams of sessions. Each stream had a distinct focus such as: development, design and management. While the Mesh Conference is in its third year, this was the first ever MeshU, so I was curious to see how well things would go.

    There was a lot of variety in attendees, with people from management, sales, and development and from varying sizes of companies in attendance. One of the biggest reasons people had for coming to MeshU was the unique lineup of speakers, especially for a Canadian conference.

    After much deliberation and coin flipping, I settled on attending: Avi Bryant’s “Turning the Tables: Moving Beyond Relational Storage”, Daniel Burka’s “Iterative Design Strategies”, Alistair Croll?s ?Watch It ? How to Monitor Web Applications?, and Ryan Carson’s “How to Start Your Own Start?up”.

    Avi Bryant really did change my view on relational databases. For most web applications, storing data is done with databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL. Avi challenged this and described how large web companies (Yahoo, Google, Amazon) approach this, and then described what smaller companies can possibly learn from the large companies.

    The “Iterative Design Strategy” session was packed, and I ended up joining more then half the audience on the floor. Daniel Burka did not disappoint his audience, as he explored what iterative design meant to him. The example he used was the iterations of Digg’s comment system.

    Alistair Croll’s powerpoint on monitoring web applications numbered 135 slides, he just had that much information. The slides covered the types of tools available for monitoring web sites and the kind of information they give. He weighed the pros and cons of every type of monitoring tool, and left everyone with an understanding of why and how they should monitor their websites.

    I finished off my day with Ryan Carson?s presentation on starting/running a startup. At the end of it, I think a lot of people had the urge to apply for a job at Carsonified (they give iPhones, 30″ screens and Aeron Chair to all their employees). His ideas and comments, while not revolutionary, were still of use to a lot of people. I can summarize it in two words: “Be Friendly”.

    The MeshU organizers did a good job of getting an awesome lineup of speakers, and promoting a relaxed more workshop feel to the day. I will certainly be there next year.

  • Will you bet on VenCorps?

    The VenCorps machine has been ramping up lately and it got a further injection of excitement with some posts in the last week.

    The premise of VenCorps is this: You record a video of your “pitch” and upload it. The “crowd”, that is the Vencorps community, then votes and chooses some winners. Those winners then go on to be vetted in a traditional investment process involving angels and other sources of funding. Chosen startups then get some amount of funding.

    VenCorps isn’t the only new Canadian video-pitches-for-financing site to launch, fundfinder.com, which also connects your pitch to a “crowd” of would-be investors. The difference being that VenCorps uses the Cambrian House software to help manage the selection/voting process. The end result however (videos of startups pitching) looks quite similar.

    We first covered Vencorps in January and at that time we were told that they would be making more announcements at the end of the month, but it seems to have taken almost 5 more months to see any sort of public activity. This is no doubt the result of some of the problems Cambrian House has been having.

    I decided to poke around and, as you might have guessed, I managed to find some differing opinions. Overwhelmingly, from community members to current and former employees, the sense is that this is truly a last stand for Cambrian House, and had Sean Wise not come along with money from Spencer Trask, that things would look a lot different right now.

    One of the overwhelming reactions I did get was that Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky is a brilliant guy who took this thing as far as anyone could have. I think we need to applaud Michael and the entire team for doing something worth doing here in Canada. I have no doubt Michael will be back with something great again.

    So the question I have is: Will you bet on VenCorps? Will the best startups in the Canada, and the world, flock to VenCorps to pitch themselves? Will there be enough investors and money to make it attractive?

    I think it is possible for this to work. It takes guts to attempt something like this.

    However, the model has failed a few times already, Cambrian House has proven that it has serious flaws, so VenCorps is going to have to do more than just re-apply that model with a more direct financing spin on it. In a video that Cambrian House recently posted (included below), they say that VenCorps will focus more on teams than on ideas, and that the lack of focus on teams was one of the downfalls of Cambrian House.

    The thought that lingers in the back of my mind is whether or not VenCorps should have attached themselves to Cambrian House or not? My gut reaction was a big No, but you have to weigh that against the fact that the Cambrian House crew have probably learned a few things about community building in the last couple of years.

    Will you pitch on VenCorps?

  • Weekend Reading – May 18, 2008

    Been a bit quiet round these parts… Jevon is on the road and my computer caught the dreaded Vista. Next week will be exciting though as Chris and I will be covering MESHU and MESH.

    Serial entrepreneur Jeff Fedor riffs on Startup Regrets.

    The TSX hit a record high, closing in on 15,000.

    Venture lawyer Suzie Dingwall Williams auditioned for Dragon’s Den.

  • TSX Venture Exchange Entrepreneurial Bootcamp

     tsx-bootcampModerated by Sean Wise, Wise Mentor Capital

    Decide if Public Venture Capital (PVC) is right for you. TSX Venture Exchange’s Entrepreneurial Bootcamp is tailored for CEOs and CFOs of aggressive growth companies considering raising capital from the PVC marketplace over the next few years. This workshop will explore the use of PVC as a growth tool for emerging companies.

    Topics include:

    • How to decide if going public is right for your company
    • The Capital Pool Company® (CPC) Program
    • Picking the best and most cost-effective advisors
    • How to pitch for public capital
    • Why PVC may work when private VCs are not interested or an attractive option

    Register, Cost: $65.00

    What: TSX Venture Exchange Entrepreneurial Bootcamp
    Cost: $65.00 Moderated by Sean Wise, Wise Mentor Capital For more information please contact: Debbie Bamforth, TSX Venture Exchange, at (416) 947-4411 or [email protected]
    When: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 1:00 PM to 5:30 PM
    Where: MaRS Centre

    101 College Street, Auditorium B
    Toronto, ON   Canada

  • 2008 ACE Exposition

    acecanadaAdvancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE) held their showcase of entrepreneurs at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.  ACE is a charitable organization that delivers programming to higher education students to inspire them to make meaningful contribution to words their community by building real world businesses and entrepreneurial ventures.

    ACE submissions are from major Canadian schools including BCIT, University of Calgary, Ryerson University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo amongst others. The Student Entrepreneur Competition requires that students be a founder (or 50% owner of a business) and are selected based on financials and subjective judging criteria. The goal is to submit an operating venture that is ready for growth.

    ACE announces 2008 National Student Entrepreneur Competition Champion – Joseph Moncada, Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium

    Since 2006 Joseph, a Business student, has owned and operated Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium, a network of stores and kiosks offering rare, unique, retro, and imported sweets from around the world. What started as a summer project through the Ontario Government “Summer Company” program has grown exponentially into a successful franchise.

    Now in operation for only two years, Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium employs over 25 people and has grown into three stores based in prominent locations around the Greater Toronto Area and Wasaga Beach.

    The focus of the ACE programs is on economic impact on local communities. The submissions are diverse ranging from software to franchises. The 2008 regional winners included software companies, an online retailer, a French language publishing company and a walking stick manufacturer.

    • Ryne Flood, 6am Software – Online Parent-Teacher Interview Scheduler
    • Grahm Watts, Nature Trails – A company that manufactures walking sticks, twig pencils, bird hourses, etc.
    • Brad LeBlanc, Engaging Entertainment – Event mangement, event production and strategic marketing
    • André Wilson, Editions Court-Circuit – A French language publishing company
    • Jill Lennox, Stuffitbag – Custom designed laptop bags with online retailing
    • Brett Patrontasch, Scholars At Your Service Inc. – a student organization offering residential and commercial painting, window washing, and on site automotive detailing to their customers

    While most of these ventures probably aren’t venture fundable, the opportunity for students to see entrepreneurship as a career path is needed in Canadian post secondary educational institutions. ACE offers a great structured set of programs for students to get involved and inspired by entrepreneurs in their communities.

  • StartupIndex: Canadian Startup Map

    We just launched a neat new mapping feature on StartupIndex.

    As more data gets entered by the community, a lot of the entries contain address information. We weren’t really using this in any special ways until Ali really started thinking about a map.

    The map is dynamic and thanks to some slick programming, it will auto-cluster elements in order to make things more intuitive as you zoom in and out.

    Is it useful? We don’t know yet. We will constantly be trying things on StartupIndex and we will be testing them to see if they are valuable or not. So please, let us know what you think.