Arguably, two of the most important centers of innovation outside of Silicon Valley are in India and Israel. The reasons of why this is are numerous and could form basis of someone’s PhD thesis but for the purpose of brevity I’ll only highlight one: global from day one.

You talk to entrepreneurs from either India or Israel and they’ll surely weave great yarns about their companies (these are also two great storytelling cultures) but one thread that will be consistent is when the entrepreneur founded their company, they were immediately thinking of the global marketplace.

In Israel, it is because the domestic market is too small and there are limited opportunities to sell regionally. The story in India is that while population is huge, it is very poor so the actual local market for technology or technology services.

Faced with these challenges, Indian and Israeli companies would market to the US and Europe and often place key personnel in those geographies. Overseas became their across the street.

In the past year, Canada has been thrust upon the global stage several times. Whether it is praise for our banking system, our brave forces, our Gold-medaled athletes, or our ability to throw a party, Canada as a country has been seen as a global leader.

Will our entrepreneurs follow suit? Sometimes it seems that cross-cultural expansion from a Canadian perspective is an Alberta company selling into Quebec.

Unfortunately, as often as you hear of grand global ambitions from Israeli, Indian (and American!) entrepreneurs, you hear of relatively modest ambitions from Canadian ones.

All too often global expansion = US expansion. That is not the right formula.

Here’s a fact that is sometimes a bit uncomfortable, many American companies consider Canada as part of their domestic market. The effort and planning these companies put into Canada is the same one they put into Wyoming. (OK, maybe I’m overstating the point)

But here’s a suggestion, we should return the favor. Canadian companies shouldn’t think of the US as a “global” market but rather just an extension of the domestic one. When Canadian companies say global, they should mean it and have Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa dead in their sights. These regions all have burgeoning and tech-savvy populations and are eager to get online.

So whether we’re talking about consumer, enterprise, SMB or SP services or products, let’s see Canadian entrepreneurs putting the “world” into their WorldWideWeb plans. Canada’s got the world stage for the moment. Entrepreneurs, make your entrance.

I was reading Eric Reis’ Lessons Learned blog yesterday and he talked about The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development. I begrudgingly read Steve Blank‘s Four Steps to the Epiphany, which is a must read for any entrepreneur (begrudgingly read because it is not the easiest reading). It is a great book, but it’s tough reading.

“And Steve is the first to admit that it’s a “turgid” read, without a great deal of narrative flow. It’s part workbook, part war story compendium, part theoretical treatise, and part manifesto. It’s trying to do way too many things at once. On the plus side, that means it’s a great deal. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.” Eric Reis

I bought a copy yesterday based on Eric’s recommendation. It is a phenomenal resource for learning Customer Development. Patrick and Brant have done a great job writing an understanable how-to guide for using Customer Development and Agile Development in a Lean Startup. The book includes a shout out to our friends Dan Martell at Flowtown and Sean Ellis at 12in6.  

The book incorporates the wisdom and experience of real world practitioners of Customer Development in the 5 years since the inital publication of The Four Steps. For the first time a lot of entrepreneurs will hopefully begin to understand a technology adoption lifecycle and the marketing of products/services. I wrote a chapter in Cost-Justifying Usability back in 2005 where I had first encountered Steve’s Customer Development Methodology from his course notes in 2004 at Stanford (yeah, I know that’s crazy). In the chapter, titled “Valuing Usability for Startups”, I argued that getting out talking to customers and testing your hypotheses were key to success. However, I proposed using the Bell/Mason Diagnostic for evaluating the stage of corporate development in order to calculate Return-on-Investment of usability. In hindsight, I probably should have instructed entrepreneurs and usability professionals to look at processes like Customer Development to search for a “repeatable and scalable business model”.

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development is a short mandatory introduction to using customer and agile development to search for a  repeatable and scalable business model.

Discount for StartupNorth Readers

A few quick emails to Patrick today, and he offered to provide StartupNorth readers a 25% discount on any version of the book. First ten StartupNorth readers to go to CustDev.com can use the discount code.

Discount code: STARTUPNORTH (limited to the first 10 users)

Good luck!

Can you pitch your company in six slides? I can’t believe that Fred and Brad raised the first USV fund with only six (6) slides.

“We learned to simplify our story and we learned how to create six killer slides. And killer slides are not slides with a dozen bullets each. They are six powerful points that combine to tell the meat of the story.

So when you sit down and build your pitch deck, think of six slides that will inspire and leave something for the imagination. The best part of six slides is that you will get through them in time to have a real substantive conversation face to face about your business. Imagine that.” – Fred Wilson

Constraints are a great thing. They help entrepreneurs filter and focus their presentations and messages. Getting your pitch down to six slides is going to be a challenge, and challenges are fun. I’m a big fan of the sequence of slides recommended by David Rose’s, chairman of the New York Angels, but even this sequence is 15 slides.

1. Company Title Page
   Start with the name and logo of the company, the name and title of your presenter, a one-line description or tagline about the company, and the dollar amount of the round you are raising.
2. Business Overview
   Boil down your elevator pitch to one sentence. Tell us what you sell or do in very concrete language. This sets the context for the rest of your presentation.
3. Management Team
   Show us your talent and experience, with one line of background (two lines max!) on each member.
4. Market
   What’s the environment in which you operate, how big are the segments, what are the pain points?
5. Product
   How do you solve a customer’s pain? What exactly do you do? This can be illustrated with a clear product or screen shot, or a simple process diagram, but if we don’t know what you do, we won’t know why we should fund you. (But don’t spend too much time on this, since you’re pitching the company here, not the product.)
6. Business Model
   Who pays whom, how much, for what and from where. What does this mean for annualized revenue streams?
7. Customers
   Who are they, how many are there, how do you distribute to them, and how are they attracted and retained?
8. Strategic Relationships
   If you have any, make sure we know about them.
9. Competition
   Who and how threatening are they? What are the differentiation factors? Include both direct and indirect competitors. Remember that everyone has competition, even if it is just “the old way” of doing something.
10. Barriers to Entry
    How will other potential competitors be kept at bay?
11. Financial Overview
    Show us your top-line revenues and expenses, and EBITDA two years back and four years out.
12. Use of Proceeds
    Where will our money take you?
13. Capital & Valuation
    How much have you raised previously, who are your current investors, what are you looking for in this round, and how do you come to your suggested valuation?
14. Review
    Provide a brief summary of what you said, in this same order, narrowed to the five or six most important points.
15. Contact Info/Next Steps
    Lead us into the next step, such as a follow-up meeting for due diligence…and include your contact info!

I can immediately reduce this to 7 slides, it’s not 6 but it’s close. The goal here is not to provide all of the information in these slides but to boil down the critical information to the salient points. I have been using Business Model Generation and the work of Alex Osterwalder to help build a better understanding of business model, value proposition, key partners and revenue streams. This combined with the slide sequence is a really effective way to model your business, customers, partners, costs and revenues.

C100 is hitting the road (virtually) and will be bringing the next C100 mentoring session to Toronto. We’re working with our partners Extreme Venture Partners and are looking for three companies to participate.

Interested? Please apply via our application process.

Finalists will be notified week of July 12.

The C100 is now coming at you live and in 3D right here on Startup North.

What does that mean for you? Well, as if Startup North wasn’t already an indispensible source of news, insights and opinions on the rapidly expanding  Canadian start-up and venture capital scene, you can now check this space for regular news and views on innovation from the unique perspective of the successful Canadian tech entrepreneurs, company execs and VCs in Silicon Valley who make up the C100.

What is the C100 you ask? Remember in Pulp Fiction when Jules Winnfeld (Samuel L. Jackson) refers to Vinnie Vega (John Travolta) as “my man in Amsterdam?” Well, that’s us. We’re your man in Amsterdam.

Except we’re a group of men and women… and we’re in Silicon Valley.

But more importantly, C100 is a huge fan of both technology and of Canada and we’re here to share our thoughts, insights and contacts with the established and the up-and-coming, with the best dreamers, entrepreneurs and innovators Canada has to offer.

So check us out online, visit our blog, get mentored, but most importantly stay tuned to StartUp North where we’ll be looking for new ways to increase the connections and communications between Silicon Valley and Canada.

Too bad Bumptop wasn’t actually an ExtremeU company. However, the recent acquisition of Bumptop should help raise the profile of the 2010 Extreme University.

If you’re a student, a founder or just thinking about starting something you should apply to Extreme University. This is a world-class program, from an up-and-coming venture capital firm in Canada. They have a track record of selling companies to big players (Bumptop to Google, J2Play to EA). The Extreme Ventures, XtremeLabs, and Extreme University programs are building into a fantastic training and breading ground for a new generation of mobile and Internet startups. It feels like something big is happening inside the walls of Extreme Ventures.

Extreme University 2010

Who?

We are looking for four smart and fast moving teams to participate. Typically all members of the two-three person team will be deep technically, but at least one of the founders should have a technical background.

What?

• Get an initial $5000 + $5,000 (US) per founder in exchange for a 10% ownership stake in your company
• Move your team to our shared ExtremeU office space at Yonge & King (downtown Toronto)
• Have weekly mentoring sessions by industry experts in technology, funding, legal, PR, marketing and HR
• Meet a who’s who of experts at our weekly socials and have an opportunity to practice your pitch and demo your in-progress prototype
• Have access to local shared resources to accelerate product development (mentors, servers)

When?

Applications are due by June 4th, 2010. The program starts Monday June 14th, 2010 to Thursday September 10th, 2010 at the ExtremeU offices in Toronto at Yonge and King. The final demo day will be Tuesday September 16th, 2010 at DemoCamp

How?

It’s a great program located in downtown Toronto for early-stage entrepreneurs and founders. The Xtreme Labs has a great track record. If you’re interested, make sure you apply before the June 4, 2010 deadline.

Alumni – The Class of 2009

Uken

Uken Games makes highly addictive games for social and mobile platforms.

Uken Games was born in March of 2009 when two normal guys decided they wanted to have super powers. Given real world limitation, they turned to the virtual world to make their dreams a reality. They built Superheroes Alliance, their first game, which eventually grew to over 150,000 monthly active users. Since then, they’ve launched 2 other games: Villains and Twisted Treasure have amassed over 300,000 total users. Going forward, they are committed to building a strong community around each of their games, expanding across other both social (Facebook) and mobile (iPhone, Blackberry) platforms. Uken Games has received a follow on investment and are driving hard towards this goal.

Assetize

Assetize is a Twitter ad network that enables publishers to monetize their social content. Publishers within the Assetize network range from large news and media organizations to individual users. The company has also partnered with a premiere sports agency to launch FanWaves - a Twitter monetization network exclusively for the sports world. The growing list of FanWaves publishers includes the NHL, NY Knicks, Phoenix Suns, Washington Capitals, as well as several professional athletes.

Next, the company plans to extend their monetization solution to other social networks, as well as other links stemming from media websites and blogs. Given the nascency of this space and lack of history, one of the challenges Assetize has faced is partnering with advertisers willing to market through social channels – a difficulty that is expected to decrease as brands realize the immense potential of social networks. Following Extreme University, Assetize is generating revenue and has secured a seed round of financing. The company is also currently in the process of syndicating a larger round from local and US-based VCs.

Locationary

Locationary is changing the way that data on local businesses and other places is collected and verified.

This data is fundamental to the local search and local advertising markets which have revenues approaching $50 billion a year. Google and other local search engines currently buy the bulk of their local business data from aggregators that have employees copy the printed yellow page directories. The current process can’t scale and results in expensive, stale and outdated information typically 1 to 2 years old. Locationary has created a patent-pending, crowd-sourced solution to collect and verify this information across the globe.

Locationary is growing quickly and now has users in over 70 countries. They’ve collected data on over 20 million places and are now updating over 100,000 places a day. In this business, the fresher the data, the more valuable it is; and that’s what makes them special. Locationary has raised a Series-A investment through the connections made at ExtremeU.

Extreme Labs has a history of bringing great mentors and presenters to interact and engage with ExtremeU participants. In 2009, participants met some of the best lawyers, founders, VCs and others in Canada.

Albert Lai	Kontagent	Startup Lifecycle
Ali Asaria	Well.ca	How to get funding
Colin Ground	Cassels Brock & Blackwell	Setting up a VC friendly structure
Dan Debow	Rypple	Sales & Marketing
Leila Boujnane	Idee	Business Development
Mike McDerment	Freshbooks	Product Management
Rick Segal	JLA	Why do a startup now?
Rick Yazwinski	Tucows	Agile Development
Sal Rocco	Stonewood Group	How to hire superstars

The list of already confirmed speakers in 2010 is amazing:

• Anand Agarawala, Founder of Bumptop
  University of Toronto alum
• Austin Hill, Founder, Akoha & Partner, Founder Fuel
• Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion at Facebook
  University of Waterloo alum
• Dinesh Moorjani, SVP, Mobile at IAC 
• Leonard Brody, Founder of NowPublic
  Venture Partner at GrowthWorks
• Rob Balarhura, Founder of J2Play
  University of Waterloo alum

Our friends at the C100 have issued the reminder that the submission deadline is April 29, 2010 for their 48 hours In the Valley. Did you wonder what entrepreneurs thought about the last mentoring session? Check out the comments from both the entrepreneurs and a mentor below.

The C100 has an impressive list of members. And continues to participate in events like the DFAIT Entrepreneur Bootcamps and through tele-mentoring sessions which ran most recently in Ottawa (I’m assuming with folks at OCRI).

Maryam Mahdaviani & Jan Ulrich, Optemo

Trevor Doerksen, Mobovio

Sanjay Beri, Juniper Networks – C100 Mentor

Dear Startups,

Please do not hire PR firms or marketers to contact us (or anyone else for that matter). It gives us a sinking feeling that your priorities are totally out of whack if you are willing to pay someone to send a few emails. That stuff is for big companies. Most of them just use the same form that you can use, because they don’t know our email addresses either.

Yours,

The Management

The hours at a startup might be long and the pay might just cover a six inch sub, but there is nothing more rewarding than being part of a team out to change the world.

We’ve added a job board on StartupNorth to help Canadian entrepreneurs find great people to bring on.

Since launching a couple weeks back we’ve had 26 postings, 2667 views, 129 applications, and 16 referrals.

Companies looking to grow their team include: FreshBooks, Well.ca, Tungle, LearnHub, Fixmo, ThoughtFarmer, iNovia, and Xtreme, obviously some amazing opportunities.

It is free to search and post, so head on over and check out: StartupNorth Jobs at http://jobs.StartupNorth.ca

So what’s the story with Rogers Ventures?

Mic Berman announced StartupCampWaterloo(Serious Edition) happening on October 20, 2009 in Waterloo, ON. Jesse Rodgers provided a little more detail about the event on the BarCampWaterloo Google Group:

“Rogers Ventures has started an early stage/seed round investment group. They are looking to make several investments before the end of this year and they have  a strong commitment to fund and support entrepreneurs or post doc researchers who have great ideas and/or innovative technology.

If are looking for funding and would like to pitch the Rogers’ team (Mike Lee, Nyla Ahmad or Jason Zan) and a few other local funders such as Tech Capital.”

We’ve worked with Mike Lee to host DemoCamp Toronto 21 & 22 (an Evening with Yossi Vardi). Rogers Ventures has already demonstrated their ability and willingness to engage with the community. Rogers Ventures continues to reach out and engage with entrepreneurs across the country.

Press Release

Rogers Ventures publically launches on October 15, 2009. Here are the details provided by the consultants and public relations individuals helping Rogers Ventures engage the development community. 

What is Rogers Ventures?

Rogers Ventures is a new source of early stage seed level investment for technology start-ups. We find great talent with powerful ideas and we invest in their business success. We invest our money, leverage, experience and other strategic contributions to get our portfolio companies on the path of accelerated development and market growth.  Another part of the Rogers Ventures’ mandate is supporting the innovation ecosystem by providing direct funding to community programs that help create innovation momentum in this country. 

Is Rogers Ventures a venture capital firm?

We operate a venture-style funding mechanism (we approve investments on a case-by-case basis) but that’s where the similarities end. Our long-term objective is to develop a portfolio of high potential companies that capture the value created through wireline and wireless broadband networks. 

Why was Rogers Ventures created?

We’re living at a time when technology innovation, new online services and shifts in consumer behaviour are being adopted faster than any other time in history. We want to be part of this innovation and the opportunity presenting themselves but realize that we cannot achieve success, as effectively, on our own. Rogers Ventures is our way of looking beyond the walls of Rogers for outside talent and ideas to fund. We believe that this will broaden our innovation horizons and keep us closer to the forefront of next-generation technology. 

How will Rogers Ventures support the high-tech community?

While we see a significant amount of energy and activity within the Canadian innovation landscape, we feel that there are opportunities for support for the Canadian ecosystem to accelerate momentum. We have been working to identify community-level programs or initiatives that require support – either money, a space large enough to hold events, someone to pay for pizza, participation in mentorship, contribution as a speaker, whatever – and we try to make that support happen. We know that our effort is not the total solution. We are contributing our part to build the necessary momentum and are committed to engage.

Who runs Rogers Ventures?

Melinda Rogers, senior vice-president, strategy and development with Rogers Communications, is the executive in charge of Rogers Ventures. On a day-to-day basis, the portfolio is run by Mike Lee, vice-president with Rogers Ventures, and Nyla Ahmad, vice-president, Rogers Ventures Operations.

What are Rogers Ventures portfolio companies?

There are currently three companies within the Rogers Ventures portfolio: Zoocasa,  a vertical search product focused on real estate; Thoora, a next generation news discovery service; and GridCentric, a solution for grid computing. We don’t discuss publically investment levels.

Is Rogers Ventures a part of Rogers Communications?

Rogers Ventures falls within Rogers’ corporate strategy and development group and it is legally part of Rogers Communications Inc. However, it operates as a separate entity on a day-to-day basis.

Additional Team Details

So who are Mike Lee, Nyla Ahmad and Jason Zan and others. We can start to piece together the players from web searches, management profiles of their portfolio companies, and social media tools.

“Mike Lee, Chief Strategy Officer, Rogers Communications Inc.

Michael (Mike) Lee is Chief Strategy Officer for Rogers Communications Inc. Mike is responsible for strategy development, new venture development, and strategic partner management for the Rogers Communications’ group of companies which include Rogers Cable, Rogers Wireless and Rogers Media. Previously, he held the role of Vice President, Strategy and Development for Rogers Cable.” Cable Congress 2009

“Nyla Ahmad, Senior Director, Strategic Partners for Rogers Communications Inc.

Nyla Ahmad is responsible for overseeing and managing key cross-company relationships. This includes managing the Rogers Yahoo! strategic alliance across the entire Rogers group of companies. Previously within Rogers, Ms. Ahmad held roles within Rogers Cable and the Internet division of Rogers Media. As Senior Director of Electronic Channels for Rogers Cable Communications Inc. she was responsible for the product development, online services strategy and customer experience for Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet. As Vice President of Excite Canada, she oversaw the development of consumer online content and services across broadband, narrowband and wireless platforms.” 3rd Annual C-COR Global IP Summit – Executive Interviews

“Jason Zan, Co-founder and adviser

Jason was a Sr. Director of Business Development at Rogers Communications Inc. (NYSE:RG), the largest wireless carrier in Canada. Prior to that Jason was Director of Venture Investments at Rogers where he was responsible for managing the company’s private equity investment portfolio. Jason has a HBA from Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, Canada.” Tokia > About Management

The team at Rogers also includes for former PlanetEye CEO Butch Langlois, who announced in Jun3 2009 that he was joining Rogers Ventures. Butch has a strong history with Rogers serving as VP, Finance and Corporate Development in the old Rogers New Media group.

The team has a very strong Rogers flavour. It will be interesting to see if they are able to break free from the corporate culture that tends to lead to “The Innovator’s Dilemma” to identify opportunities. Their current investments in Zoocasa, Thoora and GridCentric show a desire to commercialize research efforts, both Thoora and GridCentric are commercialized out of the University of Toronto projects and teams. Rogers Ventures seems to be making an effort to move beyond their traditional boundaries.