Montreal Tech Watch

The recent Quebec provincial budget included a range of announcements that represent the most significant set of commitments ever done by any provincial government (or to my knowledge state government) to support entrepreneurship.   To help shed some light on the announcement and what it means for Canadian entrepreneurs, I asked my partner at iNovia Capital, Chris Arsenault to write a guest post for MontrealTechWatch – Austin Hill.

Disclosure: I’m on the board of Reseau Capital, Anges Quebec and MontrealStartup some of whom stand to benefit from this issue and I was involved in consultations with the government in the establishment of these programs.

$5 billion to end up in the hands of Canadian entrepreneurs, as a result of Québec’s support of Venture Capital initiatives nothing less!

Now that the dust is starting to settle down around the recent Québec government budget announcements, the high tech community is wondering what concrete actions will come out of what is believed to be the most important “commitments” ever done by any provincial government to date towards fully supporting the build-out of the entrepreneur’s ecosystem.

I feel confident that the recent Quebec initiatives (link to budget) will ignite a flurry of positive impacts that will solidify Quebec’s entrepreneurship foundation, and that we will see numerous successful companies be launched, existing companies be financed which otherwise would not exist or would not be able to further their development because of today’s economic downturn, yet many of these companies will prove to become tomorrow’s industry leaders.

Here are some highlights from the budget:

• $825M  for the creation of a privately managed fund-of-funds – to invest in a certain number of VC funds;
• $500M for a privately managed later stage fund – to invest in existing high growth companies;
• $125M for the creation of 3 privately managed seed funds – covering all sectors;
• $60M for existing FIER regional funds – as additional matching capital with private investors;
• And a 10-year provincial tax holiday for new ventures that commercialize research from a Quebec university or research centre.

So, what is so great with the above initiatives? Other than the obvious large amount of dollars that will be  flowing towards entrepreneurs old and new?

What is great, is the way all of the above is being delivered! First, it’s important to the that over the last year, Minister Bachand conducted many market and industry assessments, done by qualified individuals and the results were then compared to existing initiatives found elsewhere in the world. Many, if not most of the ecosystem key players (venture capital firms, fund of funds, private equity firms, angels, angels groups, Réseau Capital, CVCA, successful entrepreneurs, incubators, coaching and mentoring service firms, tech transfer offices… and so on) were asked to share their comments and recommend solutions. Finally, and most importantly, the above listed budget highlighted initiatives are being executed in partnership with the private sector and with the financial support of the existing Quebec government affiliated institutions with industry expertise such as the Fond de solidarité FTQ (FsFTQ), the Caisse de depot et de placement du Québec (CDP) and Investissement Québec.

(more…)

FlowVentures has announced their first investment in 2009, in a Toronto-based startup named Symtext

Symtext allows the creation of customized learning material, from different sources, as opposed to traditional text books which may have outdated and non-interactive material.

As you may (or not) know, Flow Ventures provides both angel investing as well as direct operational support, which means in this case that Symtext will work together with Flow Ventures, with help in technology development, strategy plans, management, and marketing.

From the FlowVentures blog:

Symtext has made great progress and is already working with recognized learning establishments such as Athabasca University and the Queen’s School of Business. It is also working with several major publishers (more announcements to come).

This is great news, when thinking about the current economic prospects (along with this also). Congratulations to the FlowVentures team!

CoolIT Systems and iNovia Capital announced last week the closing of a $6.2 million financing.

CoolIT Systems designs advanced cooling solutions for PCs, mainly liquid cooling for CPUs. They’ve had good press coverage at the last CES, especially amongst gamers’ magazine and specialized websites such as the ones geared at overclockers.

Plans on how CoolIT systems plans to use these funds were not detailed, with merely a line about “accelerate the completion of development projects”.

I’m wondering if there are huge needs for liquid cooling systems. Consumers are buying smaller note/netbooks in droves, desktop PCs sales are falling, and gaming for PC isn’t anymore what it used to be from a few years ago. There might be something interesting to do in the servers market, if CoolIT Systems can manage to sell their solutions to manufacturers/designers such as Rackable Systems or SuperMicro — or even in HPC.

(Of course, those are quick guesses — I’m sure they were all factored out)

Congratulations to iNovia and CoolIT Systems.

We had last week StartupDrinks at Brutopia, an open gathering of entrepreneurs and people involved in tech startups.

The Drinks was organized both by MTW/TechEntreprise and Flow Ventures. Although it’s fair to say that the event was fairly promoted between Montréalers thanks to Twitter

Matthew Harrisson from BDO also came in and “sponsored” the event by buying food.

All in all, a great evening, with around 70 entrepreneurs who came for the event, many welcomed new faces. Next time, with spring in full bloom, we’ll get the terrace, and surely get more people coming in.

Thanks for everyone who attended, and do follow MTW to get updates on the next one (Apr 29th)

Embrase, a Montreal firm supporting early stage companies, has announced the 4th edition of Startup Camp Montreal 4.

It’s an evening where 5 chosen technology startups will get to pitch to investors. The formula is similar in principle to Capital Innovation, albeit attendance is more open; and previous startupcamps attracted filled the SAT room.

Be sure to check the event’s page for more details

This upcoming wednesday March 25th, technology entrepreneurs and everyone interested in startups are invited to Montreal StartupDrinks. The event is done in association with FlowVentures and TechEntreprise. It’s an informal but intense event, where you get to finally meet people behind all those twitter accounts and websites, and talk to them about your technology challenges, new viral marketing tactics, the life of an entrepreneur :-), and the opportunity to meet other Montréalers valuable for your venture.

The meetup will be at Brutopia, 1219 Crescent Street, from 5.30pm.

We haven’t had a Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast this month, so it’s an ideal meetup to hook up with others starting new technology ventures (or wanting to start new ones). If you have a passion for technology, if you are looking for opportunities in the technology space, if you are the sort of person who checks several times of day Hackers News and cie, then come over to share a drink with us. The past StartupDrinks have had a solid 50+ attendance of new entrepreneurs, programmers, investors, service providers and more.

Register on TechEntreprise if you want to come. Note: we need this to print tags for attendees.

Hint: If you are coming to the event, and want to start something special, do read the profile page of attendees.

Capital Innovation (see also for a (partial) list of people attending), a forum gathering entrepreneurs and funders, is also planned this wednesday, with high profile speakers such as Guy Kawasiki. If you are going to Capital Innovation, be sure to drop by Brutopia later in the day for a beer.

Seen below are shots from StartupDrinks in January

Good news from Akoha, with Austin Hill announcing 3000 confirmed played missions, in 37 countries in the world, and plans now to expand the community beyond the current beta testers/players. Congratulations to the whole Akoha team, make us proud!

Company: RedNod

Position: Program manager

Responsibilites and Tasks:

As program manager, you’ll have four responsibilities.

1. Event coordination. This involves working with various organizations to define program content, track down speakers and panelists, maintain a list of industry contacts, and perform research related to those events. It may involve attending 2 or 3 events a year, generally in North America.
2. Editing and blog management. We’re involved in several blogs for both ourselves and our clients. Each needs a publication calendar, content, editing, and maintenance. We’ll be launching other blogs, which may require Wikis, surveys, and other components. Each has analytics that must be digested and acted upon to increase traffic and make the sites easier to use. In particular, the publication of the forthcoming O’Reilly book Complete Web Monitoring will have a web presence that needs creation and maintenance.
3. Writing and research. Bitcurrent has published several studies (on cloud computing and content delivery networks) and continues to create content. Sometimes we sell the content; most of the time, we publish it online for the Internet community. You’re expected to contribute to that content not only by editing it, but by finding things you care about and writing them in conjunction with other members of the team.
4. Content management, storage, and retrieval. We generate a tremendous amount of data, from presentations to audio recordings of interviews, from business contacts to resources and links. This isn’t well organized today, but it needs to be. That means building a content management system that can accept various resources and make the available to Bitcurrent employees and/or outsiders. We’re not going to decide how this will work — that’s your job — but it might consist of a Wiki, a Google Site, a CRM tool, or some combination of them. You’ll be responsible for building, populating, and maintaining this system.

Rednod is based in Montreal, Canada. The company is a “startup accelerator”, helping to plan, build, and launch new ventures with a particular focus on product management and product marketing. Rednod is also the business side of Bitcurrent, a technology research firm that produces events, publishes reports, and writes about emerging technology.

We also work on a range of technology events. We run the annual Bitnorth event, and help to produce Interop, the Enterprise Cloud Summit, Enterprise 2.0, and the SIIA Software Summit. We participate in many other events, including GigaOm’s Structure and Green:NET, Mesh, various DemoCamps, Web2Expo, and eMetrics.

While startup acceleration, event production, and technology research are our three main activities, we’re also actively engaged in new ventures of our own.

More detail at Rednod’s website.

Required:

• Insatiable curiosity: You always want to know why. You believe in “as simple as possible — but no simpler.” You understand things by taking them apart, and then building them back up again. You’re constantly looking things up on Wikipedia, but you check the edit history to gauge how contentious the content is. When you see a graph, the first thing you do is read the axes. You inherently mistrust any graphic printed in USA Today. Despite a desire for the whole story, you still value parsimony.
• Superlative communications skills: You’re a flawless communicator. You read On Writing Well for fun. You’re a fan of Tufte, and the Lessig style of presentations. You know what works, what doesn’t, when to use long sentences, and when to keep them brief. You can’t look at a menu without correcting typoes. You think that Stephen Fry should be in charge of the English Language, but that Stephen Colbert should be Minister of New Words.
• Internet acumen: You have an opinion on whether Reddit, Slashdot, or Digg is better. You have an RSS reader, but subscribe to more feeds than you have time to read — telling yourself you’re a better person for subscribing to them. You’ve built websites to understand how they work, but you’re not a developer. You know Google hacks, like how to find things in a cache after they’ve been deleted. You suffer from social network overload. You know how long Twitter messages are –and why. And you’ve used analytics tools, blogging tools, and Google Analytics. Most of all, you learn new technology quickly.
• Organizational ability: You’re allergic to chaos. You dream in tables and charts. You know what GTD is, but you think it’s a set of suggestions rather than a way to run your life. You struggle with whether to sort your shoes by color, style, or height. You can juggle ten projects at once without letting something slip. You build process diagrams for navigating the local market. Perhaps most importantly, you know how to gently but firmly impose that organization on others, and to summarize complex information for quick consumption.
• An analytical mind: While you don’t have to be a statistician, you should want to analyze everything. The answer to doubt is analysis — whether that’s a spreadsheet, some web analytics data, or a survey. You know that the only way to improve something is to measure it, whether that’s a website, an Internet meme, or your own job performance.
• An eye for design: You don’t need to know how to design, but you need to recognize good or bad design — and give objective feedback to designers. You should be familiar with image editing, cropping, and adjustment tools, and with annotating presentations and PDF documents for feedback.
• A desire to change the world gently: We fervently believe that technology is rewiring humanity. The advent of accessible global digital communications is transforming our species, from how we do our jobs to how we fall in love, from how we learn to how we think. In a few short years, an Internet failure will feel like a stroke: We’ll have lost faculties we take for granted, and won’t know how to cope. While these might seem light lofty, high-minded thoughts, we have to ease ourselves into this transformation. Bitcurrent touches on many of the touchpoints between humans and technology, from public policy to web interfaces to cloud computing to mobility. It’s a fascinating place, to work and think, and you should want to spend time there.
• A thick skin: Humans make mistakes. Those mistakes are amplified when everyone’s working on a dozen things, traveling constantly, and using short-form, impersonal messages to stay in touch. To survive this, you need a thick skin and an allergy for drama. You need to say what you feel, then move on. Most of all, you need to assume that everyone else in the company has the company’s best interests at hand, until you have reason to think otherwise. This is a critical skill when working in any startup, but it’s particularly true here.
• A bias for action: Most of all, you must want to create change. Sitting still isn’t an option. You must be the kind of person who sends the first mail, organizes the event, puts the stake in the ground. Some people wait for external triggers to get them started; in this position, you are the trigger. There won’t be much coaching here, so you’ll need to ask for forgiveness instead of permission much of the time.

How to apply:

View original job listing
Submit a job ad

Company: Jezam Interactive

Position: Flash Ninja

Responsibilites and Tasks:

We are a small startup that works in the field of interactive digital signage and we are looking for a Flash actionscript guru (versions 2 & 3), with XML and databasing experience. You must be willing to work under the preset guidelines of our software architect, as well as autonomously on other projects for interactive multimedia and web. This is a part-time contract position with the possibility to grow with a young company. Experience or curiosity with Adobe Air and Flex a plus.

We offer office space with a fantastic view on Plateau, the opportunity to play with nice toys and to take Flash development elsewhere.

If you are interested, please send your CV to mike@jezaminteractive.com.

Cheers!

Required:

• 1-3 years of Flash experience
• XML schema experience
• DB knowlegeable
• Keen graphic eye
• Willing to learn
• Want to have fun

How to apply:

mike@jezaminteractive.com.

View original job listing
Submit a job ad

With conference season upon us the Montreal technology community is preparing to descend on a number of very large industry events.

Our community has a number of speakers, attendees & company presentations occurring at:

• SXSW Interactive in Austin (March 13-17)
• Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (March 23-27)
• Web 2.0 Expo (March 31-April 3)

Conferences give us a great chance to network with many of our industry counterparts from around the world.  They also provide us a chance to meet members of our local community that we may not have connected with while in Montreal.  Meeting your local counterparts at these events allow us to help support each other in many ways while we are stateside.  Whether you are looking for a job, trying to recruit for a position, inviting people to listen to your session talk or need help trying to meet that critical investor/partner/speaker or guru your local community might be able to help you get more out of your conference experience.

If you are planning on attending any of these conferences this year please send a tweet using the conference hash tag & #MTL to introduce yourselves including who you are, which company you are with (if any) and any information about meetups, promotions, presentations or help you need to get the most out of your trips.

• #SXSW #MTL Example: @georgefavvas CEO of @smarthippo is at #SXSW #MTL this week where SmartHippo is going to be doing a fun promotion.
• #GDC #MTL Example: @austinhill from @akoha #MTL is doing a keynote at #GDC Serious Game Summit
• #Web2Expo #MTL Example: @acroll @seanpower Authors of new O’Reilly book on Watching Websites are speaking at #Web2Expo #mtl

This will allow other Canadian & Montreal tech community members to reach out, introduce themselves and hopefully lend a helping hand to each other for any specific things you are trying to get done. It also allows those of us not attending events to keep an eye on your tweets from Montreal.

If this picks with with other cities such as #Tdot (Toronto), #Van (Vancouver), #Cal (Calgary), #Ott (Ottawa) or #CAN (Canada) you can use these links to track the Canadian tech community at these conferences. Expat Canadians are also welcome to grab the #CAN tag to join in on the fun.

• #SXSW – Full Canadian City round up
• #GDC – Full Canadian City round up
• #Web2Expo – Full Canadian City round up

At the very least we can co-ordinate meeting up for drinks to showcase our drinking prowess to our industry counterparts around the world :)

This is a cross post from Austin’s blog.