Instigator Blog

I’m very pleased to announce that Standout Jobs has launched a new version of its product, a new website and our business model. There’s a whole ton of new stuff in fact, and this is just the beginning of many changes to come.

After launching Standout Jobs in late January 2008 we’ve spent the last 9 months or so working with 220+ beta customers, collecting feedback, testing, getting testimonials and case studies and learning. Shortly after launching we began work on the next version. In this day and age a software product’s lifecycle is pretty short, especially after first launching; we knew the first version wouldn’t last. So once it stabilized and we started bringing on customers and getting feedback, we put our heads down and got to work.

Along with the new product comes a bunch of other changes as well:

Click to continue →

First, let’s define a strategic investment. A strategic investment is one that’s made most often by a company in your industry, and in some cases a competitor. I don’t think most startups look at strategic investment opportunities - they pursue angel and VC investors first - but in a downturn economy, do strategic investors become more relevant?

A lot of venture capital money is being held onto by VCs, or being invested into their existing portfolios. Angel investors will be a bit more wary as well; they’re seeing their stock market portfolios taking a beating and will have less investment money to deploy. But strategic investors, assuming their businesses aren’t totally collapsing, may have small war chests and see opportunities to jump in and support startups.

Jason Mendelson and Mark MacLeod both provide excellent insight into the pros and cons of strategic investors. Generally Jason and Mark aren’t overly positive, and it’s easy to see why:

Click to continue →

I’ve moved hosting companies because my old one was falling apart. This is a quick test post to make sure the DNS is propagating properly.

You should not have to update your RSS feeds, but when you see this message in your RSS feed, please click through and take a look to make sure everything is working properly. I appreciate it.

There may be a few hiccups along the way as I get all the plugins re-installed and configured, so bear with me. And I do plan on blogging more in the near future, Standout Jobs has kept me swamped.

Incidentally, I’ve moved to Media Temple and purchased their Grid Service (gs) hosting. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Media Temple, although immediately after purchasing I heard some bad things (from someone I trust). So we’ll see how it goes.

The next Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast is scheduled for October 14th at 8am.

Please note — the location is Boccacinos on McGill College

The last breakfast had the biggest turnout ever. That was in part thanks to Sun Microsystems for sponsoring the breakfast. Thanks again to Sun and Sandra and Michal for organizing that.

There’s no sponsor this time (sorry folks!) so you’ll have to pay for your own breakfast, if you want to eat something…

Like last time, the location has changed from months ago. So keep that in mind.

The Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast is for all entrepreneurs, technologists, investors and people interested in technology startups. Our last even saw the biggest turnout ever (around 40 people or so!) and I hope we’ll see many of the same faces and new ones next week.

Here are the details again:

• 8am-10am at Boccacinos on McGill College
• Facebook Group for MTEB: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5502019497
• Facebook Event for October’s MTEB: http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=29562319929

Please do your best to RSVP on Facebook - it helps give us a sense of how many people are coming, but it’s not required.

And thank you to Tanya at Praized and Heri at Montreal Tech Watch for helping to organize the event!

Note: I won’t be at the breakfast next week, I’m in Chicago for work. I should be around for November’s breakfast though!

Mastering PowerPoint isn’t something to be proud of. But it’s a reality of a startup CEO’s job if you’re trying to raise capital. Why?

Because sex sells.

Click to continue →