Montreal Start Up

Last night, Akoha gave a sneak preview of their product offering to a number of their friends, family and investors in Montreal (disclosure -  MSU is an investor).

The founders, Austin Hill & Alex Eberts (along with PR guru Dov) are no strangers to creating buzz and excitement about their projects and once again they made a splash - albeit the type of precision splash that you would see from a Chinese Olympic diver and not that of Shamu the whale !

A reasonable amount of money would have been spent on the event and as an investor in the company I can’t but help consider wether this was actually a good use of money. My conclusion is that it was; and that it achieved a few  things that any start-up entrepreneurs could consider as they launch their businesses.

1) When you’re sprinting the marathon - don’t forget the feeding stations.

When your legs, lungs and brain are fatigued but you realise you’ve only just started the marathon it’s great to see the 10km feeding station. A feeding station is designed to give you renewed energy, but it also marks another milestone on the race. The lungs, legs and brains of any start-up are of course its founders and employees and its essential to provide feeding stations along the way to motivate and re-invigorate the team.

The sneak peak event created an opportunity for the founders to put the whole team in the spotlight. Akoha hasn’t even launched yet but their sneak peak event felt like a celebration of success; as an investor I don’t see Akoha as a success (yet), but I can fully appreciate that as a team, coming together to deliver a product, they have successfully reached a major milestone.

I don’t think that Akoha is actually creating any real marathon runners, but last night a few probably felt like junior (tech) rock-stars.

2) Practice your pitch

I assume (obviously) Akoha intends on taking its pitch to the "world" at some point. That would probably involve presenting the company at a much larger event than the one last night. So their sneak peak event gave them a chance to practice their pitch in a realistic environment -  in-front of an audience with all the adrenaline flowing and nerves jangling (or in Alex’s case "Jango"ing).

Anyone at the event (including myself) would say that the presentation went really well, but the guys at Akoha know that to be the best you can’t be satisfied with "really well". You need to be outstanding - and as practice makes perfect, I think that a real-life test run is a valid investment of time and money. Its all about raising the bar.

3) You get out what you put in

By inviting the community to become "insiders" the sneak peak event has placed Akoha as one of the companies that everyone in Montreal will want to help. This help is invaluable to any start-up and I would encourage ALL start-up’s, early stage and venture backed companies to open up more to the Montreal community. It’s through the community that you will probably find your next employees, your next investors and perhaps even some of your most innovative ideas.

So to the Akoha team - thanks for a great night and good luck with the next 10km !

Here are some more of Y-Combinator’s Summer 2008 intake and where appropriate a mention of Montreal companies I am aware of that are competitive or complimentary.

Youlicit

Youlicit automatically generate simple, link only web sites that are supposed to be at least as relevant as those generated by human editors - time will tell if the automation as good as a real person produces but it should generate them plenty of free organic traffic that is very monetizable. Do people want this ? I’m not sure but it may well be one of the more commercially viable companies presenting.

Job Alchemist

As the name would suggest, these guys are in the online recruitment space. They have two offerings that are somewhat related . The first is a series of niche job boards and some white label software to roll out more job boards. The second is a syndicated distribution network for jobs that will try and place job adverts on blogs, forums, networks etc. They say they "want to fix on-line recruitment " - but, whilst I admit they have have done some great work in a short time, I don’t think they are going to fix anything - they are just adding to the current melting pot of offerings. (We are investors in Standout Jobs .)

Slinkset

Slinkset is another company that is providing software to enable not programmers to launch a white label version of a well know offering - in this case you can create your own version of  Reddit /Digg (social news site) and brand it as you like - with no coding necessary. I guess that they must have been caught out by Reddit going open-source.

Frogmetrics

Frogmetrics have developed software solution for doing mobile survey response that tracks responses in real time. I don’t see anything new in this business but they have taken the Apple approach of delivering a smooth, polished, end to end solution that includes both hardware and software - in this case they were demo’ing on Nokia hardware. I really see this as a systems integration play.

Anyvite

Competition for E-vite. Nothing new per se, but well done and less of a hassle to use than E-vite. Not sure how they plan to gain main stream awareness - always the problem with a ME2 product, but if it is that much better .. who knows.

Ididwork

Ididwork enbales you to share your work log with co-workers and managers. Nice implementation but I think they could look to incorporate some of the thinking from the team at Timmy on time - developed by a couple of young guys from Trois Rivieres (almost Montreal!).

Popcuts

Think pyramid marketing scheme meets indie music. The earlier you buy a song the more "revenue share" you will get when (if) the song takes off. I don’t think this is going to fly using financial incentives but it could evolve into something interesting. 

BackType

BackType was the only Canadian team presenting ( a second team are still in "stealth mode") and one of the reasons we wanted to go to Demo Day. They refer to themselves as the Google of comments. Simple idea; they provide a search service that allows you to search the Web for comments by a particular author or on a given topic. Let’s see if they end up in Montreal or the Valley ;-).

That’s it for the reviews - the next post will draw some conclusions about my trip to Demo Day.

We often get inquiries from start-ups looking to hire top talent.  Usually, we just tap our network of contacts to produce a list of potential candidates. This time, I thought it would be interesting to cast the net a little wider and so I’m blogging about it.

Recently I’ve been asked by two start-ups if I could recommend anyone for a developer position. Both are cool, expanding companies run by great people and looking to make a big splash. One is looking for a web developer that also knows a little about SMS and MMS. A lot of the work involves APIs and widgets and most of the code base is in PHP and JavaScript, so knowledge of both languages is essential. They are looking to bridge the Web and Mobile worlds. The other company is looking for a developer with 1-3 years of PHP experience and the right attitude. As a bonus, all of this company’s code is released under an open source license; therefore not only can you earn a living, you can also accumulate some good karma along the way!

So if you’re looking to escape from the drudgery of the corporate cube farm, have always wanted an employee number in the low single digits and are willing to sign on to the crazy roller-coaster ride that is an expanding start-up, please get in touch with me (daniel AT this domain). I’ll tell you a little bit more about the companies and, if there is a fit, I’ll arrange the introductions.

Twenty startup’s were in Y-Combinator’s Summer 2008 funding batch. Here is my take on the first half of them (the rest will be in the next post) and where appropriate a mention of Montreal companies I am aware of that are competitive or complimentary.

Posterous

A hosted blogging platform that allows you to post many different media types via e-mail. Great software, ultimate in simplicity - but perhaps it could have worked even better as a Worpress or Typepad plugin ? Nice software.

Ticket Stumbler

Vertical (sports tickets) search technology with a referrals based revenue model – nothing innovative per se, but there is a chance of success if they can simplify a complex issue that enough people have – it certainly worked for Kayak. Montreal’s TIBConcerts does a similar thing for concert listings.

A N Other Company

A company yet to launch but with a similar concept as Montreal’s BoostCast which already has over 17,000 communities (according to it’s website). These guys (who did seem smart and capable in general) made the mistake of starting their presentation by saying they were the “only one’s able to simple generate video-sharing site”. Anyone making a pitch to investors please remember that we see deals all the time and it’s just too risky to say you’re the only one – because it’s EXTREMELY rare that you are.

A N Other Company

A company yet to launch that may benefit from the progress being made at Montreal based Identi.ca , a company that has developed a version of Twitter that runs on the Laconi.ca open source micro-blogging platform (Our very own Evan Prodromou of Wiki-Travel fame is the driving force behind it’s development). The guys had heard of Identi.ca and were excited by the possibilities that could arise from having many vertically focused, but networked, micro-blogging sites.

People and Pages

Website builder (another one!) with member management. Just screams me2. The most interesting business I’ve seen in this space in Montreal (well the CEO is based here) is Kyube.

A N Other Company

PhD brainpower put to good use. This company yet to launch may have some interingsting synergies with Reasonably Smart, a Montreal based startup that is looking to make a name for itself in the cloud computing space.

PicWing

An integrated hardware and software solution for delivering photos (and in the future other media …. interesting possibilities) directly to an electronic picture frame. I’d be contacting Kodak and Fuji Film to start a bidding war !

MeetCast

Web-based video-conferencing and screen sharing solution. It’s a competitive / crowded space but no solution out there does it all yet. Very similar in functionality to Montreal’s Oneeko (previously Camwii) – whom I hear will soon have some very interesting news on getting their solution more widely distributed!

CO2 Stats

These guys can actually measure the environmental footprint of your website. It seemed like a gimmicky business at first but, once explained, it actually struck me as pretty complex to do accurately. It might actually fly !

More reviews to follow but I’d be happy to hear about any other Montreal based startups that are complementary or competitive to the companies profiled above.

(NOTE: This page has been edited to remove references to companies that have yet to launch)

I was fortunate enough to be invited down to Cambridge, MA to attend yesterday’s demo day for Y-Combinator’s latest batch of companies.

Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston acted as both the gracious hosts for the event and the concerned parents for the Founders as they exposed their ideas to an external audience for the first time (for the most part).

(Sorry about the photo quality - but I had just shaken Paul’s hand ;-))

We decided to send someone down there for a few reasons;

Firstly, there were a couple of companies founded by Canadians that we had been talking to and wanted to catch up with and let them know that their was an alternative to heading to the Valley - Montreal ! Speaking to the guys from BackType,(one of the better company’s there ;-)) it seems that long term Visa issues are always going to be a problem for Canadian founders of start-up founders in US.

Secondly, we wanted to get a sense for the overall quality of the ideas and entrepreneurs. We have met with many Montreal based start-up’s over the past few months and have a good sense of the calibre of ideas and entrepreneurs on offer. We wanted to be able to compare what we see with what was on show at (if you believe the hype) the Mecca of web-startup’s.

Thirdly, we wanted to understand the size and quality of the VC eco-system that exists for follow-on (Seed or A-Round) investment in companies as they move from Beta 2 Business.

And finally, as we push ahead with developing our own FounderFuel investment program, we wanted to get a better insight into some of the practicalities of running the Y-Combinator program.

So they were the goals - I’ll let you know how I got on in the next post …………