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 !

It’s rare that we come a cross a revolutionary idea these days. Most of the ideas we see are part of the ongoing evolution of internet based products and services.

Ev.o.lu.tion – A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.

The evolutionary process employs significant leverage by building on what has gone before. Similarly ,we find that the most promising internet businesses are those that are most able to leverage what already exists today to give them a leap start towards tomorrow.

So one of the recent questions that we like to ask is " What exisiting products, services or infrastructure are you going to be able to leverage that will have a significant impact on your ability to out maneuver your competitors?".

The development frameworks (Ruby, Jango etc.) are an obvious start but that won’t give you an edge over anyone else – it just keeps you level. What have you worked out that no-one else has ?

Remember that whilst the idea is important, the most successful start-up’s are the ones that out-execute the others.

We come across many interesting ideas for products and/or businesses but more often than not it requires a lot of digging around to actually to find that gem of an idea.

Maybe that digging is part of the value an investor in start-up’s is expected to add, but as an entrepreneur it pays if you can explain your offering to an investor in a VERY simple manner.

Either it needs to make sense straight away, or you need to explain that it won’t make sense and explain why (simply!).

Investors love to talk about how they invest in people. For most however, a strong team is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to fund a start-up. With few exceptions, investors already want the team to be working on a good idea (even though they know it is likely to change along the way). But what makes a good idea? How do you know if it’s any good? Family and friends are usually the first people to hear of your ideas, but they tend to be supportive of pretty much anything you do. Once you get to asking strangers or casual acquaintances for money however, you had better be prepared to answer some hard questions, to have all your assumptions challenged. Such feedback is rarely pleasant, but keep in mind that its purpose is not to discourage you, but rather to help you refine your plans and increase your chances of success. In order to minimise the pain of those first few encounters, here are some things to consider ahead of time.

Un gros merci à Austin Hill et Patrick Lauzon pour avoir organisé le deuxième souper Founders and Funders, un événement de réseautage hors pair selon moi, pour ceux et celles qui sont intéressés par le démarrage d’entreprises en TIC.

Parmi les nombreuses discussions de la soirée, une mérite particulièrement d’être répété. Un de mes compagnons de table nous a fait remarquer qu’il y avait très peu de femmes présentes. Je ne blâme aucunement les organisateurs de l’événement, c’est plutôt un reflet des milieux de l’investissement et des technologies de l’information; d’ailleurs, j’ai déjà écrit un billet à ce sujet. Je suis donc heureux de voir l’émergence de plus d’activités ciblant les femmes en technologie. Après Montreal Girl Geek Dinner, voici la FiQ qui offre un évènement sur le thème de l’Entrepreneuriat TI au féminin.

At Montreal Start Up we are happy to sit down with anyone who is thinking of launching a tech business out of Montreal, whether they are looking for funding or not.

Most of the entrepreneurs who come to us are first timers who have an idea or sometimes, a beta product, but are still a long way off from having a fundable business. Accordingly, most of our initial meetings are spent discussing the idea and providing feedback to the entrepreneur. All too often however, a lot of that time is spent discussing really basic stuff. As more and more demands are being placed on our time, it is becoming clear that this approach just won’t scale. We still want to meet with entrepreneurs, but we want that time to be used more effectively.

What I think the local scene needs is its own Startup School, running once or twice a year, to cover the basics. Yes, there is a ton of material in any library or online, but as the old saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know!” With experienced entrepreneurs and investors drawing up the curriculum, aspiring founders will at least know what bases they need to cover.

So what do you think? Is this an idea worth pursuing? And if so, do you have any thoughts on the format or curriculum?
 

I’m not a fan of the “drive traffic to a site and monetize via ads” business model. Too often it feels like all the creativity and effort goes into monetization, with building a truly great product or service merely an afterthought. That being said, there are plenty of startups that have created valuable offerings for which ad placement is a legitimate source of revenues. Now while, I’m quite comfortable with the ad driven model, I don’t feel I fully grok it. As such, I’d like to know which blogs, books, articles, speakers, etc. you turn to when seeking original insight on the subject?

I’ve been taking advantage of the long weekend to catch up on my reading and came across this article over at Read/WriteWeb. It’s interesting, not so much because of the points it makes (these points have been covered previously by others, including here), but because these ideas surrounding the funding of web startups now seem to be mainstream.

Dernièrement j’ai entendu parler d’une startup qui venait de recevoir du financement pour offrir conseils et produits de beauté/santé en ligne. Ça semblait évident comme marché, mais je n’y avais jamais pensé. C’est à ce moment que je me suis rendu compte qu’aucun des plans d’affaires qu’a reçu MSU ne ciblait les femmes. Pas un seul des entrepreneurs qui nous a contacté n’était une femme (Correction: en fait une femme entrepreneure nous a contacté, Christina Tomaz-Young de VC-TV. Mille excuses Christina). Aucun des investisseurs potentiels qu’on a rencontrés n’était une femme. Et bien que je suis loin d’avoir fait le tour du milieu, jusqu’à présent je n’ai rencontré que deux femmes impliquées dans le financement de démarrage pour entreprises en technologie et les deux géraient des fonds publics.

Cela fait longtemps que le problème est connu. Il existe plein de programmes pour encourager les filles à choisir des carrières en sciences pures et en ingénierie et prévenir leur décrochage. Malgré cela, en génie électrique à McGill lorsque j’y étais, les femmes ne comptait que pour 18% des étudiants du premier cycle. A l’époque je croyais que ça affecterait seulement la façon dont l’ingénierie se ferait. Mais je soupçonne maintenant que ça a un impact bien plus grand. Si les femmes sont sous-représentées lors de la conception des produits et si elles ne participent pas à la décision de financer les nouvelles initiatives, l’offre de nouveaux produits et services technologiques peut-elle vraiment répondre à leurs besoins? N’y aurait-il pas là une belle opportunité commerciale?

C’est toujours un plaisir pour John et moi de rencontrer des entrepreneurs, mais ce sera un plaisir particulier de parler affaires avec des entrepreneures. Alors mesdames, qu’attendez-vous?

Je viens tout juste de terminer l’excellent Founders at Work: stories of startups’ early days de Jessica Livingston. Le concept est simple : 32 entrevues avec les fondateurs de startups ayant connus un grand succès. Si la formule est simple, l’exécution est particulièrement réussie et nous fait vivre l’émotion des premiers jours de compagnies telles que PayPal, RIM, Flickr, Yahoo!, Adobe et Viaweb.

On en retient, entre autre, que le modèle d’affaire initial est rarement le bon et que c’est la bonne gestion de l’entreprise, bien plus qu’une idée ou technologie originale, qui détermine le succès de l’entreprise. A lire absolument si vous envisagez démarrer (ou l’avez déjà fait!) votre propre compagnie de logiciel/Internet.