Last auction for Mighty Bids

Mighty Bids, a Montreal based auction site, is calling it quits and get this… taking the ‘eBay exit’. Pretty ironic given the site’s founders, Peter Michaud and Jeff Ramaglia, routinely criticized eBay seller fees.

The site attempted to differentiate itself by providing free basic listings, but still charged a percentage of the final sales price and premium listings fees. The free listings, promises to donate 5% of profits to charity, and silly eBay protests were not enough to pull in significant numbers of sellers from eBay. Over the past four years Mighty Bids garnered 100,000 registered members and acquired 9 domain names. In case you are interested… the eBay auction ends July 1.

Mighty Bid’s new owners will have to make some drastic changes if they plan on successfully competing with eBay. What strategy would you take if you won the auction?

BunnyHero Widget is Taking Over

adopt your own virtual pet!

A big congrats to Bunny Hero (aka Wayne A. Lee), whose widget is topping the charts!

comScore’s recently launched Widget Metrix places Bunny Hero Labs in the top five widgets worldwide (and get this… #1 if you exclude photosharing widgets)! According to comScore, Bunny Hero widgets reach 3% of the world online audience with 24,984,000 unique viewers a month.

Wayne has created a quantifiable hit! The only question now is how he will capitalize on this early success. The world is his oyster (pet idea) at this point. Hint: Click “more” and feed our Bunny!

Think these virtual pets are silly trinkets? Think again…
Club Penguin – priced north of $500 million by Sony and News Corp
Neopets – acquired for $160 million in 2005 by Viacom

How do you see Bunny Hero Labs developing?

Contact: Wayne A. Lee

Reflections on MESH 2007

The MESH gang pulled it off. There were some interesting sessions this year. Jim Buckmeister of Craigslist gave us the inside scoop including the number of pages served per kilowatt hour and why Craigslist will be sticking with their simple design. Austin Hill of Akoha is focusing on social entrepreneurship these days and we are eagerly awaiting Akoha?s launch. Ted Murphy of PayPerPost who Mike Arrington called ?the most evil man in the room? faced off with Mike for the first time in person. Christine Herron of First Round Capital discussed porn affiliate programs and got everyone?s attention. Will Pate our Community Evangelist Extraordinaire shared his Theory of Awesomeness. Rick Segal of JLA Ventures provided an interesting breakdown on the natural evolution of startups. But the best sessions were held in the hallways; next year, rather than pay $400 for a ticket, you might just want to hang in the lobby.

At MESH there were 15 minutes of fame sessions that gave promising startups an opportunity to strut their stuff. We are going to be checking in with the featured startups at 15 days, 15 weeks, and 15 months to monitor their progress ? so stay tuned!

Wild Apricot ? membership management web service.
Contact: Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

SneakerPlay ? invite only social network for urban youth into street culture.
Contact: Robleh Jama, Co-Founder

ConceptShare ? online collaboration for creative professionals.
Contact: Scott Brooks, Co-Founder

Demofuse ? easily create and maintain website tours.
Contact: Greg Thomson, Founder

Octopz ? online collaboration for creative professionals.
Contact: Barry Fogarty, Co-Founder

Five Limes – user submitted eco-friendly products and services.
Contact: Chris Sukornyk, Founder

Throughout the conference a recurring thought went something like this: MESH is a once a year event. Nice as it was, it does not compare to what is really driving Toronto these days: the TorCamp Community. I am not sure what I would do without our DemoCamps, OpenCoffees, Skype Swarm, and OtherCamps. What I do know is that I am thankful, very thankful. We have a great community that is building something week in and week out. So the very first Startup North Golden Compass goes to? drum roll? the TorCamp Community.