Two events that proved to be extremely successful and valuable to our start-up community during last week’s Entrepreneur Week.

The Founders and Funders dinner event is a targeted event run by Communitech, one that is intended to put those who need money in a room with those that have it.  We had over 80 companies and 50 funders meet at La Hacienda Sarria on November 19th to engage in conversation and discuss opportunities.

Strategic Partnering day took place on November 20th and it grew significantly in magnitude this year. We had 10 Strategic Partners participate in the day – RIM, Google, Rogers, Intel, Microsoft, Sybase, Celestica, Open Text, On-Semiconductor and Agfa. The day started with Dan Mathers (Communitech EIR) hosting a Q&A panel with all partners. Valuable insight was shared with the 100+ person audience on “Partnering- Who, What, Where, When and Why”.  Afterward, the “big guys” were lined up to meet with over 26 start-ups to trigger some relationship building and discuss potential future opportunities for collaboration, partnering, etc.  In total, 45 one-on-one meetings took place and the feedback from both sides is extremely positive so far,  indicating that doors that had previously proved challenging to get a foot in have started swinging open.

– Karen

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Pretty jazzed about the launch of a new online resource in Waterloo Region for the tech entrepreneur types… waterloo.techstartup.ca is a gathering place online for startup entrepreneurs around town.

Think of it like the evolution of social networking (no, it ain’t another social media profile).

If you’re a tech entrepreneur, you should check it out. Connect to other entrepreneurs. Check out events, add happenings and gatherings.

- Add yourself

- Add blogs

- Add twitter feeds

- Add rss feeds

- Add/tag events

- Send it to peeps who matter (Tech. Entrepreneurs. Waterloo Region)

- Hit the feedback button and help make it better

But the best part is, as the site evolves, it’s going to begin leveraging your contributed content through ranking and community conversation so that the best stuff percolates to the top.

This site is maintained by @jrodgers and @josephfung, two dashing men that like the idea of a vibrant startup space in Waterloo Region. The funding to get this project up off the ground was provided by the kind folks at IRAP, The Accelerator Centre, Ontario Centres of Excellence, and Communitech, and the data that makes this site worth anything more than $0 is provided by the community.

Posted in Entrepreneur Week, Startups, Talent, Waterloo Region Tech | 3 Comments »

Members of the Waterloo Region business community gathered for a sold-out Gala celebration of the Waterloo Region Entrepreneur Hall of Fame last night. Five Waterloo Region entrepreneurs were inducted into the Hall of Fame, representing the tech, manufacturing, construction, and environmental engineering industries.

I love the Hall of Fame celebration. It’s a night when all parts of the community come together to celebrate one of the most important and unique parts of our history — that when times are tough, people around here look at their options, and overwhelmingly decide to start something out of nothing.

It was a treat to have so many of the inductees join the celebration in person last night: Harold Seegmiller, Frank Rovers, Ian McPhee, and Tom Jenkins were all in attendance. Paul Kuntz accepted on behalf of his father Oscar Kuntz.

And Intrepid Award winner John Baker was on hand with members of his team from Desire2Learn — crediting the 173 of them as a big part of his company’s success to date.

During his acceptance speech, Tom Jenkins of Open Text called on every member of the gathering to recognize that ”what we have here is unique across this country,” urging us to become ambassadors for entrepreneurship throughout Canada. 

The Waterloo Region Entrepreneur Hall of Fame isn’t just about the hottest tech sector in Canada. It’ s not just about Waterloo Region’s longstanding family businesses. It’s about celebrating a culture of innovation in a community that thinks risk-taking is OK. Another great part of Entrepreneur Week.

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Is Tim Bray the Internet's Killer App?

Tim Bray will tell you what the Internet’s killer app is. Some might argue it’s Tim Bray, but Tim’s a little more humble than that.

In one of today’s Entrepreneur Week keynotes, Tim Bray, father of XML and some say, of Internet search, Tim Bray told us what he felt the most important trend of today is. The Internet’s Killer App?  “Other People”.

It doesn’t sound like big news, but when Bray says we need to look harder at  participation on the web, deeper and in new ways than we have to date, we should probably perk up and listen. He was the guy who, while working on making the Oxford Dictionary searchable, said “hey we should make this available to everyone.  What about the Internet, and more than just the dictionary?” He was the guy who decided that HMTL stuff was starting to limit what was possible on the Internet, and contributed to the creation of XML. And he was the guy who thought 3D modelling on the web, emmersive environments, and new ways of presenting information on the web would be the next big thing.

Ok so not so much on the last bit, but clearly Tim’s contributions have helped revolutionize the web for everyone (and not just his participation in the founding of Open Text Corp and Antarctica Systems). And he keeps paying attention to what’s important. Currently, it’s participation happening en masse on the Internet. Sure the technical developers are the ones who make it go, but those people who fundamentally understand the use of Internet tools and markets are the ones whose value is increasing in the common context. And it’s happening online. And it’s people-powered.

Tim’s checklist for what trends entrepreneurs need to be paying attention to:

- Speed: whosoever gets the app out first has a trackrecord of winning the race, even if it isn’t the best product
- RESTful web service
- Don’t listen! No one knows who’s winning the smartphone pda space
- Cell phone capacity in developing nations
- Health care industry is poorly organized, high-spending, and lots of room for application development (but be warned, it’s a tough market to get into)
- Advertising, because – and here’s the shocker – it’s actually a radically underdeveloped market, moving increasingly online
- Bandwidth… if you’re entrepreneurial enough, and can escape the current bandwidth-commodity market with a disruptive technology, you could own this space.

In a final piece of advice, Tim suggests “startups should ask for money; it brings a focus to the conversation”.  Which is hilarious because startup is known for needing investment capital to get over the development hump to meet the market — but Tim’s point is most startups just don’t know how to ask. Ask everyone! And do it unapologetically.  Canada is a great place to do a startup!

– Thom

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In a way, Razor Suleman is one of our own. Not only was he a student at WLU, but he also started companies while in Bricker Rez there. That might not have been his first venture, but it was his first significant venture, selling various sundry to  classmates.

Razor speaks at Entrepreneur Week

In fact, Razor bootstrapped many ventures. It was his I Love Rewards concept  (motivating people through performance rewards, online) which eventually took off. And eventually is the correct term: in the beginning, I Love Rewards wasn’t doing well, but it rose to become one of Canada’s best turnaround stories. The numbers are impressive, and so is how far Razor and his business approach have come:

- $13.4 M raised in five years

- From 11K points redeemed last year to 1B points redeemed this year (!)

- Hiring 17 more people right now

And what has Razor learned? What’s his edge? Some of Razor’s mantra (in brief, random order):

- Indifference is the opposite of love/hate

- Nobody is smarter than everybody

- Be true to your values

- Over-communicate

- Don’t listen to external valuations (or, be suspicious of them)

- Surround yourself with great people (he always used to hire nice people but the wrong people)

- Save money, be frugal, every dollar we take from vc’s is two lost shares

- Set clear goals – a top five, with a top one year goal for yourself

- Don’t create a culture of entitlement, create a culture of peak performance

- Follow your passion

Can’t help but think that while the outlook on his latest venture is doing very well, the best is yet to come from Razor.

– Thom

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