Montreal Start Up

Let’s face it, we all spend *way* too much time in front of our computers. We could all do with some running around in the sun, so MSU would like to invite you out for a little Co-ed Start-Up Soccer! For those not familiar with the event, here are the highlights:

• Two teams, one composed of investors, the other is composed of tech start-up founders and employees.
• Each team must maintain a minimum of one representative of each sex on the field at all times.
• Absolutely no skill required! It is all about having fun with old friends and making new ones. Anyone taking themselves too seriously will be subjected to disapproving frowns and made the butt of many jokes.

Sign-up here to let us know which times are most convenient for you and we’ll let you know the Where and When of this awesome event!

I spent some time last week in London (UK) where I had the opportunity to spend a day at Seedcamp and get involved in mentoring some of Europe’s up and coming web and wireless businesses.

There were 20 companies and about 80 mentors !

Mentors were split into groups of eight and each group spent about 30 mins each with 8 of the 20 companies. The feedback on the event from the mentors and the entrepreneurs was really positive and I personally can’t wait to do it again.

Seedcamp runs a number of mini-Seedcamps in 6 European cities and then hosts "the full monty" once a year (to date this has been held in London).This is structually different to the other "feed capital" programs and may work well in Canada.

Interestingly the type of mentors invited were very broad. Of course there were investors and experienced entrepreneurs, but there were also a number of people from industry and some recent grads from the Seedcamp program. I think that this only adds support to the feedback that comes from all the feed capital programs, showing that knowledge transfer between smart founders plays as much a role as knowledge gained from mentors / advisors.

I’ve now been to a Seedcamp event, a Y-Combinator event and Alan MacIntosh (one of MSU’s other Partners) has also been involved in Launch Box Digital. I can honestly say that the raw quality of entrepreneurs and ideas that we see in Montreal (and this also applies to the limited number of entrepreneurs I’ve met in other parts of Canada) are as good as anywhere else; but our entrepreneurs must continually compete and co-operate in order to push themselves harder (ie smarter).

Whenever possible MSU tries to get the Founders of its portfolio companies to get together and engage in some co-opetition. We will continue to do more of this and we are now also looking to find ways in which we can get other funded and "to-be-funded" entrepreneurs in Canada involved in these sessions.

Look out for some upcoming MSU out-reach events!

I’ve seen so many pitches that start with "The (insert a given industry) is broken". I hate pitches that start like that - industries don’t break, they evolve. And the venture capital industry is no different!

One of the reasons that experienced entrepreneurs often make decent VC’s is that they understand the need to evolve their venture capital business in the same way that they evolved their previous businesses.

Mark Skapinker and the Brightspark team have recognised this and decided to evolve into an ideas lab. Selfishly, I think this great because it means we have less competition, but i’m sure that soon enough some other "entrepreneur turned investor" will spot the opportunity that their departure creates - there’s nothing like competition to keep you on your toes.(Hey Mark - if i’m ever given the opportunity to invest in one of your ideas please make sure the pitch deck doesn’t start of "the (industry) is broken" ;-))

Rick Segal and the JLA/Blackberry Fund team have also evolved with the introduction of their Jump Start program. As the industry evolves opportunities also open up for new models such as those of the Y-Combi"Nations". The Boot Up Labs guys in Vancouver and Extreme Ventures in Toronto have been able to position themselves favourably in this evolving world - and to some extent so have we at MSU. But even in the past year we have felt the need to evolve our strategies twice and there is yet another twist in the works as we speak.

Any under-grad marketing student knows that a problem in a market is actually called an opportunity, but it’s a smart entrepreneur that can work out how to make money out of that opportunity.

Continuing with the shout-outs to the entrepreneurs in whom we’ve invested recently ……

Marc Lefrancois and Marek Krepec at Oneeko have recently (beta) launched the upgraded version of their software solution that enables "click-to-collaborate" screen sharing with the utmost simplicity.

We also have two previously unannounced investments.

Whatsnexx (no website yet) is building it’s business from some technology and talent that has been spun out of TSX listed Komunik. The software is still in development and more info will follow as the company comes out of development.

Yona Shtern and Robert Gold are the Founders of Beyond the Rack, Canada’s answer to Gilt or Vente Privée. The company offers its online members luxury brand clothing and accessories, via limited time "flash sale" events. This business model has proven to be extremly successful in Europe - to the point that we were able to attract european co-investors to invest "across the ditch".

With all this activity we had better spend some time putting our own pitch together so that we have some more money to invest in these "opportunity" filled times !

We’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front recently. Whilst I can assure you that doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing anything - perception is reality !

The truth is that we’ve already made two more investments this year - giving us a total of 10 companies in our portfolio - and if we keep this rate up we will have invested our first fund in about six more months !

Most of our companies are still in development or beta so we aren’t trying to raise their profile yet but but over the next few days I’m going to give a quick shout-out to the companies we have backed so far.

To get the ball rolling i’ll start with the companies that we have announced:

Standout Jobs has developed a Saas platform that powers and centralizes companies’ online recruiting efforts. The company is being driven by Montreal tech community activists (Instigators) Ben Yoskovitz and Fred Ngo.

Akoha is a developer of online and real-world social games designed to make the world a better place. Alex Eberts and Austin Hill (the quiet guy in the background ;-)) are Akoha’s Founders.

We quietly announced our investment in Evan Prodromou’s latest startup Identi.ca. Having started both Wikitravel and Vinisimo, Evan has proven his abilities to build communities and execute open source/collaborative projects.

And here are a couple more of our yet to launch investments:

Keenkong is currently in private beta so why don’t you sign up to keep posted of developments. The company’s CEO, Olivier Berger, is bringing his six sigma training to the startup world - watch this space.

The Book Oven is also in private beta but it wouldn’t take a genius to work out that Stephanie Troeth and Hugh McGuire’s latest startup has something to do with books - it looks like they are working on something very appetizing!

Whilst doom and gloom may be all around us, we continue to be excited by the entrepreneurs we meet and by the strength of their ideas - and we are happy to keep funding the best of them ! 

There will be more shout-outs next week.