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.

Startups solve problems.

So if you find a problem there’s probably a startup idea lying somewhere nearby.

A Montreal developer Kenji Williams developed an app called twtspire.com that scours twitter and automatically detects tweets from people that wonder why a solution doesn’t exist for a specific problem they’re having.

Here are example of tweets from twtspire.com that could result in some kind apps

Why isn’t there an app that auto-deletes texts you send after 4am. #facepalm

Oh my god. Someone needs to make an app that makes an instrumental out of any song. #IsThatLegal #KaraokeAllDayEveryDay

There’s also evil ideas like:

Wish there was a single website with complete book/movie summaries with spoilers.

Twitter has over 50 million daily tweets, so testing and refining the app was done in a single week-end. The app uses a combination of keywords as well as keyword exclusion rules (which eliminate unwanted terms) and keyword proximity rules. For all of the meaty details and source code headover to Kenji’s blog

It’s announced as a conference full of good keynotes, from successful entrepreneurs like BeyondTheRack founder, renowned Internet marketers, and other Internet execs. View more on the eventbrite page. As the name suggests, the presentations were curated to accelerate startups.

It’s more than a conference though, as it’s designed to create connections between investors and entrepreneurs. The keynotes and the fireside chats will be followed by a cocktail where startups can meet investors. The event is instigated by the C100, a Silicon Valley-based organizations aimed at helping Canadian-based businesses, so you are guaranteed to meet SV-based investors. Who knows? It can the ticket of success for your current startup.

The startup festival aims to explore the business side of startups, and with the goal of making connections happen between investors and entrepreneurs, it’s good to see that the promise goes beyond keynotes, speechs and elevator pitches, and that they actually promise to invest $50,000 in a startup.

Generally, there are lots of VC funds and angel investors in a conference, but there are no advertised guaranteed deals, and conference-goers hear about deals after the conference. Here, the festival becomes a place for startup transactions. Perhaps in a few years, we will have a “Startup trade market”, where startups get bought and sold?

Read more

Q: Can you present yourself, and specifically what lead you to be a web entrepreneur today?

My name is Dominic St-Pierre, 31 years-old developer-entrepreneur living near Montreal, Quebec Canada. I have a huge passion for developing web application. I founded Focus Centric inc. in December 2007 and switch from a 9-5 employee to a freelancer / business owner since. While completing contracts were bringing money, I always wanted to build my own products. Having a strong background in commercial credit, I’ve built a complete collection agency software that I’ve sold to only one agency (they still use the product today after six years though). I also built ModulusCMS a content management and e-commerce platform from 2008-2009.

My most popular product has been twollow.com, which I have acquired, re-developed and grow to almost 12K users before selling it. I was unable to find any way of having a revenue model from it at that time, a huge mistake ;). All those ventures thought me lessons and was sharpening my marketing skills. In 2009, I also subscribe to Rob Walling’s Micropreneur Academy, that help a lot and still do today.

Q: What’s bunkerapp? What problem does it aim to solve? It seems to compete with basecamp, freshbooks and many other web apps at the same time

Bunker App is an online business suite targeted at freelancers and small businesses. I’ve been there and done that, sometime you have no contracts and three or four weeks later you’ve got five pending contracts all approved at the same time. Having a tool that helps you in all your daily processes and hopefully saves time is the goal of Bunker App. At this time, we have the initial proposal, project management, time tracking, invoicing and expenses built-in. Having the same professional look and feel for the proposal, collaboration interface and the invoice is possible for the prize of a small pizza.

I don’t think Basecamp or FreshBooks are direct competitors. Those are fantastic products and as a matter of fact; I’ve built a template app for FreshBooks near 2008. There’re enough freelancers actually to offer something different. It’s all about the workflow of each product, if you try a tool and like the way it handles things for you this is great, otherwise, try another one. Bunker removes the fact that paying $20 per month for a proposal software plus another $20 to send invoices is a truck load of money for a single freelancer.

Q: I saw the pricing, it’s very affordable compared to other alternatives. Who is your typical target customer?

As you might guess, solo freelancers represent the majority of our customers base. I ‘already blogged about this couple of months ago. In today’s society why something has to be ultra expensive to be considered desirable? I’ve set up the price from what I think it should be for a solo freelancer knowing that this kind of lifestyle comes with high and low in terms of cash flow. I would have loved to have a tool at that price when I started.

Q: I see you’ve done and sold twollow.com before, and now bunkerapp. Are you working full-time on bunkerapp? Does it get enough revenues and press, or are you still doing client work and/or looking for grants in the meantime?

I’m happy to say that I’ve kept only ongoing projects / clients I had agreements, no more new clients or contracts. I’m not sure everything would be possible in that market without being dedicated to the product.

In the next two years, each startup will be eligible to a $150k in convertible note from the BDC. During and after Demo Day, the Business Development Bank of Canada and FounderFuel will assess together which startups have what it takes to be venture-ready in the following months, and will then fund up to $150k per startup.

This is great news, since between Demo Day and their first funding round, it’s often an egg-and-chicken situation where potential investors are asking for market traction, and where startup co-founders need funds to get market-fit and also develop their technology. Furthermore, many investors are also asking that a first investor commit before agreeing to put their money in, another uneasy situation where the startup CEO has to play his cards carefully. With BDC’s convertible note, Venture Capitalists and angel investors will feel secured, both by the fact that each startup has gone through the FounderFuel program, and also has been selected by expert investors. It’s also an additional motivation for FounderFuel team, knowing that there is new funding waiting for them after the long 12-months business acceleration.

FounderFuel also confirmed today that the following startups received investments: Playerize, Ooh-la-la, wavo.me and Seevibes, raising a total of $2.5 million. It’s great news for Montreal, wavo.me and Seevibes being local startups and Playerize and Ooh-la-la still having employees here. With the new support from BDC, the number of funded startups for the second cohort as well the total amount should raise significantly.

Along with unique access to funding, FounderFuel general manager Ian Jeffrey still highlights that the program’s best proposition is its wide array of mentors that entrepreneurs can tap into.

FounderFuel also invites experienced and new entrepreneurs to discover the new FounderFuel startups at Demo Day, on May 23rd. The last Demo Day was inspiring, and it’s worth missing out for a half-day’s work to attend the event, especially if you’re planning to join the next FonderFuel cohort. In the same week, we’ll also have AccelerateMTL as well the CVCA conference which will be here in Montreal this year.

Editor’s note: Post by Jake Hirsch-Allen (@ jakehirschallen). Jake is currently Director of Business Development for Wall Street Survivor and consults on business development for the Multiplicity Accelerator and several Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto-based tech startups. Having practiced international criminal and intellectual property law, he has founded health technology and startup development organizations and currently consults for Incentives for Global Health.

…or at least that’s Venkatesh Rao’s argument in his recent Forbes.com article, “The Rise of Developeronomics.” His article combines 3 memes that I believe are transforming our economy. They will move the focus of commerce to software and to the individuals that create it.

Rao’s opening paragraphs capture the first meme well, describing the hard time we’re all having with where to put our money these days. He contrasts the current situation with the theory in evolutionary biology that reciprocal altruism and cooperation first appeared as a solution to the food storage problem. Sharing the food you couldn’t eat was a necessity and “the best bank for your excess capital was your friend’s stomach.”

Rao continues:

“Unless you are a professional investor (and probably even then), places to store surplus capital today where it will even be safe and/or not depreciate too fast (let alone generate a return) are getting incredibly hard to find. The stock market seems to be a secular, bearish bloodbath. Volatility and unexpected temporary rallies are making short games dangerous. Even staying liquid in dollars seems to have its dangers, due to threats of devaluation and unfamiliar new terms like “quantitative easing” which us average investors are starting to hear for the first time. The Euro isn’t exactly a great alternative at the moment. Investing in gold and similar commodities seems to require a somewhat apocalyptic mindset and decisions about whether or not you want access to the actual metal if things go to hell (which isn’t to say such a mindset isn’t justified at the moment).”

Rao’s solution? Invest in software developers. Every industry needs them and even when the current bubble bursts there’ll still be far more demand than supply. This is how he describes the current developer frenzy:

“In the midst of a thoroughly gloomy labor market, the genuine desperation you see in the software talent wars is almost surreal. Almost every day, I see big companies, little companies, entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs and even venture capitalists join in the hunt.”

This description is similar to an Economist magazine summary of “The new tech bubble“:

“some start-up firms are dangling multi-million-dollar pay packages in order to tempt star programmers from Google, Microsoft and other big companies. They are chasing scarce skills when the broader technology industry is on a roll.”

I agree with Rao’s description of the current situation as somewhat fantastical but it’s not surprising if one plots the increasing importance of information technology and more specifically software over the past couple decades.

Another Economist article entitled “Another digital gold rush” describes three forces that propel the software revolution forward “First, technological progress has made it much simpler and cheaper to try out myriad bright ideas for online businesses. Second, a new breed of rich investors has been keen to back those ideas. And, third, this boom is much more global than the last one; Chinese internet firms are causing as much excitement as American ones.”

Yet the Economist also characterizes some descriptions of the current upheaval as over the top: “Some excited people have likened this technological upheaval to the Cambrian explosion 500m years ago, when evolution on Earth speeded up in part because the cell had been perfected and standardized.”

The internet or software revolution, at times compared to a Khunian paradigm shift and at a minimum the most significant recent development in human technology, necessitates a rethinking of some economic principles.

In his description of the new role of developers in our economy Rao explicitly dehumanizes and objectifies developers, describing them as the objects of an all-encompassing capitalist game that we are all playing whether we want to or not. One interesting dynamic that he mentions, for instance, is the tendency for software to benefit extremes in company size. Not only are the Googles and Facebooks of the world capitalizing on the increased importance of 1s and 0s but software has also been the primary engine behind the massive decrease in the amount of capital and time required to create a startup, even in other industries. This has resulted in an attraction to the poles where the best entrepreneurs and developers succumb either to the comforts of “gilded-cage workplaces full of gourmet buffets, high-tech nap pods, and daycare facilities” or the freedom and unrealistically slim chance of a windfall at a startup. This latter career choice has become doubly attractive due to the totally overblown publicizing of the relatively few individuals who have gotten rich quick (while I’ve seen many stats on how few startups make it, I’d be curious if proportionally more are making it big since software has done so).

Eric Ries’ book, “The Lean Startup“, perhaps the most popular meme in recent tech startup lore, describes the myriad benefits of small teams focused on fast moving software projects requiring little capital and with massive potential. Applying Toyota’s “lean” methodology to product development including its focus on constant cyclical validation, constant QA and a culture of transparency, this movement has brought significant attention and benefits while reinforcing unrealistic hopes.

One symptom of software’s overwhelming influence about which I was unaware is how early talent war’s are beginning. Apple, Google and others are encouraging students as early as middle school to adopt their technology, doing their best to breed a new generation of iOS or python coders. Just as Google’s investment in Python (one of the three languages the company uses for its work) was in part a strategic bet on the growing talent pool in this under-valued language, so too, my developer-friend Matthew Huebert informs me, PowerSet mined Ruby for young talent.

I think Rao is wrong when he says that this is creating a have/have-not talent divide “that will soon surpass the infamous geopolitical North/South divide in importance” yet he is dead on in noting that it is unprecedented and significant.

Rao cites three reasons for the talent wars:

1. “software development talent is incredibly hard to assess upfront, and its value can be highly situation-dependent, which means intake volumes and intra-industry churn have to be high (since a potential star may not flourish in your environment).”

2. software skills can afford social and economic mobility – the former fad, in my opinion may not endure as long as the latter. Nevertheless I agree with Rao’s statement that “Stock options are simply not as effective in limiting mobility as the power of Russian nobility to whip serfs into immobility once was.”

3. the most important and interesting reason is the third meme I went to discuss, the 10x phenomenon, about which I’d like to learn and write more later. The concept of the 10x engineer is attributed to the now octogenarian software engineer Frederick Brooks, who described why a good programmer is an order of magnitude more productive than an average one (see here for a longer discussion http://www.quora.com/Is-the-concept-of-a-10x-engineer-valid/answer/Tom-Park).

More specifically, Rao explains why the 10x phenomenon applies to software developers in a way that it doesn’t other engineers:

“Other industries turn x’ers into 10xers primarily using software tools (a mechanical engineer equipped with CAD software suddenly becomes a 10x mechanical engineer)… [Yet] the 10x phenomenon, and the [software] industry’s reliance on it, doesn’t seem to get engineered or managed away because the 10xers keep inventing new tools for themselves to stay 10xers.”

While I still don’t completely understand this particularly allegorically interesting paragraph:

“As Alan Kay, a major pioneer of today’s software-eaten planet, pointed out recently, the Internet doesn’t have stop, shut down, or rewind buttons. Once it was turned on, history was essentially rebooted. Software began eating away at the pre-software layers of civilization on the planet, and depositing software-infused layers instead.”

I do find compelling questions about how the internet is changing history. There is no question, software and the internet are dramatically changing how history is being re-written resulting in the medium having a perhaps unparalleled effect on our stories. This relates to what Matt describes as his “random thought” that “software is a very “mental” thing… it changes how we manipulate & categorize the world at a deep level in our minds.” Like him, I too am “very curious about the psychological and sociological consequences of the software revolution.

I do not agree with “David Kirpatrick’s now famous line that every company is now a software company” and think Rao returns to hyperbole when he suggests we will replace the BC/AD distinction with BI/AI (Before Internet/After Internet). Yet I do think this hyperbole is representative of sentiment within the software industry and is perhaps indicative of a problem with its over-exaggerated sense of self-importance. While this narcissism has so far done the software industry well, I worry that it is perhaps the clearest harbinger of a bubble.

The Economist tempers these fears though with the reasonable statement that “irrational exuberance rarely gives way to rational scepticism quickly. So some bets on start-ups now will pay off.” Here the magazine echoes the National Venture Capital Association’s claim that today’s tech firms have robust business models and healthy revenues. It suggests this plus the fact that they are trading at price-earnings multiples “nowhere near as frothy as they were before the last bubble burst in 2000″ should limit excesses in valuing private firms.

I remain a sceptic. I think a middle term bubble is foreseeable and favour the Economist’s portrayal “of signs of irrational exuberance among some investors.” Instead of the indefinite exponential rise or a short term crash foreseen by many I think the software revolution will likely be experienced as a bumpy economic progression for the better.

Matt recently responded to my thoughts on this issue with the following:

“Frothy excitement and narcissistic personalities may be positive signs of a short-term bubble, but are they reason to suspect that the underlying change is weak? Tech is hard for outsiders to understand; I would imagine it difficult for people who do not understand tech deeply to be able to see how much change is coming.”

Spurred in the short term by mobile, social, cloud, platform, apps and data driven advances, we may see significant efficiencies across markets and in societal, environmental and international developmental work.

From new forms of financing, think angel networks and impact investing, to dramatic new uses for internet-based technologies, the latest tech bubble and software more generally will increase standards of living. One brilliant example is Ushahidi’s free, crowd and open sourced software (LGPL) for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Other good uses of technology closer to home include open data initiatives from Montreal Ouvert to Open North and Buzz Data to Vote Compass increasing transparency and accountability through technology.

In sum I see software as the latest significant social evolution – a technology that like glasses or the engine have sped human progress and given us new powers. Our current bubble is ironically a sign of software’s long term importance and is the best support for developeronomics.

What’s often missing from these events is guidance to teams about what’s next for them, in terms of becoming a viable startup. It’s often a hit or miss, before they become ready for launch, VC or angel funding.

It’s with this in mind that I discussed with Charles Morand, a senior analyst at the Business Development Bank of Canada or the BDC, involved in the “Anges Financiers” event, and also at Startup Weekend. Charles Morand also mentored teams at the event, and I wanted to see what was the investor’s point of view for those local startup events.

Q: Can you present yourself, and your position at the BDC?

My name is Charles Morand and I am a Senior Analyst in the Strategic Initiatives and Investments group. We focus largely on the early-stage end of the VC market and do mostly indirect investing (e.g. accelerators, seed funds, angel funds), although we do issue convertible notes to the most promising graduates of the best Canadian accelerators.

Q: We’ve seen the BDC getting involved in the startup community, by sponsoring Startup Weekend Toronto, Startup Weekend Montréal, HackingHealth, and now the $100,000 BDC Innovation Award. Is there a plan behind this? Is the BDC looking to support very early-stage startups?

Our group was created in response to the major funding gap that exists for early stage Canadian technology companies. We therefore focus heavily on investments (e.g. accelerators) and initiatives (e.g. Startup Weekend) that have positive impacts for the early-stage ecosystem. So yes, there is a plan behind what we do

Q: What do you think of the hackathon model where a hundred or so programmers and tech entrepreneurs get together to design and launch a project in one weekend?

We’re big fans of them. They’re relatively cheap to put together and they’re a great way to get the local entrepreneurially-minded talent (technical and otherwise) together. Sometimes that’s all it takes for someone who has the fire to make the jump and become an entrepreneur – we’ve seen that happen in a couple of cases already. Some of the projects we’ve seen come out of the hackathons have been very impressive. Moreover, it’s often a chance for the whole community to get together and network.

The one caveat to that is that startup competitions of all kind are gaining in popularity, and that means greater demands on a limited pool of mentors, sponsors, etc. My advice to organizers of such events is to focus on putting together fewer, high-quality events rather than more frequent mediocre events.

Q: What could be done to support the most advanced projects from Startup Weekend and other hackathons? Right now, it looks like there’s a real gap between being a winner a Startup Weekend and being seed-ready.

That’s a good question and one that a lot of people struggle with. In a majority of cases, there is indeed a gap between being seed- or angel-ready and having just won a hackathon or startup competition. There are some interesting initiatives in other places that could serve as models, but there’s nothing yet here that provides support at the very early stage on a scale that would move the needle from an ecosystem standpoint. Maybe that’s the next thing the organizers of the top hackathons and startup competitions in Montréal should tackle – get together and bring a solid project to us and we’ll be happy to see how we can support it!

Note: l’article suivant a été écrit par Anne-Laure Putigny, en charge de “À Go, on change le monde”, à l’institut du Nouveau Monde

Montréal est reconnu pour sa scène tech extrêmement dynamique. Mais au delà des suspects habituels, on entend encore peu parler d’entrepreneurs nouveaux genre, pourtant en pleine expansion : les entrepreneurs sociaux techno!

Ces entrepreneurs ont décidé d’utiliser le plein potentiel des nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la communication (NTIC) pour répondre à un besoin social ou environnemental. Ils utilisent le pouvoir du virtuel pour enrichir le monde réel, et nous proposent de nouvelles façons de nous alimenter, de communiquer, ou de s’éduquer, afin de rendre Montréal, le Québec, et même parfois le monde plus agréables!

Bref, ils innovent, en mettant les technologies au service de l’humain ou de la société.

Vous pensez que ces entrepreneurs d’un nouveau genre sont de doux rêveurs? Découvrez quelques uns de ces projets vraiment innovants, et si proches de chez vous :

Révolutionner l’éducation une rencontre à la fois : E-180 : L’idée est simple: nous apprenons constamment. À utiliser Twitter. À voyager avec un enfant. Et si quelqu’un était prêt à nous rencontrer pour répondre à nos questions? E-180, c’est une plateforme de jumelage qui vous permet de rencontrer cette personne aux intérêts similaires aux vôtres afin de partager des connaissances. L’échange n’est pas nécessairement réciproque : peut-être offrez-vous aujourd’hui, peut-être demanderez-vous demain. Mais qu’on offre ou qu’on demande des connaissances, on apprend tout le temps ! Leur pari, c’est de faciliter ces échanges informels et d’élargir nos opportunités de rencontres à un plus grand réseau.

Un accès à internet démocratisé : Île sans fil Île sans fil a pour mission de fournir un accès Internet sans fil public et gratuit à Montréal. La vision d’Île sans fil est qu’il possible d’utiliser les technologies de l’information afin de contribuer à briser l’isolement des citoyens à l’échelle locale. Île sans fil, c’est l’expression de l’esprit communautaire Web à son meilleur !

Collaborer virtuellement pour changer le monde : plusieurs projets web ont également choisi d’utiliser le virtuel comme un espace de collaboration en soi. Je pense à Imagination for people, véritable répertoire et espace collaboratif pour des projets d’innovation sociale à l’échelle mondiale, ou encore Espace temps Montréal, qui via son projet Mur Mitoyen, se donne pour mission de valoriser et de rendre accessible l’offre événementielle montréalaise de la manière la plus conviviale possible, par la création de calendrier en ligne simples, accessibles, ouverts et centralisateurs.

Et si une ferme poussait sur chaque toit : Les fermes Lufa. Pour utiliser les NTIC, il n’est nul besoin que cela soit son cœur de métier! Même pour les entrepreneurs sociaux traditionnels, les NTIC peuvent permettre d’innover, d’être plus efficace, de sauver beaucoup de temps (et d’argent) pour répondre toujours mieux au besoin qu’ils ont identifié.. Je pense notamment aux fermes Lufa, qui grâce à des logiciels et un intranet très performants, réussissent à savoir le matin s’ils doivent cueillir 14001 ou 14002 tomates pour leurs paniers bio, réussissant ainsi à garantir des légumes cueillis le matin même, et sans la moindre perte!

Et comment ne pas finir en citant l’un des plus grands sites de microcrédit au monde où des petits prêts changent des vies? Kiva est la première ONG au monde de microcrédit en ligne, finançant près de 500 projets par jour. Grâce à sa plateforme en ligne, Kiva connecte des micro-entrepreneurs avec des personnes partout dans le monde qui décident de prêter des petites sommes. Au fil des mois, les prêteurs sont remboursés de leur prêt qu’ils peuvent récupérer ou réinvestir dans de nouveaux projets. Cette success story, fondée à San Francisco en 2005, a réuni depuis plus de 110M€ de prêts, à destination de plus de 50 pays différents.

Alors pourquoi ne pas rêver en grand et imaginer d’autres projets qui pourraient changer le monde?

Pour en savoir plus sur l’entrepreneuriat social et découvrir d’autres portraits inspirants : http://www.agoonchangelemonde.qc.ca/

A Montreal-based student and also encryption specialist, Nadim (@kaepora) is also famous for crypto.cat, a communication tool that is used by many security groups and also activists worldwide to send privately messages, without fear of detection. The messages are encrypted, and not even the operator of the infrastructure cannot read the messages.

Even with the cryptocat cred, Nadim was still impressed to get messages from Sabu, and even more surprised to be invited to join in attacks. As most of you know, Sabu has know been revealed as the 28-year old NYC resident Hector Xavier Monsegur, paid by the FBI to reveal the identies of hacker “friends”.

Other signs show the growth of the hacker community in Montreal: in less than 3 weeks, Hackus will be in Montreal, with a software, hardware, and social engineering tracks. The initiative is advertised to most Comp Sci students in Montreal as well as various InfoSec companies. Teams are challenged for 2 days to solve simple to complex challenges, such as rooting a server, cryptography challenges, or hacking the network layer. For programmers or “regular” sys-admins, it would interesting to attend the event and see what are the challenges in security, if you are on the other side of the fence… especially if your server experienced an intrusion or injection recently.

Other initiatives also contribute to the growth of the community. Every month, MTLSEC has organized informal get-togethers where anyone can meet professionals or anyone interested in security, from governance issues to low-level implementation. The next meeting is tomorrow at Nyks Bistro near metro Place des Arts.

That’s without counting REcon, a world-class computer security conference. The event attracts companies and individuals interested in reverse engineering and exploitation techniques, and contribute into establishing Montreal as a security and hacker pole in North America.

That community is fuelled by the support of new startups like Subgraph, a developer of the open source security tool Vega. Many student groups from ETS to UQAM to Concordia are also heavily invested in that community… on what side you might ask. But that’s for another article.