September 2007

There were 12 posts published in September 2007 (this is page 4 of 4).

Startup Weekend Toronto starts tonight

Startup Weekend Toronto get’s underway tonight at 6pm. They are completely sold out, and even if half of those who signed up actually show up then there will be more than enough people to get a fun, and real, startup off the ground.

A lot of interesting people have been introducing themselves on the forums.

It’s hard to know what to expect from something like Startup Weekend. Like any startup, everything has to start with a good idea. Instead of starting with a business idea however, StartupWeekend is starting with an event and a group of people. That doesn’t have to be a negative thing, in fact, it can probably be a positive thing.

I will be dropping by StartupWeekend tonight and again near the end of the weekend and I will be reporting back all of the non-confidential bits that I can find out about what is coming together.

Experienced Startup founders that I have talked to have all had similar feelings about StartupWeekend. It is something we really want to encourage because it builds a startup culture and exposes a lot of new people to the world of starting a business, but at the same time we feel practically paralyzed with fear at the idea of have our business partners all chosen for us and having to negotiate simply to settle on the ‘what’ that is being built.

StartupWeekend is, however, anything but a joke. A real company will be incorporated, shares will be divided up and various equity incentives will be distributed to those who perform better or contribute more.

Update: Jonas and I came for the opening of StartupWeekend. There were at least 30 participants in the room and there was a lot of energy. It was a mix of people across all disciplines. The only concern I had was that someone mentioned that 7 developers didn’t show up, which would l leave them short I think.
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What happens when it all goes wrong?

I have been meeting with a decent number of startups in and around Toronto lately. I have been doing this for a few reasons. The most obvious is that I want to find interesting startups to profile here on StartupNorth, I want to encourage people to keep at it, and more selfishly, I find startups, whether they are my own or someone else’s, fascinating.

When I came across this chronicle of the ArsDigita story, I was fascinated. Philip Greenspun went through it all. An incredible ramp up of his business, strong response from customers and a solid development team that was producing really great products.

If you remember Ars back then, they were a big deal. The Ars Community System was the top notch social media platform of it’s day, and a lot of companies are just now starting to replicate it, including a few Candian startups. (Whether or not they know they are simply replicating Ars is another story).

You will have to read the story for yourself. Take what lessons you can from it, it is the story of what happens when investors don’t play nicely. ArsDigita was a strong company, profitable and reasonably well run, but it only took a few petty VCs to tank the whole thing.

If that can happen to Ars, what could happen to your little startup if you took money from the wrong source?

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