Montreal Start Up

Un des sports favoris des montréalais, c’est de démontrer à quel point on est supérieur à Toronto. On vante nos loyers abordables, notre dynamisme culturel, les pistes cyclables, la beauté des Québécoises, mais jamais les indicateurs économiques. On va à Toronto pour faire de l’argent, pour brasser des grosses affaires; c’est bien connu… ou du moins ce l’était.

Pour moi, c’est Mat Balez qui a débuté le bal sur son blogue. Bagel, joie de vivre, bonne bouffe pas chère , rien de nouveau jusque là, mais voilà qu’il commence à parler de la scène techno, comment vu de Vancouver, Montréal à le vent dans les voiles.

La semaine dernière le Globe and Mail nous annonçait que le taux de chômage à Toronto venait de dépasser celui de Montréal. De mémoire d’homme ça ne c’était jamais vu.

Cette semaine, j’ai rencontré un entrepreneur Torontois qui était venu dans notre belle ville chercher du capital de démarrage. Oui, oui, vous m’avez bien compris, il a choisi de commencer sa quête pour du financement à Montréal. Qui plus est, il dit être prêt à déménager l’entreprise à Montréal si ça peut faciliter l’affaire.

Serions-nous devenus plus lucides que la ville-reine?

Cette semaine j’ai rencontré un archetype de la mythologie des hackers. Dans la sous-culture des geeks, ceux qui créent leur propres outils sont partiulièrement bien perçu; ces hackers qui ne se contentent pas de denigrer les outils existants ou de souhaiter une façon plus simple de faire x. Cet entrepreneur, ayant trouvé une solution technologique à son besoin, s’est rendu compte que ce qu’il a créé à une valeur réelle. Le hic, c’est qu’ayant développé une technologie intéressante, il n’est pas certain comment la commercialiser.

Cette semaine j’ai rencontré un homme d’affaires, un gars de business. Pragmatique, il est dans le milieu pour l’argent point à la ligne. Homme d’expérience, il sait comment gagner de l’argent sur le Web. Dans le duo Bill Gates – Paul Allen, lui c’est clairement Gates. Il a bâti un modèle financier d’abord et ensuite a développé les sites web nécessaires pour le succès de son modèle. Pourtant, je crois qu’il lui manque encore un morceau du puzzle.

Deux approches opposées: du besoin vers l’argent et des projections financières vers le contenu en ligne. Le hacker et l’homme d’affaires. Qu’arriverait-il si on les assoyait ensembles à la même table? Je ne le sais pas encore, mais je vois une complémentarité intéressante entre leur projets…

Last night was the annual “Les Anges Financiers de Montréal” Gala. It was a well organised event that culminated in prizes being awarded in 5 catagories:

Start-Up

Servivap – Servivap Canada manufactures and distributes industrial water treatment products for Vapour-generating boilers and cooling systems. Their exclusive biodegradable products generate energy saving costs of upto 15% without any capital investment.

Expansion

Emovendo – Emevendo have developed a suit of relationship marketing technologies, particularly for Online Customer Acquisition. Very well presented by the Founder Alexandre Pettelier whose has had previous start-up experience.

Jury’s Pick (coup de coeur)

Matrix Evolutions – Matrix Evolutions has developed a state-of-the-art machine in the roofing industry: the Shingles Peeler. The SP, as I like to call it, simultaneously tears of shingles and nails without any physical effort. “C’est pas incredible ca !” It really was a bit of a Tetes a Clacques moment – pas un, pas deux mais quatre fois plus vite !

Innovation

Pakwa Technologies (no website) – Medical diagnostic tools company that was created by Yves Martin to bring to market technologies developed at the University of Sherbrooke.

Banque National Prize

Proximo – Proximo Systems provide an OEM”able” hosted VOIP solutions for businesses and carriers.

In general I was impressed by the quality of the presentations even though most of them were outside my field of interest. One presentation that I did find interesting was by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan of Mojo Supreme. Mojo Supreme runs the watchmojo.com Web TV portal. Prior to this venture Ashkan was responsible for the majority of the Ad sales activity at AskMen.com. He knows his product well and is obviously an accomplished salesman. Something to watch.

There were a number of VC’s represented including Garage, BDC Venture Capital and Propulsion Ventures. It is hard to guess the actual number of Angel Investors at the event and it will be interesting to see how many of these companies actually get funded.

In summary, events such as this help in providing a concentrated focus on start-up entrepreneurs. Perhaps more importantly though, this event reinforces the fact that Angel Investors are an essential part of the VC funding mix and that it is essential to recognise and support their investment efforts.

I have been following the municipal wifi market over the last year following an investment I made in RoamAD, a wireless infrastructure vendor.

Quebec, as with Canada in general, has a strong wireless history (congratulations Mr. Sirois !) and it is still being driven today by VC’s such as Acta Wireless, Trio Capital and Garage Canada along with the “usual suspects” of Caisse de Depot and FTQ.

Montreal now has some serious players in the Wimax market, including SR Telecom, Maravedis and Wavesat; but Why, I ask, is nothing happening in the area of wifi? I know I’m going to sound very much like a conspiracy theorist but is this a coincidence ? The guys at Ils Sans Fils have doon a great job at getting hotspots throughout Montreal, as have Eye-In Wireless, but nothing of any scale has even been mooted in Montreal.

I have done some work on a wholsesale/retail business model for a Wireless ISP (along the lines of the UK’s Cloud and think that something along those lines could work in Canada (It does for Wimax!!), but one of the issues I’ve been tackling recently is the network roll out and in particular site acquisition.

Utility providers and the various “cities” of Montreal have infrastructure that might be usable but it has also been suggested to me that other companies may have citywide infrastructure that may assist in getting the site acquisition rolling quickly. Is anyone willing to stand up to the evil forces of Montreal’s Wimax community ?

(I don’t really think there is a conspiracy, or that the Wimax community is evil – sometime you’ve just got to, and I quote, “weave the pot of soup!”)

My areas of interest are quite wide ranging; Media, Internet, Wireless, Consumer Finance, Property, Design and Hospitality.

Building a company on your own is no fun. So I’d be happy to hear from anyone who has any interest in joining a start-up and has experience or passion in these areas. You can do the old CV thing if you like but why not just drop me a paragraph or two on who you are and what you like and we can take it from there.