StartupNorth

  • StartupCamp Toronto – Second Release of Tickets

    The second release of tickets are now available for entrepreneurs. We will also be opening up new slots for service providers.

    Things are really coming together for StartupCamp, a big thanks to everyone who has offered support so far, especially our service providers who have purchased tickets to support the event.

    Even more importantly, we have had some fantastic startups step up to the plate. Here is the list so far.

    Your last chance to submit your startup is Sunday, November 11th Submission Form

    InvestMate
    Investmate creates customized CAPM model portfolios based on personal interests for those with little to medium amounts of money who desire to invest in the stock market.
         		Workspace
    We are building an online IDE to help developers create web applications faster and easier while following best software engineering practices.

    Metatom Enterprises
    Software takes a long time to build costing companies millions in longer development, debugging, and time to market. Our software speeds up build times by distributing the job of compiling across the LAN.
    Issues Done, LLC
    Eliminate procrastination stress by introducing an effective approach to track issues, plan, get reminded and collaborate.
    litterary
    litterary is a social network for reviewing documents. After a document is published other users can highlight portions of it to make comments.
    OfficeZilla.com
    OfficeZilla consists of a core set of features which can be put together in different ways to create new collaboration experiences

    Ogrant
    Ogrant is a social media platform that allows students to get grants for school using videos and other forms of creativity. All grants are funded by schools and corporations.
    MadWhips.com
    A state of the art exotic and modified car classification and display gallery storage system.

    YowTrip
    A social network for world travelers that connects you to people traveling to the same place and allows you to find people hosting other travelers.
    Wheels Mart TV
    Using video to sell used cars online for private individuals and dealers. Think “YouTube meets AutoTrader”.

    Defensio.com (Karabunga Inc)
    Defensio is a better spam filter for social web apps. We make spam management less of a chore with our spaminess ranking and our open API.     		CakeMail (The Code Kitchen)
    CakeMail is a multilingual white label email marketing platform with an architecture that is open to extension by third parties.

    More startups on the wiki…

  • Cover Your …

    Let’s face it, most entrepreneurs break all kinds of rules (the law is no exception). Starting a business is risky and time consuming; when your immediate survival is determined by your burn rate, the quality of your product, and time to market, it is easy to overlook or even knowingly ignore legal niceties.

    The thing of it is… investors want something tangible to hold onto. You won’t get very far with “we’re buddies so it is 50/50” or “we’ll figure out who owns what later”. Partners will also grow anxious without some formality and structure. Adhering to a few best practices may very well determine the near (and long) term prospects of your endeavor.

    Next Tuesday (November 13) from 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST, Cognition LLP‘s Joe Milstone will be hosting a free webinar on legal issues startups can?t ignore but often do. Well worth your time to listen in and listen up.

    What legal issues have you knowingly ignored in your startup? Post your (anonymous) responses in the comments.

  • Angel financing – What angels look for in a company: Market size and revenue model (part 2 of 6)

    In the last article, we discussed how you would go about describing your company’s product or service. Now that potential investors have a clear idea of what your company does, you need to show them the potential for how much money the company can make. You do this by outlining the market size potential and revenue model for your company.

    Angel InvestorFirst lets start with market size. The amount of market share your company will get each year is obviously highly speculative, especially for a new company offering a new product or service. However, rather than just come up with a number such as the number of customers you project to have after the first year, it is important to show the reasoning behind this number. You will need to do research to determine the total potential market you can serve and build up how you will get a share of the market.

    If we take our hypothetical company that is building cases for iPods, what is the total market size? In determining the market size, you need to be specific:

    Is it everybody that owns a portable MP3 player – no, you are only making cases for iPods
    Is it everybody that owns an iPod – no, you are only making cases for certain models of iPods
    Is it everybody that owns the specific models of iPods you are targeting – no, not everybody that owns an iPod is going to buy a case for it
    Is it everybody that would purchase a case for the specific models of iPods you are targeting – maybe, but will you be attempting to sell to everybody globally day one or will you focus on one region, such as North America

    By following a line of reasoning such as the above, you will be able to narrowly focus on the specific market you will be targeting and be able to give numbers in terms of how large this market is in terms of total customers or dollars. You will also want to research statistics for how much the market is growing each year.

    Now that you have defined the size of the market, you need to determine how much share you will get of this market.

    Here is where things become speculative as you will not have 100% certainty of the uptake of your product. However, again, the main point is not the final number. It is to show you have a well thought out reasoning so you can demonstrate you have a clear understanding on how you will launch into the market. In terms of determining what year over year share you project to get, it is best to try show how your market share is based on fundamental building blocks. For example, if your model for selling iPod cases was to establish your own retail stores as the channel to customers, you would want to show a market share based on how many cities you will establish a presence in over time & how many sales would you expect per store. Or if your model for selling iPod cases was to license designs to existing manufacturers of iPod cases, then you would want to base your market size on which manufacturers you will be able to sign up over time and how much revenue you will get per each manufacturer.

    In addition to talking about the market size, you also need to ensure you clearly explain your revenue model –

    • Who are your customers?
    • How do you reach them to sell your product?
    • What are they buying from you?

    In our iPod example, depending on the business model you chose there are many different revenue models. Maybe you look to manufacture and sell your product through retail channels such as Best Buy, maybe you look to license your product to other manufacturers of iPod cases, maybe you look to give your product away for free but make money via ad placements on the case. In order to be able to properly assess a company, an investor is going to want to have a clear picture of how your company generates revenue.

    When most entrepreneurs pitch what their market share and revenue potential is, they usually mention that the numbers being presented are ‘conservative’. This is good, but does not mean much to an investor. One tip would be to produce a few scenarios of how much market share and revenue your company will get over time. Since you are probably asking for investment money to execute the plan of how you will gain this market share, it is good to show a few different scenarios of what your revenue potential will be given varying levels of investment money. i.e. you may not get the full amount of investment money you are seeking so this way you will be prepared to show the implications of getting less money.

    In discussing market share & revenue potential of the company, this is only one side of the equation. Expenses are also important to discus so investors can get a picture of the income potential of your company. I will cover this in part 6 (financials) of this article series. In my next article, I will talk about competition and barriers to entry. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future articles feel free to contact me: craig at mapleleafangels.com

  • BlitzWeekend: Launch a Startup in a Weekend

    We were going to make a post about BlitzWeekend, but what’s better than information straight from the source? Here is a guest post from Heri, a co-organizer of BlitzWeekend, with all the details.

    BlitzWeekend (organized by Heri Rakotomalala, Denis Canuel, and Mehdi Akiki) is coming to Montreal this February. We are inviting teams of designers, developers, and entrepreneurs to build a startup in 2 days, from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. BlitzWeekend is inspired by StartupWeekend, but there are some key differences. Where StartupWeekend attempted to get over 60 people introduced and working together on one project in one weekend, BlitzWeekend teams and projects should be setup before the event. We will be providing the space and other necessities, but it?s up to each team to find a project and to organize themselves.

    For new entrepreneurs, we offer an opportunity to go through all the stages of a startup: finding talented partners to collaborate with on an idea, writing a business plan, building and deploying the product. Teams will have an opportunity to present their final product at the end of the weekend and receive feedback from other participants and a panel of experienced entrepreneurs and investors.

    blitzweekeend-website.jpgIf you are already involved in a startup, it is also an opportunity to build our your existing product. 48 hours is ample time to create a Facebook / Open Social app or a widget to distribute your content to blogs. You can also view it as a challenge to test new technologies you haven?t had time yet to try out. Think of BlitzWeekend as your R&D lab.

    We expect most of the teams to focus on web applications, but BlitzWeekend is also open to teams working on innovative mobile applications, desktop software, games, etc. If all you really want to do is hack some hardware, then so be it!

    We will be limiting attendance for the event to 50 people, which should make for about 10 teams. We?ll open registration as soon as we secure the venue. For now, you can join the Facebook group, and post about your potential ideas and team members. Of course, we will also be updating the blog.

    See you in Montreal this February!

  • TimmyOnTime – Time Management via Instant Messenger

    logo.pngI am pretty sure the one tool I would not give up these days would be Instant Messenger. All of my closest business partners and customers are on either GTalk or MSN (with GTalk being far and away a more work-related buddy list). I take IM with me everywhere, on my iPhone, using meebo if I am on another computer, it’s just one of those things that I stay connected to as much as possible.

    When I started using Twitter, it was their instant messenger integration that really got me hooked, and I have always flirted with the business models around instant messenger bots. It seems though, that few useful applications show up for instant messengers, and IM in general is still not seen as a viable platform for applications.

    I think that assumption is flawed, and that’s why I was excited to hear about TimmyOnTime, a work time-tracking application that you use through your instant messenger. You can connect via AIM, MSN or GTalk/Jabber.

    Basically, TimmyOnTime allows you to create, by sending a message, a Project. Each project then has Tasks, which you define, and for each task you can “check in” and “check out”, and TimmyOnTime will then tell you how much time you have spent on a particular Task or Project. You can even tag projects and tasks to keep all sorts of information about them. TimmyOnTime also offers a web-based interface to view reports and manage your projects, tasks and account.

    They have a free version, which limits you to four projects, but they also have very simple paid tiers which not only let you create an unlimited amount of projects, but give you group-tracking capabilities as well.

    Personally, time tracking is not an art that I have mastered. While working on a project, I am usually reduced to keeping notes on paper. This is neither safe or efficient. What I like about TimmyOnTime is that I won’t have to change my workflow in any great way in order to track my time, and I won’t have to install another application, which is the last thing I want.

    One thing I would like to see in TimmyOnTime is an SMS-based option. This would have to be pay-per-use or an option for premium subscribers I am sure, but it would be fantastic to be able to send an SMS while out on the road or in meetings to keep my time tracking up to date. I’m not sure if that is something others would want, or just a heavy SMS user like me.

    Dan Simard and Frank Lamontagne are the two guys behind this startup and they are taking a very pragmatic approach to getting their name out there. They are based in Trois-Rivières, Québec, and they haven’t taken any funding as of yet, but that may change in the future. As they build up their subscriber numbers, and develop their product, I am sure we will hear more from them.

    Contact Dan Simard and Frank Lamontagne

  • $7,500,000 Series B and New CEO for xkoto

    xkoto logoGrowthWorks and GrandBanks Capital have announced a $7.5M Series B investment in xkoto. The startup, based in Toronto, is a leading provider of database load balancing solutions. The funding will be used to expand support of multiple database and ISV platforms, grow its U.S. presence, and accelerate sales. xkoto already counts big customers including UnitedHealthcare, Genworth Financial, InGrid, Travelport, and leading Wall Street investment firms.

    While the use of load balancing technology is already widespread for deployments of web and app servers, corporate data centers have only recently begun to seize the technology and capture the associated benefits (improved performance, lower consumption of system resources, and the viability of using inexpensive commodity hardware). xkoto claims savings of up to $295,000 on the initial hardware/software and recurring savings of $60K per year for each system replaced with a commodity system using GRIDSCALE, their software product.

    In addition to funding xkoto announced today a new Boston based CEO, David Patrick. David hails from Novell where he managed the $450 million Linux, Open Source, and Platform Services Group. Co-founder Albert Lee will become Chief Strategy Officer. Khalil Barsoum an industry veteran and Tim Wright of GrandBanks Capital, have joined xkoto’s board of directors which includes Roger Chabra of GrowthWorks, Mark Stirling of Treadstone Associates, and co-founder Albert Lee.

    This round is exciting as it represents continued interest in Canadian software startups. Is a move south of the border imminent? No decision has been made according to Roger Chabra of GrowthWorks. “The CEO is Boston-based solely because he was too good a candidate to pass up.” Rather than get all worked up about headquarter relocation, lets try celebrating it as both a fact of startup life in Canada and more importantly a sign of success in a larger market.

  • Cake Mail LogoCakeMail launched their public beta last weekend at BarCamp Montreal. The company, founded by serial entrepreneur Francois Lane, is only offering email marketing services through resellers, a pretty contrarian bet in a ?direct from the source? era. It remains to be seen whether or not offering service direct and through resellers would yield superior results, but either way there are some great lessons here for Canadian entrepreneurs.

    Get other people to sell it
    CakeMail is a white label email marketing platform. They are positioning themselves as wholesalers and doing everything possible to empower their resellers (marketing and web design agencies). I?m not entirely sure what keeping a per email pricelist off their site does when larger competitors publish comparison charts, but resellers probably appreciate the gesture.

    Open and abstracted
    CakeMail was designed from the ground up to leverage a community of developers. The UI is completely abstracted from the logic. In addition to offering reseller the ability to completely tailor the visual experience, CakeMail has opened up their API to give resellers the ability to extend the platform to their hearts content. It is a cost effective way to add functionality, experiment, and harnesses knowledge that only exists at the end user level.

    Go global
    Abstracting the interface has another benefit, localization. This is one area where Canadian entrepreneurs can really out do their peers south of the border. The company, based in Montreal Quebec, is a team of six, two of which are based in Eastern Europe. Count the fluencies. Localizing software is a big challenge and an even bigger opportunity (check out our recent post on Languify). CakeMail is already running in several languages, supports email in all characters, and is going to be quickly localized by end users.

    CakeMail at BarCampGet traction? Then funding
    Investors are risk averse. There is no better way to increase your funding prospects AND valuation, than by getting product out to paying customers. I asked Francois about the company?s capitalization and this is what he had to say:

    ?We are currently building a list of interested parties who could provide strategic synergies in addition to capital for rapid expansion into international markets. While we already have paying customers, we’d like to gain a bit more traction before starting funding negotiations in earnest.?

    So take note, this guy has a recipe for success.

  • Savvica Languify – Don't Sleep, Release!

    We covered the return of Savvica earlier and expected we’d hear from them soon. I was thinking more like 5 or 6 months, but instead today we see that Languify, a crowd-sourced translation service, has gone live.

    Languify InfoIt is a service which not only let’s you manage your own translations for your product, but let’s you benefit from the translation work of others. Languify offers a full REST-style API, which allows other systems to programmatically interact with all of the projects, locales, keys, and translations you have on their service.

    I woke up this morning to a few messages from a well known entrepreneur that he left me on Skype at 3am, and I am sometimes amazed by the number of late night e-mail exchanges I have with other startups as we work through the night. I have a feeling that John and Malgosia pulled a few all-nighters to get Languify done and released (8 days from start to finish).

    While you don’t have to work long nights, and I avoid it most of the time these days, I have to admit that most entrepreneurs I know, who are successful, do it regularly.

  • StartupCampToronto 1 – Now taking submissions

    startupcamplogo_small.pngWe have 3 slots remaining for startups to present at StartupCampToronto and we have decided to let the audience vote on who those companies will be.

    StartupCamp is almost completely sold out, and in looking over the list of people who have tickets, I can see that it is a really high quality group. The mix of Startups, experienced entrepreneurs, experienced investors (both VC and Angel) as well as eager students, all has me feeling pretty excited and optimistic that there will be a lot of value in presenting at StartupCamp.

    The primary benefit of presenting is that you will get candid feedback on your pitch from a crowd that is made up of both other entrepreneurs, experienced investors and people who have successfully exited their previous startups.

    I know that when I was getting my first few startups off the ground, I would have loved the opportunity to have the core of my business plan assessed by such a great crowd.

  • StartupCamp Toronto – December 6th

    Update #5: All tickets are currently sold out. We plan to release any remaining tickets this coming Friday at 2pm ET.

    Update #4: 4 Service Provider tickets remain. Some people have been asking why we service providers are expected to purchase a sponsorship. The basic reason is that we have a very limited amount of tickets available, and in our experience (and we did ask for advice on this): tickets can be snatched up by service providers pretty quickly. Instead of shutting them out completely, we chose to offer a limited amount of spots to the most serious and dedicated of the group.

    We will not let this event grow to the size of a FaceBookCamp or a DemoCamp. Because of the format and intent of startupcamp, startups will not benefit from a large group. Please feel free to drop us a note if you have any questions.

    Update #3: Student tickets are now sold out.

    Update #2: Guru tickets are now sold out.

    Update: The Entrepreneur Round 1 tickets have sold out. We will be releasing a second round soon as well as doing a re-release of any tickets which were claimed by people not involved in startups. Stay tuned for updates about the second release of tickets.

    If you aren’t able to get a ticket for Startupcamp, please remember that there is Democamp just a few nights before which has less of a startup focus.

    startupcamplogo_small.pngI am extremely happy to announce that we will be holding StartupCampToronto on December 6th.

    After we had such a great time in Waterloo, we knew the time was right to do it right here in Toronto.

    We are simply announcing the event now and intend to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next few weeks. We have put together a small group to work out the details and that has been coming together nicely.

    There are loads of great startups in Toronto and even more future entrepreneurs with great ideas and a great work ethic. Building a startup in Toronto is no picnic, and we think the best thing to do is to create an opportunity for those who are committed to their startups to share with and help each-other.

    The format will be relatively simple. There will be 5 pitches by existing or soon-to-be startups. Each pitch is limited to 5 minutes and it is expected to cover the extent of your existing business plan. This may change, but it is the format right now. It worked extremely well in Waterloo a few weeks ago.

    Entrepreneur, Student and Guru tickets are now available here. And of course, we aren’t charging for admission, but we are limiting the amount of tickets available.

    We will email updates to ticket holders and post updates on the wiki.

    Note: We have created specific ticket types in order to make sure that there is enough space for Students and Entrepenurs. If you are a consultant, web developer, lawyer, accountant or other type of service provider, we have created a special type of sponsorship opportunity for you. Please purchase the type of ticket that describes you accurately. We will be checking tickets and re-releasing any which are invalid.

    We aren’t doing this to be jerks, we realize that a lot of people are excited about startups, but our focus is on helping existing startups who need advice now.