Who’s Crazy Enough?

Founders' Club

Brydon

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

Founder’s Club recap for January 9th meeting…

Thanks to Ali Asaria from well.ca for dropping by. The most interesting tangent for me was this concept of how crazy you have to be to attempt creating a (insert dollar figure) dollar company. As well, if you show signs of success on that path, it’s very likely you will have to turn down multiple enticing exits along the way.

The thread reminded me of the book Different, in which she explains that insane and brilliant ideas are indistinguishable in their infancy. Large corporations, which are mandated to mitigate risk, are built to identify those insane/brilliant ideas and crush them. A brilliant idea, in it’s infancy, requires shelter and protection. Ultimately that is real opportunity that individuals who start things from scratch have over larger organizations. You, as an individual, can do crazy things.

If you’re out on your own starting something new and a corporate environment doesn’t think what you’re doing is a little crazy then you should consider dropping it. The point isn’t being crazy just to be crazy. It’s that in them deeming you insane, you know they can’t compete with you and you know you may have something brilliant on your hands. If someone in that corporate setting does attempt to compete with you, you can rest assured that a boss will kill that project at some point. It’s not what they’re tooled for, they can’t take on the risk.

This Wednesday at Founder’s Club, our friend Michael Lewkowitz is joining us. As always, spots are limited so please register.

Silent No More

DemoCampGuelph

Colin DeCarlo

Kanye Lets Taylor Finish

In the words of the great Kanye West, Simon “Imma let you finish” but I just want everyone to know that I had one of the best DemoCampGuelph (DCG) presentations of ALL TIME. Let’s be honest here, what I brought to the table that night was nothing short of spectacular, a masterpiece for the ages and it’s not only upsetting but straight up wrong that I didn’t get to take home the crowie.

Don’t get me wrong, what I think Simon did with the Diyode crew in developing the CodeShield is great. It allows people of all ages and ability to get up and running with an Arduino in a matter minutes. It really is an amazing product and the fact that it came out of the maker community right here in Guelph fills my heart with pride. I mean, just think of the impact the CodeShield could have on our future generation of makers; give a child with a burgeoning interest in electronics two potatoes, some leads and digital display and you may hold their interest for an hour. Give that same child an Arduino with a CodeShield and they will spend hours enjoying its spinning cross thingie and blinking light.

The purpose of my writing today is not to take anything from Simon or his “win” that night at DCG, think of it more like a wake up call for the jokers that call themselves judges. If Simon had shown the CodeShield at any other DCG I’m sure he would have deserved his win, but that night he and the other presenters started at a disadvantage, I was presenting as well. That’s the way life is sometimes, it’s like bringing a professional athlete to a game of pickup, it’s not his fault that he was born with natural athletic talent, just as it’s not everyone else’s fault they weren’t. I’ve been silent for some time now, determined to be the better man and to not voice my disappointment at the “judges” decision that night but I cannot, will not, remain silent any longer. I demand that these judges be stripped of their positions and never allowed to make any decisions regarding anything ever again. If they got something so simple as who won the crowie wrong then just think of the disasters they could cause in other areas.

  • “The sign says STOP so surely everyone else will STOP and I can continue on my merry, ignorant way.”
  • “Washing my hands is just a hassle and I’ve already been sick with the flu this year, what’s the worst that could happen?”
  • “There’s no chocolate left in this box of Neapolitan and all I ever eat is chocolate, time for another box of Neapolitan.”

My call to action isn’t for my own satisfaction in seeing these people held accountable for their misguided misinformed decision, it’s a public service to save the community.

Has anyone ever wondered just how the DCG judgement is rendered? I wouldn’t be surprised if these dullards read tea leaves or goat entrails. How can we stand idly by as our fate as presenters is held hostage by such savage devices. It’s time we took control and push back against this oppression. “Seize the day” they say, well I say why stop there? We must seize the crowie, release it from the clutches of evil and allow it to be given to the rightful winner. The presenter who truly owned the stage, captivated the audience and presented the most amazing, mind bending application or device. The writing is on the wall, the winner of DCG shouldn’t be decided by judges who are apparently completely out of touch but by the audience, that’s who we’re here for anyways.

drop the mic

Burn it to the ground!

Founders' Club

Scott Allen

Founder’s Club recap for our December 12th meeting…

[Give] Dave Bullock of Fongo dove into his approach for identifying market opportunities. Instead of creating new markets or developing nascent ones, Dave described his love for disruption. Ripe for the taking are massive markets where the incumbents are equally huge and stuck in a perpetual tug of war over market share. The key to disrupting these markets is to change the system dynamics. It’s not about carving off a little piece of the overall market, it’s about forever altering it.

There are a number of methods a startup can take to cause this disruption, one being the freemium, but the essence of the business maneuver is to shrink the overall market size and seize control. An example cited was the classified ads business in the newspaper industry. The lifeblood of that industry was valued in the billions and a small startup came along and disrupted it mightily. Craigslist effectively walked into that mansion and torched it. Of course they also skillfully walked away with a very valuable gold and diamond encrusted Fabergé egg worth many millions of dollars before the last beam of that market went up in smoke.

At Fongo, the team is taking a disruptive approach to the massive mobile communications world with one simple concept: Free. Fongo saves you hundreds of dollars per year with free calling, free messaging, a free phone number and free premium services delivered via a rich content mobile media platform. It will be very interesting to see how the Fongo story plays out as we definitely saw the mansion and the case of molotovs. Hope they remember to bring the matches.

[Take] Dave flipped the switch on us and conducted an impromptu brainstorming session with our group. It’s not too often that a business leader gets the undivided creative juices of a set of hungry entrepreneurs. That is of course, unless you show up to Founders Club. Our task was to brainstorm how a company could bring a voice renaissance to the teenagers of the world. It seems that demographic has forgotten the value of voice communication and instead places a great focus on texting and SMS. A lot of great thoughts and concepts were proposed and there’s no doubt that we saw Dave pause to take some serious mental notes.

This Wednesday we’re talking about the concept of antifragility and getting a peek at our friend AJ’s new project, If you’re curious to try an event out, let Brydon know?

We Have Field Notes…(on sale)

Office

Brydon

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

We sell Field Notes here, partially because we wish we were hipsters, mostly because they’re wicked paper and pens. We’re drooling over their newly released expedition edition and want to place a new order so we can have them. To do that, we’re clearing out some current stock.

We have a few remaining 3-packs. We’re selling those for $10 each or 3 x 3-packs for $20. Stop by if you’re looking for some great Christmas gifts for the pen and paper types in your world.

Have Some Personality

Founders' Club

Brydon

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

Founder’s Club recap for our December 5th meeting…


[Give] Matthew Sharpe of Daring Boy shared the value of allowing your personality to come through in the design process. Taking the time to step back from the colours and nuts and bolts of building to remember why you’re building your business and then allowing the design process to draw that out.

[Take] We stuck with Matthew and spent some time discussing how he’s built up his design studio to date. After sharing where he’s at, we brainstormed where he’s heading, how to move there faster. A lot of the discussion, as often does, centered around narrowing in on who your customer is.

Founder’s Club is an interesting beast. In explaining what we do, I often say that our speakers, presentations, agendas exist only to kick off all the side conversations. The magic tends to happen after our ‘formal’ Give and Take parts of the evening when we share pints and splinter off to conspire with each other in more detail.

Next week, we have our friend Dave Bullock stopping by to lay some startup wisdom on us. If you’re curious to try an event out, let me know?

Postcards and Landing Pages

Founders' Club

Brydon

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

Founder’s Club recap for our October 24th meeting…

I realize this is getting old but we had yet another full house last night at Founder’s Club. We had a great mix of people building both tech and non-tech businesses which was awesome. Thanks for everyone who came out.

Scott led a discussion on landing page optimization. The crux being not all conversions and metrics are the same. Bob shared some of the Hippopost story with us. It was great to see the entire room excited about sending postcards.

We’re Hosting A Social!!

Next Wednesday is a scary night so we won’t be hosting Founder’s Club. We are, however, getting together Thursday at 5pm for an off-site social at The eBar. Please note, this is NOT at ThreeFortyNine, we’ll be at the ebar.

We’re hoping to get everyone out, as well as few friends curious to learn more about ThreeFortyNine. This is a chance for us all to get in a room together, have a drink, catchup, and meet others if you haven’t yet. Please register here.

Friday at noon we have our Brown Bag Tech event here in our boardroom. This time around we’re talking about the differences and uniqueness of the various CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. How do you pick one? Which one’s are better for certain applications etc. Space is limited for this so register here.

Leaders and Feeders

Founders' Club

Brydon

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

Founder’s Club recap for our October 17th meeting….

Sweet fancy mary, I thought we had a full house last week. We packed them in last night. It was double rows and stadium seating. I started the night off talking about Brad Feld and his thesis about leaders and feeders. It quickly became clear we had a room full of leaders. It was exciting to see the wheels churning and plans forming on how we ourselves can lead. Yes, that is a photo of Brad and I….or is it….

Brett Shellhammer then shared his new startup Organimi with us. With Brett’s deep experience in the enterprise and startup community, he always has lot’s to discuss and fascinating insights. His recent project also went through the new Hyperdrive program in KW.

Selling Expensive Stuff Online

Founders' Club

Brydon

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

Founder’s Club recap for our October 10th meeting….

Scott led a discussion about selling expensive, high margin goods online. We seeded the discussion by reviewing MacKenzie & Marr and their model of selling guitars made in China online. It was clear to everyone in the room how important their Dragon’s Den appearance played in marketing. We were fortunate to have Mark in the room who created Folkway Music from the ground up. His behind the scenes insight into this particular business was fascinating. A few more related links:

MacKenzie & Marr Bring Guitar-making Into The 21st Century

Up Close With MacKenzie & Marr’s Handmade, Online-Only Guitars

Where Are They Now: MacKenzie & Marr Guitars

With Dave Estill in the room with us, we moved onto discussing his business and the realities of operating in a heavily policy driven environment. We spent some time brainstorming other potential models to package and sell home energy solutions. We’ll have to set Dave up to speak at a later Founder’s Club about the results of anything he actually tries out.

Lastly I introduced 20skaters, which I recently launched to help people organize private pickup hockey. There was no real love in the room for the domain name, however, consensus seemed positive about the pain we’re solving and the potential of the business.

Next week we’ll be talking about startup communities, leaders and feeders, and how we can lead ours better. If you can join us, register here.

A Coworking Update….It’s Just Us In Here

Office

Brydon

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

I had a conversation yesterday that’s occurred a few times over the past year. In speaking with someone about what we’re up to at ThreeFortyNine, they commented about us being government funded or associated with other organizations here in town.

To be clear, we have no government backing and it’s just us here. I’m certainly open to conversations about any/all support and collaborations but the fact is that’s not the case today. I’m biased but if you’re asking me, what we’re up to here in supporting early stage technology entrepreneurs should be at the top of any list related to economic development in a community.

What does that mean? It means ThreeFortyNine is simply an underfunded, struggling business in Guelph, not unlike a lot of others. To date, it’s taken a lot of personal time and investment to build up and we’re not ‘out of the woods’ yet. We’re working our asses off to deliver real value to our members here. If we succeed in doing that, we’ll earn our place in this community and our existence. If we don’t, well let’s not worry about that.

Why do this? The honest answer is I took a leap I had no business taking. In doing that I found an incredible community of people. I fight daily to make this place viable because I really do love working here and I love the people who are members here.

Join Us! Today, there are two main avenues to work for yourself, not by yourself here at ThreeFortyNine. We have a few full time coworking desks left, which gets you 24/7 access to our space. We’re also looking for more members for our ongoing events series, the core of which is our Founder’s Club which I refer to as group therapy for us folks dumb(smart) enough to try launching something of our own. Get in touch with me, let me know what you’re working on and we’ll figure out a time for a tour or to sit in on one of our upcoming events! Or say something nice about us on the twitters!

Nice Words A few testimonials from folks in our community….

“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

“There’s a value to spending time at ThreeFortyNine beyond just a spot to hang your shingle. There’s an air of collaboration and support there that you don’t find just anywhere. The conversations, shared ideas and feedback among individuals of such varied backgrounds and skill sets bear unlikely but welcome fruits”, Danny

“I recently had a chance to hang out at ThreeFortyNine’s Founders Club. I was greeted with friendly entrepreneurs in a relaxed setting sharing thoughts, opinions, and some laughs. I left with new ideas and got to meet some new faces. If you’re looking for a place to connect with others, or just connect better with what you’re doing, this is a good place to be”, Mark

[cross posted at shiftMode]

“Starving” Startup Train Tickets

Ontario Startup Train

Brydon

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

We’re looking for six startups local to KW, Guelph, or Toronto who’d benefit from being on our train to Startup Fest in Montreal in a couple of weeks. This is massive opportunity for some early stage startups to get focused time with other funders and founders, not to mention some national press folks. You’re on a train, they can only hide in the bathroom for so long!

A big thanks to the BDC, through Startup Festival, who paid for these conference tickets. Please make sure to read the details closely as there are a few simple stipulations.

Apply Today!

Help us spread the word on this!

[Cross posted with ShiftMode]