Founders & Funders – Feb 15, 2010

founders and funders Logo It’s time to for another Founders & Funders event in Toronto. I can’t believe it’s been 18 months since the last event in June 2008. The next event is scheduled for Februrary 15, 2010 in downtown Toronto. We’re looknig for a few good startups and a few good investors. We’ll be sending out invitations early in the new year, but we want to start with an open call for participation.

What is Founders & Funders?

Founders & Funders is an invitation only social event for people that start high potential growth companies and the people that fund them. This means entrepreneurs. This means angel investors. This means venture capitalists. This means government funders. It is a curated dinner party. The idea is to get stuck at a table with others interested in emerging technology, growth companies. Have meaningful conversations beyond the usual conference hallway chatter or pitch sessions. The goal is to create stronger, more relevant connections between individuals in this community.

Who should attend?

Founders of high potential growth companies. This means companies that are at varying stages of corporate development, ranging from the very new to the more established. Digital media. Internet. Software applications. Enterprise applications. Infrastructure. Data centre automation. Mobile. Clean tech. Yes, you should consider attending. However, you should be looking to raise capital in near future.

Funders of high potential growth companies. Venture capitalists in Ontario, Quebec, New York, Boston, California, and around the globe. There are attendees that are actively seeking capital, with outstanding track records and attractive valuations. Angel investors, definitely. You’re the backbone of Canadian deal. We’re reaching out separately to National Angel Capital Organization and to Maple Leaf Angels to invite investors (by active I mean that you’ve written an investment cheque in the past 18 months).

How can I participate?

We’re asking everyone interested in participating complete an application. The goal is to gather enough details that we can share with others, i.e., founders details will be compiled and shared with investors, investor details will be shared with founders. (Yes, I know that form doesn’t specify this use of the data, each invited attendee will be asked this question and given the opportunity to revise their details. If we don’t invite you, the information will be purged after the event).

Microsoft acquires Opalis

OpalisLogo Microsoft has acquired Mississauga-based Opalis. Details are available on the System Center blog and on TechNet. Rick Segal provides a summary of the investor involved, Peter Carrescia at VenGrowth. VenGrowth had invested $3.6M in March 2004 and had participated in an $8.5M round in November 2005 with Sierra Ventures & BDC. It’s a story for Canadian venture capital and a great story for entrepreneurs.

It also demonstrates some of the main reasons companies like Microsoft make acquisitions: shared customers. There is nothing greater than shared customers to drive a potential acquisition. When a product offering fills a gap in a companies product line and there are shared customers, it becomes a much stronger conversation about acquisition.

“Opalis has over 300 satisfied customers today, including many of the largest IT Managed Service Providers, demanding customers who deliver IT as a business and expect solutions that deliver results for their customers…Combined with Opalis, System Center will be able to interoperate with all of those legacy tools so customers can take a ‘land and migrate’ approach with Microsoft versus a ‘rip and replace’ approach as they build out their next generation virtualized data centers” – Todd DeLaughter

Here’s hoping that the Opalis team will stay in Mississauga, however, Microsoft tends to like to have the talent in Redmond. Congratulations Opalis, VenGrowth and BDC on a win.

C'mon Meat, throw me that weak-ass shit!

Crash Davis: Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: [to himself] What’s this guy know about pitching? If he’s so good how come he’s been in the minors for the last ten years?

I guess this makes me Crash Davis, ten years in the minors, makes me wonder when my Waterworld is coming (so please make sure you take any feedback with the appropriate sense of pending doom).

“Open challenge to local startups to “pitch” for a meeting in a 140 characters or less in the comments (more realistically less than 420 characters – basically 3 tweets).”

In response to my Pitching Fastballs post on StartupNorth (reblogged), Trevor and Karim from Big Time Design have answered my open challenge, along with a bunch of others in the comments. Along with Scott Annan and Tim Harris.

Big Time Radar

radar

big time Radar is: Discreet, targeted messaging; customers ask for it & you deliver via Live Messenger, Twitter, SMS, email & Facebook from one interface.

Big time’s management team consists of three guys from marketing, design and development backgrounds.  Radar’s market opportunity is massive for anyone in the marketplace looking to use social media to sell, communicate and connect with their customers.  Initially, we plan to focus on four verticals: retail, events, media and real estate.  Our pricing model is segmented by number of users and selected features. We are currently in the beta phase (with very positive initial results) and are bootstrapping rather than looking for funding as our overhead cost is negligible. 

Commentary/Feedback

This is a great approach to layered information. The piece that is missing for me is the separation between Big Time Design and Big Time Radar. I’m assuming Radar is a product offering of Big Time Design. That coupled with I’m curious at the benefit of the solution, i.e., it sounds like a multi-channel replacement for MailChip or Constant Contact, i.e., email marketing that uses social media for notification beyond just email. A little more clarity about how it fits with respect to these other offerings might be helpful.

Network Hippo

network_hippo

Network Hippo is a smart address book for startups and professionals. It combines and scrubs contact information from dozens of sources, finds more info about them on the web and social networks, plugins into your email, and alerts you when – and who – you should contact. It’s a smarter, personal, social CRM. We’ll replace Highrise completely & Salesforce’s smallest customers.

Commentary/Feedback

I also like the one provided on Network Hippo’s home page , “Network Hippo is a powerful and unique network relationship application that puts your professional network to work. We help professionals and small businesses build their network, identify their most valuable contacts, remind them when somebody needs a call, and track deals for their business.” It’s very clear who the product is for, what the product does, and who are the competitors. I would like a little more detail on the differentiator, i.e., what makes Network Hippo special?

Star Return

Star-Return-Logo

Star Return links out door media to rich media content on handheld apps via web services, while providing advertisers with solid analytics to evaluate effectiveness and viral affects of their campaigns.

Commentary/Feedback

I’m still not sure how Star Return links outdoor media to rich media content (I’m assuming that this is online content). I still don’t actually know what Star Return does. Jumping on the Interwebs, I find “We are Star Return. We allow you to download information to your mobile device, related to products, places, people and businesses.” and “Star Return puts a new twist on information access. Users – anytime, anywhere can now access information on restaurants, stores, products, sporting events, concerts, bands, real-estate and much much more.” My guess is that it’s bit.ly for billboards?