Instigator Blog

StartupCamp is a great event organized primarily by Embrase. It’s a less tech-focused unconference (versus DemoCamps and BarCamps) where a handful of startups get on stage and pitch the audience. There’s a group of investors (angels and venture capitalists) who provide feedback, and there’s the overall audience of entrepreneurs, etc. there as well.

There have been two StartupCamps in Montreal so far (I missed the second one), but I think it’s a good opportunity to take a more “business-focused” look at startups. One of the biggest challenges for startups is raising capital. I think StartupCamp can help.

The next StartupCamp is on November 27th - so it’s still some time away - but you might as well sign-up now and save the date.

There will be two speakers - Austin Hill and Patrick Lor. Both are great guys. Both have tons of experience. And both can present the pants off of almost anyone I know.

There’s also going to be a panel discussion with a handful of entrepreneurs that are currently running funded companies. I’ll be involved in that, along with Sebastien Provencher and Marc Gingras. They’ll be adding a couple more people soon to the list.

Right now, if you’re a startup and you want the chance to get on stage in front of an audience, and learn a lot about how to present for investment, you should submit your company for review. A group of folks will take a look and pick the 5 companies that get to present.

All the details are here: http://www.barcampmontreal.org/wiki/StartupCampMontreal3

You should definitely consider attending and getting a chance to meet a lot of the entrepreneurs, investors and business folk that live and breathe the Montreal startup community on a daily basis.

I started my first company in 1996. A couple years later that company morphed from a service business (offering web design and development services) into a product business with the launch of our web-based project management application. Those were the early years of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In fact, we were referred to as an ASP (Application Service Provider) back then, and the biggest hot button issues were the fact that implementing web-based / hosted solutions was extremely new, security, and SLAs (Service Level Agreements.)

Truth be told, those were the early days of Enterprise 2.0.

Nowadays, very few companies are worried about hosting mission critical applications outside of their own networks. Security is less of a concern, because companies are generally comfortable with Web security. And SLAs still exist, but they’re not the predominant issue. Most companies understand that web-based / hosted applications stay up fairly well, but nothing is perfect.

But even with many of the biggest issues resolved over the last 10 years, companies are still not adopting Enterprise 2.0 at the pace you would expect. And many Enterprise 2.0 startups can’t get the traction they need.

So what’s up?

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It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the latest widgets, gadgets, plugins and features available for bloggers. New stuff is coming out daily, which is understandable, there are millions and millions of bloggers, and many of them are very dedicated to blogging — that’s a nice market with interesting opportunities.

Few companies have really capitalized on bloggers (except those helping them generate revenue). I expect a lot of those that offer “nice add-ons” will fall off the radar eventually. But some will survive, do well, and ultimately get acquired.

Blogs are meant to be social things. (Just ask folks like Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss.) Blog success can be measured by many things (and it varies for each blog owner) but the social nature and social quality of a blog is certainly one measure. I would measure the social nature of a blog through a few things — including comments and content sharing.

With that in mind, I’ve added two features to improve Instigator Blog’s “socialness”:

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Paul Graham is well-known in the startup world for his past successes and most recently, the launch of Y Combinator. Y Combinator continues to garner a ton of attention, from a combination of the sheer volume in startups being launched through the program, the successful exits, and the way in which they’re shaking up the venture capital industry.

I’m a big fan of Y Combinator. I wish I could have gone through the experience. From the outside looking in, I see an insanely talented and dedicated group of people running the operation, who are working with a slew of bright, young, hungry entrepreneurs. I’ve met several Y Combinator folks and have been impressed with all of them.

I think Canada needs a similar model, although for a whole host of reasons, it can’t be quite the same. But that’s a topic of discussion for another time.

Paul Graham recently published his Fundraising Survival Guide, and I wanted to take a few moments to go through some of his key points and add my own thoughts and experiences to the mix.

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Just a quick note that I’ll be live on Saturday, August 16th @ 9pm EDT on the Aaron Brazell show talking about how to find a job, tips on job seeking, social media and the job market, the economy and more. It should be fun!

You can join the show live (and participate) by clicking here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/22406.

You can also subscribe via iTunes.

Aaron Brazell is a well-known social media guru, and most recently was the Director of Technology at b5media. But he won’t be hosting the show on Saturday - so he’s found a very suitable replacement, Mr. Jimmy Gardner.

The show itself (if you look through the archives) is an eclectic mix of social media, politics, current events and more. There have been quite a few interesting and diverse guests, hopefully I can hold my own!

We’ll see you on Saturday!

Update

I did the show on Saturday night and had a great time. Thank you to those who spent time in the live chat room and asked questions. The show is now live and you can listen to it here.

During the 1-hour show I talk to Jimmy Gardner about Standout Jobs, what employers need to do to attract top talent, what job seekers need to do in assessing opportunities, the economy and much more. Half of the discussion surrounds startups and entrepreneurship in general, and the struggles of smaller communities (like Montreal and D.C.) to build up great startup ecosystems.