I’m jealous of Waterloo Region. There I said it. And I love what’s going on in Toronto.

Iain Klugman and the team at Communitech are doing a fantastic job building mindshare making Waterloo the regional hub for technical entrepreneurship in Canada. I’m also a little biased. I’m a UWaterloo graduate. I participate in events like Entrepreneur Week, Founders and Funders and Strategic Partnering Day. I think that TechCapital and their staff have a great portfolio and are doing a great job engaging entrepreneurs and the community. Groups like Velocity are leading the charge for innovative entrepreneurship education. Waterloo is a great example of academic, corporate, community and startup engagement. It’s a functioning ecosystem.

Sure it’s not listed on the Mercer Quality of Living Survey. Nor is it in Monocle’s Most livable cities. There’s a suburban feel and the need for a car. And depending on who you listen to the hospital quality has fallen over recent years. But the strong community groups, a world-class technical university that encourages industry participation, a wicked entrepreneurship community and advocacy group. But there is are great events like the Quantum2Cosmos and the Public Lectures from the Perimeter Institute. There is Janet Lynn’s Bistro and Langdon Hall (ok it’s Cambridge). It’s a great place to be an entrepreneur.

Make sure you try to attend Entrepreneur Week 2009 they have a great list of events including:

• November 16, 2009 10:00am
  Chris Hughes, Founder of Facebook & Co-ordinator of My.BarackObama.com and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst
• November 17, 2009 8:30am-10:30am
  Tim Bray, Founder of Open Text and Antartica Systems
  Ali Asaria, Founder of Well.ca

Should be a great week.

We’re really lucky to have Saul Colt working his ass off in Toronto. He’s done a great thing. He’s invited his friend Gary Vaynerchuk to come to Toronto and talk to startups about his book, Crush It, and entrepreneurship. That’s right, Gary Vaynerchuk in Toronto on December 3, 2009 for the next DemoCamp Toronto (which will be number 24 for anyone keeping track).

Gary is keynoting SxSW. Here’s your chance to see Gary without the trip to Austin. However, I strongly recommend the trip to Austin if for nothing other than the BBQ and the Shiner Bock.

The event is sponsored by Zoocasa, Saul Colt, Rogers Ventures, OCE, Microsoft BizSpark and StartupNorth are working together on this one.

I haven’t had the chance to read the book yet. Adding it to my queue along with Trust Agents, Six Pixels of Separation and a few other books.

DemoCamp Details

• Post at DemoCamp.com
• Buy a ticket at Guestlistapp – proceeds will be going towards the DailyBread Foodbank
• Apply to demo

Today marks an interesting day in Toronto. Today Toronto joins Washington, D.C., Vancouver, San Francisco, New York City, Australia, and the US in opening city data to citizens, companies, and the world to improve the quality of life. It begins a great journey to creating a strong new economy in Toronto around an infrastructure of city data.

It’s the data, stupid

(I feel like I’ve said this before).

“More and more governments state that opening government data is their priority, from the U.S: to the UK, from Australia to Belgium. Application contests (or mashup or idea contests) to engage citizen developers in creating new and valuable applications that leverage government data” – Andrea DiMaio

David Eaves identifies that data is the infrastructure for the next economy. It is the baseline upon which applications, value, and wealth can be built. I’ve talked about the benefit of data collection and the value-added analysis services in relation to personal health care. Data is the backbone, it is the building blocks from which developers can begin to build new applications and new services.

Mark Surman provides a great vision for the role that data plays in the development of a city. Re-reading his post has me thinking about a couple of challenges that need to be overcome to continue to enable the opening of city data.

1. Costs of open data
2. Economics of contests

Costs of open data

I think there needs to be an active discussion with citizens, politicians and staff members that open data is not free. There are costs associated with the production, release, maintenance, and up keep of the data sets. Additionally there may be a “build it, and they will come” model of development. Open data is not a replacement for city procurement. The city will still need to purchase software and look for ways to innovate to improve citizens lives. Open data is a building block to enable citizens, companies and communities to create applications the enable under-served (or self-served) parts of the city.

Economics of contests

Many of these cities have elected to host contests to encourage and incent local application developers to build upon the data sets.

• NYC Big Apps
• Apps for Democracy
• Apps for America
• Mashup Australia

I’m curious at the effectiveness of contests to engage the developer community and create a sustainable ecosystem. There is no question about the initial effectiveness as a tactic to create value. Apps for Democracy has shown a very strong contribution to the citizens, companies and communities of the District of Columbia.

“A $50,000 dollar investment in changing processes and offering prize money has so far yielded $2.3M in value. That’s a 46 times return on investment in one year.” – David Eaves

I’m curious about decay rate for contests. My feeling is that it is similar to the Chatter of the New Cycle. Where the contest and the data sets spike and then flow through the developer sphere just like news flows through blogosphere. 

I could be totally wrong, Sunlight Labs API shows a steady growth of the number of API calls. Apps for America 2 drew 46 submissions versus 44 for Apps for America, only a 5% growth in the number of submissions. (You might value measure of the applications as increasing with the increased API calls). More interestingly there are only 3 repeat submitters: ForumOne Communications; Jeremy Ashkenas; and Todd Fine in an initial pass of submitters. It’s actually highly probable that the number of repeat submitters is higher given submissions are often submitted with the name of the product or project.

Sustainable economies

Next I need to spend some time looking at sustainable digital ecosystems and economies. Looking at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon for examples of engaging developers and creating an ecosystem for developers.

Any suggestions for reading would be appreciated.

I’ve been thinking about Toronto. It’s almost 4 years since TorCamp and the first DemoCamp. The tech scene has changed significantly since I first posted BarCamp Toronto in September 2005. People are paying attention to Toronto. Just look at the past few weeks, we’ve had Dave McClure, Steve Ballmer, Hugh MacLeod, First Round Capital, Dharmesh Shah, Joel Spolsky, Yossi Vardi and others all in Toronto. There something going on here.

There are startups. They are raising money. They are hiring. They are doing great work. Have you checked out:

• Polar Mobile
• Crowd Science
• Rypple
• DayForce
• FreshBooks
• Well.ca (yeah, yeah, I know their based in Guelph not Toronto)
• Viigo
• AdParlor
• Thoora
• FixMo
• Bumptop
• BackType
• LearnHub
• Oanda
• Idee
• Fonolo
• PagerDuty
• Varicent
• ecobee
• Assetize
• Chango
• Agoracom
• enomaly

There are a ton of startups in Toronto. We have new corporate venture funds, there are incubator programs, there is something in the water. The best part is that there are great companies in Montreal, Vancouver, Waterloo, Ottawa (all across the country really, I’m looking at you Radian6 in Fredericton). It’s be a great four years since the start of this community thing in Toronto. Canada has always been a great place to live. Now it’s starting to be a great place to be a tech entrepreneur.

Cross posted on StartupNorth.

Impact Entrepreneurship Group started life as a student group designed to help promote entrepreneurship as a career path. It was started by Kunal Gupta, now the founder & CEO of Polar Mobile. It started as a conference for students, “a one-day event in Kitchener, Ontario attracting 150 delegates”. It is still primarily a conference/event machine for student entrepreneurs. However, with the creation of Impact Consulting and now Impact Ventures (see below) this is changing very quickly.

The next Impact National Conference is happening November 20-21, 2009 at the Westin Harbour Castle on Queens Quay in Toronto. The conference features some interesting speakers including some familiar faces: Andy Nulman, Sunjay Nath, Ali Asaria, Jordan Banks, Saul Colt, Austin Hill, Mike McDerment and others. It looks to be a great conference with a great list of speakers in Toronto.

What is most interesting to me is the announcement of the Impact 2010 Programs, including Impact Ventures.

Many talented youth with innovative ideas steer away from an entrepreneurial path due to the numerous challenges, including funding and guidance, which they inevitably face; Impact Ventures was created to remove these obstacles. Impact Ventures strives to provide youth entrepreneurs with the seed funding, advisory services, workspace tools, and strategic resources they need at the crucial idea stage to create a successful business. Based on the successful Y Combinator model used in Silicon Valley to bring the next generation of ideas to life, Impact Ventures will help propel new startups to achieve their business objectives.

The selection process consists of an application form and an interview; there is no business plan required. During the pilot, three to four ventures showing the most opportunity for growth and long term sustainability will be chosen for the first batch. This three-month program will bring these budding entrepreneurs to Waterloo, the technology hub of Canada, to present them with all the components each entrepreneur needs to help build their venture.

Components for each selected Venture:

• $15,000 in seed funding for an average of 6% stake in the company
• Mentors available for hands-on help as well as advise
• Advisory services including Legal, Accounting, Banking and more
• Office Space in Waterloo to create an environment of collaboration
• Themed weeks where experts related to starting a business will provide their insights and advice
• Consultants to help a new company fill gaps in its initial organization

Impact Ventures is dedicated to the implementation of the entrepreneurial spirit amongst Canadian youth and values the independence of each entrepreneur. We are not interested in controlling the direction of the company as we trust in the entrepreneurs to make the best decision for their company. We believe in a non-regimented and friendly atmosphere where you are allowed to develop your startup with little interference, numerous resources and advice when you need it. Impact Ventures is set to revolutionize the startup industry by giving entrepreneurs an excellent spring board that will launch them to their success.

I’ve been talking with members of team creating Impact Ventures including Taimur Mohammad and Ray Cao since my post "Incubators, accelerators and ignition” back in April 2009. It looks like the Impact team has taken up the challenge and will be using their network of advisors, past members to help guide and mentor new companies. It also looks like they’ll be providing funding and consulting services to help kick start these early ventures.  There is a Waterloo residency requirement, which potential a detractor for many students actually enables students in the VeloCity program a formalized incubation phase beyond their residence. For many non-University of Waterloo students this provides students access to the ridiculous support network available in Waterloo (I’m looking at you TechCapital and Communitech and BarCampWaterloo). This is something that is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

• Register for Impact National Conference happening Nov 20-21.

Reposting my StartupNorth post.

“With the proper level of ambition, talent, and opportunity, even a small, islolated company can turn the world into its market” – Michael Cusumano, Dealing with the Venture Capital Crisis

I’m reading Michael Cusumano’s Dealing with the Venture Capital Crisis in the October 2009 issue of Communications of the ACM, I’m struck by the idea that our geographical proximity to the US, advanced economy, good universities and strong intellectual property rights might be the spawning ground for new ventures, sources of wealth, social welfare and employment. The article proposed 4 markets that meet these requirements including:

• Israel
  Estimated 2009 Population: 7.4 million
  2008 Venture: 483 investments totaling US$2.08B, $780M from local VCs (Cdn$2.54B/Cdn$904.84M)  (IVA) 
  Investment-to-GDP: 0.0125/0.0045
• Finland
  Estimated 2009 Population: 5.3 million
  2008 Venture: 406 investments totaling 360M euros (Cdn$620.55M) (FVCA)
  Investment-to-GDP: 0.0032
• Ireland
  Estimated 2009 Population: 4.9 million
  2008 Venture: 160 investments totaling 243M euros (Cdn$418.87M) (IVCA)
  Investment-to-GDP: 0.0022
• New Zealand
  Estimated 2009 Population: 4.3 million
  2008 Venture: 52 investments totaling NZ$66.1M (Cdn$46.81M) (NZVCA)
  Investment-to-GDP: 0.0004

Well these are great numbers, how does this compare to Canada?

• Canada
  Estimated 2009 Population: 33.8 million
  2008 Venture: 371 investments totaling Cdn$1.3B (CVCA)
  Investment-to-GDP: 0.001

When compared to the US and Israel, Canada looks like a poor third cousin. What is the appropriate measure here? Investment as a percentage of GDP? Well we fall somewhere between New Zealand and Ireland. Maybe things aren’t as bad as we’d like to think. We have more venture money than New Zealand. We’re closer to a larger market. Maybe we should start to look at the positive factors and exploit the constraints to build opportunities.

• Advanced economies
• Sophisticated customers
• Good universities
• Strong intellectual property rights
• Favorable tax laws
• Vibrant entrepreneurial cultures

What’s an entrepreneur to do?

In my opinion, there are only 2 items on the above list that are directly impacted and influenced by entrepreneurs: Sophisticated customers; and Vibrant entrepreneurial cultures. Sure, the net result of a more positive entrepreneurial environment is a advanced economy that produces good universities. We can lobby politicians for strong intellectual property rights (and consumer freedoms) and favorable tax laws. But there are advocacy groups like the National Angel Capital Organization and the Canadian Venture Capital Association that more directly benefit and are better funded to act on the behalf of entrepreneurial financing. This is not some that necessarily deserve any additional attention than you currently dedicate to the political process. I’m arguing the entrepreneurs should build companies and leave this to the pundits, advocates, policy wonks and politicians.

Sophisticated customers

For entrepreneurs,we need to work on helping develop sophisticated customers. Often these customers are located near where the entrepreneur is building their product or service offering. However, this is not a requirement. Entrepreneur should look for sophisticated customers around the globe. Including customers in your product design and development process is key to creating products that meet customer needs and to develop more sophisticated customers. Steve Blank and Eric Reis have proposed the Customer Development Manifesto and Lean Startup as ways for founders to engage customers in the earliest work. All startups should read these posts.

Vibrant entrepreneurial cultures

Isn’t this what we’re trying to do? Read our thoughts on:

• Because Startups Need Each Other
• How Startups will save Venture Capital in Canada
• I love my city, and so should you

Part of the reason that we are luck enough to have Dave McClure in Toronto (and he had a great time). First Round Capital had office hours with Chris Fralic and Phin Barnes. We continue to see folks from Atlas Ventures, General Catalyst, and Microsoft (Don Dodge presented at StartupEmpire and will be presenting at CIX). This is a result of your participation. Canadian cities have a lot of buzz and attention based on the things that are going on.

It’s cumulative!

It is the force of a thousands of butterflies flapping their wings. All of the blogging, twittering, attending conferences, showing up to events, participating online. It’s about the DemoCamps, Launch Parties, StartupDrinks, Social Media Breakfasts, Third Tuesdays, Founders & Funders, NEWTECH, SproutUps, Meshes, and everything else.  It is a cumulative effect. It doesn’t take a lot of extra effort, but it adds up to the rest of the world paying attention to the noise.

We have great spokespersons like Saul Colt, Mathew Ingram, Mike Lee, Michael McDerment, Leila Boujnane, Brian Sharwood, Sarah Prevette, Pema Hagen, Bryan Watson, Anand Agarawala and others running around the world telling their stories of being a startup and the reasons they are doing it in Toronto. In Vancouver there’s Robert Scales, Kris Krug, Boris Mann, BootupLabs, Boris Wertz, Andre Charland, amd others. In Montreal it’s Austin Hill, Heri Rakotomalala, John Stokes, George Favvas, Ben Yoskovitz, Fred Ngo, Pinny Gniwisch, Ray Luk and others. Let’s not forget Social Media Breakfast, StartupOttawa, Scott Lake, Allan Isfan, Jacqui Murphy, and everyone that I’ve missed (it’s on purpose, because I don’t like you any more and I hate your startups).

But it is up to us to make noise. It’s up to us to build successful companies. It’s up to us to make Canada a better place for startups. No one is going to walk in and make it easier. We all have to participate and build a vibrant entrepreneurial culture. We need to talk about entrepreneurship as a career path. We need to talk to politicians about policy decisions.

So the first rule of being an entrepreneur is to reach out. Invite a friend. Make a connection. Tell a customer. Most of all, do the things that make the ecosystem better for you.

Steve Ballmer is coming to Toronto.

He’s speaking at the Can>Win initiative presented by The Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The event is focused on helping to “define strategies to secure Canada’s global advantage”. The effort is publishing 16 one pagers from thought leaders (there 8 published as of Oct 15, 2009) in a dialogue on what Canada must do next. I’m waiting to see who is lined up to round out the remaining 8 dialogue pieces. I am a little underwhelmed as none of the published pieces are about telecommunications, technology, copyright, education or any of things that interest me. So I’m hoping based on the event participants that these topics will be covered. Speakers like:

• Dr. Indira Samarasekera,
  President, University of Alberta
• Parker Mitchell
  Co-CEO, Engineers without Borders
• Trish Wheaton
  Chief Marketing Officer, Chairperson, Wunderman Canada

I’m hopeful that there will be some thought pieces on topics that interest me.

I wasn’t always a Steve Ballmer fan. He was that funny dancing man from Microsoft. But it was at Mix08 that I changed my mind. Sure, I had become an employee of Microsoft Canada and ultimately Steve is my boss. But it was his interview with Guy Kawasaki that forever changed my opinion of Steve. 

I was impressed with both the depth and breadth of his understanding of the Microsoft business. He was informed about strategy, about operations, about technology, about sales, about acquisitions. I was just blown away at the insight, honesty and the casualness of the conversation. It also helped me understand the “Developers, developers, developers”. Steve is a passionate guy. And he’s very, very intense.

If you get a chance, watch the full interview with Guy Kawasaki and Steve Ballmer. It changed my opinion.

I was reading Monocle and noticed a recommendation for a set of 9 Whiskey Stones from Teroforma

“Based on an idea using granite that has been in existence in Scandinavia for centuries, we chose to work with natural soapstone due to its softness (won’t scratch the glass) and its unique ability to retain temperature for extended periods of time.

A few hours in the freezer and the stones are ready to complement your favorite tipple without imparting either flavor or odor.”

My challenge is that I like a couple of “rocks” in my bourbon, I find that the whiskey opens up (whatever the hell that means – I live the taste with a little ice) with some cold water. However, I’m willing to give these a try in my single malt.

My good friends Mark Evans, Michael McDerment, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram and Rob Hyndman, also known as The Mesh Boys, are hosting a new event in Toronto called meshmarketing. Mesh Conference has evolved into the leading conference for impact that the Web and participatory technologies have on marketing, media, culture and politics in Canada. It leads me to believe that meshmarketing will be a great event.

What is meshmarketing?

“meshmarketing is a one-day event focused on insights, tools and tactics to help you win customers’ hearts and minds, online. An insightful keynote will lead us into a series of engaging conversations and "show and tell" presentations, as well as in-depth workshops.”

Who is speaking?

There are great entrepreneurs and marketers including:

• Dharmesh Shah of OnStarups & HubSpot;
• Dan Martell of Flowtown;
• Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid & Stormhoek (who was great at last year’s StartupEmpire);

And some of the best Canadian talent that we haven’t seen at community events in a while including:

• Mia Wedgbury of HighRoad Communication
• Mitch Joel of TwistImage

It’s a very inexpensive conference (tickets are Cdn$489 + GST) to see world-class talent in Toronto. For Toronto residents, you don’t have to travel, you don’t have to pay for a hotel, you get access to leading international and Canadian speakers (ok, it’s focused on eastern Canada, I’m not diminishing either the speaker list or my friends from the western parts of the country). If you’re looking for what looks like it will be a fantastic event focused on marketing, analytics, mobile, community, participation, reputation, search, video, word-of-mouth and a whack of other buzzwords, meshmarketing is going to be hawt.

I’m starting to get ready for another trip to Los Angeles for Microsoft PDC. PDC08 was a great trip, however, it ended really poorly for me. I arrived home from LA and spent 5 days in Toronto General Hospital after complaining all week about chest pain. It turns out that after a heart attack, they take this stuff very seriously, and wanted to do an angiogram. I promise for PDC09 to not hole up in my hotel room and hide because my chest hurts!

Thomas Lewis has a great post on Hotels for PDC09. I’ve stayed at the Westin Bonaventure for PDC08 and CHI98. It’s a great hotel. It was where True Lies was filmed.

“Where do all the Microsofties hang after the event? If you are a fan of edgy chef personalities, you know that you always want to find the dives the chefs go to after their shifts are done. Later in the evening, after evening events and A/V checks are done, many of our kind will head over to the lobby of the Westin Bonaventure where everyone will be hanging out at the bar chatting up the news of the day and talking with attendees. Now, if you are looking to find all the hipster-Microsofties, then you want to head to the club at the rooftop of The Standard. The view there is awesome but the drinks can get expensive.” Thomas Lewis – Devil’s Field Guide to the PDC

But I’m thinking I’m going to change it up for 2009. I’m turning over a new leaf. And in a tribute to my turn-of-the-last-century industrialists I’m thinking the Millennium Biltmore will be my home away from home for a few days in November. I stayed in the Biltmore as part of the planning committee for CHI2000. And while the hotel is not the family estate, it should be fun. It’s only a few blocks from Westin, check out my Bing Collection of the hotels to help find your friends in downtown LA, and it’s something new. Plus how can you go wrong with the name Biltmore?