in Montreal, News, Quebec, Startups

Lessons in Social Media, with MediaScrape

We have covered MediaScrape a few times, and when I joked that they might be the next Capazoo, their CEO came through with a great reference to Cocain.

Well, they are back. Since this post is not an opinion piece, I will just link you to a recent Montreal Gazette article and quote a few bits. In the interest of presenting the other side of the startup-ecosystem argument, I present the one… the only…

He’d rather make deals with media conglomerates and Silicon Valley giants over fancy lunches than share ideas over blogs or hobnob with venture capitalists at technology happy hours.

He doesn’t go to local networking events where entrepreneurs talk about their projects and share feedback:
“Why would I go? There’s no money – there’s no content at those things. I’m busy. I’m making deals. And the times I did go I just heard a lot of whining that there’s no money in Montreal.”
He doesn’t have a blog where he logs his company’s progress, details its challenges, and invites dialog from the tech community, in the hopes of increasing his Google cred:
“I don’t need to be a destination site. For us to use social media gimmicks, to drive traffic to our site would put us as competitors with our clients.
“We’re a behind-the-scenes enabler.”

Yet this hardly seems to faze Cavell. He doesn’t feel he needs to satisfy doubting bloggers.
“Screw them,” he said. “We’re a private company. I don’t have to tell them shit.
“Blogs are great for open-source editorials, but they’re no substitute for researched journalism.”
One could chalk up Cavell’s philosophy to his lineage. He’s the son of Charles Cavell, the former head of what is today Quebecor World Inc., when it was still a mighty printer, and former chairman of tabloid chain Sun Media Corp.

An in case you are wondering, yes: Comments are turned on.

  1. I am not sure Mediascrape wants to be viewed as a startup and do the whole social media thing

  2. I am not sure Mediascrape wants to be viewed as a startup and do the whole social media thing

  3. I don’t agree with his tactics & I think he comes off as an idiot but there has to be more than one path to success for startups. How many businesses are actually sold (what most startups want these days) through good press/coverage from techcrunch? If positive coverage from techcrunch was the bellwether for getting sold then Riya would be google image search right now. Maybe his family connections trumps facebook groups & democamps with Sun Media ending up buying them…their design is shitty enough to be a Sun property :)

  4. I don’t agree with his tactics & I think he comes off as an idiot but there has to be more than one path to success for startups. How many businesses are actually sold (what most startups want these days) through good press/coverage from techcrunch? If positive coverage from techcrunch was the bellwether for getting sold then Riya would be google image search right now. Maybe his family connections trumps facebook groups & democamps with Sun Media ending up buying them…their design is shitty enough to be a Sun property :)

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