Billions With Zero Knowledge

I liked it so much, I bought the company.

- Victor Kiam

Ok, well I didn’t buy the company, but I am an investor and co-founder of Standout Jobs. At Akoha we are also proud customers of Standout Jobs.

My involvement in the company was based on my own experiences with hiring, promoting jobs, managing the difficult task of finding great people and building a talent base to hire from.

There are a lot of great productivity tools including on of my favourites which is the browser bookmarklet that allows us to source & track the many great candidates I research for contract, intern and employment opportunities @ Akoha.

When hiring, our team spends hours on LinkedIn and Search Engines checking out candidates online portfolios, blogs and public work (such as contributions to open source & community projects). 

Instead of a spreadsheet of candidates being emailed around and having 30 tabs opened in my browser we can now collaborate, share comments on candidates and maintain active relationships with people we might work with in the future.

Akoha today launched our own career site powered by our sister company Standout Jobs.

We have some intern positions open for web and python developers (Apprentice Ninjas in Akoha speak) - we will be updating the site with new positions in the coming months so subscribe to our site.

On Thu 7 Feb 2008. No Comments

Being part of a startup includes a mandatory ride on an emotional rollercoaster that will  find ways to break your nerves and patience, straining every relationship you have at various times throughout the ride. 

Startups are powered with emotional rocket fuel, but never seem to lift off in a vertical fashion.  Your emotional rocket fuel is actually powering a crazy up and down rollercoaster ride that can make lesser people pass out.

Recently I’ve been caught underwater with three large transactions occurring at the same time, two of which were unplanned resulting from some events outside of my control but need to be tended too regardless of what I had on my schedule.

Each are complicated and carrying lots of small moving parts, differing personalities, large expectations, opportunities for profit & loss with the corresponding communication problems that tend to arise and need to be worked out.

In each case my relationships with my partners, and the outside parties we are doing business with have been tested in positive (in the case of my partners) and some negative ways.

I like what Marc Andreessen recently wrote in his post on Why Not To Do Startups

First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced.

You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again.

Over and over and over.

And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs.

There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. Will the product ship on time? Will it be fast enough? Will it have too many bugs? Will it be easy to use? Will anyone use it? Will your competitor beat you to market? Will you get any press coverage? Will anyone invest in the company? Will that key new engineer join? Will your key user interface designer quit and go to Google? And on and on and on…

Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.

Sound like fun?

Marc’s a smart guy who gave me some great advice the couple times I met with him when I was building Zero-Knowledge Systems.  He’s been doing some great blogging sharing his considerable experience on startup life which is worth checking out.

The fuel that drives startups and any growing company is passion and intensity.  The day to day decisions may affect the navigation, but you need this startup fuel to create the momentum to face the daily challenges of startups and to achieve escape velocity.  

This startup fuel (Mix equal parts passion, intensity, and relentless need for getting things done) is volatile and needs to be mixed and handled with extreme care. In my experience it takes at least 2 co-founding partners to both create and safely handle this startup fuel.

I advise lone entrepreneurs I work with to get some sort of co-founding partner before they go any further for two simple reasons.

#1 Reason you need co-founder

• If you can’t convince someone else to jump into the startup void and join you on your adventure then odds are you aren’t a good enough personal sales person to do what it will take to build a company without a co-founder creating a no-win situation.   Creating companies takes team building and millions of moments of convincing (sales, financing, hiring) and if you can’t find a co-founder who is better than you at something and convince them to join you in your adventures then it doesn’t bode well for your abilities to build a company. 

In the Valley it’s easy to find a co-founder and the environment is incredibly supportive in teaching smart people how to operate startups and navigate the industry.

Finding startup minded people in Canada is more challenging, since we don’t teach or promote risk taking and entrepreneurship as a career option. Culturally we have many smart and successful people, but we don’t have an abundance of risk orientated startup minded people compared to other countries. 

It can be done if you work at it.  My partner, Fred Ngo started to organize Barcamp in Montreal specifically to help meet other people interested in startups.  That’s where we met alongside with Ben and started the discussion that led to the creation of Standout Jobs.

My buddy Marc Chriqui at ILovetoPlay also just announced a co-founding partner, Sandy. - Congrats to Marc since this is a big step in building a company. 

#2 Reason you need co-founders

• More importantly, startups are emotional rollercoasters and they are only fun when you have trusted co-founders and partners to ride the ups and downs with you.  Your partners and co-founders talk you down when you are angry, and up when you are down.   Then you swap sides as you take the lead in talking them up when they are down and you are riding high.   Many times you are both looking at a shitty situation, sigh together, suck it up and know that you both will fix whatever problem has occurred. This becomes easier because you know you’ll be in it together.  Would you try to lift an 800lb. weight without a spotter? 

The ability to bounce ideas off each other and act as emotional cushions while riding the startup rollercoaster is essential to the success of the company.   Teams that bleed together, succeed together.   Because at the end of the of day, it’s the tough times when peoples real characters are tested. You will always be learning about the characters of your partners at the same time you are judging the characters of all the people you will be dealing with in your daily startup adventures (financing, sales, hiring).   Many of the characters you will meet aren’t worth your time and will suck the energy out of you and you need your partners to help you ride that out and help you both learn from the experiences. 

The most important thing your partners help you realize together is at the end of the day it is just a ride.   Although it may not feel like it, the situations are never as bad as they seem and the intense twists and turns are just normal by-products that come from mixing any intense activity with a highly volatile amount of passion, piss, and guts poured on for fuel.

I am very lucky to have some great partnerships with my various co-founders that have all come in handy this last couple of weeks. 

Despite weeks like I just had, I love what I do including all the ups and downs - and that is only because of the partners I have.

Startups are adventures made fun and enjoyable because you share the experience with people you enjoy riding rollercoasters with.  Not because you have any real control of which twists and turns you will be riding on any given day.

Thanks to my co-founders who help me keep my perspective and my activities intense, rewarding and always full of adventure.  

• Alex and my team at Akoha have been pulling together some great stuff for an upcoming team offsite.  Alex works with me on all aspects of my business affairs and he and I talk throughout the day about all our decisions to help each other balance our ideas and activities.  We have been friends for more then a decade and can talk each other up and down any situation.  We keep each other in check.  (I’m looking forward to introducing the whole Akoha team once we come out from behind our curtain for our premiere.  They are all co-founders in our project.).

• Ben and Fred my partners at Standout Jobs are incredible in their level headed and practical way of tackling day to day startup adventures.  We each have had the fun and nerve racking moments tackling some curveballs in the last month. As these curveballs come faster and more erratic Ben and Fred have been incredible to work with.  We discuss how we tackle the issues of the day and move on to the next thing.

• My father and brother, who I have been working on some exciting Radialpoint business with. This required us to work through some complicated financial and business decisions. Working with family comes with a unique set of advantages and challenges.  One of the benefits is that you can pretty much always trust that family will figure out ways to make things work, which is what took a lot of time to work out this week but we sorted it out in time for some tough deadlines since the transaction needed to close quickly.

• Todd (our financial Analyst & Spreadsheet jockey), Katherine (my executive assistant) and Rosalie (our bookkeeper & admin assistant) at Brudder Ventures who have been helping me deal with juggling all the various meetings and financial aspects related to each of these transactions. Knowing that I have a strong financial and administrative teams to compliment my skills on creating companies is a great piece of mind.

• My greatest co-founder in my projects is my partner at home, Kelly.  She has been incredibly supportive by taking care of so many life details allowing me to focus my time effectively on the projects on my plate.  Many of my early startups were done without a relationship in my life.  I would always date after the startups were in revenue generating mode because I couldn’t handle the distraction from work.   At this point in my life, I appreciate having a loving partner at home who reminds me to take breaks and is the ultimate anchor of what is important.   Thanks babe for all your help & support.

If you have the right friends along for the ride, I still can’t recommend a more satisfying experience then working for a startup. Whether you are part of the founding team or an early employee there is an incredible amount of pride that comes from contributing to the fuel that creates something new and of value.

On Sat 30 Jun 2007. [8] Comments

The number one job of any leader is talent development.  Recruiting, retaining, equipping and developing the talent in your team is the not only the most critical part of creating a successful company it is also the hardest.

Raising financing takes time. Dealing with customers, partners and earning revenue takes time. Working on product and getting any of the millions of tasks done that need to be accomplished to be able to afford to employ anyone takes time.  Once an organization has accomplished all these tasks and has enough money, or business to justify hiring it is often hard to switch gears on your plans and go slow enough to allow you the time to do hiring well.

Hiring is the item that most companies don’t plan for or make enough time for.  It takes a lot of time to do well, and there are always areas to make changes or new talent that needs to be developed to fit the businesses changing needs.   Scouting, developing and nurturing top talent is something that is a full time job of the the entire senior management team. 

Just like sports coaches are constantly working on finding the right mix for a winning team, there are constant tweaks and changes that need to occur and a huge payoff for finding the fit that allows a great winning team to begin to form.

Despite the payoff it is surprising that many times hiring gets pushed back as a priority, often being delegated completely to 3rd parties or outsourced entirely by using offshore contractors to build core intellectual property.  

Management personally spending time in recruiting top talent is the best investment any leader can make.  Hiring top players, who have the intelligence, passion and are a cultural team fit in the right positions is the single biggest leverage a management team has in building a successful company.

In addition to taking the time to record a video for one of our job postings (others are coming soon) I’m spending a lot of time personally scouring the worlds campuses, local technology firms and the Internet for top talent.  A huge percentage of Zero-Knowledge’s staff moved to Montreal to work with us because we recruited across Canada, globally from Silicon Valley to Europe and throughout the world.  When looking for talent, I spend a huge amount of time searching for top people regardless of where I have to look to find them.

Top talent loves to work with other top talent.   For Internet web software companies in Montreal there is an incredible number of great people working in the video game & graphics industry, creative agencies, corporate marketing departments and throughout the world on University campuses that are interested in great Montreal opportunities if you reach out to them.

Often time great people are being unrecognized in their current jobs, or have a life long passion for working for a small startup company, or on a product that can make the world a better place.   The only way to find this out is to meet a huge number of people and see if your dreams match with theirs.  Top talent is never looking for jobs.  Jobs need to hunt out top talent.  That takes time, and requires every tool in the shed.

Internet video is a tool that offers great promise to help in recruiting online. It allows for the hiring team, and company to put their message out there and start a conversation with candidates.  It is just another tool though.  The companies top leadership needs to love recruiting the best people and be willing to invest the time to reach out in every way possible to meet potential candidates. 

The company needs to make recruiting top talent a top priority. It takes putting some of your companies best sales people out there spreading the word about why your company is the place for top talent to come work. It takes hiring with your heart on your sleeve with passion.

Here is a little video I shot recently while driving to UC Berkeley on a recruiting trip.   Just some random thoughts on recruiting while I was driving.

If you are a Web Developer/Integrator (Javascript/HTML/XML) , Flash developer, Graphic Artist, Illustrator/Comic book artist, Python Developer or Web Application Architect available for consulting or full time positions then please introduce yourself. 

An interest in or experience with Internet startups, online multi-player games, game development, online web communities, social media or so called ‘Web 2.0′ tools and technologies is a great plus.  Akoha is recruiting for a few positions right now, but we are hiring throughout the summer and into the fall in these areas and are interested in meeting talented people.

On Fri 23 Mar 2007. [2] Comments

I’ve heard the process of naming a company is often compared to naming a child.

I don’t have any children yet, but I’ve been through the naming process with more then ten companies (including spin offs, rebranding, as an investor, founder or advisor) and in the last six months have been involved in the naming of 4 more.  I hope when I do have kids, that I don’t use the same method as corporate branding and wind up calling them Zero Knowledge

Sometimes names are easy (Total.Net), but recently it has become harder to find proper names that have available domains, search engine uniqueness and provide meaning or a story that people can identify with.

I am not a fan of names that don’t embody some story of the mission of the company. Made up names that combine vowels and consonants to create a five letter words that don’t mean anything except that they are unique and the domain name is available is not my style.

It took some time for us to develop our story and find a proper name for what has until now been called Project Ojibwe.

On behalf of my partner Alex and our incredible team, it is my pleasure to announce that our new project which will launch this summer is going to be called Akoha.

There is a story and meaning behind this name, but you’ll have to wait a little while longer to hear it.

Project Ojibwe is dead. Long live Akoha.

Ultimately names are important. They embody the passion and effort of the product creators and provide a container for our team to pour our creative energies into. It is our hope that when we share our community project with our members they will see our passion and start to share some of our love for what we are working on.

We look forward to sharing more of our story with you in the coming months.

For now, if you’d like sign up on our mailing list and we’ll let you know when the Akoha blog and community preview trailers are ready for launch.

On Fri 9 Mar 2007. [5] Comments

While in Toronto recently I took the opportunity to sit down with my StartupCamp Canada co-organziers and community instigators Rob Hyndman, David Crow and Stuart McDonald.  StartupCamp Canada is now a go.

We are still finalizing the date, but it will be in the last half of June in Toronto.  (The final date will be announced in the coming weeks). It will be a full day packed with some of the top Canadian entrepreneurs from all over the country and the world.  We are going to mix presenting content, doing small team coaching and providing lot’s of chances for interaction with entrepreneurs, VCs and technologists interested in the Canadian Startup scene.

Here is a quick video I shot while we were having breakfast yesterday in Toronto.

I was attenting the Canadian Venture Forum and frankly the entire situation was depressing.  Even some of the VCs on the nominating comittee for the conference were tellling me they couldn’t get companies without business models or revenues to be accepted and were tiring of the entire futile excercise of doing the conference.

Most of the serious venture investors I know didn’t bother to attend and if they did it wasn’t to look at companies to invest in, it was to say to hi to a few friends and they generally popped in for a few minutes and left the conference.

It was more like a meeting of aging Canadian bankers then anything I’ve come to know as a venture conference.  At every venture conference I go to, there is an engergy in the room, excitement everywhere and you can see deals being fought for in the hallways and companies leave the conference with term sheets. 

This conference was very indicative of many problems of our venture industry.   The program had some good speakers (David Lawee & his wife Lorna were great) and the Toronto Venture Group is working hard to promote Canada but I feel most of the good content was wasted on the audience and the quality of the presenting companies and venture investors to listen to them was dismal.

Instead of just complaining, we are hoping to build off the experience of Democamps, Barcamps and StartupCamp in the Valley to put together a conference based on sharing first hand experiences that helps entrepreneurs succeed.  

Some of the topics and sessions we are considering,

• Private elevator pitch coaching with top entrepreneurs who have succeeded in raising large amounts of funds, and building great businesses.
• Lot’s of panels with entrepreneurs sharing practical lessons on how they build their Canadian companies and the problems they faced.
• A BoF session for early stage entrepreneurs discussing the challenges they are currently facing in building their companies.
• What can the Canadian technology commuity, governments and entrepreneurs do to better support an early stage startup community.
• Entrepreneurs guide to understanding early stage financing & company creation (Love money, angel money, IP rights, partnership & shareholder agreements, first VC round, strategic partners).

These will be multiple sessions and we are still working on the agenda, so if you have comments or things you’d like to see included please let us know.

Please head over the to wiki and sign up, and let any of the organizing group know if there are specific things you would like to see on the agenda.

On Wed 7 Mar 2007. [8] Comments

I’m on the program advisory board for the Youth Employment Services Entrepreneur Conference which is occuring tomorrow Saturday March 3rd at the Delta Hotel in Montreal (along with my friend Mitch who recruited me to help, which I was happy to do).

YES the Future is Yours
New TRENDS .  New IDEAS . New CONTACTS

YES Montreal is now accepting registration for the 10th Anniversary YES Entrepreneurship Conference, which will be held on Saturday March 3rd at the Delta Hotel, Centre Ville. Over 350 entrepreneurs and special guests will be in  attendance, including keynote speaker Lino Saputo Jr., President and CEO of Saputo.
For workshop descriptions and registration forms, download the program brochure by clicking here.  Don’t forget to visit our website for updates www.yesmontreal.ca

I’m speaking at 3pm on financing and starting your company.  I’ll be be doing a series of case studies of my various startups throughout my career and how I financed them.  I’ll be reviewing the different approaches to financing and bootstrapping a company.

The program for the conference is here.  Come out if you are an aspiring entrepreneur with questions, or looking to network with other entrepreneurs.

Small correction in the program, I have been mistakenly listed as the head of strategy for Zero-Knowledge Systems :( 

Since the Gazette article where I was mentioned earlier this week, I noticed a lot of search engine traffic in my logs for “austin hill zero knowledge what happened” and similar questions.

For those interested in an update, Zero-Knowledge succesfully survived the technology melt down, flourished and became the world leader in providing managed broadband services for ISPs and changed its name to Radialpoint. 

They are doing phenomonal and are one of Canada’s fastest growing software companies.   (Radialpoint is also hiring and they are growing so quick there are great entrepreneurial opportunities within the company for any really bright and ambitious people.)

I left Radialpoint in June to work on a new venture called Project Ojibwe with my old friend Alex Eberts (also a Zero-Knowledge co-founder).

On Fri 2 Mar 2007. [3] Comments

So it seems we may be part of a trend.  Roberto Rocha wrote an article in yesterday’s Montreal Gazette about companies using video’s to recruit that mentioned our video advertisement for a Python Wrangler.

He also has a follow-up about others jumping into the video job business on the Montreal Gazette’s new local technology blog.  It is good to see the Gazette covering the local technology community and searching out good stories about what is occurring in our community.  Welcome to the blogging world Roberto. 

We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from the video.  We also got some constructive feedback from people pointing out we could use video to show more about our team, the environment and what we are working on. This is coming in upcoming videos for future positions.

Here are some quick facts and information on how the video was produced and our early experience with it.

About the Filming & Shooting

• The  video was shot in about 3hrs. with a 2 page script that was written by David Eberts (seen above with camera) who is a very successful documentary filmmaker.  He is also Alex’s brother and he and Jack (seen with the microphone) were incredible in helping us setup and shoot quickly.   Dave also did the editing in a couple of days with our feedback.  We couldn’t have done this without him and he made the entire process easy & fun.
• We have gotten tons of questions about who played Mary our recruiter.  This was played by Lindsay Eberts, Alex and Dave’s sister.  Lindsay was hilarious and the only reason our little attempt at humor worked.   Lindsay has done some acting and has to be one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.  So far a lot of the best feedback has been on her funny acting.  Thanks Lindsay

If you are interested in talking with the team that helped us do this contact me and I’ll introduce you.  I know they are helping a few other companies prepare their own video recruiting. 

How we used the Video

• Uploading it to YouTube in a format that looked good took a couple of days of experimentation on different formats and codecs.  Once we had it up, it went live through this blog.
• We also posted job descriptions on job boards like Crunchboard, 37 Signals Job board, and on Craigslist.  The job boards where not able to accommodate us and embed the video job ad, but we did include the link.  Only 37 Signals allowed us an active  hyperlink so we don’t have good tracking on how many candidates found us through these postings yet.
• We listed the link in various mailing lists, and forums where our Python developers and Django developers hang out (Where we felt it appropriate, no spamming)
• We posted the job on LinkedIn and sent it to our network of contacts.
• My good friend Ben Yoskovitz wrote a great article about what is wrong with the online job market where he included our video job.  Ben is a top 2,000 ranked blogger with an incredible ability to write popular posts which resulted in the video being seen to thousands because of the number of people who voted on it in Digg.

Results so far

• We became the 48th most linked to video this week on Youtube with 1942 links which led to us getting a YouTube honor. (I think these are internal links since I can’t find them in Google)
• It’s been viewed more then 3,100 times.
• We have seen more friends and members of our LinkedIn networking taking time and effort to forward it to friends and help us find someone.  This has been a great surprise and we are finding some promising prospects this way. I think people are more inclined to put effort into helping us when they feel the posting is funny & they see that we are putting effort into standing out. We tried to make it interesting for them to forward to friends.
• The CVs are beginning to come in but we are still actively searching for more candidates as we begin to do first interviews.  You can still apply.  We are hoping there are some candidates putting effort into their applications to match some of the interesting applications we’ve gotten so far (Sample code is a great attachment to your CV).

We are continuing both traditional and non-traditional (online) recruiting techniques and will keep you updated on how effective the video was in our recruiting. Despite the joke on the video we are using every available resource to find good people and believe that the video is complimentary to our other efforts.

In the meantime, we are also hiring a Javascript Ninja. 

Would anyone like us to do another recruiting video for this?

Any ideas or things you would like us to include? 

We already are planning to introduce more members of the team but would be interested in hearing from you (especially if you know Javascript) on what we could include in the video to interest you in this or other future positions with our team.

Please don’t wait for the video to apply though - we are hiring right away.

On Fri 2 Mar 2007. [5] Comments

Google today announced that they have purchased formerly Ottawa-based video game advertising company Adscape Media. (You could call them Video Game Advertising 2.0 if the sidebar picture is Video Game Advertising 1.0)

See today’s coverage on the news,

• Techcrunch - Google to buy Adscape for $23 million.
• PaidContent - Google does by Adscape after all for $23 million.

Mark Evans wrote about the rumored acquisition a couple of weeks ago and explains the companies Canadian roots.

Adscape was named a startup to watch in December 2006 by the Ottawa business journal where they mentioned moving headquarters to San Francisco.

Congratulations to the Adscape team on joining the Google family. According to reports Adscape raised $3.2 million in Venture Capital from H.I.G. Ventures (based in Boston & SF).

What I found interesting was that there were no Canadian VCs involved in this company. I don’t know the players involved, but wonder if they attempted to raise capital with Canadian firms to be rebuffed or if they chose to avoid them altogether.

Unfortunately too often I see both situations where Canadian entrepreneurs avoid Canadian VCs (I’ve spoken to many Canadian CEO’s who can go direct to the US VCs and feel that local VCs don’t add a lot of value. I don’t always agree with this, but it depends on the team & VC) or the Canadian VCs don’t understand or have the risk appetite for some hot Canadian deals that end up going to the states.

Amid a growing video game marketplace and the strong Canadian talent pool of video game developers (Ubisoft in Montreal just announced another 1,100 positions to be hired, Electronic Arts has Vancouver & Montreal presence) you would think there would be more innovative gaming based startups being funded by Canadian VCs.

From yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen in an article entitled Gaming Nation the following stats were included,

As many as one in three North Americans, or 120 million people, play video games for at least one hour every week and recent studies have shown that one quarter of all gamers in Canada are over the age of 50.

Parr said Canadians spent more than $933 million on video gaming last year. Worldwide, the game industry brought in more than $25 billion U.S. in revenues during 2006. That figure is expected to hit $55 billion U.S. by 2009.

During the massive industry explosion, Canada has quietly become a world leader in video game development. The top two game development studios on the planet — EA in Burnaby and Ubisoft in Montreal — call Canada home.

The number of companies developing video games in Canada has tripled in the last three years. According to a study conducted at Queen’s University in 2004, there were only 100 gaming companies in Canada that year.

The ESAC says there are more than 300 video game development companies employing more than 49,700 full- and part-time employees are scattered across the country now.

And these are not low paying call-centre-type jobs. The average starting salary for a video game developer is $60,000 U.S.

I may have missed it, but you would imagine with all the companies working around and supporting the video game industry there would be some activity by Canadian VCs.

While I think it’s great that a Canadian company has succeeded in getting an exit through an acquisition to Google, it is interesting to see that our Canadian VCs are not playing roles in Canadian companies.

Case in point, I had the pleasure to meet two successful Canadian entrepreners Patrick Lor and Ravi Sood on my panel at Garage Canada’s Startup Canada. For those not aware, Getty Images bought Patrick Lor and Bruce Livingstone’s company iStockPhoto for $50 million. Hewlett-Packard bought brothers Ravi & Rahul Sood’s company Voodoo PC for an undisclosed sum and he and his brother Rahul are now in San Fran working with HP.

They are both great examples of Canadian entrepreneurs who built and sold their companies to US firms without traditional VC investment.

In each case they recounted how VCs ignored them until the risk was almost gone and buy out offers started to emerge as viable choices to taking VC money for growth capital. They join other Canadian companies such as Flickr in having chosen to prove the business viability and let a larger company expand the market.

Early stage risk capital means taking risk at the early stage - not waiting until the company has product, traction and sales and then trying to invest to help them grow. As the cost of building, launching and obtaining traction continues to drop (at least for consumer & enterprise software) there becomes less of a role for Canadian VCs who don’t know how to play aggressively at the early stage.

Once a company has proven a product with traction in the marketplace, the US investors care less about location and are happy to invest in a winning concept. So Canadian investors not playing aggressively at the early stages when they can still put risk capital to work will end up always sitting behind the US aquirers and financing options that the best companies will always be able to get.

In today’s marketplace where innovation through acquisition becomes more common place Canadian early stage investors will have to change how and when they invest in made at home opportunities if they wish to play a role in our Canadian success stories.

On Fri 16 Feb 2007. [2] Comments

I am going to be speaking at Startup Canada next week. The conference runs from Thursday to Saturday January 25th - 27th.

This event is being produced by my friends at Garage Canada and the Quebec City Pole Economic Development Agency.

Venture Capitalist, author and evangelism guru Guy Kawasaki is leading a great line up of speakers with an agenda that is based on his great book The Art of the Start. He has done other Art of the Start conferences, but I believe this is the first in Canada.

I recommend entrepreneurs I advise to read a copy of Art of the Start. It is one of the best how-to guides on the basics of starting a company or organization that I’ve found. Simple, clear and jam packed of useful tips on starting something.

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, or a practicing entrepreneur looking to network this is a great event to attend. I’ll be there with a few entrepreneurs who I’m supporting in a new startup.

My friend Tom Sweeney (Garage Canada) who is also speaking asked me to join Patrick Lor, Isabelle Bettez and Ravi Sood on a panel with Guy Kawasaki discussing the state of the Canadian startup scene.

I hope to see you there.

This shouldn’t be confused with the StartupCamp Canada that I’m helping to organize, which will be later this year.

On Thu 18 Jan 2007. [6] Comments

Every startup team has a rhythm, a team swing. 

When a team starts to fall into it’s swing every interaction seems to be surging the company forward in almost an effortless and fun way.

In his book Mind Over Water, rower Craig Lambert describes swing in this way,

Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing…Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself.  The swing carries us; we do not force it.  We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work.  We are not so much swinging as being swung.  The boat swings you.  The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature.  Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster.  Trying too hard sabotages boat speed.  Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself.  Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing.  Aristocrats do not strive, they have already arrived.  Swing is a state of arrival.

No two teams can have the same swing. 

You can be in the same market, with the same product and your team swing will the primary factor in deciding who wins.

So your team could swing like this,

Or the same team could swing like this,

Either way - you want to staff your startup with people who can swing like you do.

(Note to self: Get copies of Jean-Luc Goddard films. This is brilliant footage.)

On Wed 10 Jan 2007. [6] Comments