The Post Money Value

Swingnature – A (Canadian) Hole in One

If you are an avid golfer, you’ll like this product. If you are an entrepreneur, you’ll be inspired and encouraged by Kelly Curry.  Kelly is the inventory of a product called the Swingnature, a golf swing training tool.  Kelly’s story is almost a text book case study in what happens when you have a brilliant ‘kid’, some great programs in both the government and the university environment, rounded out with raw entrepreneurial drive.

Kelly’s story begins when accidently left on a lifeboat in the Atlantic at age 3, he made his way to Canada.  Okay, not exactly. The more reality based version:

As an engineering student, he reads an article about golf and the correlation to getting business done while on the course.  He learns the game, gets nuts about it and, while watching a golf pro do some warm-up exercises, gets a brilliant idea. He heads down the the hardware store and builds what’s in his head.  You can read the more polished version of the story here, but that’s essentially how the company got started.

Kelly got into McMaster University’s Engineering Entrepreneurship and Innovation program. This is an excellent program where the students arrive with a great product and the school teaches the business aspects of running a company along with getting more engineering brains wrapped around the product itself. It is an amazing program.

The Canadian Government stepped up with $60,000 in grant money, and off we go.

But beyond the great educational program and the seed funding, you have two things at the center of all this; a great product and an outstanding entrepreneur.  Consider all the things that followed.

• Kelly rounded up some golf professionals and trainers to check out, love, then endorse his product. This includes a guy by the name of Hank Haney (yes, that Hank Haney, Tiger was a student).
• Kelly got Golf Town to sell the product at all their retail outlets and through the online store.
• Kelly is effectively using the internet by having a web portal with training exercises, videos, etc, for the customers of the product. It’s nicely done and focuses on post sale; i.e. making sure the customer can get the most out of the product through tracking progress, etc.  This leads to happier golfers which hopefully are better golfers that turns into rabid fans recommending the product to anyone with a pulse.
• Kelly has won other entrepreneur competitions as well as raised additional capital.

And Kelly will probably have his “TV Show” (aka infomercial) on the Golf Chanel within weeks.  Hundreds of the product are already in customer’s hands and the orders keep rolling in.

Finally, the product is made completely in Canada. Burlington, Ontario to be exact.  If you are an entrepreneur, you can do yourself a favor by chasing down Kelly, buying him a Tim Horton’s coffee and get the story first hand.  I suspect you’ll get some good insight and inspiration from somebody who is doing an amazing job. 

Better still, get him out on the golf course. Well done, Kelly.

A NYT Story You Should Read

One of the highlights of my working life was the night the first book order was placed and received on the original Chapters website.  A guy by the name of Johnny O’Brian pressed the button at exactly midnight and that order went zipping to the warehouse. I was notified at 12:01am.  It was awesome.  I would never insult the women of the world by using the giving birth analogy but I’m just saying…

In that light, I’d strongly suggest you head on over to the New York Times website and read “The Case for Working With Your Hands” by Matthew B. Crawford. 

As somebody who whacks at a keyboard all day, I found this to be a very inspiring excerpt from a book Dr. Crawford is publishing.  He has a PhD in Philosophy and is a great writer. Nice combo, the world needs more of these types.

Enjoy.

Our Mobile World – Aussie Style

I’m heading over to Australia for a meeting. Australia requires a visa to drop on in.  As I’m enjoying this really nice salad, damn, I just realize I haven’t done jack on getting this visa. I whip out my BlackBerry, jump on the search to figure out who can quickly get me a visa for Australia. I’m looking for one of those expediting places that can get you a visa into anyplace within 24 hours. 

I happened to wander onto the Australian site which talks about all the visa requirements and, golly gee, it’s all electronic.  Click this, fill in that, fork over 20 bucks, and bob’s yer uncle, get the barbee fired up.  Yup. In just under 6 minutes, I was able to electronically fill out the form, pay for, and get confirmation of a multiple entry visa into Australia.  On my BlackBerry. 10 minutes after I realized I needed to get this done. That’s progress, folks.

Yes, it was in a browser so no big app issue here, that’s not the point.  The big point is the true, always on, always connected, instant/demand nature of the world we are living in. 

For your start-up, can you give instant gratification? Are you tuned to the ‘mobile’ device(s)? 

Major kudos to the Australian Government as this has to be the smoothest piece of foreign paperwork I’ve ever filled out; well done!

Congrats to GigPark

Canadian company GigPark has inked a deal with the fine folks at Metro, the daily newspaper, found in major cities all over Canada. They will be providing recommendations for Metro’s service recommendation both in print and within the online offering.

GigPark was founded by Noah Godfrey and Peme Hegan a few years back.  Located right here in Toronto, the service is a kick butt place to find (and recommend) local services like plumbers, carpenters, travel agents, etc.  They have done an excellent job of mixing the social/friend aspect of getting these recommendations.

We done, guys, rock on!

via StartUpNorth

Just do the Demo

I can’t for the life of me figure out why people get their feelings hurt when, after two slides, I say “yup, I get it, show me.” 

Yesterday, I had a very smart entrepreneur show up to do a pitch.  After making Michael Arrington “no hand shake” jokes, he proceeds to start the Keynote presentation. First slide is the one line pitch on what the company does and slide two was the problem.

Me: “Okay, I get it, you’re totally right, big problem, show me the solution.”

He: “Well, I’ve got another 20 slides you need to see in order to fully appreciate what we’ve accomplished”

Me: “Email me the slides, show me the demo.”

He: “My team will kill me if I don’t present this properly.”

Everybody gets in a snit whenever any of us (us = VCs/Angels) get all snarky and impatient but this is really silly stuff so let me lay out my disclaimer if you are pitching me or any of my brethren:

If we say, you are right after two slides and want to see what you have, consider that the highest possible compliment you can get. It means you’ve found a problem we get/understand and you’ve gotten our interest quickly enough to dive into the product.

It’s a compliment when you are asked to skip the slides and just do the demo.

Really.

Ecobee – Java Uber Brain Wanted

Ecobee, a JLA portfolio company, is looking for a super JAVA programmer to join the team here in Toronto.  The job information is below.

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Senior Java developer + Server Administrator, located in downtown Toronto, Canada.

Description:

This development and operations role will work with both the VP of Development and the Software Architect.

As an Senior Java developer, your primary job requirement will be design and development of core server software, with emphasis on the data to object mapping layer, and back end design. Ecobee relies on test driven development, and so ongoing maintenance of unit tests and system wide tests is also an integral aspect to the job. The successful applicant will have demonstrated a deep understanding of multi-threaded server architecture, especially how this relates to performance and scalability, and is able to work independently and with little supervision. You will maintain and improve the existing system test scripts, and in particular, the overall system performance test suite.

The secondary job requirement is maintenance and monitoring of our live production servers; in this capacity, you will be working closely with development to ensure server stability, throughput and reliability.  This will include design, development and installation of a redundant server and database architecture, consisting of server and database software development and networking equipment installation and configuration.

In addition, you will also be assisting our technical support group, fielding issues related to the production environment. In this capacity, you will be responsible for analyzing database throughput, advising on performance, scalability and robustness.

Essential Functions:

- Design and development of new features in the application, based on requirements gathered from product management.

- Investigate and implement recommendations on system changes and operational procedures to increase efficiency or facilitate performance improvements.

- Advise and work closely with development to optimize and improve overall back end performance.

- The job applicant will have experience with large scale enterprise production on the Linux environment (Redhat).

- Knowledge of monitoring software (eg. Hyperic, Nagios), including alerts, escalation policy, etc.

- Maintain the health and operations of the servers, including maintenance of shell scripts, applying OS patches, etc.

- Monitoring performance and managing parameters to provide fast query responses to both the user interface, and back end report servers.

- Continually review and verify and document backup policy, retention and integrity.

- Participate in design decisions and help create and implement the company's core high-volume systems and network infrastructure.

- You will work with QA and tech support to field server related issues.

- Developing, managing and testing backup and recovery plans, and capacity planning.

- Communicating regularly with technical, applications and operational staff to ensure database integrity and security.

- Commissioning and installing new versions of the application, both on the pre-production and production servers.

- Knowledge of TCP/IP networking, including network equipment, such as load balancers and routers, and configuration of networking services on Linux based servers

Requirements:

Must have experience with:

- Excellent working knowledge of Java.

- Extensive knowledge of relatonal database (MySQL) administration and management, including real world working knowledge of clustering, failover, fault tolerance, etc.

- Windows, Linux (Redhat)

- SQL (MySQL).

- Unix shell scripting, and Windows batch scripting.

- Experience with maintenance and monitoring of production servers.

- Networking experience (HTTP, DNS, etc).

Bonus experience:

- Experience with monitoring software such as Hyperic or Nagios.

- Experience with green technologies and energy conservation.

ecobee is a Toronto based entrepreneurial organization that helps homeowners conserve energy, save money and reduce their environmental impact. Our green automation platform sits at the convergence of energy conservation, green technology, the networked home and consumer electronics. Our first product to market is a WiFi enabled Smart Thermostat that simplifies energy conservation, making it easier for homeowners to save on energy costs without sacrificing their comfort.

Menu Pollution – We Have Seen This Movie

I’ve been looking at a number of new apps and goodies for my BlackBerry. Here’s a disturbing trend: Developers hacking menus without a) asking me or b) asking me.  I’ve maintained that RIM’s OS is open and way more open than others. One of the trade offs with ‘open’ can be developers running all over the basic OS making little changes which can, over time, make a mess of my user experience.

Consider the TeleNav application or the ForwardWithEdit application.  In both cases, these applications add menu items.  FWE puts themselves at the top of the email reply menu (the full menu).  They didn’t ask and didn’t actually tell me where it was, I had to go hunting.

You can read the berryreview.com review here. There is a good screen shot of the menu modification and explanation. I would have like them to ding the company on not asking or alerting the user to the menu modification.

On Windows Mobile, Android, and likely the Palm-Pre, you have/will see this issue come up over and over.

Now would be a good time for the OS vendors to lay down some standards as well as leading edge (bleeding edge in some cases) users (aka you) start complaining and demanding this get done right.

In addition, CrackBerry Nation, BlackBerry Cool, etc, when you are doing reviews, point out the good/bad about the installs so we train developers to play nice in the sandbox.

I’m not suggesting menu options/modifications be stopped, just we get into an explain/ask habit.

Ruby Wonks Unite – Toronto Ruby Job Fair

I got a email from Pete Forde about a Ruby job fair coming up here in Toronto. It’s 20 bucks if you want to show off, free if you want to watch show offs or, more importantly, hire one. Or two.  This is the blurb. You can sign up, read more, etc, here.

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The First Toronto Ruby Job Fair

http://rubyjobfair.ca/

What: A technical talent expo, showcasing Toronto's amazing Ruby developer community... without the aid of computers!
When: June 6th, 2009 — 11am to 6pm
Where: The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom (1214 Queen St. W)
Who: 40 freelance developers, students, and small companies who use Ruby to create sophisticated web applications
Why: It's a new opportunity for companies, start-up founders and recruiters to casually meet members of the Toronto Ruby community that are available for hire

FREE to the public, including potential employers!

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After just three short years, the open source (free) Ruby on Rails web development framework has changed the face of vibrant tech scene in Toronto. Did you know that:

• there are over four hundred Ruby developers in the GTA, and counting
• the monthly Rails Pub Nite social event has grown to expect 40-50 attendees
• there are at least 5 Rails consulting companies downtown
• dozens of Toronto-based start-up ventures have been built with Ruby
• the avant-garde FutureRuby conference happens at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto on July 9-12

In spite of the world economic crisis, software development in Toronto is booming. There is a constant need for great new talent to hire, and there's a huge pool of friendly, creative developers looking for their next opportunity. Tragically, there's no efficient way for these two groups to find each other... until now. We announce the Employment.nil? Ruby Job Fair — an opportunity to meet dozens of excellent candidates with a blend of skills, face-to-face.
Hiring quality technical talent for your project or company can be an intimidating challenge — even for other programmers. Unfortunately, many mediocre candidates hide behind acronym-laden resumes and dubious technical diplomas. If you're building complex, custom software and something goes wrong, it's often too late to replace team members without losing momentum. The stakes for finding the right technical partner are extremely high, as the wrong choice can sink a young company.
Our solution to this crisis is a return to the basics: this is one day when we'll leave our computers at home! Participants pay a low, tiered fee to exhibit a poster. These posters provide an illustrated backdrop to the conversations which might evolve, and act as a vehicle for the passion of this community to shine through. These presenters are artisans who take pride in their tools; they will tell you in their own words why they love to use Ruby.
Working with someone that "might work out" is a recipe for disaster. Instead, come to the first annual Employment.nil? and hire based on personality first.

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Employment.nil? is a community-driven effort that is sponsored and organized by Unspace Interactive Inc., a small full-service boutique web consulting firm. We're five years old, located downtown at Queen & Spadina, and we boast a team of ten industry-leading developers and designers under one roof. Unspace was the first full-time, commercial Ruby on Rails company. Ruby is our life.
To find out more about Employment.nil?, Unspace Interactive, or the upcoming FutureRuby conference, please contact:

Meghann Millard or Pete Forde

info@rubyjobfair.ca

(416) 977-0269

Going Down Under with Ontario

Here’s a particularly good example of how businesses in Canada get some seriously good help from the government; in this case, the provincial government of Ontario.

At the Wireless World Australia 2009 conference, there will be a sponsored trade booth where you can exhibit and a massively reduced rate. In addition, the Trade Commissioners responsible for the area will be setting up 1 on 1 meetings with potential business partners, funders, etc. They will be having a reception in three cities, inviting local business folks to come out and hear about your company and opportunities. It’s a great opportunity if this is a market you are looking to expand your wireless business into.

$1,000 gets you participation in two countries/three cities.
$700 gets you participation just for the conference.

Canada: It’s an amazing place to build a business.

Contact Information

If you have any questions and/or require further information, please contact:
Sabrina Chan
Area Director – Japan, Korea, Australia & New Zealand
International Trade Branch
Ontario Ministry of International Trade and Investment
Tel: (416) 325-6782
E-mail: Sabrina.chan1 AT ontario.ca

Funding to actually get there, do some business, etc? Yup, Canada has programs for that as well.

This is from the document:

Possible Funding
Interested companies may wish to explore the following programs offered by Export Development Canada and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Please contact these organizations directly with any inquiries.

Export Market Access (EMA) is an initiative of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, with support and funding from the Government of Ontario. It is designed to assist small to medium size organizations (SMEs) to access and expand their growth in new foreign markets. If your company has 5 or more employees and annual sales of $500,000 or more, you may qualify for a grant covering up to 50% of eligible costs incurred to develop export sales (up to C$30,000).

To find out if your company qualifies, please visit: www.exportaccess.ca

Export Development Canada (EDC) offers Export Express Credit to companies in the form of unsecured loans of up to $50,000 with flexible repayment terms of up to two years. The loan can be used to cover travel costs and other related expenses.

For more information, please visit: http://www.edc.ca/english/financing_export_express_credit.htm

Putting One in the Win Column - A StockTwits Lesson

To this day and likely to the day I die, nobody will ever top the business trust I have in Howard Lindzon. As you may recall, I invested in a Howard Lindzon company (Wallstrip) and was right there when CBS bought the company. We did this all on a handshake.

We finally did paperwork at the end of the deal, when the sales check was cashed. It was amazing, refreshing, and powerful: A handshake.

Here’s a new lesson from the Lindzon school of I just wanna have some fun while making a few coins.

As you can read over in TechCrunch, StockTwits ‘took over’ Chart.ly which built stock charts for StockTwits, Howard’s company.

Adarsh Pallian, the creator, will put a few coins in his pocket, continue to guide the product, and split the new revenue off Chart.ly 50/50.

Lessons:

- For every ecosystem, there are opportunities. Not zillion dollar ones, perhaps, but opportunities.
- If you built it and they (the ecosystem) are busy, etc, you never know.
- “Selling” Chart.ly (ignore price) puts one in the win column. He thought up an idea, executed on it, got the attention of the ecosystem owner, and landed a win.

Some people will argue it is a low amount of money or take issue with the 50/50, maybe valid points, I have no idea. I’ll assume Adarsh is happy, Howard is happy. Terms were simple, and there is another member of the farm team with one in the win colum.

Good stuff all around.

I Love Rewards = More Love

JLA portfolio company I Love Rewards (Incentive and Recognition programs) got some VC love from our friends at GrandBanks Capital. ILR closed an additional $5.7 million in a deal lead by GrandBanks. Ryan Moore is the partner who also teamed up with us on First Coverage.

Razor Suleman continues to blow the doors off the ILR metrics and, like First Coverage, is a great Canadian company started by a great Canadian entrepreneur. VC backed companies bringing aboard a great U.S. partner in GrandBanks.

Uh, huh. Just the way we like it. As Mark McQueen of Wellington points out, there’s some good stuff up here.

Congrats to Razor and the gang, well done!

Kindle: Welcome to the Mainstream

Many people will use the seal de la Oprah to declare something has hit the big time with the people. While it’s possible, I’ve got another data point for you.

Airplane safety announcements.

Let’s face it, iPods, BlackBerrys are two things those folks in the air tell you, specifically, to turn off. For awhile, you’d hear “Gameboys” in the list.

Yesterday, while on final approach, the Air Canada attendant did the normal “Please turn off your electronic devices” speech but tacked onto the list?

Kindle. Yup. Please shut off all electronic devices including cell phones, pages, iPods, BlackBerrys, and Kindles.

Damn...

Never let facts get in the way of a good story: him again

After landing here in Washington D.C. for a conference, my BlackBerry was buzzing out of the holster with 20+ (Roger, you were first) people pointing me to Matt Hartley’s story on (deep breath, breatheeee) “Venture Capital Breakdown” in Canada.  In seeing the title, I thought, sweet, we can all go yelling at my buddy/co-investor Mark again.  But, of course not, things are never that easy.

The opening salvo:

“Startup veteran Albert Lai is the sort of businessman who should be leading Canada out of the recession.  To fund one of his early startups, Mr. Lai turned to Canadian venture capital. But for his latest venture, Kontagent, a social media analytics service, he didn't even bother trying.”

The last time this popped up, I *might* have gone a tad bit overboard picking on Canada’s entrepreneurial savior.   So, let me just point out the facts.

Fact 1: Extreme Venture Partners put money into Kontagent.

Fact 2: Extreme Venture Partners is Canadian.

Fact 3: Albert Lai bothered to try, see fact 1, fact 2.

Fact 4: He’s still trying.

I appreciate Albert working hard to get a statue of himself erected on the grounds of Queens Park.  Really. Give the guy his due; when it comes to his brand promotion and marketing spin, the dude takes a backseat to nobody.

Facts, bah humbug, who needs em. Gotta admire the spunk; rock on Albert.

[Non-Canadian Note: Queens Park is a phrase to represent/mean Capital Hill, if you will. So the American analogy would be something like taking down the Washington Monument and replacing it with a statue of Albert holding a business plan, little American children at his feet gazing up adoringly, him pointing to the Silicon Valley promised land.  Something close.]

 

[UPDATE: 90 seconds after I posted this, Albert sent me a note with a link to his post.  No rocks, I’m being funny here, people, and also making sure Amar at Extreme gets credit for doing excellent work.]

Competition is not an excuse for failure

Mark McQueen points to a story by Reuters columnist Eric Auchard which was generally about the up and down of the tech IPO market.  Mark called out one chunk of the Eric’s story:

“There is now a noticeable dearth of entrepreneurs building companies with differentiated strategies and sustainable business models. Hot start-ups are now far more often built to be sold to established firms. And when good ideas emerge, VCs flood the market with a slew of copycats, making it hard for true pioneers to succeed.”

As the kids would say, Meh… 

The “flood the market” comment is simplistic and fails to deal with reality.  Lots of Facebook copycats, maybe. A bunch of YouTube knock offs, yup. A slew of Twitter wannabe companies, uh huh.  In each of my (of the top) examples, the pioneers have and continue to succeed. 

Eric’s comment with respect to big company buying up little company as a strategy, uh, yeah.  The venture community invests dollars in an attempt to return more than what was invested. Selling to an established firm works for me (us) and should work for the entrepreneur as well if those first interests are aligned.

Gloom and Doom loves to look for scapegoats. Eric’s “it’s their fault” commentary fails to make the case in my view.