StartupNorth

Tag: Montreal

  • Ontario Startups…On A Train

    [Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Brydon Gilliss. Brydon has held a number of roles but most recently he is the driving force behind lots of awesome in Guelph including a coworking space, ThreeFortyNine; a personal accelerator, Startupify.me; events, DemoCampGuelph; and a startup, 20Skaters.] 

    Have you ever wished for just another minute or two for that elevator pitch you delivered? What if, instead of an elevator ride, you were locked on a train with that investor?

    Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide!

    For the third year running, the Ontario Startup Train is back on July 9th. We will have several private, chartered cars on a VIA train with first class service and our own bar car where we’ll host our on-train events. We pack the train with startups, investors, and various players in our startup community and travel together to attend The International Startup Festival in Montreal.

    “The concentration of the opportunities and discussions on the train blew me away. By the time we got to Montreal, referrals were flying.” Lloyd Longfield

    Tickets include first class travel to Montreal from Toronto, our on-train activities, full conference access, and time in our Ontario Startup Tent at the festival to showcase your startup. If you already have your festival ticket, we do have train-only tickets.

    Get your ticket now before the train sells out, again.

  • Early bird pricing for StartupFest

    TL;DR

    Early bird pricing for tickets to International Startup Festival end on June 1, 2013.

    CC-BY-SA-20 Some rights reserved by Michael Lewkowitz

    We can all gripe about why founders and startups should not attend events, and they should get down to figuring out  if there is quantified market demand for their product.

    But lets face it, summer feels like it is here in Toronto (it’s hot). And we all need to blow off some steam. So why not take some 2-3 days and connect in Montreal (or Vancouver more on that soon). Startup Festival early bird tickets sales end tomorrow (June 1, 2013). There is an amazing lineup full of local, national and international recognizable talent. Come to Montreal. Be prepared to listen to amazing stories from real founders and investors about how they figured out traction for their companies.

    Folks I’m looking forward to hearing stories from:

    Dulcie MaddenDulcie Madden

    Co-founder of Rest Devices, Inc.

    Joe_ChernovJoe Chernov

    VP Marketing at Kinvey

    Fred DestinFred Destin

    Early Stage VC at Atlas Venture

    Jen van der Meer picJen van der Meer

    Advisor, Luminary Labs

    Michael BaumMichael Baum

    Founder of Splunk, Venture Partner at Rembrandt Venture Partners

    The part that I look forward to the most, is the part where I hang out with folks from Toronto (and beyond) because we’re all too busy with companies, family and kids. So I get to hang out with my friends Zak Homuth , Mark MacLeod , April Dunford , Harley Finkelstein , Ben Yoskovitz, Roger Chabra , Andrew D’Souza , Brydon Gilliss
    and Ken Seto .

    I’m going for the opportunity to learn from other people’s experiences. I’m going to connect with folks I’d otherwise have to travel to multiple places to connect with. And probably most importantly, I’m looking forward to strengthening the connections I have with folks I already know.

    Register Now

     

    Image attribution: AttributionShare Alike Some rights reserved by Michael Lewkowitz

     

  • Ontario Startup Train Meetup – June 10, 2013

    Update: The event date has changed to June 10, 2013.

    In partnership with Via Rail consider this your official invite to our Ontario Startup Train wine and cheese on June 10th at Union Station in Toronto. We hope to get all our train attendees, alumni from last year and anyone considering coming this year together to start connecting and meeting before we even board the train. If you haven’t bought your ticket, come out and meet us.

    If you don’t have your train ticket yet, grab one now as we will sell out again this year. Our early ticket purchasers get dibs on spots for our on-train mentoring with the likes of Jim Estill, Zak Homuth, Brian Kobus and many more.

    You remember the roadtrips of your youth, some with your parents, some with just friends. For our greatest roadtrips, we remember the journey the rest of our lives but often pause and think “where were we headed?”

    “Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”, ZAMM, Robert Pirsig

    Last year we organized a roadtrip for startup founders and funders. We reserved our own car on a Via train and packed it full of entrepreneurs. Our destination was The International Startup Festival in Montreal for three full days of meeting, conversing, learning and working with a truly international audience of startup people.

    This July, we’re aiming to have three cars, two passenger cars along with a bar car that we’ll use for our on-train events.

    Startup conferences are very different beasts compared to their corporate cousins. People aren’t attending “because my boss sent me”. Instead the majority have spent what little pocket change they have to get there. The result is a conference filled with hustlers motivated to get a ton of value out of being there. We hope to help.

    Instead of wasting your travel time, join us on the Ontario Startup Train and let’s get organized before we’re even registered for the conference. Our hope is to get you thinking and sharing what you need to get out of attending this conference before hand. Sharing that with other people on the train means it won’t be just you hunting for an introduction to Dave McClure or speaking to that potential partner you want to invite into your new project.

  • A Startup for All Seasons

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    Is it me, or does it feel like there are 2 distinct seasons of activity in the startup community?

    • Post Christmas Pre-Summer (aka golf season) Holiday
    • Post First of School and Pre American Thanksgiving

    Whether it is reality or bad cliche, it feels like there are 3-4 months of the year where nothing gets done. But no more!

    Thanks to events like Startup Festival and Grow Conf, the summer season for Canadian startups is getting stronger and more important. There are localized opportunities to connect with investors, strategic partners, and potential customers at events like the aforementioned Startup Festival and Grow Conf plus Jolt Demo Fest, Atlantic Venture Forum, Metabridge and others. (You could go to CVCA in Banff, and golf with the Canadian VC landscape, that might up your chances of raising funding).

    Things for Startups To Do

    1. Apply to pitch at StartupFest. Startups get access to press, investors, and a chance at a $50k investment prize from the organizing committee.
      Deadline: Friday, May 10, 2013 5pm EDT.
    2. Apply to be one of the 45 Canadian startups at the Metabridge retreat. You’ll get access to investors, advisors and a great cultural event.
      Deadline: Friday, May 10, 2013 5pm PDT.
    3. Apply to throwdown at the Smackdown at GrowConf. Winners will get access to press and investors. Plus more Debbie Landa.
      Deadline: Tuesday, August 13, 2013

    There are a lot of opportunities for Canadian startups to get access to both local and foreign capital, corporate development folks and press by participating in these events. Take a bit of time, and figure out which ones you benefit from attending. Plus it’s a great excuse to get out of the office and hustle.

     

  • Growing successful companies

    Mark Evans (LinkedIn) wrote a blog post about my tweet. The blog post captures much of my sentiment and frustration around entrepreneurs. I commented about entrepreneurs learning about how to build a successful, high growth emerging technology companies. And there are lots of ways to learn what is considered a successful company. And a great way to learn is to learn from others that have been in the trenches. Debbie Landa (LinkedIn) and her team at Dealmaker Media have done most of the hard work for you.

    GROWtalks

    They have brought together a great event. Attending the event won’t bring you investment. It won’t make you a successful company. But it might increase the odds. They are bringing together an amazing set of entrepreneurs. And they are bringing them to Toronto and Montreal to share their experiences, stories about what worked and didn’t work for their companies.

    Local Events Matter

    You can and should get your ass on plane and head to New York City and San Francisco to attend events. But you don’t always have to. There are advantages to attending these events locally.

    1. Local connections can help you see The First Rule of Real Estate – you can find and connect with local talent. Whether that is for funding, moral support, hiring, etc. There will be people you do not know yet. Easy way to find them out.
    2. Travel costs are less for regional travel. If you live in Ottawa or Montreal or Halifax, you can make it to Toronto or Montreal by plane, train or automobile for a lot less than travelling elsewhere.
    3. Travel time is lessened. You can spend a day.

    This all assumes that the event is providing amazing content that you would travel to consume.

    World Class Content

    The content that Debbie and team have assembled is unbelievable. If you don’t know who these people are, my advice is take a little bit of time and use the GOOG. These are entrepreneurs that have seen the ups and downs, the ins and outs of successful businesses.

    Every single person is worthy of a keynote presentation at a larger conference. This is not a vanity presentation. They are on stage sharing information about their specific expertises in building successful businesses. It’s not Mark Organ talking about random things, which is fun, but Mark Organ talking about leveraging disruptive technology in fund raising. Holy crap! You want to learn how Mark used AngelList, LinkedIn and other tools to raise 2 of the most impressive rounds of capital in Canada…quickly.

    Every single person speaking, every one, will be providing expertise about what they did to build a successful company.  Here is the list of presenters in Toronto:

    You want more details, check out my first post. Do your homework. But this is an amazing opportunity.  The lineup is different in Montreal. It includes 2 of my close friends, but they are 2 of the best people in helping startups become successful. Mark MacLeod and Alistair Croll . Unbelievably kind and intelligent people, who beyond that know WTF it is startups need to do to become successful. They like the others are the best of the best.

    Our Commitment to Successful Companies

    There are initiatives like Startup Visa Canada and the Upside Foundation that we strongly support. And we’re committed to helping provide education to entrepreneurs to help them to build successful companies.

    We’ve committed to provide a limited number of $100 discounts. I am not going to tell you how many. If you are building a successful startup, and you want to hear the tactics and advice of other entrepreneurs that have been massively successful in building their startups, sign up now and save $100 before the discount expires.

    • GrowTalks Montreal – February 19, 2013 – Register use promo code: startupnorth
    • GrowTalks Toronto – February 21, 2013 – Register use promo code: startupnorth

     

  • Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, where is Montreal?

    Startup Genome Ecosystem Ranking

    The state of the Canadian cities in the StartupCompass Startup Ecosystem Report 2012 (Get the Report) is interesting. The Startup Ecosystem Report 2012 lists 3 Canadian cities:

    • Toronto # 8
    • Vancouver # 9
    • Waterloo # 16

    It leaves Montreal out of the top 20, it might very well be # 21. But it is very hard to determine without the full report that is due out later in the year. I also find it very strange, given the strong Montreal supporters in the  “Local startup ecosystem supporters” listed in the document:

    The data reminds me of other analyst driven research companies (think Gartner, Altimeter, etc.). The methodology leaves it open to bias. But it is a great stick in the sand based on our own community survey responses.

    “The index is based on data from more than 50,000 startups around the world who are using the Startup Genome’s Startup Compass, an automated analyst in the cloud that helps businesses make better decisions via benchmarks and actionable recommendations.”

    It will be interesting to continue to read the report and lessons for Canadian entrepreneurs.

  • Crowdfunding for Notman House


    We’re big fans of Montreal.

    There is a lot of really exciting things going on in Montreal. Founder Fuel. Real Ventures. c2mtl. Rho Ventures. iNovia Capital. MtlNewTech. Next Montreal. Grand Prix du Canada.  And Notman.

    Notman is conceived as a community space for the web community in Montreal. I remember John Stokes talking about his vision for this space in 2006. And how the efforts of Montreal Startup have demonstrated the value and benefits to the city when founders, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and others have something to rally around. Montreal doesn’t have a Communitech or a MaRS. This is the efforts by local entrepreneurs to bootstrap a central place. John, Alan, Mark, JS and Austin have led this vision for over 6 years. And it’s very close.

    Over the last year the Notman House  has hosted over 125 events, including user group meet-ups, hackathons, and learning events, been home to over 50 Startups, and been visited by over 10,000 entrepreneurs, investors, students, and others involved in the growing Montreal tech scene. It’s an incredible place.

    Our top priority is to connect the already existing community. Hundreds of groups, meetups and events are being created and take place every year in Montreal. They are loosely connected and aware of each other, but still essentially fragmented. The Notman House wants to bring them all together.

    We want to bring startups, students, investors, developers and artists all together in the same spirit that characterized the Montreal of the past.

    Notman and OSMO Foundation is looking to raise $100k in private funding. They need to raise this $100k to unlock the a combined $1.7M in grants from the municipal, provincial, and federal government. In addition a $4.3M loan has been committed by Investissement Quebec and the BDC. However, to access these grants we need to raise $1.1M in private contributions. $1M of this is being pledged by corporate entities such as Teralys Capital, Claridge, Telesystem, McCarthy Tetrault, and Fasken Martineau.  We are looking to the community to help close the $100K gap currently faced in the funding process.

  • A few slides for every Canadian startup

    With a little help from my friends

    I think that every Canadian startup could throw a couple of slides in their presentations and pitch decks that could help themselves and help build a stronger ecosystem in Canada. I was struck by the story of Jon Medved in Startup Nation including other startups in his pitch deck. It’s a simple thing. It demonstrates entrepreneurial density, provides social proof, and potentially helps create some FOMO in foreign investors. All from including 2 or 3 slides at the end of your presentation or pitch deck, particularly when you are travelling.

    At StartupNorth, we’ve always believed that we as entrepreneurs should help each other out. The goal here is to raise the noise around Canadian startups and your friends and colleagues when you are travelling. There is a lot of amazing stuff going on in Canada. We don’t need public sector programs and not-for-profits to support us, we already do the things to grow our companies. And a little bit of extra effort to raise the attention of those around us. It won’t hurt, it will help.

    Here are basic un-styled PowerPoint slides that include a set of recent fundings in Canada by US VCs and a second slide that lists a set of other local companies that the audience might find interesting. (I have added 24 companies I think are interesting).

    Help us. Add the following slides to your presentations.

    StartupNorth.ca Slides for Canadian Startups

    View more PowerPoint from David Crow

  • Crazy train

    On the trip home from a conference last year, it struck me how lonely it was. Yes I talked with people on the train. I had wifi and a phone but I didn’t have anyone who had shared the awesome conference experience I’d just been through, I wanted to keep it going. Returning to my city, I wanted to keep it the momentum rolling there as well.

    I happened to have attended an amazing conference named BitNorth. In the case of the crap conferences, the travel back and forth is even more torturous. BitNorth is unique in that it really attempts to leverage what are typically considered the fringe elements of conferences.

    All this left me wondering if we could make crappy conferences better and great conferences awesome by explicitly building up the fringes. We, at ThreeFortyNine, are taking our first shot at it this July. We’re cheating by starting with an amazing conference with The International Startup Festival in Montreal. We’re getting ourselves our own first class car on a Via train to travel to the conference and back from Toronto, Guelph, or Kitchener-Waterloo. We’re filling the car with founders, funders and startup junkies. For us this experience starts when we hop on the train and it doesn’t end when the conference ends. It won’t even end when we get off the train since you’ll be returning to your city with a group of friends who’ve shared this experience with you. We’ll conspire, plan, meet and keep the momentum going.

    In the case of the best roadtrips of my youth, I can hardly recall what our destination was. It’s the getting there I remember. It’s the getting there that was the starting point of something bigger.

    Join us this July as we bring the Ontario startup scene to Montreal and give them a peek at who we are and what we’re building. Clearly we have limited seats on our train car so when we sell out, we’re sold out for realz.

  • Go big and stay home

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    AttributionNoncommercial Some rights reserved by Darwin Bell

    Wattpad announced today a $17.3MM raise from Khosla Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures and Jerry Yang. This is huge.

    “It has been recognized as highly significant due to having two top-tier US funds investing at this level in a Canadian-based consumer internet company.”

    We are seeing Canadian entrepreneurs build companies and demonstrate global traction. The changes to foreign investment related to Section 116 changes in the Tax Act, have allowed Canadian companies to go big and stay home.  The changes to Section 116, coupled with the desire of Canadian entrepreneurs to go big and stay home. Evidenced by Wattpad’s big raise, Wave Accounting’s $12MM series B from Social+Capital, Hootsuite’s $20MM round from OMERS (sure they’re not foreign capital but its a big round), Shopify’s $22MM ($7M series A + $15M series B from Bessemer), Beyond The Rack’s $36MM raise, Fixmo’s $23.4MM Series C from KPCB, Achievers’ $24.5MM Series C from Sequoia, and others. There are startups and there is capital. It’s possible to build a growth company in Canada and raise foreign capital. The game has changed for Canadian VCs, geography limitations can help these funds identify early but it potentially will relegate many to second tier status if they can not enable their startups beyond their geographies.

    The great thing in talking with many of these entrepreneurs is that they want to build successful companies in Canada. Allen Lau, CEO of Wattpad, mentioned that his desire was to grow a large successful company in Toronto. He is not looking to move the company. The same is true of my conversations with Kirk Simpson at Wave Accounting, Tobi at Shopify, Mike at Freshbooks, etc. There are a lot of reasons to want to be way from the tensions and pulls the exist in the Bay Area. Canadian startups have access to great talent. While there is some pull between the different startups, many of these companies aren’t competing with each other for employees or mindshare. Just check out Shopify’s recruiting video and tell me why you wouldn’t choose to work for Harley and Tobi instead of a financial institution or a government organization.

    It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur in Canada. It’s a great time to work for a startup. You should check out the opportunities on the StartupNorth job board.