Montreal Tech Watch

TechStars, the Boulder Colorado based startup program similar to Y-Combinator recently graduated another 10 companies. The event was attended by approximately 350 people, including tech bloggers such as Robert Scoble and investors from a number of “web 2.0” VC firms including First Round Capital, Foundry Group and Union Square Ventures (Fred Wilson) and our very own Montreal Start Up.

The team behind  one of these graduating companies is Vanilla. Vanilla provides open source forum software that is used to power hundreds of thousands of sites around the web. Vanilla already had 300,000+ Installations, 450+ Plugins and were doing 200+ downloads every day – all of this before even attending TechStars.

So why did they decide to join the TechStars program? Simply because they wanted to turn there product into a business !

The team behind Vanilla, are Canadian entrepreneurs Mark O’Sullivan and Todd Burry. The guys will be in Montreal this Thursday and they have agreed to tell us a little about their experience at TechStars: what they’ve learned about turning a product into a business, how to approach investors and some insight into the value of belonging to the TechStars alumni community.

We are going to take this opportunity to have a “Last drinks of Summer” for the Montreal tech community. The event is open to anyone and is going to be held this Thursday, September 3rd at Helm from 5pm-8pm.

Alongside main actors of the Montreal tech community such as MontrealStartup, the event is being organized in conjunction with Station-C, so it will be also be a great opportunity for anyone looking to meet up with freelance designers and developers.

Photo credit: Demo Day, techstars, by Andrew Hyde

Note: you can use techentreprise to see who is also coming up.

It’s already the end of August, with another new installement of StartupDrinks Montreal. If you read MontrealTechWatch, you are warmly invited for a drink and (re)connect with other fellow Montreal techies next wednesday 26th.

It’s a parallel event, with the Toronto edition held at the same time at C’est What. For Montreal, we’re doing it at Brutopia on Crescent Street. Brutopia is a winner thanks to its selection of beers and location.

Read last month’s report if you haven’t been lately to one, or if it’s the first time.

We’re especially calling students to come over for the drinks. If you know anyone in university who is interested into technology entrepreneurship, we’d appreciate if you can extend the invitation to them. It doesn’t matter at what stage one is, and I believe making diverse minds meet would make StartupDrinks even more interesting. So forward the link to friends & students, suggest the meetup, put it on Facebook or your other social networking website.

We ask everyone to register on TechEntreprise, in order to print name tags. ALL EVENT DETAILS also available there

Co-organized by FlowVentures

With the invaluable of our friends at StartupNorth for the Toronto event and @davidcrow‘s magic touch

Solutious, a company started by Delano Mandelbaum (@solutious), has released last monday Rudy version 0.9

Rudy allows simplified development and deployement on Amazon’s cloud computing platform by using a Ruby DSL (Domain Specific Language), allowing then quick and easy provisioning of custom environments on Amazon’s hosting platform.

The best use case for Rudy might be software development companies who’d use Amazon as a staging and a testing platform, since the servers are only needed for a fraction of time, compared to the “real” production environment, which might be at Amazon, or much more probably in a different hosting company.

Since an example is much better than long text descriptions, compare the following lines to the usual raw command lines a sys-admin has to type to provision instances on EC2:

 machines do
   env :stage do                   # Define an environment
     ami 'ami-e348af8a'            # Specify a machine image

     role :app do                  # Define a role
       disks do                    # Define EBS volumes
         path "/rudy/disk1" do
           size 100
           device "/dev/sdr"
         end
       end
     end

   end
 end

 routines do

   startup do                      # $ rudy startup
     adduser :rudy
     authorize :rudy               # Enable passwordless login

     disks do
       create "/rudy/disk1"        # Create and mount a volume 
     end                       

     remote :rudy do               # Run remote commands via SSH
       mkdir :p, "great"           # $ mkdir -p great
       mysql_init :start
       your_script 'arg1', 'arg2'  # Call your own scripts
     end
   end

 end

The user only has to provide the AMI, and of course the custom scripts to setup and launch its software stack.

I really like Rudy, since it illustrates what Amazon is best at: provisioning for a finite timelapse a custom infrastructure, for a specific job. Fire the rudy/ruby script, provision as many instances as you need, launch the job, get test results. It will bring shorter development cycles for software companies, and also an easier path to try out EC2.

BookOven, a startup by fellow Montréalers Hugh McGuire and Stéphanie Troeth, under development for the past year, launched an alpha version last week, with one simple feature showcase. It allows anyone to edit excerpts of an author’s work, also called by BookOven bite-sized edits.

It’s usually a short sentence, presented in the work’s context, and the user is given the opportunity to submit an improved edit. As soon as this is finished, another edit is presented to the user.

I find the mechanics used by BookOven to be similar to HotOrNot, where the visitor gets a few seconds to submit his/her thoughts to the system, which would then give a crowdsourced feedback to a user-submitted picture. Obviously, BookOven works also along the same line as Librivox or Wikipedia. Those online destinations bet on building a fanatical user base bringing user-generated content, rivaling quickly with more established entities in results quality. Wikipedia is free though (as in free beer and Free Software), so it would be interesting to see how users would see themselves contributing to a commercial work.

As the BookOven blog suggests, this is only one of the final product’s feature, which would ultimately give the opportunity to anyone to submit their litterary work, and publish it on BookOven.

I wouldn’t dare to comment if BookOven would actually revolutionize the book publishing industry or not. It’s of course a compelling alternative to traditional publishers. But the service would also need to be able to gather readers to make it interesting to its customers. I couldn’t also get myself to continue to use the service; the service obviously caters to writers, and also the Wikipedia/Librivox contributors work, none of which I never participated in. If you fit that description, I invite you though to try out the service. It has a wonderful user interface, as well as a dedicated team which am sure would love to answer to your feedback.

BookOven is funded by MontrealStartup and is based in the “no-name” shared startup space

Foulab, Montreal’s own hacker space, is holding an Arduino Jam this upcoming Thursday evening, starting from 7.00pm. It’s an open event is targeted at those who wants to learn about Arduino, and try their hand on the open source microcontroller hardware.

I recommend the event for those who are interested in hardware hacking, for instance to mix real physical events. You can think for instance about innovative interfaces, such as this bakery in London which alerts customers on Twitter, about fresh bread, through a specially designed knob. It’s also easy to think about software services which would offer an Arduino-enabled physical interface.

Photo Credit: Arduino Synthetizer, by Collin Mel

Gigdoggy has unveiled a new version of its service last week, nicknamed Fanteraction™ release. It comes up with a new music blog, written remotely by a sound engineer, and of course the Fanteraction™ mobile platform, which allows music bands to interact with their fans during gigs.

Strangely, the blog post announcing the release is very sparse on the product’s features, namely on the why and the design of the system, and I’ll try then to decode what the creators of the service wanted behind the service.

I think it’s fair to assume that the creators were thinking about every music fan having mobile smartphones at hand when going to shows, at least in the near future. The music fan would click through pages to find out about upcoming songs and features, comment & tweet about performances. There’s also a tune downloading feature (which would be the monetization path).

The scenario above can be found easily in barcamps and startup conferences, with digital natives finding out very easily (and on their own) if there is any online information about the current speaker, only if you give them some kind of Internet connection. I am not sure how it plays out for the casual fan. Picture this in a standard Francophofolies show, where GigDoggy would be able to display an url to invite fans. Would fans & casual listeners tune in? Would they spend a few minutes to go through the information online? That’s a lot to ask imho, unless the band asks specifically for it.

That’s where the application seems lacking in polish. One can see the core of the product & the vision, but there’s still a lot to do in terms of presentation and working on edge cases.

I also understand it’s a new service, but I would have expected much more interaction and marketing for the service. I’d love to hear how this plays out vs other music portals and platforms such as myspace. I’d love to see a more dynamic homepage where you would see activity coming from bands. Also read: I’d love to love this service, only if it could give some material to give me the reason to.

While technically MontrealTechWatch focuses on Technology and Innovation in Montreal, it’s with pleasure that I hear what’s being done in Ottawa, especially by Scott Lake (see startupottawa), Scott Annan, or Aydin Mirzaee.

Scott Annan, who was a regular contributor to StartupOttawa, was nowhere to be found though for the past 6 months… which for an entrepreneur means that he was working non-stop on a new project, unveiled today. The application’s name is Network Hippo, and it’s a CRM focusing on quality and qualification of relationships.

The product is designed for consultants, individuals, as well as small businesses. In an earlier blog post, Scott Annan tells how rotten the CRM market is, with most providers selling unusable entreprise software. NetworkHippo’s bet is then to focus on contacts; with its unique algorithms, it will be then be able to show in a glance the deal flow as well highligting the best opportunities.

Unlike popular competitors like HighriseHQ, NetworkHippo offers email integration via imap (good!), free trials and free plans for individuals, plus also integration with social networks (for instance, showing the Twitter stream of your contact).

I am in no way qualified to state if NetworkHippo is going to revolutionize the CRM market. I have to say though that it brings fresh ideas, in a space where you always need a whole week to learn your way around a software… and then fight with the software every day after that. The clean user interface, the focus on usability, great prices, and the team’s experience (it’s the version 2 after dexapp) gives it winning points and get them quickly customers.

Congrats to the whole team at Mercury Grove!

Like many tech people in Montreal, Ian Rae (@ianrae) went through Coradiant in the early 2000′s, before eventually starting his own business. He now runs a successful company which I’d describe as the “Jaguar of web hosting companies”. It might not be affordable for all companies, but it does offer top of the line expertise and service that would be hard to find in more “mainstream” companies like Rackspace.

Ian Rae has had many ideas, and one of them was to get technology entrepreneurs and companies together in a space. I actually met him 2 years ago, and my immediate answer was that he wasn’t the first one to think about this, and the hardest thing was covering operational expenses and marketing, like Mark McQueen from the Wellington Fund pointed out in an earlier MTW post.

Unlike many in Montreal tech scene, who make much more noise than Ian Rae on starting incubators and the like, it seems actually Ian Rae got things starting off the ground, quietly. He now has a large space, in a University Street building. The office is of course Syntenic’s headquarters, with its staff setting up servers hardware and also Syntenic daily operations, but it also is home for several Montreal startups, a few funded by MSU, plus also companies where Ian is an active contributor, and also consulting companies providing key advice to startups.

Not shown in the pictures are the variety of office spaces being occupied by the various Montreal startups.

If you see this, it’s immediate to conclude that it’s a de-facto startup incubator, with all the advantages (proximity of entrepreneurs, people focusing on innovation, technology-oriented allowing quick development, having a central space for discussion and meetings), and none of the disadvantages (since everything has been managed very informally so far, with tech companies coming in by word of mouth). There’s also no marketing at all done, and it’s easy to see the national & international potential of such a place, plus the immediate benefits for any entrepreneur who’d move in there.

Ian Rae says he doesn’t want to compete at all with projects like Station C ; he’d just want to “let’s get things working right now, we’ll see how things go in 90 days…”. Seeing the success so far, I’m asking myself questions if the entire community wouldn’t be better after all to support that space, and see if it’s possible to present it as the main hub for Technology in Montreal … although it probably needs a clear plan and clear intentions before being presented as such.

In the past year, Marc Gingras was known for evangelizing product simplicity and ease of use. I remember him at a StartupCamp Montreal edition, and he spent nearly two thirds of his allocated “time slot” to make the case why user experience and easy of use was primordial for Tungle… My reaction, and most of the entrepreneurs I talked to (apart from the likes of David Dufresne who were already “sold” to Marc), was that his speech was obvious, but, really, how complex can appointments management can be? Just get iCal interface, and you’re done.

Fast forward, and Tungle, as a product, and as a team, impresses me. When you use Tungle, it’s the same feeling as using a macbook, Google’s user interface or 37Signals’s backpackit. The product feels incredibly polished, from the placement and color of every pixel, to the user flow, where every click and every button feels that they’re just right where they need to be.

With this solid product base, Tungle has recently introduced new features. One of them is the short url, such as Tungle.me/Marc, a handy and memorable link, which works well in Twitter too. Tungle has also released last may a direct booking API which allows third-party websites to book time slots; and it’s easy to envision then Tungle as a central platform for time management for business users, giving it much more potential than “just” a calendaring application. Last week, Tungle was also a launch partner for Xing’s OpenSocial initiative, giving its 7.5 million members access to Tungle.

Today, Tungle is in all its aspects a very strong product. I wonder what would happen if they had the marketing genius and hyperactivity of Freshbooks in terms of communication; making it a Great montreal startup.

Jasmine Antonick (@jasmineAntonick), a Canadian living in the valley, calls out for Canadian startups to present at Under the Radar Nov. 09.

I’m looking to find some killer Canadian mobile startups, as I want to showcase innovative companies from outside the borders of Silicon Valley ;) And, I’m a Canadian living in San Francisco… It’d be great if you could post a “Call for Companies” on Montreal Tech Watch.

Under the Radar will uncover the next wave of vetted, test-driven startups that have launched within the year, showcasing the newest companies created by founders with a quest for innovation and a plan for disruption. Under the Radar brings startups, industry leaders, press, and investors together with one ultimate goal: to get the deal done.

In the past three years 54% of presenters have gone on to raise funding and/or be acquired by Google, Microsoft, FOX Interactive, Salesforce, British Telecom, and others

Event page for more info