Demos announced for DCT27

DemoCamp lineup has been announced:

This is a great set of early stage Toronto and region (Waterloo) based startups. Some of the folks are getting their second shot at a demo. It will be interesting to see how far they’ve come from their launch. I hope that everyone takes the time to understand the need for “wow” in the demo. And remember the goal is not to heckle but to give entrepreneurs a chance to show what they’ve been working on, how they’ve improved and to get feedback.


DemoCamp Surprises

Anand Agarawala has stepped up with an EPIC DemoCamp sponsorship as a thank you for all of the support from the Toronto community and DemoCamp for helping promote and inspire Bumptop. We’ll take none of the credit for Anand and the Bumptop team’s hustle in getting acquired by Google, but we’ll enjoy the rewards at the next DemoCamp.

Sponsors

I know and appreciate everyone paying for a ticket. We don’t run DemoCamp as a business. We run it as a cost recovery event, that is, our goal is not to generate a profit (often we run at a loss). We couldn’t do this with out the support of our sponsors. There are some great local companies including:

  • Anand Agarawala and Bumptop! You have to be at DemoCamp from 4pm-6pm to find out what it is.
  • Eqentia builds the a semantic publishing platform for knowledge tracking & competitive analysis
  • XtremeLabs is hiring agile engineers and ui designers for the hottest mobile development company on the planet.
  • Microsoft BizSpark jumpstart your startup and speed up your time to market.
  • FreshBooks is the fastest way to track time and invoice your clients.
  • Mercanix develops tools that enable organizations and their people to do good work.
  • Rob Hyndman is the bee’s knees & the cat’s pajama. Startups looking for a lawyer. Start here.
  • Rypple builds social software that makes workplace feedback easy and fun.
  • Dayforce is the an enterprise software company in Toronto. Hiring dev, qa, ui and sales ninjas.
  • Kontagent is a Facebook Fund funded startup that is hiring rockstar developers in Toronto.
  • OCE helping commercialize the next generation technologies like Bumptop & Sysomos.
  • KPMG Information, Communications & Entertainment (ICE) practice helps startups to succeed in turbulent markets.

A year in the life

GuestlistHappy 1st Birthday Guestlist!

Guestlist has had a couple of weeks. On July 12, 2010 they launched their paid service which finally allows the company to generate fees for the great service they provide. We started using Guestlist for events starting on September 24, 2009 for DemoCamp Toronto # 22 aka An Evening with Yossi Vardi.

“What began as a dare between three friends to actually finish a software product has turned into full-fledged web service that has helped hundreds of event organizers sell tickets online and keep tabs on their cash flow. Over that period we’ve collected half a million dollars on behalf of our users, a near-majority of which was delivered directly to charities. All powered by word of mouth.” – Ben Vinegar, Guestlistapp

It’s been a great year for Guestlist enabling over $500,000 in transaction revenue. This is great traction for the small team. Sure it’s only $10,000 using the 2% paid service fee. But this is fantastic traction given that this is a part time project with all 3 team members working other jobs. The demonstrated traction helped the team realize the potential of Guestlist as a business.

“That’s the story of what our team put together, part time, over one year. We can’t say it was easy; building and maintaining a quality application part-time requires a lot of dedication and free time. That’s why we’re excited to announce that 2/3s of our team has opted to work full-time on Guestlist going forward.”

If you’re planning an event and you want a great event application, I can highly recommend Guestlist.