FounderFuel cohort explodes onto the scene

Disclosure: I am a mentor at FounderFuel, and I traveled  to Montreal in August 2011 to see most of these companies during the mentor matching. I’ve also mentored Willet as part of my role as Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EiR) at Velocity (@UWVelocity) in Waterloo. 

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I am/was impressed with the teams accepted into the 12 week FounderFuel program. Today is #FFDemoDay where after the past 12 weeks the companies get a chance to show the world what they’ve been working on. I love the art of the demo, it is so different than the pitch. I met all of the companies in August 2011 at the Mentor Matching Day, unfortunately I wasn’t able to travel to Montreal to see the demos today. It looks like the team at Founder Fuel is continuing Montreal Startup Up’s great track record of identifying and growing very early stage ventures.

I’m apparently having a bromance for the Real Ventures team.  John Stokes (@iamjohnstokes), JS Cournoyer (@jscournoyer), Mark MacLeod (@startupcfo), Allan MacIntosh and Ian Jeffrey (@ianjeffrey) are putting together programs and the funding to support a strong early stage technology ecosystem in Montreal. Keep up the phenomenal work guys.

The 2011 FounderFuel Cohort includes:

  • Playerize
    Playerize grows social and mobile games by providing player installs from diverse channels at huge scale.
  • OOHLALA
    A mobile platform that helps students take control of their college life by powering the events, conversations and deals on campus.
  • Willet
    Willet is the missing step from social browsing into shopping, and converts the mindsets of people without intent to buy into paying customers.
  • Vuru
    Vuru takes complex financial statements and distills them down into clear, transparent reports that show investors the fundamentals that matter.
  • Seevibes
    The TV Ratings For Social Media Audience – measures engaged audience to provide relevant data that media and advertising industry need.
  • BlameStella
    Is your Internet contrivance up to snuff? Find out with BlameStella, the future of Web Monitoring .
  • PlayerTakesAll
    A viral campaign & referral management platform that enables advertisers to extend the reach of their marketing efforts by 50%.
  • Wavo
    wavo.me is the easiest way to collect, manage and play the music and videos being shared on your social networks.
  • Editola
    Editola uses the community to build the most accurate view of every news story. The best articles, videos and opinions, all in one place.

Apply for FounderFuel 2012

The spring 2012 FounderFuel session is scheduled to start on February 20th 2012, and applicants may apply directly online at founderfuel.com until January 7th 2012. An early review of candidates will begin on December 12th 2011.

FounderFuel DemoDay #FFDemoDay by deniszgonjanin
Photo by deniszgonjanin

The Upside Of Canada’s Startup Buying Binge

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from StartupCFO written by Mark MacLeod, it is a response to Mark Evans’ post The Downside of Canada’s Startup Buying Binge. Mark MacLeod is a Partner at Real Ventures, Canada’s largest seed VC fund. He is also an advisor to some of Canada’s leading startups including Shopify and others. Follow him on Twitter @startupcfo or StartupCFO.ca. This post was originally published on September 14, 2011 on StartupCFO.ca.

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Mark Evans posted recently about the downside of Canada’s recent startup buying binge. Year-to-date, we have had 22 exits in Canada. But save for outliers like Radian6 and Algorithmics, most have been relatively small. Mark correctly argues that there are long term negative implications to these early exits: losing talent to the US and not building mid to large scale companies that can really bolster our tech scene.

Can’t argue with that and I have posted in the past about the importance of large tech companies to our ecosystem. But, exits are like pizza, even when they’re bad (small) they’re good. Why?

Returns to LPs: Returns in the Canadian venture industry since inception are negative. Some funds have delivered returns, but the industry as a whole has not. That won’t work if we want to attract non-government LPs who are motivated by returns vs. policy, job creation. So, any exit that contributes towards fund performance is good.

Generating repeat entrepreneurs: The reason (I believe) why many of our exits are relatively small is that the founders behind those companies have not had a positive exit before. As an investor, you should not bet against human nature. And I think it’s perfectly natural for an entrepreneur that has the opportunity to sell early and pocket a few million to do that. The trick is to keep that entrepreneur in the system and working on the next company. The next time, that same entrepreneur will set his or her sights much higher.

Eliminating borders: It used to be an uphill battle to convince US investors to come up here. Now with the elimination of witholding taxes on exit and with our companies doing great things US investors are coming up here more often and earlier in the startup lifecycle.

So when you think about what’s happening now, my hope is that we are setting the stage for long term success and the creation of some tech giants right here in Canada. To enable that, investors need to do more of the following:

Give Canadian Startups more capital: This might be ironic coming from a guy at a seed fund, but it’s a well known fact that Canadian startups raise less than their US counterparts. I think it’s fine to operate with small $ before product/ market fit but as soon as you are ready for goto market acceleration you need serious fuel. Canadian investors and entrepreneurs need to continue building strong syndicates that include US investors that can write big cheques.

We did that at Shopify. The investor group there includes two large tier 1 funds that can help Shopify become a giant in its industry.

Enable founders to take cash off the table: As a founder you’re more likely to “go for it” if you can sell some shares and not have to worry about cash. This is common practice in the US. We need to do it more up here. It does not make sense early on but series B and up, I think it makes sense.

Surround our CEOs with mentorship: When you look at the truly giant tech companies, they are almost always founder-led. So that tells me that we have to surround our founders with peers, mentors, coaches, advisors to help them make that transition from founder to CEO.

We also need tech companies going public here in Canada, but that’s another topic for another time. So, I say bring on these early exits and realize they are setting the stage for great things to come.

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from StartupCFO written by Mark MacLeod, it is a response to Mark Evans’ post The Downside of Canada’s Startup Buying Binge. Mark MacLeod is a Partner at Real Ventures, Canada’s largest seed VC fund. He is also an advisor to some of Canada’s leading startups including Shopify and others. Follow him on Twitter @startupcfo or StartupCFO.ca. This post was originally published on September 14, 2011 on StartupCFO.ca.

The Next 36

The Next 36The Next 36 is a new program at the University of Toronto that “aims to transform Canada’s most promising undergraduates into high impact entrepreneurs”.  The program is founded by Reza Satchu and Tim Hodgson. Mr. Satchu was the founder of SupplierMarket which sold to Ariba in 2000 (for a reported $581MM) and founder of StorageNow Holdings sold to InStorage REIT. SupplierMarket was a Sequoia Capital company and was eventually acquired for approximately $581MM. Mr. Hodgson was CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada and is connected on the finance and banking side.

The program is aimed at identifying 36 high potential undergraduate students that are in entrepreneurship. It provides a program that includes:

  • Personal mentorship from Canada’s top business leaders and entrepreneurs (think Anthony Lacavera, Kevin O’Leary, Nadir Mohammed and others)
  • Support for the development of your own mobile app company
  • Combination of academic theory, business mentorship and practical entrepreneurial experience
  • A powerful peer network with 35 of Canada’s most talented and innovative students
  • $25,000 scholarship for each student selected

It’s an interesting opportunity to build a mobile application, get a $25,000 scholarship, build the personal network with the most powerful business folks in Canada. It’s an interesting opportunity for the Next 36 team to partner with other local organizations like MEIC long with their existing corporate sponsors.