Ben Yoskovitz announced on his blog recently that Standout Jobs had been acquired by another company in the recruitment space.

This is Montreal Start Up’s first exit since the fund was officially launched in Feb 2008 !

Congratulations to Ben, Fred Ngo and the rest of the Standout Jobs team who showed an incredible amount of tenacity and endurance in making this happen.

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.

Standout Jobs, Cozimo and Xtranormal have recently been pitching their businesses at DEMO. These pitches were all well received by the audience – and one of the key reasons for that is that they were prepared specifically  for that audience. In other words, to deliver a good pitch it is essential to understand the motivation and objectives of your audience.

Knowing your audience is also important when it comes to pitching potential investors. Some time ago Brad Feld published a list of questions that a pitch to a VC should address. We have developed a set of questions that we think are more applicable to pitching angel investors:

• Set the scene – Explain why the space your business operates in is interesting to you and should be interesting to an investor.
• What is your vision for the business? How will you be perceived?
• What is the need you are trying to fulfill? Who specifically has this need? What is the intensity of demand? ( ie are potential customers/users willing to invest time or money to satiate the need?)
• How many potential customers/users have this need ? (ie How big is the market?)
• What is your offering? How does it fulfill the need of your potential customers/users? What stage is it at (idea, beta, in production)?
• What are you competing against? What differentiates your offering from others and why does it matter to your users / customers?
• How do you generate revenue?
• What is your strategy for attracting and retaining customers / users?
• What relevant experience or insight does your team have for executing this strategy?                       
• In addition to money, what other resources are you lacking right now? (e.g. key hires, key relationships, etc)
• How will this investment fit in with the overall financial plan of the company? (e.g.Enough funds until profitability (no further investment anticipated) or Interim financing round (how long will this funding last))
• What business milestones will this investment enable you to reach? Why are these milestones significant? What key perfomance indicators can you use to track progress towards the milestones?
• Are there any other material matters ? e.g. Outstanding debts, important contracts, specific timing requirements for an investment etc.

Whilst some of these questions might appear to invite broad sweeping answers – that is not the idea. Be tight, be concise and debate each question thoroughly before you answer it.

We will continue to refine these questions based on feedback from entrepreneurs, Reseau Anges Quebec and NAOQ.

We have been a bit pre-occupied recently and so we are rather late in saying this – but it is still worth saying !

MSU is determined to see Montreal become an Entrepreneur-Centric Environment (EPCE) and the funding of talented entrepreneurs by both Angel Investors and traditional VC’s is a watershed in the development of Montreal as an EPCE.

What do we mean by an EPCE? We mean an environment which is conducive to the establishment and growth of entrepreneurial enterprises – an environment full of people who aspire to use their talent, people who aspire to fund that talent, and who together aspire to create great businesses.

Fig 1. An Entrepreneur-Centric Environment

With Standout Jobs we have two talented entrepreneurs who aspire to create a great company, mentored and funded by a more experienced entrepreneur / Angel Investor. In turn this has provided an opportunity for an early stage VC investor to invest in a promising Montreal business – a great example of the benefit of a multi-tiered funding environment.

The jury is still out on whether StandOut Jobs will be a success, but should they succeed or fail it is important that other entrepreneurs, angel investors and VC’s recognize and applaud the achievements of everyone involved to date in this business and aspire to be involved in the building of other great businesses.