Instigator Blog

Software startups always start out very heavily focused on technology. They have to be; they’re building some kind of software application and most of their time has to go into doing that properly. Most software startup teams are made up entirely of developers or weighted in that direction. Have a team of 4? I bet 3 of those people are technical…

At Standout Jobs we have 8 people full-time. Six of those are on the technical side. That’s fairly common amongst early stage software startups.

But at some point, most software startups have to start changing. You can only focus on the technology for so long. Eventually, you have to start marketing and selling it. Occasionally you’ll find developers that can also serve as marketers and business development gurus, but more than likely you’ll hire on additional people to help.

Thats the evolution of a software startup — from being a technology company to being a sales & marketing company.

Most successful software companies make the leap.

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The guys behind StartupNorth and a number of other initiatives, have recently launched StartupIndex, which they describe as, “…a free, community-based index of technology startups and investors in Canada.”

It’s similar to CrunchBase and TraveVibes.

This is a much-needed addition to the startup scene in Canada. It’s great for Canadian startups but also for others, around the world, to get a detailed glimpse into what’s going on here.

Anyone can update entries, but I believe they’re approving them all manually. Each startup’s entry can include basic information - size of company, industry, blog RSS feed, investor information, etc. Over time you can see more and more data and content appearing for each startup’s profile (and for investors), which will make this a must-use resource.

Here’s a miniature version of the Standout Jobs profile (click the image for a full view):

If you don’t think personal branding is important, you’re flat out nuts.

Nowadays it’s so much easier to brand yourself online - through blogging, social media, networking - and then leverage that effectively offline as well. Bringing your online branding efforts offline is key; because you can’t live exclusively online. And this is especially true in the job market.

There are plenty of places online to look for jobs, and we know that Gen Y and Gen X do almost all of their job searching online. It makes completely sense. And now we’re seeing tools to help companies and candidates brand themselves more effectively online. But ultimately, hiring people is about one-on-one connections and meeting people face-to-face to see if there’s a fit. The online job market helps bring people together, and it’s getting better at it, but you still need to bring your online brand with you when you meet potential employers for interviews, etc.

Dan Schawbel gets personal branding.

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The pervading approach to launching a startup is to do it quickly, iterate constantly and make as much noise as possible throughout the process. It’s not a bad way of doing things, and given the lower cost of startup operations, and the nature of consumer web startups in particular, and it’s completely doable. But be careful if you’re not a data hog.

Getting your startup launched as quickly as possible is fine - you need to get it in front of people to understand what’s working (and not), and get as much feedback as possible - but you should also spend a good chunk of time preparing to collect data. That means building the necessary infrastructure into your system to collect, review and analyze the data generated by users.

What Data Should You Collect?

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Marc-Andre Cournoyer was the first employee we ever hired at Standout Jobs. Since then he’s done a lot of cool things (for us) and on his own, including the fastest Ruby web server, Thin.

Now Marc-Andre has been invited to speak at MeshU - a 1-day conference on development, design and business. Marc’s doing a workshop on using Thin and Rack to solve performance issues and have fun.

Other speakers at MeshU include: Leah Culver (Pownce), Daniel Burka (Digg), John Resig (Mozilla), Avi Bryant (DabbleDB) and more.

MeshU will be held in Toronto on May 20th. It coincides with the Mesh conference.

If you’re interested in development and/or design you should check it out. Marc-Andre is a great speaker (as are the other speakers), and it looks like it’ll be a jam-packed day.