entrepreneurs

The Week in Startup Land (Edition #3)

Feb 11, 2012 By Mark Evans in Startups No Comments Tags: Canada, entrepreneurs, startups

Welcome to edition #3 of my weekly look at what’s happening within the Canadian startup landscape, as well as interesting blog posts about startups.

I’ve got blog re-design in the works so considering turning this into a weekly newsletter. If you have thoughts or feedback, let me know. If you want me to add items to the round-up, leave a comment or send me an email.

- How Does a Startup Grow: a story by the Financial Post’s Quentin Casey putting the spotlight on six “Canadians with influence” within the high-tech sector:

- Uniiverse launches its “collaborative living” service: The Montreal/Toronto-based company attracted an extensive review by TechCrunch’s Rip Empson. Look for a story next week on Uniiverse in my Globe & Mail “Start” column.

- WattPad, which attracted $3.5-million in venture capital last September, reported that users spent more than a billion minutes on the social reading service in January.

- There are a growing number of startup accelerators emerging in Canada. Canadian Private Equity puts the spotlight on four: GrowLab, Extreme Startups, FounderFuel and Launch36.

- Shopcastr, which makes it easy for retailers to create an online store and for consumers to discover them, launched earlier this week. I’ve been working with them for several months, which included the decision to pivot after their original idea failed to gain much traction. Here’s my blog post, as well as a story by Mike Connell in the Toronto Standard.

- Just F*%king Sell: A passionate blog post by Graphic.ly CEO Micah Baldwin in which he contends the most important metric for a startup is “building something worth selling, and selling something worth building”.

- A couple of my other blog post this week included a look at the startup roadkill that’s will no doubt materialize, and a look at how generous startups should be with stock options given the many people Facebook turned into millionaires.

- In my Globe & Mail “Start” column, I took a look at Montreal-based Buyosphere, which offers a Q&A service for shoppers.

Warning: Watch Out for Startup Roadkill

Feb 8, 2012 By Mark Evans in Startups 1 Comment Tags: entrepreneurs, failure, startups

When it comes to startups, I’m a glass half-full person.

To me, every startup has the potential to be successful, although it does depend on a combination of their ability to execute, some luck, and being in the right place at the right time.

Although I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, here’s another reality: For all the enthusiasm and entrepreneurial bullishness, there’s going to be a lot of startup “roadkill”. Maybe not over the next few months but it’ll happen, and it ain’t going to be a pretty.

It goes against the grain for an entrepreneur or startup to talk about the possibility or even admit their startup is struggling, but starting any business is a high-risk proposition. Not everyone is going to succeed, no matter how good their idea, how hard they work, or how much money they raise.

Startups are going to flounder and fail because their products don’t resonate, there is too much competition, there’s a lack of execution, the wrong people are hired, too many strategic mistakes are made, etc.

As much as we celebrate every seed financing and collectively cheer when a startup is acquired, it is also important to be prepared for bad news. Startups will flame out, burn through capital or attract no customers – some of these failures will be high-profile, while most of them will quietly shut their doors. It’s the way of the world for startups.

At the end of the day, there will be plenty of failures, lost dreams, frustrated entrepreneurs and disappointed investors. The thing to remember is failure is a part of the startup landscape. It happens. Rather than wallowing in our failure, we need to learn from it so that the next startup doesn’t fall victim to the same mistakes.

Now, it’s your turn to provide some thoughts.

Forget About Lean. It’s All About Lunch for Startups

Feb 3, 2012 By Mark Evans in Startups 1 Comment Tags: culture, entrepreneurs, lunch, startups

There are lots of different “secrets” for startups to be successful. There’s the lean approach, minimal viable products (MVP), bootstrapping, crowdsourcing, strategic seed capital, etc.

But in working closely with startups, here’s a key ingredient few people talk about: lunch.

Yup, lunch.

Think about it. Lunch is not just about nutritional intake, it’s about community and collegiality, and a time for a startup employees to take a break from the go-go-go nature that can be stressful and exciting.

Lunch is a time when everyone – founders, developers, marketers, salespeople and admins – can gather to talk about sports, pop culture, sports, the latest episode of “Glee” and, yes, even work.

While lunch doesn’t get much attention – there are no best-selling books about the power of lunch and startups – but lunch is one of the keys to startup success.

Lunch is important because it develops and nurtures teamwork, which can be powerful, particularly when startups operate lean and mean. Lunch brings people together so working together makes them more effective and productive.

It’s one of the reasons why I like it when a startup’s employees start bantering back and forth about where they should go for lunch. While it may sound like a discussion about food, it’s really about creating a strong startup culture.

You’ve Raised Venture Capital, Now What?

Feb 2, 2012 By Mark Evans in Startups, Venture Capital No Comments Tags: entrepreneurs, investments, startups, VC

For many startup entrepreneurs, raising their first venture capital round is like winning the Super Bowl. It validates what they’re doing, their vision and all the hard work that’s happened. When the deal is signed, there are lots of high fives and the champagne flows. It’s good times, baby!

The funny thing is you wake in the morning with a whack of cash in the bank, and realize the work has just started. For all the effort that happened pre-deal, there’s even more work ahead post-deal because there’s another party (or parties) who have a vested and financial interest in how you operate the business.

For some entrepreneurs, it can be an abrupt wake up call. Suddenly, there are board meetings, regular updates to be filed, plenty of questions, and performance reviews. If you thought there was pressure before, it’ll come in waves now.

At the same time, entrepreneurs also need to get their head around the money. While it is being invested to grow the business, it will eventually run out, even if it does seem like a large amount at the beginning. I worked with an entrepreneur who seemed to think the money would last forever and, as a result, start spending it on products and services that weren’t a priority.

Here’s funny thing about raising your first round of venture capital: investors are happy to give it to you, and they’re happy to see you spend it.

Why? It’s because they know it’s likely you’ll to come back for more if the business shows traction. While there may be more suitors but your initial investors will more likely be involved and be assertive in making sure the deal rewards their initial investment.

The bottom line is raising startup capital is a terribly exciting and rewarding experience, particularly given it is like winning a lottery ticket in many ways. At the same time, it’s the end of one stage and the start of another with just as many challenges and demands.

More: For another angle on raising capital, Mark MacLeod has a good post looking at burn rates versus runway.

Extreme Startups Unveils Accelerator with $7M in Financing

Jan 31, 2012 By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: Canada, entrepreneurs, extreme startups, startups

As much as Canada’s startup landscape has been seeing more financings (Clio being the latest deal announced), there’s still a long way to go before we have a healthy and robust capital ecosystem.

So it’s good to see the arrival of a new accelerator, Extreme Startups, which is launching with $7-million in funding from Extreme Venture Partners, OMERS Ventures, Rho Canada Ventures, BlackBerry Partners Fund and BDC.

Extreme Startups will have two cohorts of five companies/year. Each company in a 12-week cohort will receive $50,000 (in exchange for a 10% equity stake) and be eligible to receive up to $150,000 in a convertible note from BDC upon graduation.

“There is a great environment with a lot of talent and voracious entrepreneurs, so it’s a great space to be,” Andy Yang, chief innovation hunter with Extreme Startups, said in an interview.

Extreme University Rebranded

Extreme Startups is a rebranded and expanded version of the Extreme University accelerator program started by Extreme Venture Partners. In addition to having access to 29 mentors, the initial cohort will also have Dan Debow, who recently sold Rypple to Salesforce.com, as the “Entrepreneur Link”.

Yang described Extreme Startups’ investment approach as “agnostic”. The focus, he said, will be on entrepreneurs who are the “best and brightest…and have potential for leadership and great products”.

“I would say we’re looking for entrepreneurs and teams attacking large markets with disruptive technology and products,” Yang said.

Another key part of the program will be relationships and access to “leading technology companies and industry pillars”, which will be unveiled soon after negotiations are completed.

Applications open today and close March 1, 2012 for the spring 2012 cohort, which starts on March 15, 2012. Teams can apply at http://extremestartups.com

The Week in Startup Land: Edition #1

Jan 29, 2012 By Mark Evans in Startups 4 Comments Tags: entrepreneurs, startups, weekly roundup

With so much happening within the startup landscape, I’ve decided to do a weekly recap featuring Canadian startup news, as well as interesting startup-related blog posts. If you have any suggestions or items you’d like to add, let me know.

1. Ian Sigalow had an interesting post – “A New Approach to Series A” – looking at Greycroft’s investment approach.

2. Polar Mobile raises $6-million from a group led by Georgian Partners ”to expand globally and launch MediaEverywhere, a new product line that will transform the media industry”.

3. IGLOO Software raises $5-million from RBC Venture Partners and the Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund to expand its enterprise social software business.

4. From Mark Evans Tech, which is mostly focused on startups these days, I had a couple of posts you may want to check out:

- Startups: What’s Your Wow Factor? What captivates new users or, at least, gives them reason to come back for another look?

- Getting Acquired and Then Getting Shut Down: A look at startups that get acquired for the people, while the product gets shut down.

5. On StartupNorth, Brydon Gillis looks at the need for incubators for adults. While incubators are popping up here, there and everywhere these days, I think they are also going to attract a lot more scrutiny about the value they provide.

6. Mark MacLeod (aka Startup CEO) on the need to focus, although, like him, I’m curious about the Code Academy.

7. In my Globe & Mail “Start” column, I took at look at Fantastical (software to make your calendars easier to use) and Sortable, which recently launched a pretty cool “decision engine” currently focused on consumer electronics.

8. A video in which John Ruffolo talks with the Globe & Mail’s Katherine Scarrow about OMERS’ decision to make direct investments. His tip to startups is “get to know us before you’re looking for money”.

9. KISSMetrics’ Neil Patel had an interesting blog post on how to create a demo video for less than $100. I’m a huge believer in demo videos but $100 seems extremely cheap.

1 2 3 4 5