Billions With Zero Knowledge - Austin Hill, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor

Sometimes the light’s all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it’s been.
Truckin, Grateful Dead

I wrote this post in October 2006 but delayed in posting it until I had time to get comfortable with blogging. Although I’ve edited it a bit in the last couple of weeks before posting, most of the content remains the same. I attempted to write a shorter version of it recently, but decided that I would retain the original format of the post I wrote almost six months ago. It is fitting that I’m posting this from the TED conference since it was the TED conference that inspired the idea for my new project, leading me to leave the company I founded with my brother & father.

It was almost a decade ago in the spring of 1997 when Hamnett and Hammie (my brother & father) and I had just sold our Internet provider Total.Net and had begun to work on a new venture. Our new company was based on the idea that we could build a number of services to protect individuals privacy and security online by making military grade encryption and privacy technologies easy for consumers to use.

There was a very large discussion going on about the fears of Internet users regarding privacy and we felt we could make a positive impact on millions of peoples lives with our solution.

While trying to come up with a name for our new venture, I developed a list of all the encryption & privacy related concepts and keywords that I sent to Hamnett & Hammie. It was my father, Hammie who in a meeting at my apartment keyed onto the words Zero Knowledge from a description of Zero Knowledge Proofs that I had sent around. Shortly thereafter Zero-Knowledge Systems was born. At the time, tongue in cheek names were all the rage and everyone was trying to stand out in the crowded early days of what would become the dot.com boom.

We knew going in that we would catch a lot of grief at times with a name like Zero-Knowledge - but we wanted to stand out. We stood for something different, and the name just seemed to fit.

Our Incredible Journey

The name of course, was only the beginnging of what would become an incredible journey that has lasted almost a decade for me personally.

Our staff would go on to plaster downtown Montreal and our office neighborhood with stickers proclaiming “Changing the World with Zero-Knowledge”. I’m still having to turn down requests from people who want to get some of our old T-Shirts or posters. We wanted the world to know what we stood for - power to the people - privacy for all - we were passionate about changing the way the future would look. We were social entrepreneurs believing that we could both make a profitable company and a contribution to the betterment of society at the same time.

I began capturing notes, journal entries, photo’s and video of the companies ascent early on. I had the idea of writing a book about the companies experience one day. This may have been youthful hubris & arrogance but at the time I was confident we would be a billion dollar company eventually and people would want to know how we did it. Given the time this was not a crazy idea, but you could say I was literally Chasing Billions with Zero Knowledge.

Did we ever have stories though, lot’s of good stories.

Over the course of the next nine years I would rub shoulders with incredible industry and world leaders, extremely well armed cypherpunks, brilliant scientists and luminaries of the technology and venture capital industries. (Too many links to post, but Google has a decent memory of my past activities you can peruse if you are curious.)

I began to spend time with incredible people actively involved in changing the world. I gave speeches at the World Economic Forum, traveled the world meeting and working with global leaders on issues ranging from Ethical Technology Design, Privacy, Security, International Cybercrime law, Canada’s technology innovation strategy, net neutrality, technologies role in social responsibility and many meetings on technology & human rights work.

Amidst the world travels we would also become media darlings, appearing on 60 minutes, CNN, WSJ, NY Times and in hundreds of publications as we became one of Canada’s highest profile Internet startups and acted as a regular expert on the issues of Internet privacy and security.

We brought innovative Silicon Valley style recruiting & retention ideas to Montreal as we exploded onto the Canadian technology scene.

We conducted intelligence agency briefings with most of the alphabet soup agencies, battled killer typhoons in asia, and were taxied to silicon valley in private jets as investors wooed us. We set Canadian records for our financing’s and for awhile were members of that generation of dot.com media darlings.

The Tough Times

There were also a lot of very tough stories and painful lessons we had to learn.

Reducing our head count by the hundreds because of undisciplined growth while reacting to the meltdown of the private and public equity markets. Managing teams while teetering on the edge of bankruptcy as we restructured debt, getting out of potentially crippling lease obligations & negotiating a recap with the investors to keep the company going. We faced the challenges of discontinuing the companies flagship product and having to completely reposition the companies products, target market, technology and structure while trying to keep the doors open.

We would experience some of the downsides of being media darlings as the companies shift in direction and layoffs became popular targets for reporters writing about the dot.com bust. Articles with sentences like “Blood runs in the halls at Zero-Knowledge as the firing carnage continues” to report our reductions in staff made each step that much harder as the articles made their way to partners and customers.

In early 2003, as the company started to generate positive cash flow - I started joking with my brother that if we ever told the inside story of our rise, fall and survival through the bubble that we should call it Chasing Billions with Zero Knowledge.

The phrase struck me as a fitting moniker for our own journey as a company, some of the investment trends that contributed to the dot.com bubble, and many of the ideas & entrepreneurs I encountered.

To be clear, I believe that most every company begins with zero knowledge. Assumptions and theories abound but actual knowledge of what the future may hold for the company is a pipe dream. There are so many questions from team, to product, to competitive landscape that the only real bet you can make is that shit will happen and things will need to change. Every enterprise begins with zero knowledge.

The process of building innovative enterprises requires experimentation and failure. How much experimentation is a function of risk appepitite and cost of money. The cost of money was incredible low and the risk appetite for technology stocks were so much in abundances that we were fielding random calls from retail investors looking to buy stock or get on a waiting list for the IPO for almost 2 years before we even had revenue.

I don’t believe even now in hindsight that we were ever chasing billions while clueless. We proved ourselves able to play by the rules of the that time and raised money and built real products & teams in a way that the market was rewarding (Getting big fast, become the market leader by the size of your brain trust and the broad range of your opportunities).

When the rules of the market changed, we changed with them and made sure we could continue to work with customers finding a business model and customer profile that would grow with us. We made a lot of mistakes that in hindsight now seem obvious. But we rushed into our mistakes recognizing them as valuable lessons and we were eager students.

A New Story - Radialpoint Emerges

I often get questions about the fate of Zero-Knowledge Systems. For those interested in our early experiences as a company, I’m posting a case study done by Professor David Phillips that was written over the course of many interviews and on site visits with our staff throughout the early days of the company. David recently sent me this copy to distribute.

Zero-Knowledge Systems - An Early Case Study in Systems of Surveillance. David J. Phillips, Professor University of Toronto

It highlights some of our successes, mistakes, and our early adventures as a company.

It is an account of the early Zero-Knowledge history (it ends about 2001/2 as we made the transition into the Radialpoint business and turned the company around). Like with all accounts, it can never capture even 5% of what was occurring behind the scenes, but it captures much of what was occurring around the company and provides a good account of our early rise and fall from grace.

When we started Zero-Knowledge my internal email signature carried the phrase “Make new mistakes more often”. Our team culture helped us to react and evolve as we saw new opportunities, identified failing products and responded to the dramatic shifts that occurred in the capital markets.

Zero-Knowledge Systems not only survived but changed its name and is now a thriving company called Radialpoint.

The company has emerged as one of Canada’s fastest growing technology companies, Quebec’s 2nd fastest growing technology firm and a market leader in managed consumer Internet services for broadband providers. The company has been profitable for years, is growing quickly and is now providing Internet value-added services for a community of more then 20 million broadband subscribers through its broadband provider customers. This is one of the largest aggregate broadband subscriber bases in the world.

Writing about the last bubble bursting and the dot.com graveyard that ensued was popular sport for many members of the media. Now we have reporters writing about the impeding Web 2.0 bubble and asking when it will burst. I think enterprising reporters could do well to explore companies such as Radialpoint that have survived the dot.com fallout and emerged stronger, smarter and battle hardened. There are great stories out there for those reporters not just looking to write about what Apple announced.

While I know this story well, and I believe in it with all my heart, the Radialpoint story is no longer my story to tell. The story of how Radialpoint emerged from the dot.com bubble and became one of Canada’s largest software-as-a-service companies that quietly cornered the ISP market for desktop delivered services will be told someday.

That story will be told by my brother, father and the team that continues to work with them there. It is their story to tell.

The team working there deserves to take a bow and get full credit for the incredible work they have done. I’m no longer part of the day to day operations at Radialpoint- so I will not be posting about it’s business on this blog.

I left Radialpoint, in June of 2006 to work on my new projects. This was a very difficult thing to do, but I was no longer the right person to help lead that company.

After the sabbatical I took to help my brother fight and ultimately die with dignity from his battle with cancer, things changed for me. It took me awhile after his death to find my footing again, but I needed to do that outside of the company in an area that I felt I could make a difference in the world. My mind and heart had drifted into a new domain and I couldn’t both follow my heart and try to do the work that Radialpoint needed at the same time.

I remain an investor, friend, family member and supporter in every way of Radialpoint and the team there.

In many ways, the team from Radialpoint plays a heavy influence on the work I am doing now since I learned an incredible amount from my brother, father, our managers, our teams and the staff we had. In the school of hard knocks and practical entrepreneurship I was incredibly lucky to have the mentors, partners and teams that I did.

I want to thank all the teams that worked with me throughout the years. I can say without a doubt, I learned more from you then the other way around.

Large amounts of thanks goes to the my brother and father, our management team (especially Marty, Veronique, Carlos that I worked with so closely) and all the direct reports and teams throughout the years. I also need to thank my assistant for almost a decade, Elizabeth. She has had the pleasure of seeing me at my best, and worst - and was always there working hard to make sure that others only saw me at my best, which I’ll be forever grateful for.

I had the incredible opportunity to work with family, an incredible management team and hundreds of bright staff as they navigated the changes required to keep our company thriving. Their support of my eccentric ideas, my crazy personality and most of all their support of me leaving to do a new project was crucial to me having the confidence to tackle what I’m now working on.

Billions with Zero Knowledge - The Blog

Since I won’t be blogging about Radialpoint that much, and my new project will most likely be operating under the radar for awhile this blog is very much a personal sandbox for me to play in. I’m not marketing or selling anything (at this point) - just having fun and looking to be part of the conversation.

I’ll be writing about topics that I feel I can add some unique point of view too. I won’t be covering or reposting other stories, tracking the latest moves of other bloggers or any specific industry.

I’ll be writing about the topics I care most about which are,

• The state of the Canadian startup scene from an entrepreneurs & angel investors perspective
• Promoting Canadian entrepreneurs
• Social Entrepreneurship
• Grass root authentic conversational marketing, Social media and Angel Investing
• Online communities, open innovation and collaborative open source models for community production
• World Hacking (finding easy hacks to make the world a better place), World Changing

One of my major complaints on all the government committees I participated on for innovation was the lack of a strong culture of mentorship in Canada. This combined with a little bit of angel investing from experienced entrepreneurs could help us nurture the next generation of startups and provide a farm system for the venture capital industry. I’ve seen this model work throughout the world in creating a culture of sharing of experiences resulting in the bundling of great advisory experience coming with risk capital.

I have been very fortunate to have had the experiences I’ve had and I hope by sharing my experiences that I can help a new generation of Canadian entrepreneurs begin to shape their own dreams.

My tagline for this blog is “Changing the World with Little Bits of Knowledge”. I believe that there exists within the technology community the power to change the world both for the good and bad, and I hope my projects and this blog help play a small but meanginful role in the postive aspects of this change.

On Thu 8 Mar 2007. [13] 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’ll be on the road for the next two weeks.  I’m in Toronto at the Canadian Venture Forum right now.

I then leave for Monterey for the annual TED conference, which is my favorite conference of the year.  Look for a lot of postings come out of TED (some of which I hope to be mine, but I tend to get so busy at conferences that posting is difficult).

I’m then in Silicon Valley for a couple of days, and then I spent most of that week (March 12th to 16th) in Calgary.

I have a number of overdue posts (my inaugural one would be a good start that I hope to get finished while travelling.

My posting schedule may be erratic but I’ll be keeping my status updated with my new Twitter widget which you can see on my blog.  After only a couple days of use I’m a Twitter fan. 

Mitch has a great post up on the basics of Twitter.

It now has some critical mass with my friends in San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto and a few in other pockets of the US and for me it feels much more personal then blogging.  I’m connected to my friends stream of activities and it somehow feels closer.

I’ll post something about my own experience in a couple weeks when I’ve had a chance to experiment with it a bit more, but for now I can say that I really like it.

On Mon 5 Mar 2007. 1 Comment

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

We just reached 600 wishes at the Gifter Wishing Well.  You can grab a coin at the Gifter.org site and drop it in the wishing well.   For each wish you make we have sponsors donating $1 to charity.   Our sponsors have already donated $6,147 to a number of worthy charities.

We need your help in collecting hundreds of thousands of more wishes.

Go make a wish and then help us spread the word with your friends.  Your wish is our donation. 

If you help us get 1,000,000 wishes - we are making sure we get the $1,000,000 dollars in donations - so make your wish today.

Update 10:30am: We’ve been getting some heavy traffic that has caused our wishing well to hicup. In the meantime you can still leave your wish by dropping the coin, but the graphic of the wishing well has become shy with all the attention and is not being generated for some reason. We will fix this shortly and your coin will appear on the wishing well. Thanks for your patience.

Update 3:00pm: We have the wishing well back in working order. There is a fresh well screen up, so if you want to make your wish please head over.

On Wed 28 Feb 2007. No Comments

The startup that Alex Eberts and I are working on, Project Ojibwe is looking to hire a talented Python wrangler.  Our preferred team member will have experience with Python web frameworks (preferably Django) and experience with database, web services and web application architecture.

I’ve always wondered why if all markets are conversations, that the job market where we hire the people to make our products begins with a process that is as impersonal as asking someone to drop their pants.

So we are going to start an experiment in conversational recruiting. (Thanks Shel)

If you think you can add something special to our team, and are interesting in learning how we are building a fun, kick ass product that will help change the world then please start a conversation with us.

While we want to see your CV we are more interested in who you are through your work and in your own words. 

Introduce yourself to us, show us your work, send us a screencast, or a video of you telling us why you want to be part of what promises to be an incredibly rewarding adventure with our team.  Show us your online blog, open source contributions, Flickr fetish or the communities you contribute too.

We want to get to know you, not just what is on your CV.

You can send us large file attachements by using YouSendit and any screencast, video, sample source code, or other portfolio material (along with your CV) to pythonwrangler<@>project-ojibwe.org. 

This is for a full time position in Montreal.

To help start this conversation we decided to have some fun and have prepared this video for you.

Although we aren’t discussing the details about our project publicly just yet, we have ensured in keeping with the modus operandi of stealth companies we are fully buzzword compliant.

Here is a version of the video with our buzzword compliance filter activated.

Here is the full job description.

Sr. Python Wrangler & Developer
Project Ojibwe, Montreal’s hottest new startup, is looking for an experienced Python developer who wants to work in a fun environment with other motivated, talented developers.

We are creating an original idea that we hope will change the way people think about social networks and online communities. We are a small team that believes in creating mind-blowing web apps that have a positive impact on the world, avoiding meetings as much as possible, iterating quickly, and having fun at work. We’re looking for a senior python programmer with architecture experience and a positive attitude to help us bring our baby to the world.

Project Ojibwe will be coming to a browser near you in Summer 2007. The web community project is a funded startup founded by a team of Canada’s top Internet entrepreneurs.

Essential experience includes 3+ years of python development, architecture of large-scale web applications, database design and HTML/JavaScript, a sense of humour, an understanding of creating passionate users and a preference for getting things done.

Useful experience includes Django development and web service design.
Candidates will be expected to demonstrate their ability to stand out from the crowd. Creativity and a willingness to showcase your talent will be required of the successful candidate.

This position is full-time and not contract. Please, no recruiters.

Interested candidates should contact us with a resume and portfolio by email.

Développeur Python expérimenté.

Project Ojibwe, une des startups de Montréal les plus en vue de Montréal, est à la recherche d’un développeur Python expérimenté, ayant envie de travailler dans un environnement amusant, en compagnie d’une équipe motivée et talentueuse.

Nous travaillons sur un concept original qui, nous l’espérons, changera la manière dont on considère les réseaux sociaux et les communautés en ligne. Nous sommes une petite équipe qui pense que des applications web radicales peuvent changer positivement le monde, que moins il y a de meetings, mieux c’est, qu’il faut faire des itérations rapides et qu’il faut s’amuser au travail ! Nous sommes à la recherche d’un développeur Python expérimenté, ayant une expérience en architecture logicielle, et surtout ayant une attitude positive qui nous aidera à accoucher de notre bébé !

Project Ojibwe sera prochainement sur vos navigateurs, aux alentours de l’été 2007. Notre projet de communauté web est une startup fondée par une équipe d’entrepreneurs les plus actifs du Canada.

L’expérience indispensable est d’au moins 3 ans de développement en Python, architecture d’applications web à grande échelle, conception de base de données et HTML/JavaScript, un sens de l’humour, une compréhension de comment rendre les utilisateurs passionnés, et un goût prononcé pour “getting things done”.

Des connaissances de Django et en conception de services web sont un plus.
Nous attendons des candidats qu’ils fassent vraiment la différence, qu’il fassent preuve d’une forte créativité et d’une volonté à démontrer leur talents.

Ce poste correspond à un emploi à plein temps seulement. Pas d’agents de recherche d’emploi, svp.

Envoyez vos candidatures par courrier.

On Sat 24 Feb 2007. [19] Comments

DemoCampMontreal1 will be held next Tuesday, February 27th at the Society for Arts and Technology. The SAT has generously donated their incredible space for this and other Montreal Barcamp/Democamps.

I’m helping my friend, Montreal Barcamp organizer Fred Ngo with the fundraising for Barcamp and Democamps. I’ll be announcing the sponsors for the events shortly. If you are in the Montreal technology community and would like to sponsor these events please contact me.

Jonathan Kopanas has volunteered to MC the event. He did a great job MC’ing Democamp Cusec where we had a great turnout.

You don’t have to present anything to attend. You just need to have an interest in the local Montreal technology community. Sign up on the wiki, and come out to support the community.

The presenting slots for DemoCamp2 are already booked, so your next chance to present something if you are local and want to show off your goods is MontrealBarcamp2.

Here are some great photos from the previous BarcampMontreal and the DemoCampCusec events courtesy of Simon Law and my friends at Kakiloc. Simon is a great member of the Barcamp/Democamp community, and he has an upcoming show this Sunday showcasing some of the photo’s of Montreal he has taken.

On Fri 23 Feb 2007. [2] Comments

As part of my continuing series of interviews showcasing the Canadian tech scene I asked my friend Russell Samuels, the founder of Ventis Media to share a bit about his story in building a succesfull software company as a stay at home dad

Russell worked with me at Zero-Knowledge Systems, and then again at Synomos (a failed spin out of Zero-Knowledge Systems). We went through a lot together at ZKS and he has since moved on to becoming an entrepreneur.

For the last couple of years Russell has been building Ventis Media. They are among the many hidden in plain site Canadian companies achieving great things without a lot of local awareness. He is one of the many Zero-Knowledge alumni who have gone on to found their own companies.

Russell’s and his team are the developers of MediaMonkey. MediaMonkey is the 2nd most popular MP3 music manager with 1.8 million downloads on Download.com.

CNet gives MediaMonkey a 5 star rating and here is what their editors say about the software.

Despite a glut of free player/encoders, it’s tough to find one that meets our expectations. Formerly known as Sound DB, MediaMonkey has excellent library-management tools that keep the largest digital music collections well organized. Stir that up with integrated CD and DVD burning, a stellar interface, a full-featured encoder, and the ability to sync with portable audio devices such as the iPod, and you have a pretty compelling product.

and…

Considering the overall polish of this application, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything you don’t like.

So first all congratulations on the success of your MediaMonkey product, why don’t you tell me a bit about the project?

MediaMonkey is a music organizer for serious music collectors who are looking for an organizer that gives them more control than other players out there. It’s a labour of love, having grown out of a hobby project by my partner and my belief several years ago that we could do better than RealPlayer and Windows Media Player.

You are based in Montreal, can you tell me about your team and where they are based?

We’re a completely virtual company to the extent that I’ve never met anyone else in the company face to face. Other full-time team members are in Serbia, the Czech Republic, and we have consultants in France, Italy, Portugal, etc. To bridge the distance we use a variety of intranet applications, instant messaging, and skype–we could not exist without the internet.

How have your funded your business, and do you have any thoughts on early stage technology in Canada – was it easy for you to get your project going? Any advice for small teams looking to finance software projects out of Canada based on your experience?

MediaMonkey was self-funded. For the first year of the project only 2 people worked on it (slaved on it would be more accurate), gradually growing to the 6 full time members that we have today. In retrospect, it might have been wiser to seek funding early on, however, the advantage is that we were and are fully in control of our destiny. I’ve seen friends seek funding, only to lose interest in their businesses since with funding comes VCs who have certain expectations about how the business should be run. Funding is a double-edged sword: it can open new possibilities, but it can also bring a certain amount of baggage depending on where the funding comes from.

Competing against iTunes and Windows Media Player seems crazy to most, but Media Monkey seems to have developed a strong following, how do you deal with competing against entrenched players like Microsoft & Apple.

Apple and Microsoft have to build their products to support the needs of the average user, but very often, this means not including some functionality that is critical for more serious collectors. The key for us has been to focus on a specific niche of customers that want more than is available via iTunes or Windows Media Player and tailoring MM to meet their needs.

A big part of this has been involving our customers in the development process. Although MM isn’t open source, we have a very open development process that has encouraged the development of a large community of users and contributors. Users submit critiques and feature ideas which form the basis of future product versions.

The product is also engineered to facilitate user contributions. It has open APIs that encourage users to contribute new functionality on top of the platform, open specs for skinning and translation, and a forum within which users can exchange their ideas.

To illustrate, MM is available in 13 languages almost all of which have been contributed by our community. Our community is part of what makes MM viable in the face of such large competitors, and also what makes it so enjoyable.

What is exciting for you as part of being an entrepreneur?

Doing what I want when I want, and reaping the rewards and facing the consequences. It’s a lot of work, though: I can come up for lunch and play with my infant daughter, but I’m also often at my computer at 10pm and take my PC with me when I’m on vacation.

What is next for Media Monkey and Ventis Media?

Until now, most of our revenue has been upgrade-driven. Moving forward, we hope to capitalize on our user base by becoming a platform through which users can purchase music online.

A few of our former co-workers at Zero-Knowledge have gone on to start their own companies like yourself, any words of wisdom for entrepreneurs thinking of making the jump from working for the man, to being the man?

The time I spent working in other companies was invaluable–it’s given me so many learning experiences. But when you start feeling that you could do it better, it may be time to make that jump. Just choose something you enjoy–having an idea, ability, knowledge and connections isn’t enough–you need drive and passion to get through the hurdles that you’ll invariably face.

I’m not sure how we went from me being man, to me asking the man about leaving working for me (as the man) to become the man himself - but these are crazy times. Kind of makes it hard to figure out who to stick it to when you want to stick it to the man.

On Wed 21 Feb 2007. [3] Comments

Google recently released it’s RSS reader numbers and like most bloggers around the world I have a fairly large increase in my reader numbers. My RSS subscribers have jumped from about 80 regular RSS readers to 170.

Even though those readers must have been there for awhile, the increased readership is great encouragement to keep up regular postings.

In the coming weeks I’ll be starting to talk about what I’ve been working on with my various projects since leaving Radialpoint.

I also have my infamous inaugural post coming quite soon.

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce some worthy causes to my newly discovered readers because I feel like being in the giving mood.

GuluWalk Gala Event

Joshua Fattore from SilverLining Ltd. let me know about a a fundraising event occuring in Toronto this Thursday February 22nd.

GuluWalk is focused on supporting the abandoned children of northern Uganda. They were honoured this last January by The NonProfit Times as one the ‘Worlds Best Fundraisers’.

January 24, 2007 - On Thursday, February 22, 2007, please join us as Athletes for Africa presents the ‘GuluWalk Gala’, a celebration in benefit of GuluWalk - - the worldwide movement for the abandoned children of northern Uganda.
It’s going to be a spectacular evening at the Barbara Frum Atrium at the CBC Building in downtown Toronto and will include an evening of fine food, great music, and an extensive silent and live auction.
It will be hosted by Matt Galloway, host of CBC Radio’s
‘Here & Now’, and will feature an impassioned keynote address by former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Allan Rock and a live performance by Juno Award winning artist Donné Roberts.
Click here for more information, including tickets, sponsorship opportunities and how you can get involved.

I’m not in Toronto this week, but this is a worthy cause and sounds like a great event. If you are in Toronto and attend, drop me a note or blog about it and I’ll post about it.

Atwater Digital Literacy Project

I mentioned in my recent interview with Julien Smith that we both are involved with the Atwater Library Digital Literacy Project.

The Atwater Digital Literacy Project gets kids and community groups using creative web technologies (blogging, audio, video, digital photos) to help them express themselves, find new ways to talk about things important to them, and to help them build their own communities.

We are going to be working to raise some funds for the pilot project which is occuring right now. The first workshops with kids is starting this week. We (our great advisory board) are reaching out to the Montreal community to introduce this project and ask for support in raising the funds to get some equipment for the project. You can donate through CanadaHelps (make sure you mark Digital Literacy Project) on your donation if you would like to help this worthy project.

I had my fair share of interesting times as a teen, and without the help and support of people who showed me how to develop some of my skills I think I could have easily ended up living a very different life then the great one I enjoy now.

Gifter.org

I’ll be making my donation for the Atwater Literacy Project, and posting my receipt to Gifter.org. If you haven’t checked out Gifter.org it is our group giving project. We are collecting wishes at our Internet wishing well. For each wish collected we have a sponsor donating a dollar to charity. We recently put on a new interface and are getting ready to relaunch it. Go test out the new wishing well and make a wish.

If you’ve made a wish before, feel free to make another with the wishing well. We have lot’s of wishes available. I’d love to see 500 wishes come in the next week - so if you can help spread the word and make a wish - I’ll be donating that amount to the Atwater Digital Literacy Project and would love to see you use these wishes.

We have a major sponsor of wishes preparing to make a large contribution to a charity associated with the project and we will be re-launching the new site with some new outreach programs.

Before we relaunch we want to get some feedback on the new site, so please give it a whirl and let us know what you think of the new interface.

If blogging is a gift economy then I guess I want to make sure to give as well as I get.  For another view of blogging as a gift economy this is a great article as well.

Welcome to you my newly discovered subscribers. Thank you for taking the time to subscribe.

I don’t know how long you’ve been with me, but please feel free to drop me a comment, or contact me through the website and let me know what’s on your mind.

On Tue 20 Feb 2007. 1 Comment