Ontario Startup Train 2

Ontario Startup Train

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.

Last year we took a small leap here. We commissioned a private first class Via rail car for a round trip to Montreal. The destination was the International Startup Festival. For a peek at last year’s trip, check out Qasim’s post and photos.

Why? I still don’t know the answer to that. It seemed like a reasonably crazy idea at the time.train

In the end, we sold out and filled our car with 50+ startup junkies and travelled to startup fest and back together. We had an AV setup on the car which allowed some of our companies to pitch to the train so we knew what they were working on.

We’re doing it again this year, stay tuned here and our email list as we announce ticket sales soon. A sneak peak at some changes we’re working towards based on our experience last year……

One Way

The combination of some people leaving early or staying a few extra days in Montreal meant our return car was only about 3/4 full. As well, after a few days of startup festival, we were all fairly tanked. We’re focusing our efforts on the trip to the festival. We’ll offer an optional return train trip and we’re hoping to offer an optional return flight as well.

More of You

This is a lofty goal so don’t hold me to this yet. We’re working on having three cars total. Two of those cars will be first-class cars where your seat will be. In between those cars, we’re hoping to sandwich the bar car we rode home on last year. Our on-train events will take place in that middle social car which will allow for some flow amongst the cars.

Pre Events

Startup conferences are not corporate conferences. I have little patience for anyone complaining about ROI for startup fest. Instead of asking myself and Phil for a cheaper ticket, tell me how you’re going to get $2000 of value out of this entire experience!

To that end, we’re working on hosting some pre-events intended to get our train folks together ahead of time. We all have specific goals for this conference. We want to find a funder, a co-founder, a customer, etc. Let’s try and share our goals as best we can before we get to the conference so you’re not on the hunt alone.

Headshots and Avatars

Office

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.

Anyone can point their iphone at the mirror but a professional headshot for your avatar won’t come from that. We’re having Noelle come in and shoot headshots for our ThreeFortyNine members. We’d figure we’d open it up the public as well.

The shoot will take less than 30 minutes per person. You’ll receive two final versions that have been edited. It’s free for ThreeFortyNine members, $50 for non-members. Look at the magic she worked on the 20 Skaters crew!

If you need headshots, make sure to confirm on the event page asap! Space is limited but we’ll run this again soon if it’s popular.

Benefiting From Chaos..Lights Out with Oreo at Super Bowl

Office

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.

The subtitle of the book Antifragile is “Things That Gain from Disorder. I’m fascinated by that concept and specifically how you can leverage it within the chaos that is new business creation. How can you prepare your business and team to not just be unharmed by large unpredictable events but to benefit from them?

A thread in this book is the concept of optionality and how it, along with risk taking, are the greatest tools you have available. Few of us truly recognize and leverage optionality in the day to day.

“Risk taking ain’t gambling, and optionality ain’t lottery tickets.”

Last night I witnessed a great example of antifragility in practice in an advertising setting so I wanted to share it. The power went out last night during the Super Bowl. It’s fairly clear we could classify that as an unpredicted event. I don’t think anyone prepared for that scenario, certainly not advertisers.

Within minutes of the power going out, Oreo posted to twitter “Power out? No problem.” along with this image. You can read more about it on the interwebs. Was it anything mind

oreo

blowing? Well technically no, it was a reasonably simple image and a post to twitter.  How many brands and marketing teams were prepared to leverage an unpredictable event like this? On the other side, how many were actually injured by this event? The timing of their precisely planned campaigns thrown off by the delay etc.

I say nice work Oreo! Your super bowl advertising left yourself a world of options and allowed you to gain from the disorder that a massive event like this always contains. Who knows what you could of pulled off with this approach and an unpredictable wardrobe malfunction?

Feedback Required

Founders' Club Office

Adam Little

It’s not optional, it’s not just good to have, and it shouldn’t be low priority, feedback, is vital to success. Not everyone will like you, things won’t just click for your audience, and not every idea you have will be a home run. Don’t ignore those that can make or break your product, but rather engage them throughout its creation.

So, why do people gloss over feedback?

Feedback can be devastating. I have an idea, I think it’s great, I don’t want someone to destroy that feeling. I have seen people take this as far as not googling their “revolutionary” concept for fear of its current existence. Look at this as an opportunity to avoid wasting your time and energy on something that isn’t worth it.

feedbackFeedback can be liberating. Sometimes you have a project, which has become stagnant. You’re in this rut where you are doing something that you feel isn’t productive, but can’t motivate yourself to move out of it. Perhaps, the perspective and input someone that is distanced from the project can jar you out of it.

Feedback can be exhilarating. You have an idea but are unsure of where it may go. The process of reaching out to others, a business partner or the market, can strengthen and validate your work, which motivates you to work smarter. Early on in the process this can be crucial to flushing out what is you want to do but more importantly why it will succeed.

Where does ThreeFortyNine fit in? A space where you can gather informal and formal feedback, from individuals from different backgrounds and with varying levels of experience, is valuable- very valuable. You avoid the pitfalls of only bouncing ideas off clones of yourself and this creates an environment where both giving and receiving feedback becomes second nature.

It doesn’t mean it is always positive, but I guess that’s why they added the keg.

Startups, Just Pick Up An Instrument!

Founders' Club Startupify.Me

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.

I reference this great post by Jason Fried almost weekly. He compares learning to create new businesses to learning to play an instrument. Getting is more about pickup up an instrument and making noise around like minded folks than it is about pitch contests and incubators.

My kids and I were watching Danny MacAskill’s video the other night.

My son asked “how did he learn how to do all of that?” Luckily we happened to be about 30 seconds into the video. At that point Danny falls a few times. I answered my son “that’s how he did it. He made it up, had a silly plan, tried it hundreds of times with small course corrections each time”.

Another video my kids and I watch often is Edward Sharpe performing live.

Beyond the music, I enjoy watching how Alex leads. He spends more time facing his bandmates and interacting with them than any audience. Clearly there’s a framework in place in the form of a structured song but it’s clear he expects creation from each member in the moment. Stumbling and failure are part of creation. You can see Alex smile when a bandmate makes a mistake. You can see more of this style in this NPR video…

I’m of the opinion that team formation and project definition are artificially forced to occur too early in startups. A mandate for me at ThreeFortyNine and Startupify.Me are to allow them to happen as late as possible. If we all focus more on finding ways to pick up an instrument and jam together, the rest will work itself out. Someone will write great songs that we’ll be attracted to playing them. Others will book shows. Maybe you’re more like Alex and will do all of the above, enabling and leading incredible artists to create great music. Or maybe you’ll be one of those awesome musicians reinventing Alex’s songs everyday. Don’t worry about all that today, just pickup an instrument and find some people to play with!

Starting Up To Get Some

Startupify.Me

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.

Is it just me or are startups, and being a founder of a startup, just about the coolest thing around these days? A few years back a funder suggested to me that there’s too much ‘starting up to get laid’ going on. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was referring to but I’m starting to clue in.

I realize I’ve said this before but let’s review, there’s nothing cool about starting up a new business. You read The E-Myth right? So you already know about “the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work“?

Then I read recently about entrepreneurship profiteering? At first I was sucked in by that article. Yeah, those greedy meanies sucking all the money out of our great startups and causing them to fail. We need to stop them, let’s name names, let’s out these pirates!

Then I came to my senses. If we’re going to name names, let’s name these so-called “startups”. Let’s face it, the great ones, the one’s who will tear through any obstacle to succeed won’t be slowed down by crappy advice. They won’t suffer fools. The idea that an entrepreneur needs protection from these bandits is absurd. By entrepreneur, I’m referring to someone who’s actually created something from nothing, which a customer values. I’m not referring to…well everyone else.

Entrepreneurs aren’t spending money on design, development, hiring etc from people “who radiate false bravado” and “sound like a late night infomercial”, give me a break. They’re too busy doing it! They’re practitioners and craftsmen, they’re not wringing their hands about the bad advice that caused them to fail. They aren’t pointing fingers, whining or blaming. They’re accepting all responsibility and getting back at it. If “these wolves in sheep’s clothing” can bleed me dry, then shame on me!

I agree with the point of the article but I say bring on the profiteers! They’re doing us all a service by culling the ecosystem so the rest of us have a clearer path to our customer. It reminds me of downturns in the real estate market. My friends who are killing it in real estate get a twisted joy from these downturns as it chases out the pretenders and part-time agents who are phoning it in anyway.

If you’re considering starting up a new business, don’t! There’s no ribbon for participation here. Trust me, keep your dayjob, make your boss happy because she’s really not that bad. Spend your weekends explaining to your friends and family how you ‘thought of that one first’ and keep collecting your paycheque.

Why am I not trying to talk you into a startup? Why would I? When I’m not out buying coffee and toilet paper for ThreeFortyNine, I’m busy failing at creating new businesses. I have no interest in funneling you through the ThreeFortyNine turnstile so that I can claim you as a success story if you’re the one in a million that succeeds. I’d rather you keep your job so I have more room to create and more customers to win.

“that small, very small number of risk takers crazy enough to have ideas of their own, those endowed with that very rare ability called imagination, that rarer quality called courage, and who make things happen.“, Antifragile

You’re still reading? Ok, you should seriously stop by ThreeFortyNine immediately because you may be one of us! Oh and if you’re a software developer and you’re quitting your job tomorrow, you should consider applying to Startupify.Me. Careful, we may fleece you! Cripes this wolf skin is hot….

How Coworking Ruined Me

Office Startupify.Me

Eric

I work at Boltmade and 20Skaters. I mostly write Ruby, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I hate timezones. Find me on Twitter: @eroberts

A little over a year ago, I was happy. I had a decent job, I had a good group of friends, and I had hobbies and interests outside of work. I did, however, work from home, and it was boring. Sure, I talked to people via IM or phone conversations throughout the course of the day, but it wasn’t the same as real human interaction. I didn’t want to become the stereotypical developer who stays holed up in his basement writing code, so I decided to see what I could do about this problem. It just so happened that I stumbled upon an article about coworking and a subsequent search for “coworking in Guelph” brought me to ThreeFortyNine. I sent an email, came in to try it out for a day and ended up with a desk in the building. Now I do all my work in an environment where I have other people to talk to, bounce ideas off of, and fulfill my daily quota of human interaction. My life got a little better, end of story.

Except… that’s not quite what happened. I thought I was paying for a desk, but that’s not what I got. Instead, ThreeFortyNine ruined my life. You see, the people there have this funny preoccupation with startups.

Creating a startup, for those of you who don’t know, is the process of identifying problems and charging people to fix them. Or, as Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, puts it, they are “a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty“. It’s that uncertainty part that gets me. Why would I want to leave my comfortable job and attempt making something out of nothing in “conditions of extreme uncertainty”?

Slowly however, my feelings towards startups began to change. I started checking out ThreeFortyNine events like Founder’s Club and DemoCampGuelph. What I found was a bunch of people who were passionate about what they do and why they’re doing it. Looking at my own job, I couldn’t say that’s how I felt about it. Did I like my job? Sure, it was acceptable. But after seeing these people who were involved with their own projects, acceptable wasn’t good enough anymore. Pursuing my own ideas started to seem more appealing than showing up and being told what to do. So I got involved with a startup.

I didn’t initially jump at the offer to join a startup. I actually said no. I felt I didn’t have the time to commit to my regular day job and something extra. At the same time, I was starting to feel like I wanted to do something that wasn’t my normal routine of building a site for a client, passing it off, and moving to the next project. After some convincing, I reluctantly joined Printchomp. In a few short months, my technical ability and business knowledge has easily doubled. I work with a great team of people who are personally invested in the results of our project. That sense of ownership makes the work different. I’m not just passing it off to clients who are then going to use my work to make money for themselves. What I do has a direct effect on my future. It’s both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

As I got more involved with the startup world, I started to see things differently. I don’t think that these companies are finding problems that don’t exist and working to fix them. A lot of them are looking for the inefficiencies in our everyday lives and looking to solve them. That’s what I identify with. I like solving problems. Now I want to solve problems and get paid for it. And if I got rich while doing that, I wouldn’t complain. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

How Do You Work?

Office

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.

“It ain’t about the desks”, I find myself saying that a lot in reference to ThreeFortyNine. It’s enlightening witnessing a person’s transition from when they first visit our building to a few months of working here full time. It’s all about the costs on day one, however, in a short time, you see people go from “I have a desk at home, it’s a good setup but a bit distracting but it’s free” over to….

“What excites me about ThreeFortyNine goes beyond just the workspace and into an environment created by a collection of driven, imaginative individuals with an aversion to comfort zones. People here aren’t afraid to challenge themselves and, quite frankly, that attitude’s contagious”, Matthew Sharpeg7_blog

As this Fast Company article speaks to, once you truly experience a coworking environment you quickly realize it’s real benefits have very little to do with office space and a desk.

“The ability to approach problems from a variety of angles is the undercurrent running through coworking spaces”

“Sometimes that’s just tapping someone outside of your team on the shoulder and asking their opinion. Other times, it may be a 15-minute whiteboarding session with a developer on another startup.”

This article alludes to larger companies beginning to leverage the benefits or coworking. We’re certainly seeing a bit of that here, however, my sense is it’s still dominated by freelancers and micro teams.

Have you tried coworking? What did you see as the core benefits of it? Let us know in the comments below. Oh, and obviously if you’d like to try coworking, just let me know!

Products vs Services

Founders' Club

Brian de Alwis

Founder’s Club recap for January 17th meeting…

We had Michael Lewkowitz from Igniter start a wide-ranging discussion around shifting business focus from products to services, or vice-versa. We touched on many topics:

  • A false dichtomy? Received wisdom recommends small businesses focus on seeking either products or services, but not both. But a business may slowly shift, such as monetizing services offered around their products (e.g., a bookstore charging for a meet-the-author or book club), or building a product to support their services work. Whether you sell a product or services, it’s about solving problems experienced by your customers.
  • Does your culture support the shift? I hadn’t considered the importance of cultural fit. Services-related work tends to be more constrained by the client and may be repetitive, whereas product-related work is problem-focused and requires research and experimentation. The people performing services have more visibility than those working on a product. Selling an engagement is very different from selling a product. More established businesses may see problems from perceptions of money-making areas propping up money-losing areas.
  • How do you manage the transition from services to product? “Product looks easy until you try it.” Do you continue to take services work or make a clean break? Does everybody wear multiple hats, or do you split out a separate team? Can you afford to take the hit on revenue to get your product out? Could somebody else develop a product that cuts out your services revenue?

The best part of Founders Club is learning from the experiences of others. We left considering one problem: how can a business best manage shifting from services to product, where the services will be cannibalized by the product (and if not their own product, then by a competitor’s), but where its culture doesn’t support it?