If you know me, you know I have a paper and pen fetish. It’s ok, I’m ok. Sharing that fetish with others led us to becoming a Field Notes retailer here at ThreeFortyNine. Recently Field Notes created the craziest notebook most of us have ever seen, named the Expedition Edition. Finally a use for my […]
For those of you who enjoy beer, do we have a mashup for you. Take some DemoCampGuelph, toss in a little OX Guelph and sprinkle in a master brewer from Great Lakes Brewery and what are you left with? DemoBeerGuelph, that’s what! For those coming to DemoCampGuelph, we have room for forty of you to […]
We’re closing in on our next DemoCampGuelph on April 10th in downtown Guelph at The EBar. You still have time to submit for a demo spot but that time is slipping away so email me your demo pitch asap! As always, it’s free to attend, you don’t have to be technical or demo something to […]
As we prepare for this upcoming round of Startupify, we’re spending a lot of time discussing curriculum, teachable moments and learning in general. What’s refreshing to reflect on is the almost complete lack of evaluations. We have no tangible carrots or sticks. Ultimately our cohort are the ones taking a gamble on themselves. That’s a […]
I always struggle to explain our weekly Founder’s Club. I’m quite comfortable in that, in fact I feel no pressure to explain it. The people involved are comfortable with it’s ambiguity and people not involved can stay curious. “Success requires no apologies, failure permits no alibis“, Napoleon Hill My simplest pitch for Founder’s Club is that it’s group […]
I had a great meeting yesterday with a new local business who are doing very well. It was great hearing their story, in particular how they had an idea and they just went after it. There was no 40 page business plan, angel investor pitches, mentor meetings etc. They had a simple hypothesis based on […]
(Editor’s Note: Reposted from shiftMode 2010) We turned a particular corner with DemoCampGuelph events last year that personally makes my life a whole lot simpler, that being that we now consistently have more people applying to demo than we have spots. The plus for me is that I don’t spend the week of the event begging […]
What if you could get some serious, focused time with over 120 of the best from Ontario’s entrepreneur and startup scene? Not just a stand and listen speaking event followed by some ‘social’ time, which only the desperate few stick around for. I’m talking about five hours literally locked on a train, nowhere to hide, […]
This is partly a continuation post of our Stop Measuring Everything post last week. Metrics and what we measure are powerful and dangerous. Data and metrics are noise, what happens when you overreact to noise? Poor metrics can kill an early stage company. We can’t mathematize startups and focus solely on the known while ignoring […]
There’s a cool thread in The Talent Code about how foot speed is determined by your birth order. Your chances of being fast increase if you have older siblings and the author backs this up with stats from current 100 meter dash champions and NFL running backs. The point is that commitment, motivations and primal cues […]