Le défi Startup Weekend Montréal

Cette fin de semaine, 135 développeurs, designers et spécialistes en marketing et en administration se sont rassemblés à Startup Weekend Montréal, et ont été mis au défi de concevoir, développer et lancer une «startup». L’événement a commencé fort vendredi avec une allocution de Yona Shtern, le fondateur du site à succès BeyondTheRack.com et de François Gilbert, directeur général d’Anges Québec. « Être entrepreneur, c’est une façon de vivre, d’exprimer sa confiance en soi et ses convictions profondes » a affirmé François Gilbert. Ils ont été ensuite été invité à rejoindre dans un panel de discussions Jean-Sébastien Cournoyer, partenaire du fonds de démarrage Real Ventures et Chris Arsenault, associé directeur au fonds de capital de risque iNovia Capital.

61 idées ont été ensuite présentées par les participants, avec au final seulement 17 projets sélectionnés. Les équipes se tout de suite lancées au travail, avec pour défi la réalisation en seulement 54 heures.

Support complet de la Communauté d’affaires

Tout au long de de la fin de semaine, 54 entrepreneurs à succès, chefs d’entreprise, et experts reconnus en design, marketing, technologie et services légaux ont conseillé et supporté les équipes. Ces mentors se sont assurés qu’ils ont validé les hypothèses en parlant à des clients potentiels, les ont aidé dans leur modèle d’affaire, et ont rappelés aux équipes la nécessité d’avoir un produit fonctionnel.

Im-patient, la solution pour de meilleurs services en santé?

Les équipes ont été jugées à la fin de l’événement sur la qualité d’exécution de leur modèle d’affaires, de l’exécution, de la validation du produit auprès de la clientèle cible ainsi que sur la composition de leur équipe. Le jury composé de Senia Rapisarda (BDC), Mr. Claude Ananou (SynOpp), Mr. Johann Gest (Fasken Martineau), Mark Mcleod (Real Ventures) et Caroline Pelletier (Anges Québec) ont remis le prix du jury à l’équipe de im-patient, une application mobile qui permet à ses utilisateurs de simplifier et d’accélerer leur visite médicale. Humm.it a quant à lui, gagné le prix coup de coeur.

Des chiffres qui parlent d’eux-mêmes

En tout, 100 000 $ de prix ont été décernés, dont des forfait complets de services légaux, des services d’incubation, rencontres et coaching auprès investisseurs, services de design, et entrées dans des conférences internationales comme C2MTL ou Startup Festival. « Startup Weekend Montréal a pour la première fois rejoint d’un côté la communauté des startups de Montréal, avec des organisations comme Notman House, MontrealTechWatch ou FounderFuel, et d’un autre côté l’organisation de HEC Montréal, qui a eu un effet multiplicateur et donné naissance à un événement d’envergure.» selon Heri Rakotomalala, co-organisateur de l’événement.

Startup Weekend Montréal, c’est en tout 8 projets d’affaires dans les réseaux sociaux et jeux, 4 projets en ecommerce, 3 projets en applications mobiles et géo-localisés, 1 projet en santé, et 1 projet en publication numérique.

Startup Weekend Montréal a pour partenaires principaux HEC Montréal, Fasken Martineau, Real Ventures et la BDC, et est un événement co-organisé par la Société des Relations d’Affaires et MontrealTechWatch.

Références:

TVA Nouvelles is the #1 show, with 256m impressions. Other shows by V, TVA, SRC are also in the top 5. See the chart below for the detailed ranking:

As shown by the graphic, SeeVibes can also show more elaborate rankings, such as gender %, engagement, # of unique participants, Twitter vs Facebook interactions. It’s an impressive demonstration of technology, since they need to track twitter’s firehose and facebook in real-time, and be able to classify the social media mention immediately, if there are relevant keywords. I know François Beausoleil is working hard on this, and using every piece of technology available to get the performance.

With the growth of social media, and internet tv such as netflix and youtube, the television industry needs to integrate solutions like SeeVibes’s in order to stay relevant, and prove their reach to advertisers. TV producers can also leverage the metrics given by SeeVibes to fund projects. Undoubtedly a much better solution compared to what BBM Canada provides!

Checkout seevibes

In the category of product owners, I don’t think you can beat Michael Daudignon of iWeb. Most product owners have a vision of the product, and yes most are passionate, but only a few take it personally as much as Michael, who decided to sing about the joy and merriness that the Smart Server brings. With the control panel as illustrated below, Michael says you can control your server.

Compared to Amazon who doesn’t offer a control panel for their customers or Rackspace which has a minimalist cp, iWeb apparently will allow anyone to easily manage your server’s configuration.

This is in constrast to startups in Montréal who choose to take a more clinical approach to product ownership, and leave instead to the marketing team or the whole company to do all the communication (traditional or not) of the product. Here’s another shot of Michael who chose to disguise as Super-smart-man, with a Smart car, for Halloween.

I don’t know anybody in Montréal who’d be as creative (crazy?) to take this Richard Branson-esque approach to their product. Do you have examples? Do you know any community manager or product manager as quirky and imaginative as Michael?

An innovative design

There are many startups claiming to understand the online job market, and Jobbook approaches it like a dating site. Candidates first create a profile, and then indicates to the site what sort of jobs they’d like. They will then receive alerts on new jobs. When back to the site, they then go through a list of jobs, and “Like” the ones they’d like to apply to. Employers then go through the list of candidates who liked their jobs, and if successful, Jobbook will get 5% of the candidate’s first-year salary from the employer.

The design means canditates don’t have to go through the long and painful process of introducing him/herself to the company, and employers don’t have to go through spam, or invest in a job listing fee. It adds an original facebook-y component to the online job market, which has been so far dominated by the rather old-schools Monster or eLance.

The online job market is very lucrative and fierce; startups like oDesk are bringing new markets to the table, there’s a wave of hopeful “AirBnB but for jobs”, while there’s still a lot of free job boards. And it’s interesting to see another Montreal upstart trying out something new.

Aggressive marketing

The “innovation” doesn’t stop there though, and Jobbook is also looking for creative ways to promote the service. The news section of the site have nice-looking photos and articles, with a professional design. There’s no original content though, and most articles are in fact aggregated from various established sites like the New York Times, Mashable, and any other site having news that would interest a job searcher. Is copying another site’s content infringement? Jobbook includes a “Read the original post” at the end of the article, and law in Canada about Fair Dealing is very vague on what you can or can’t do, but what’s clear here is that Jobbook isn’t adding original comments, review, criticism, and the whole system actually looks like they’re just re-publishing their favorite RSS items.

I understand the rationale though, it’s certainly very good in terms of search engine marketing, and will get your site ranked well by Google for the targeted keywords.

Eclectic group of investors and business partners

As reported by the Montreal Gazette, Jobbook already sits in a sprawling 4,000 square foot office in a prime location. The offices feature a basketball court plus a gym. That’s explained by the fact that one of Jobbook’s investor is a real estate developer. Other investors include 73-year old Jean de Brabant, a lawyer, who is the original godfather of Jobbook while Antoine de Brabant, his son, and Noah Chaimowicz, the CTO, are presented as the cool co-founders of Jobbook. Other shareholders include Michael Boyd, ex-Fonola, plus any other individual or group that is interested in business partnerships with Jobbook.

Giving 1 company share to “affiliates” for each new registration

Like many web and mobile startups, Jobbook is trying new marketing tactics to promote their service. The site’s founder signed a deal with Zach Newburg, the president of student society of McGill university, where he would be entitled to one share for every McGill student that registered. Zach Newburg went on trips to Ivy Leagues schools, Ontario, and in England, contacting various student clubs about presenting McGill, but then arrived with Jobbook founders, and pitched instead the website to student society representatives. There was a big uproar at McGill university, both Newburg and Jobbook explained it was a misunderstanding, and Newburg is now in a more official role as VP of student relations.

Naughtiness

When asked about this deal, Newburg said he couldn’t reveal it, having signed a non-disclosure agreeement (NDA) with Jobbook founders. Other student reps have joined in, and Jobbook now boasts 5,000 new users in one month.

The business practices are amusing, to say the least. In Paul Graham’s essay, “What we look for in a startup”, referenced by many investors, one of the fourth quality of a startup entrepreneur is “naughtiness”, defined as the capacity to bend rules to their advantage, and beating the system.

Jobbook’s practices are certainly not illegal. Even the star of the web AirBnb is known for spamming craiglists users in its early beginnings, enticing them to register on the site. Facebook got started initially by leeching student information through Harvard servers, without the users’s approval. And don’t even get me started on Groupon.

In Montreal, there’s a selection of startups using blackhat SEO and other “creative” tactics to get users. There’s even an industry of spammers in the city (such as the case of the spammer ordered to pay $800m to Facebook). Even in collaborative environments like Notman House, we’ve come across entrepreneurs using those creative practices, where one copies someone else’s ideas and then re-optimized them.

Where’s the technology advantage?

We can call those practices naughty (or hustling?), and when you’re a startup, with limited resources, in a ultra-competitive market, that’s a path many entrepreneurs are taking. They’re pressed by investors to increase cashflow, sign distribution deals, and find a way to “make things work”. In cases where you don’t have a technological advantage (i.e. your product pitch can be easily replicated by any new CompSci graduate in a few months), some business-oriented cofounders take the lead and will be tempted to bend the rules to their advantage.

As stated earlier, Jobbok’s tactics are certainly not illegal. It’s just amusing to see a conservative organization like McGill unhappy with those practices. For MTW readers, and especially programmers, what you can remember is that many startups begin like this. And for bloggers: do a minimum of research, don’t just copy&paste what the press release says

Check out Jobbook

There are quite a few good projects (with plans and resources available to make it happen), but due to limited time, there will be only one or two that will be started and your feedback is warmly welcomed to help decide. So please fill the form. Of course, if you have any comments, please add it at the end of the form.

As most efforts, initiatives like VentureCap are a huge time investment, and deserves to be highlighted. I know many VCs, angel investors, as well as foreign investors are following the video series, so if you meet Kristina or Brent, find a way to get some coverage. It would be good if the community also support the initiative.

Check out the recent videos from Founder Fuel demo day, as well as videos from main conferences.

Holiday shopping is starting very soon, and Buyosphere is now offering to help consumers find the dreamed item, either for wearing at holiday events, or for gifts. You can ask a simple question, and add details such as Tara Hunt’s request for a holiday dress:

Sadly, the application didn’t let me comment on how her current profile picture already featured a good new years-y dress. It offers you instead to paste directly the URL of a suggested product. Other users can weigh in, and vote on suggested products, similar to quora or stackoverflow’s interactions. So no trolling — just focusing on products that can fit you.

This is a *very* interesting pivot from to what Buyosphere was offering previously, which was cataloging your shopping spree either by inputting the URL or by sending buyosphere the invoice. They did in fact spent a lot of time developing invoice parsing. It was all in good fun, and you could discover what your friends were buying, but then it lefts you sometimes wondering how useful the application could be. Now, users can come to the site to solve a shopping problem, which as everyone knows, can be dire in the end of the year. Everyone always wonders what they can offer to their loved ones and friends that is unique, good and fits the person.

There’s also a “Discover” section, populated with products already in the buyosphere database, with the “user has” or “user wants” tags that buyosphere was doing previously, although to make that section a good complement to the answer section, it should feature in my opinion trending or popular products, for those who want quick answers to popular questions.

Check out the new Buyopshere. There’s a few details here and there that needs to be fixed to make the experience perfect, but it’s a pretty damn good release. Congrats to the Buyosphere team!

Launched recently with much press and smart outreach through social media outreach, e-180 is a new experiment in social learning. The site wants you to register something you can show to another person, such as a professional expertise, or a personal passion. At the same time, you can ask the community what you’re looking to learn. If there’s an agreement between two members, they can then meet in a coffee shop, or in one of the special meetups organized by e-180. Check out this video showcasing a typical (?) e-180 exchange between Ricardo Lamour and Martin Rodriguez:

e-180 thrives in a age where everyone wants to be that special person, if you want to know how to train for a semi-marathon, or how to take beautiful pictures with an iPhone. There are more exotic learning experiences on the site, and added to the fact of meeting a new person, there’s quite an excitement. The site has 200+ early adopters now, mostly montréalers from the plateau, an urban, creative, web, social, and young crowd.

Since the service is offered for free, it’s different from other new services out there who all want to be “AirBnb but for experiences”. Members are expected to give their know-how, for free, and take whatever the other person offers… which is frankly a challenge if the service expects to grow in the near future. Currently, most people on the site trust each other since they’ve met at the launch party or know they’re good people from Christine Renaud’s community, but e-180 is bound to have meetings where one person would eventually feel cheated on giving much more than the other person. And maybe that’s why the e-180 team focuses so much on the meetups and community management. The service plans monthly “5 à 7″ where they’ll be around to arrange the exchanges.

I’m personally curious to see where the service will go. Christine Renaud, instigator of the service, wants free services backed by professional services to companies. e-180 has sometimes great media and approach, or sometimes, a somehow complicated user interface where you have to specially persistant to finish the whole experience. The vision is compelling for sure — we’re going in a world where everyone wants custom experiences.

Check out the pictures of e-180 launch party

Check out e-180

12 weeks later, FounderFuel has invited the investor community & friends to check out the 9 businesses, and it’s undeniably a great success, in terms of quality of the startups, and maturity of the businesses. At the beginning of the event, John Stokes also reminded the audience of the FounderFuel program’s position in the local startup eco-system.

The 9 startups are ooh la la, blame stella, editola, playerize, player takes all, willett, SeeVibes, vuru and wavo.me. They operate in the social, mobile, and media space with each one of them having an advanced product and a pitch on how they’re going to be the next big thing. A few has already announced closed funding rounds, others have already paying customers, or have that hockey stick curve that most entrepreneurs fantasize about.

As for the event in itself, it was a great lesson on pitching. The CEOs presented big numbers, announced bold plans for the future, partnerships, never-ending distribution deals, as well as creative and smart monetization plans, highlighting new opportunities. I was expecting more demos, as the name of the event suggests, and a few presentations reminded me more of what smart MBA friends can do, but the presentations (and the program in itself) were targeted to investors, so that might reflect the current startup landscape. Less democamps and barcamps, and more investor-friendly presentations, where closed funding rounds means success.

In short, if you were thinking of doing a business school, apply instead for FounderFuel. If you’re a programmer who has a good product but has little idea on how to make money out of it, you’re also a good candidate for FounderFuel… Although if you’re still scrambling on how to build a product or if you’re interested on how to solve a hard technical challenge, it might not be the right fit.

Congrats to the Real Ventures team, and to Ian Jeffrey, who’s done a great job. It’s very impressive and just took the local startup process to a whole new level. With the program now a proven success, they’re now accepting new applications, up until end of Jan 2012. Check it out.

Playerize was introduced today by one of their new investors (Rho Ventures) as opportunistic entrepreneurs. With the explosion of social gaming, mainly on Facebook, one of the challenges is how to acquire players. For game publishers who want to get beyond simple facebook ads, Playerize can also provide google adwords campaigns, display ads, social ads, and email marketing. Playerize can also provide monetization tools, increase engagement, and provide retention tools to publishers, meaning they’re aligning themselves to be the #1 provider for any game developer looking to make a living out of their facebook app.

One of Playerize’s focus was a dashboard, showing clearly user acquisition, as well as other metrics to track the app.

Like a few FounderFuel startups, the product is still rough on the edges (most pages linked from the homepage are not working, see above, and the homepage seems there’s something missing as well), but this is minor and it’s only a couple of days of work. Having done a few facebook and adwords campaigns, I’m also surprised to see they managed to technically scale that part of the product. If this was the case, congrats on a job well done! A few VCs and angels saw the opportunity and the team already announced they have closed a round of funding. Congrats to the Playerize team!

Check out playerize