Comments on: Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions

By: As the Founders & Funders are wrapping up their dinner…

As the Founders & Funders are wrapping up their dinner… — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:08:14 +0000

[...] Is the Dragon�s Den the most visible face of Canadian Entrepreneurship right now? What is wrong with that? Source: Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions | StartupNorth [...]

By: Jesse Rodgers

Jesse Rodgers — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:02:38 +0000

Waterloo allows students to use one of their terms or even two in co-op for a startup. Not sure how easy it is to do mind you. With the creation of the Velocity residence I think that may help highlight that as an option.

By: Rob Hyndman

Rob Hyndman — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:32:44 +0000

I’m beginning to think we should start talking about funding tech during a recession. :(

By: John Philip Green

John Philip Green — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:50:14 +0000

I’m with Chris R (I think): Entrepreneurship can not be taught in school. (Though Malgosia & I witnessed the best possible effort when Greg had us speak an engineering class at UoT.)

What Toronto/Canada needs is role models. God bless the Lor’s, McDerment’s, Boujnane’s, Garrity’s, Lai’s which are inspiring the next wave. We need big successful outcomes to seem achievable (they are!) by having big successful outcomes to point to.

Malgosia and I helped build a company in San Fran that sold for $61M after 14 months. Our conclusion, we can do that too! (Only bigger! hehe.)

We should all do what we can to put a spotlight on the world changers we have in our midst.

By: Magnus

Magnus — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:37:56 +0000

The funny thing about these show’s like DD, Venture, business stories on the news or in the newspapers is you see the same people over and over again. So I imagine the media wants Start up stories bad, enough to keep some of these entrepreneurs on some sort of media circut.

By: Brycej

Brycej — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Everyone knows that the really business is not done by the face, it’s done by the loins.

By: heri

heri — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:23:24 +0000

funny how you write the questions, we don’t really have a choice in answers, do we?

i think there should be more videos coming from canadian entrepreneurs that gets the word out. ca.intruders.tv is a good start, but I am thinking about video blogs like Loic le meur’s seismic.

By: Thomas Purves

Thomas Purves — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:00:15 +0000

No, you are right Jevon, DD is the face of entrepreneurship in Canada … in exactly the same way that American Idol is the face of modern music:

It’s appalling cringeworthy, completely disconnected from every new venture/artist that is meaningfully important, it’s “entertaining” like a car accident … and it’s exactly the first thing that springs to mind for any of millions of Canadians when you say “I am an entrepreneur”.

Maybe together we could start to try and change that.

By: Chris R

Chris R — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:17:41 +0000

I attended the University of Toronto and they had a class called “The Business of Software”. That was probably the only class that I took that related to Entrepreneurship, and the only one offered in the Computer Science program. The question then becomes, can successful entrepreneurship be taught? I think a course on idea generation should be taught somewhere. All you would need is crayons and a piece of paper. Sounds like Grade 3 art? Maybe. I always liked art class :)

By: Jevon MacDonald

Jevon MacDonald — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:04:24 +0000

Ah Leila, Idee is the big leagues and we are just watching, you know that.