It’s secure, convenient, and quick, since there is no money transaction and there’s no friction in the gates. As you can see though, the system is not perfect, as you need almost 1 staff to guide people and make sure they find the scanner for the bracelet.

Coachella attracted 30,000 festival goers and it’s a big break for Montreal-based Intellitix. What’s also interesting is the social media integration. Each festival-goer gets their Facebook timeline updated everytime they check-in, adding more marketing opportunities for coachella.

The 3rd annual GROW Conference is returning this August to Vancouver, and we’ve secured 20 tickets for our Montreal audience at the sold out price of $295 ($100 off from the current price), thanks to our friends from dealmaker media. This is a great great opportunity for startups looking for visibility for their products, or those looking for build connections with other Canadian, American or European startups.

Use promo code “montrealtechwatch” when buying your ticket, and do it fast, there’s only 20 discounts available!

GROW Conference: RE-THINKING BUSINESS, August 22-24th, 2012 Vancouver, B.C.
Engage or die. The social web has changed expectations and empowered consumers with real-time information and a digital soapbox. These consumers are your customers and your employees. In today’s noisy marketplace with low switching costs, they can leave you at any time. To stay competitive, companies must create a culture of respect and openness, build a strong brand identity, and emotionally engage their community. In the land of ‘me too’ companies what you stand for and how you interact is your differentiator.

In a unique three day event learn from leaders as they discuss lessons learned throughout each phase of the business life cycle. Join the conversation with 700 influential founders, corporate executives, and leading investors from across the globe.

Follow GrowConf on Twitter: (hashtag #GROWConf)
Check out the main site

MTL DGTL, a festival which inaugurated its first edition last year, has announced a new 2012 edition. It’s planned from 12th to 15th November, and is based on the same principles: gather in the same banner several independent events, in order to offer a bigger and more attractive platform to Montréalers as well as to an international audience.

The most important event in the line-up is the MIGS or Montréal International Game Summit, which has been running for years in the city, and has gathered big players like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, with as well creatives and professionals from all over the world. New edgy events such as Web-In for the web digerati, Mobiz to accomodate those working on mobile applications, or the “Atelier Innovation Cinq” complete the line-up, to wholly represent the digital industry in Montréal.

For those who follow events, there’s an interesting parallel with the International Startup Festival, who is also vying for an international audience, bets on first-class keynote speakers, with the objective of gathering everyone from the industry, create connections, and generate publicity for the businesses going to the event. The International Startup Festival goes even further in the festival concept since it’s planned during the summer, in the same way the Jazz festival or other well-known festivities are planned in Montréal to attract an international audience. It’s in 2 related but different industries though: MTL-DGTL caters web agencies, video games companies, media, and small & medium businesses, while Startup Fest is explicitly aimed at startups.

It would be interesting to have a startup-related event in MTL-DGTL. I’ve seen the Web-In crowd in the Notman House, and a few dedicated “startup tracks” in Mobiz or Web-In would bring in good people.

With Google Montreal, MTLStartupTalent announced yesterday evening a challenge open to anyone interested in solving a Montreal-specific problem. Interested participants are invited to register on the contest site (deadline: monday). The winning team will get a $2500 cash prize plus also an invitation to the google Montréal new offices, and have a special meeting with Google engineers and staff. There’s also a $500 cash prize for the runner-up, plus also an invitation to tour the Google offices.

Closing on March 10th, the challenge runs for around 3 weeks, and should be very interesting to any student, professionals, entrepreneurs, or freelancers interested in putting their talent to good use, see what they can really do in 3 weeks, and hope to be first, of course to win the prize, but also because of the generated publicity.

What’s also interesting is that the contest is not a pure “programming” contest: videos, simple pages with minimal interaction, or any other work will be considered … as long as it uses google+ (such as logging in, adding to Google +, leveraging the social network etc.). You could also get together an all-star team of programmers, but if you’ve been to recent hackathons or launched new services, you know that a project becomes much more interesting if you get together people with different backgrounds : hacking, design, product management, communication, etc. Also, as explained on the site, you can’t submit on-going projects, so you must work with a team on a new site or application.

Run in partnership with the good folks at Google Montréal, one of the main reasons to put together this challenge is to support innovation and talents in Montreal, and at the same time, why not fix a problem that you and most Montréalers are faced with? Here are a few ideas taken from the contest site: blind dates or flirting in a foreign language, , working out with people, discovering events, discovering good food spots in Montreal/venues etc.

Register on the site

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.