StartupNorth

Tag: conference

  • GrowConf Super Early Bird Pricing

    GrowConf Aug 22-24, 2012 in Vancouver

    Register for GrowConf »

    The Grow Conference  just released their first 50 “super early bird” tix at 50% off and sold out in less than a day!  StartupNorth was able to secure 20 more “super early bird” tix for the StartupNorth audience to get that same price. Just register with the promo code – “startupnorth” and you’ll get the $295 price too (it says $395 – but you’ll get the discount).

    Be sure to check out Debbie and Jason on their cross-country tour. I’ve heard that they’ll each be “manning” a kissing booth in Waterloo for their Valentine’s Day stop.

    GrowConf is a great event that offers something for every entrepreneur.

  • OCE Discovery + Special DemoCamp + One Day Pass

    Editor’s Note: This post is written by Paul Vice. Paul works the OCE team to enable special projects. This includes community outreach with groups like StartupNorth and DemoCamp. OCE has been a proud sponsor of DemoCamp and other StartupNorth events for the last 4 years. We’ve written about OCE Discovery in the past and the support that OCE has offered local startups like Bumptop, Verold, and others is unparalleled. We are excited to be able to offer StartupNorth readers access to OCE Discovery 11 » see below for details about ticketing. – David

    The Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) has teamed up with the StartupNorth team to present a special DemoCamp on May 19th at 3:30pm at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre as part of the Discovery 11 conference.  It is a chance to put DemoCamp in front of a different audience, drawing all the Discovery attendees. In 2010 we had a standing room only crowd. We have space for 300+ this year.

    Discovery is the annual showcase of the best of innovations in Ontario hosted by OCE. Recently named Canada’s Best Trade Show 2010, Discovery has become the premier innovation and commercialization showcase in Canada with over 2500 attendees & over 300 exhibitors.

    OCE Discovery picture of show floor

    Some of the highlights of Discovery this year:

    • Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences is the keynote speaker on the morning of May 19
    • A hot panel on the direction of mobile app development in Canada, moderated by Kunal Gupta, CEO and Founder of Polar Mobile.
    • A full track on Stereoscopic 3D technology including S3D gaming development
    • Indra Laksono from Toronto’s own ViXS Systems on the future of digital technology in the home. (btw, ViXS is a very cool company, check them out.)
    • The return of the Elevator Pitch competition – Dejero Labs and Gridcentric were past award winners.

    Check out the full agenda.

    DemoCamp at Discovery

    Moderated by David Crow (@davidcrow), with guest speaker Anand Agarwala from Bumptop (now at Google) kicks things off with a unique “Art of the Hustle” (Street Smarts for the Startup World) presentation, followed by a showcase of 5 unique selected startups to pitch in front of an audience of over 300 participants, including panel members:

    Discovery is not the usual DemoCamp venue. But, we are looking to accomplish 2 goals:

    • Put some interesting, exciting new DemoCamp start-ups in front of an new audience; and,
    • Put DemoCamp in front of that new audience and inspire some of them to join future DemoCamps

    Want to demo?

    We are looking for up to 5 startups or entrepreneurs to demo a new technology. Selected presenters get 5 minutes to show us the best of their application and then ask the audience for feedback, coaching, and insight from a highly connected, if occasionally cynical, crowd. You get market advice, technology advice, and pitch advice and the opportunity to deal with the hecklers.

    Apply to Demo

    Want join the audience, offer advice, heckle and get to explore the full conference floor?

    Discovery is a full conference and trade show at the MTCC with all the typical costs and overheads. We run it on a cost recovery basis with a lot of very generous help from sponsors, but costs are a lot more than your typical Democamp.

    But, we want you there. You can join us at DemoCamp and visit Discovery  with a one day pass May 19 for $250 if you use the promotion code DC250 when you register. (The full price for the 2 days is $895, $75 for students with ID.)

    OCE Discovery 11 May 18-19, 2011

  • Giveaway – 2 Tickets to Art of Marketing on March 7, 2011

    The Art of Marketing on March 7, 2001 in TorontoStartupNorth and The Art of Marketing are giving away 2 tickets to the March 7, 2011 conference in Toronto. The conference features:

    It’s a great line up of speakers. I’ve seen Guy Kawasaki speak in the past. He hosted a conversation with Steve Ballmer at  Mix08 in Las Vegas. And comedy ensued:

    Guy Kawasaki at Mix08

    Guy has written a number of books that I have enjoyed reading including: Reality Check, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy and The Art of the Start. Very entertaining speaker, and I’ve been told that we should try to organize a startup hockey game for him while he is here.

    I’m most excited about hearing Dr. Sheena Iyengar. I did not know that she was born in Toronto. Her TED Talk about The Art of Choosing and cultural biases is a very engaging and insightful presentation.

    Dr. Sheena Iyengar at TED on The Art of Choosing

    Giveaway

    This is a giveaway. We have 2 tickets. The tickets have no cash value. Someone from StartupNorth will randomly select 2 emails submitted before 11:59:59 EST on Feb 27, 2011. There might be a skill testing question. Please only one entry per person. What’s an entry? Your name and email address. It’s our promise that we will always respect your privacy. From time to time we may email you to inform you about future events, or updates about the giveaway.

    Entries are closed.

    The promo code: LD27 gives you a $50 discount off the regular ticket price, or $100 discount for groups of 3 or more for The Art of Marketing March 7, 2011 event.

  • SxSW fallout – you should attend MeshU

    There’s been a lot of bitching about the state of SxSWi and why it sucks!

    “Too many people, not enough tech.”

    Jay Baer provides the best observations about what is working, what is broken, and some general themes from the event.

    1. There is more than one SxSW
    2. Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better
    3. The Conference isn’t that Good
    4. The Periphery Exceeds the Core

    The great news is that there are fantastic opportunities for entrepreneurs in Toronto (and across Canada, but we’ll come back to that). There are a number of small focused events. MeshU and Mesh are firecode limited at MaRS to 450 attendees. They are excellent opportunities to connect with entrepreneurs, designers, developers, marketers and funders. The event is tight and there are multiple tracks, however, the core keeps getting stronger every year. The core speakers are fantastic.

    MeshU is a one day event. Perfect. My attention span can’t handle 5 days (never mind the 5 nights). It is happening Monday, May 17, 2010 which is right before Mesh Conference and OCE Discovery. MeshU is the supporting event to these 2 larger events. The supporting role has allowed it to focus on delivering great value.

    Education-based aka the strong core

    MeshU, May 17, 2010, Toronto, ON
    MeshU, Toronto, ON May 17, 2010

    The mesh team has always put on a great set of events, however in 2010 they have added one speaker that will justify the entire price of the ticket for me. Sean Ellis runs Startup-Marketing.com and 12in6 Inc.

    12in6 specializes in helping startups unlock their full growth potential.  Our metrics, survey and experiment driven approach has evolved over 15 years of taking startups to market as VP marketing, interim VP marketing and as an outside advisor/consultant.  The first five startups our principal (Sean Ellis) helped take to market were:

    1. Uproar (IPO)
    2. LogMeIn (IPO)
    3. Xobni (Khosla Ventures – rapid user and revenue growth)
    4. Eventbrite (Sequoia Ventures – rapid user and revenue growth)
    5. Dropbox (Sequoia Ventures – rapid user and revenue growth)

    5 projects that include 2 IPOs, and fuding from Khosla and Sequoia Ventures. Startups that have opportunity to learn about the Customer Development methodology from one of the best executors. This session will justify the price of the MeshU ticket for most startups.

    There are other fantastic speakers including Aza Raskin from Mozilla Labs, Joe Stump from Digg, and Meredith Noble from Usability Matters.

  • Impact National Conference & Impact Ventures

    Impact Entrepreneurship GroupImpact_blog_redlogo started life as a student group designed to help promote entrepreneurship as a career path. It was started by Kunal Gupta, now the founder & CEO of Polar Mobile. It started as a conference for students, “a one-day event in Kitchener, Ontario attracting 150 delegates”. It is still primarily a conference/event machine for student entrepreneurs. However, with the creation of Impact Consulting and now Impact Ventures (see below) this is changing very quickly.

    The next INC_logoImpact National Conference is happening November 20-21, 2009 at the Westin Harbour Castle on Queens Quay in Toronto. The conference features some interesting speakers including some familiar faces: Andy Nulman, Sunjay Nath, Ali Asaria, Jordan Banks, Saul Colt, Austin Hill, Mike McDerment and others. It looks to be a great conference with a great list of speakers in Toronto.

     

    What is most interesting to me is the announcement of the Impact 2010 Programs, including Impact Ventures.

    Many talented youth with innovative ideas steer away from an entrepreneurial path due to the numerous challenges, including funding and guidance, which they inevitably face; Impact Ventures was created to remove these obstacles. Impact Ventures strives to provide youth entrepreneurs with the seed funding, advisory services, workspace tools, and strategic resources they need at the crucial idea stage to create a successful business. Based on the successful Y Combinator model used in Silicon Valley to bring the next generation of ideas to life, Impact Ventures will help propel new startups to achieve their business objectives.

    The selection process consists of an application form and an interview; there is no business plan required. During the pilot, three to four ventures showing the most opportunity for growth and long term sustainability will be chosen for the first batch. This three-month program will bring these budding entrepreneurs to Waterloo, the technology hub of Canada, to present them with all the components each entrepreneur needs to help build their venture.

    Components for each selected Venture:

    • $15,000 in seed funding for an average of 6% stake in the company
    • Mentors available for hands-on help as well as advise
    • Advisory services including Legal, Accounting, Banking and more
    • Office Space in Waterloo to create an environment of collaboration
    • Themed weeks where experts related to starting a business will provide their insights and advice
    • Consultants to help a new company fill gaps in its initial organization

    Impact Ventures is dedicated to the implementation of the entrepreneurial spirit amongst Canadian youth and values the independence of each entrepreneur. We are not interested in controlling the direction of the company as we trust in the entrepreneurs to make the best decision for their company. We believe in a non-regimented and friendly atmosphere where you are allowed to develop your startup with little interference, numerous resources and advice when you need it. Impact Ventures is set to revolutionize the startup industry by giving entrepreneurs an excellent spring board that will launch them to their success.

    I’ve been talking with members of team creating Impact Ventures including Taimur Mohammad and Ray Cao since my post "Incubators, accelerators and ignition” back in April 2009. It looks like the Impact team has taken up the challenge and will be using their network of advisors, past members to help guide and mentor new companies. It also looks like they’ll be providing funding and consulting services to help kick start these early ventures.  There is a Waterloo residency requirement, which potential a detractor for many students actually enables students in the VeloCity program a formalized incubation phase beyond their residence. For many non-University of Waterloo students this provides students access to the ridiculous support network available in Waterloo (I’m looking at you TechCapital and Communitech and BarCampWaterloo). This is something that is definitely worth keeping an eye on.