Montreal Tech Watch

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

Raymond Luk (@rayluk) from FlowVentures planned to be in Toronto this week for DemoCamp Toronto ed. 21; thus was born the idea of having Toronto StartupDrinks, in the same evening as the one in Montreal.

It’s a great idea; we’ve been running StartupDrinks in Montreal for well over a year, with every time a large audience. Actually, having one just after a democamp makes even more sense. It’s awesome to have David Crow (@davidcrow) and everyone from the Toronto tech startup community get together for those informal, simple, but in a way, so crucial for the life of a community.

For the Montreal edition, I was surprised to see many new faces, many entrepreneurs, consultants, business and marketing folks, as well as a strong group of technology people. Lots of people talking, getting to know each other, and I’ve seen a few trying to recruit actively talent for new ventures.

Hats off to Robin Ahn (@RobinBirdSounds) who is doing a fabulous work

For those who were there, you can see again the list of attendees here, and (re)connect with them.

See pictures on Flickr

At last week’s OSCON conference event, Evan Prodroumou won an award from Google and O’Reilly Media for his work on identi.ca and the laconi.ca platform.

OSCON is by far the conference with the biggest profile in the year; and it’s a statement well-deserved to Evan’s magnificent work on the laconi.ca platform, which has now reached 7.000.000+ “dents” and 60.000 users.

Google and O’Reilly Media, the co-organizers of the conference awarded Evan, as well as other open source/Free Software leaders, such as the people behind Drizzle, PostgreSQL, etc. The award is given to individuals who innovated in open source and lead by excellence

Evan can be proud of himself; he’s in many ways a model for entrepreneurs and hackers alike, proving that all you need is a laptop and a spot in a co-working space somewhere in the world (ok that was maybe stretching it a little bit, but not so far from the truth…)

You might be like me, i.e. too busy on work & projets to even think of blogging. Or you might be contemplating technology entrepreneurship and startups, as told on high-profile media such as TC or HC

Either way, it’s end of July, which means it’s time for this month’s StartupDrinks. 

What is StartupDrinks?

StartupDrinks is an informal event where entrepreneurs busy in startups, developers, and everyone interested in technology entrepreneurship are invited, grab a drink, share what you’re doing, and get feedback from Montreal startupppers. It’s the ideal moment if you want to talk about a new marketing campaign you’re designing, or about a hard technological problem you are trying to solve. 

Who will be there?

The event gathers entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, students, and is co-organized with FlowVentures. We’ve hard a regular attendance of around 50-70, and we expected the same number (if not more) this time.

Interested?

The event is this Wednesday July 29th, from 5.30pm at Brutopia, 1215 Crescent Street in Montreal.

Subscribe here if you’re planning to go.

Teralys Capital, the new fund of funds for Quebec and Canada completed the first closing of its fund last week.

Founders & Funders is holding two networking events to welcome Mr. Jacques Bernier & congratulate him on the closing of his new fund.

On Wednesday July 22nd interested entrepreneurs, VCs and angel investors can either purchase a pair of tickets for the John Cleese gala event at the Just for Laughs festival (cost is $375 for a pair of VIP tickets) to join the welcome cocktail and attend the gala show OR there is an option to volunteer to be in the Gala event which includes no cost, but requires the volunteers to rehearse with John Cleese and the Just for Laughs staff from 1:30pm-4:30pm on Wed. July 22nd, then these volunteers will watch the show from backstage and play a small role in the 2nd half of the Gala show that evening.

Details on the July 22nd Gala Event including tickets, registration for volunteer & VIP tickets can be found here.

On Thursday July 23rd interested entrepreneurs, VCs and angell investors can purchase a pair of tickets for the Lewis Black gala event as part of the Just for Laughs festival (cost is $375 for a pair of VIP tickets).

Details on the July 23nd Gala Event including tickets, registration for volunteer & VIP tickets can be found here.

On both evenings there will be a small cocktail reception from 4:30-6:30pm where Mr. Jacques Bernier will speak about the new Teralys Capital fund.

Raymond Luk, from Flow Ventures, announced an investment in a 2nd startup called Art AnyWhere.

Art Anywhere is an artwork rental service, matching any artist and individuals wishing to decorate their home or offices.

Behind the startup is Christine Renaud, known by a few Montreal entrepreneurs for e180, another education web venture which she headed for the past year. I am also sure Raymond Luk is also heavily involved in Art Anywhere, at least on the core idea, business and strategy side.

I have to say the simplicity of the idea is elegant, one of those ideas where I’m certainly eager to try it out. Even though it’s a different industry, this reminds me strongly of netflix’s DVD shipping service, where subscribers get to keep a fixed number of DVDs home, with netflix taking care of logistics, and also taking care of the DVD supply and the recommendation algorithm, so that their users get the best DVD for them.

Of course, this service supposes that inviduals rent, not because of the object’s monetary value, but because of art and the quality of the art work, leaving out people attracted to art because of the rarity and because other people would envy them.

Congrats both to Raymond Luk and Christine Renaud, wishing both of them all the bests!

In the same vein as the various X-Prizes setup by private and public organizations, the Netflix prize spurred lots of interest in mathematicians and hackers circle.

The competition invited programmers and scientists all over the world to find a better recommendation engine. It would allow Netflix to predict better if a user would like a movie, based on his previous ratings, and other users’. The winning mark was a 10% improvement.

Now it looks like the Pragmatic Theory snatched the prize, with 10.05% improvement. Pragmatic Theory is made of Electrical engineer Martin Piotte and software engineer Martin Chabbert of Montreal, working in the telecommunications industry, and apparently algorithm crafters in their spare time. Their work came up at the 1st place since March this year, and they’ve reached the final mark by adding work made by Comendo, Yahoo! Reasearch and AT&T.

The Netflix prize came with a $1million prize. Initially, it wasn’t open to residents of Québec, but on 24th of March 2009, when Pragmatic Theory got the lead, Netflix changed the rules to accept as well residents of Québec. That’s good for Netflix, a wise decision (compared to the Régie des Jeux du Québec’s rulings…), and fortunate for all of Quebec residents, since it would have been the laughing subject of tech publications otherwise.

The rules of the competition also stated that the winning team could also commercialize the product of their work, on top of the cash prize. Congrats to the Pragmatic Team, congrats for their perseverance and sheer brilliance, since they present it as only a “leisure project”.