StartupNorth

  • Weekend Reading – April 12, 2008

    CIX and Mesh are both approaching, as well as two StartupCamps (Montreal and Toronto). Surprisingly, it has been a bit of a quiet week in the startup world, perhaps everyone is hard at work!

    Austin Hill talks about his venture Akoha and sexy aboriginal gift economies.
    Mark McQueen of Wellington Financial weighs in on bikini trends.
    VC Rick Segal does not want to hear pitches from sock puppets.

    Applications to pitch at StartupCamp Toronto 2 are due tomorrow.

    StartupCampMontreal 2 has released more tickets. Get some now before they are all gone.

    Did we miss anything? Post below.

  • StartupCamp Toronto 2 – Last release of tickets

    startupcamplogo_small1.pngWe have put more Entrepreneur and Guru tickets up for grabs for StartupCampToronto 2.

    It is looking like a great night and it is your chance to hear from some new startups and we also have Leila Boujnane lined up to speak.

    The format for StartupCamp is simple: 5 Startups will have 5 minutes each to pitch themselves. The audience will then have twice as much time to grill them on everything from their marketing plan to the product itself.

    The 5 startups will be selected in advance.

    If you want to get feedback on your business plan, then fill out the form available here by Sunday, April 13th.

    The event will be held on Tuesday April 29th at The Carlu in Toronto. We are putting on this StartupCamp during CIX, which is a new conference with a focus on connecting VC ready startups and VCs.

    Because of the limited venue size and the nature of the event, these tickets are ONLY available to individuals with a startup of their own or “gurus” who are able to contribute from expertise in some domain. See the ticket descriptions for details. Tickets may be revoked when we look over the list. Sorry, but we have to do this.

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  • DemocampGuelph 5 – 4 New Companies!

    Jonas and I went to Guelph yesterday for DemoCamp Guelph 5. When we arrived in Guelph we stopped by the Well.ca offices and picked up some Roti (try the Doubles, delicious!).

    We had a great time and the venue was cozy. We didn’t find out the beer was free until the end though!

    The demoing companies were:

    Doctopus
    Doctopus is a hosted content management solution. So far they have built a nice looking platform that can manage and deploy a large number of sites. The CMS market is big, but also saturated to say the least. I think they will need to focus on a more defined target market/vertical. That said, it really did look nice.

    Liveoffcamp.us
    LiveOffCamp.us is a site that connects students with off campus housing. Right now the interface is a little disconnected. You enter a query and it emails you the results. The crowd thought that they should provide the results right on the site, and I agree, but getting an email should be kept as a second option.

    MyVine
    Myvine.ca was the best looking site of the night. Their tagline “Simple referral management” is confusing. They don’t manage your referral system, they help you manage a list of recommendations for your business. MyVine is sort of a GigPark turned on its head, where instead of putting all of the control in the hands of the users, the merchant gets to control what recommendations get posted and which ones don’t.

    FOSSFactory
    FossFactory is a site that helps manage bounties that are put on features in Open Source Software. For example: If you use a piece of open source software and you want to have a feature added to it, then you can put a value on it, deposit the money, and then developers can claim the money if they develop the feature. Other people who also want to see the feature developed can add to the bounty.

  • Presenting companies announced for CIX 2008

    If you are going to have a beauty contest (or not), the contestants may as well be good looking, and CIX seems to have delivered. I have to admit that I didn’t even think the list would turn out this well. There is a cross section of everything from startups to companies looking for follow-on rounds.

    There has been some debate recently about the value of events like CIX, and I have to admit, I have not been easy on similar events in the past, but I have to say that I think it is time to move on. If you think CIX is all about a bunch of companies getting up and presenting, then you are wrong. I think of CIX more like a DEMO or Techcrunch 50 for the Canadian community, and that is something we need.

    More than that, a lot has changed in the Canadian Startup community in the last year, and this is a chance to start putting more names to faces, and for more shy startups to start coming out of the shadows. It is also a chance for the Venture Capital community to pull back the curtains and start connecting more closely with the community.

    We are using the CIX space to put on a second StartupCamp. So if you didn’t get a chance to get your name out there at CIX itself, make sure you put your name in the hat for StartupCamp.

    The list of presenting companies was released today, you saw it here first!:

  • Conceptshare announces API

    Conceptshare has released details about their API today. This is a big move for the Sudbury, Ontario based company and I think it opens a whole new set of opportunities for them.

    For those who don’t know: An API is a defined way for one piece of software to interface with another. In the case of Conceptshare, their API would allow another tool (for example, Sharepoint, or Basecamp) to remotely use and launch Conceptshare and to send users directly in to the Conceptshare environment.

    We have written about Conceptshare in the past and since then they have continued to iterate both their product and their marketing and partnering strategies.

    “The release of the ConceptShare API signals a new era in our company history. We want to enable our clients large and small to leverage our platform to further improve their projects. The API will allow users to customize the ConceptShare experience for their organizations, teams and clients.” – Scott Brooks

    I have heard Scott and Bernie, two of 3 co-founders of the company, both talk about why they have maintained a very tight focus on what they do best and why they have not been lured in to building broader tools. In a world without an API, that decision might seem shortsighted, but with the release of this API, Conceptshare has made their tool available and ready to plug in to any sort of existing workflow in any toolset. They become a reusable tool that other integrators can make use of.

    This also shows that Conceptshare is going a little more upmarket, and my guess is that there will be similarly enterprise-focused features and tools on the way.

  • DemoCampGuelph Tonight – April 9th 2008

    Jonas and I are heading to DemoCampGuelph tomorrow. The lineup looks great, it includes: Liveoffcamp.us!, doctopus, myvine and fossfactory.

    While this isn’t a startupcamp, Jonas and I will be doing a rapidfire pitch of our own: (Less Stupid) Startups, including some secrets on how to get covered on blogs a little more easily.

    So if you are in the area, or just want to find out what is happening in Guelph (lots of cool stuff!), then sign up and I am looking forward to seeing you there. Be sure to say Hi!

  • Spring Acquisitions: Meriton Networks & Sirific Wireless

    As promised… we have a couple spring acquisitions:

    Meriton Networks, an optical networking infrastructure company based in Ottawa, has been acquired by Xtera Communications. Meriton had taken venture financing from: Desjardins Venture Capital Group, Newbury Ventures, Nomura International, Primaxis Technology Ventures, RBC Capital Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, VenGrowth Capital Partners, Skypoint Capital. The acquisition price has not been disclosed.

    Sirific Wireless, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in CMOS RF transceivers based in Waterloo, has been acquired by Icera. Sirific had taken venture financing from: Agilent Technologies, BDC, Celtic House, GrowthWorks, Hunt Ventures, Intel Capital, Solowave Investments, TD Capital, and Tech Capital. The acquisition price has not been disclosed.

    Hat tip to Mark McQueen of Wellington Financial, who described the exits as follows:

    Although details weren?t announced, these don?t feel like successful exits. Probably somewhere in that middle of pack for that vintage. Neither company had announced the kind of revenue generating customer traction (think Dragonwave and Clearwire) that drives a home run. And they both raised tens of millions over 8 or so years. Yes there was value built (which the strategics can afford to fund and harvest) but after that long these are deals where the clock ran out.

    Sounds like a little portfolio spring cleaning to me.

  • Sneak Peek: Brain Park

    Brain Park LogoEarlier today Marc Dowds released a PDF Diagram that gives us a hint of what his latest venture, Brain Park, is all about. Take a peek… Is there a pot of gold waiting for Brain Park at the end of the organizational intelligence rainbow? Park your thoughts in the comments.

  • Angel financing – Term sheets (part 2)

    One of the first things a term sheet will outline is the investment mechanism for the deal. The two most common types are equity (via common or preferred shares) or convertible debt. Equity, as the name implies, is taking on investor’s money in exchange for shares. Say for example your company currently has 1,000,000 shares outstanding. You and the investors settle on a valuation of $1 per share for a pre-money valuation of $1,000,000. The investors put in $250,000 and in exchange they are issued 250,000 shares. The post money valuation of the company is $1,250,000 and investors own 20% of the company.

    Investors can either be issued common or preferred shares. Depending on how your current shareholder’s agreement is written & company capitalization structure is, you will probably have all shareholders (founders) holding common shares. If investors are issued common shares, they have the same class of shares as the founders and hold the same rights. Since the investors are often the ones putting the most hard cash (as opposed to sweat equity) into the venture they will often want to protect themselves with additional rights.
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  • Weekend Reading – April 5, 2008

    Spring is finally in the air, and with it acquisition offers, financings, and lawsuits. Mostly hijinks so far, but some big announcements are sure to follow in the weeks ahead.

    Well.ca gets an acquisition offer.
    Canadian blog network raises $3M.
    Sold too soon? iStockphoto, which Getty acquired for $50M in 2006, hits revenue of $71M for 2007.
    Austin Hill of Radial Point to appear as expert witness in $25M lawsuit against Facebook.
    Alec Saunders thinks it?s time to abolish VC beauty contests.

    Don’t forget to apply to pitch at StartupCamp Toronto 2! Applications must be received by next Sunday April 13.