Instigator Blog

The next Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9th at 8am.

Remember: The location is Boccacinos on McGill St.

And for the first time ever we have 2 sponsors! Both Nestor System and Sun Microsystems are sponsoring this event. (Both have sponsored previous breakfasts too!)

As a result of our sponsors combined generosity, breakfast is free. The menu will have a handful of items on it; the cost of breakfast (including tip) is covered by the sponsors.

Here are the important details:

• Who should attend? Anyone that’s into the tech and entrepreneur scenes in Montreal. That includes entrepreneurs, startup employees, angel investors, venture investors, service providers, students, etc. Every event sees new people, and hopefully the connections made turn into real value in the long-term.
• When and where? Tuesday, June 9th at Boccacinos on McGill St. (downtown) at 8am-10am.
• How do we connect? Stay connected using our Facebook Group.
• How do we RSVP? It would be great if you RSVP’d so we have a sense of how many people are coming. You can do so using the Facebook Event listing.
• Who is sponsoring? Nestor System and Sun Microsystems!

NOTE: The last event had far more people RSVP than showed up. This isn’t the end of the world, but please make an effort to attend if you RSVP (or update us before the event that you won’t be coming.) It helps us manage the seating arrangements, restaurant expectations, etc. Thank you!

April’s Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast is fast approaching, and I’m pleased to say that we’ve got a sponsor — Nestor System.

Nestor is a local Montreal software company. Here’s the scoop:

Nestor System is a leading Cross-Cultural Communications & Technologies company. Nestor System is specializing in localization of software, video games and websites in more than 40 languages and cultures. Enterprises that overlook local ethnic consumers and worldwide multicultural markets are missing a huge opportunity. Nestor System help I.T. companies to succeed locally and internationally into diversity.

It’s great to see a local software company step-up and support the overall community. At the breakfast, I’ll introduce Stephane d’Amours from Nestor, who should be attending.

With Nestor’s sponsorship, breakfast is free! There will be a fixed menu with 4 or 5 items that you can choose from. The cost of breakfast (including tip) is included, so there’s no charge.

The Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast will be on Tuesday, April 14th @ 8am.

Here are the details:

• Who should attend? Anyone that’s into the tech and entrepreneur scenes in Montreal. That includes entrepreneurs, startup employees, angel investors, venture investors, service providers, students, etc. Every event sees new people, and hopefully the connections made turn into real value in the long-term.
• When and where? Tuesday, April 14th at Boccacinos on McGill St. (downtown) at 8am-10am.
• How do we connect? Stay connected using our Facebook Group.
• How do we RSVP? It would be great if you RSVP’d so we have a sense of how many people are coming. You can do so using the Facebook Event listing.
• Who is sponsoring? Nestor System!

On Saturday, April 18th I’ll be speaking at the YES Montreal Entrepreneurship Conference, doing a couple of roundtable discussions on pitching and presenting your business. The conference is being held for the day at the SAT, which is a great, easygoing location. The conference is $50 to attend, and I’d recommend it for anyone thinking about entrepreneurship, starting a business, early stage entrepreneurs or small business owners.

There will be plenty of roundtable discussions on a variety of topics - including two hosted by good friends of mine - Mitch Joel and Warren Wilansky.

My focus is on pitching, which is something I’ve talked about quite a few times already. Here are some of those posts:

• 5 Lessons Learned Pitching VCs
• 5 Quick Tips on Pitching Angel Investors and VCs
• 7 Things No One Ever Tells You About Raising Venture Capital
• 10 Questions VCs and Angel Investors are Going to Ask
• Venture Capitalists Love Sex Because Sex Sells

Most of what I’ve written centers around pitching to raise financing, but certainly there’s more to pitching than that - it’s really about how you present your business to anyone - VCs, angel investors, customers, prospects, employees, etc. So we can keep the discussion broad-based. I’ll really let the participants decide on the direction they want the discussion to go.

Here are some additional details on the conference: YES Montreal Entrepreneurship Conference

For the first Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast of 2009 I’m pleased to announce that we’ve landed a sponsor: BDO Dunwoody.

BDO has been very active in the local startup community, participating at (and sponsoring) numerous events. They work closely with Montreal Startup helping recently with a couple of MSU events.

The details of the sponsorship will be announced soon - once I’m finished coordinating things with Boccacinos. Due to the number of people who attended the last breakfast, I’m looking at possibly doing a fixed price menu with the restaurant, to make things easier. We’ll see.

The Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast will be on Tuesday, February 10th @ 8am.

Here are the details:

• Who should attend? Anyone that’s into the tech and entrepreneur scenes in Montreal. That includes entrepreneurs, startup employees, angel investors, venture investors, service providers, students, etc. Every event sees new people, and hopefully the connections made turn into real value in the long-term.
• When and where? Tuesday, February 10th at Boccacinos on McGill St. (downtown) at 8am-10am.
• How do we connect? Stay connected using our Facebook Group.
• How do we RSVP? It would be great if you RSVP’d so we have a sense of how many people are coming. You can do so using the Facebook Event listing.
• Who is sponsoring? BDO Dunwoody!

Defensio, which provides an excellent anti-spam plugin, was acquired by Websense, Inc (publicly traded on NASDAQ). The news is all over the Web, including the Defensio blog.

Why is this important?

For starters, I was Defensio’s first big user. Carl Mercier (founder of Defensio) asked me to help him early on with beta testing of their anti-spam plugin on this blog because of how much spam I was getting. I was happy to oblige. But more importantly:

1. Defensio is Canadian. Defensio is actually Montreal-based (or pretty close to it) so I think the entire Montreal startup / tech community celebrates these kinds of victories. We don’t see a lot of exits (although another Montreal-based startup, Reasonably Smart was also recently acquired by Joyent, and Oz was recently bought by Nokia.)
2. Defensio didn’t raise Venture Capital. Mark MacLeod calls it the era of small exits and I think he’s right - at least for companies that haven’t raised significant dollars (or any at all.) If you can exit for a few million dollars and you’ve only raised a couple hundred thousand, everyone wins. No one’s buying a small Island in the Caribbean, but it’s still a win. It’s important to realize though, that even if you don’t raise money (or only raise a small amount of angel money) you still need to orchestrate the exit; just because you’re going for a smaller exit doesn’t mean it’s so much easier or happens automatically. I think there’s a future blog post in there…
3. Defensio wasn’t first, but it worked well. Defensio wasn’t first to the anti-spam market, nor were they first to implement anti-spam blog plugins — so you don’t need to be first, being a copycat startup has its advantages, but you do need to stand out and have unique value that’s clearly differentiated.

I continue to use Defensio and find it works very well. I enjoyed working with Carl through the beta / development process, and wish him (and the entire Defensio team) best wishes and tons of luck for the future.

(Incidentally, Carl claims “the cheque is in the mail” for being their 1st big user … but I’m not convinced. *grin*)