Yuummm.. there’s nothing quite like a tasty sushi meal. Anthony and I had the privilege of meeting up with Brisco and ItalianSpirit in Yorkville, Toronto for lunch at one of our favourite Japanese restaurants. It was a real pleasure to meet in-person and talk supercars with fellow car nuts. We look forward to many more annual Christmas lunches in the future!
Brisco and ItalianSpirit about to dig into a delectable Sushi Lunch
On Friday, Anthony and I had the pleasure of taking John Chow and his wife Sarah for dinner in Toronto. Anthony hade made reservations at Kit Kat restaurant on King Street, right in the heart of downtown Toronto. We were treated to the best table in the restaurant and top-notch service. The superb dinner consisted of various delectable appetizers, wine, main courses of halibut and seafood linguini, and desserts of tiramisu and creme brulee.
We thoroughly enjoyed the company of John and Sarah, and found it of great value to be able to have a candid conversation with a prominent successful dot com mogul about various aspects of running online businesses. We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to both of them for taking the time to meet with us.
We both look forward to many more dinners at great restaurants with John and Sarah.
Before I get into the details of the night, I would like to thank Jevon MacDonald and Jonas Brandon of StartupNorth.ca who put together an extremely professional and organized event.
Albert Lai serial entrepreneur and founder of BubbleShare.com, kicked off the the fun evening by giving a powerful, insightful and extremely motivating speech on everything that encompases startups, including his 13 some failures.
Here are the highlights of Alberts powerful keynote speech which had everyone in attendance fully attentive to his every word.
Don’t sellout before realising your visions
Stay away from venture capital if possible
True startups get paid very little, if any at all
Find Partners with the same philosophy and vision
Learn to deal with the fact you will be rejected, LOTS
There is no such thing as balance
Focus on near term execusion 30-60-90 days outlooks
Know your competition
Overplanning is bad
If you are not failing at the end of the day, you are not trying hard enough
It also boils down to how quickly you can get back on the horse after failing
Albert is proof that hard work, focus and determination are the main ingredients required to succeed when starting a company. Failure will happen, and the quicker you can mentally recover, the better equipped you will be to navigate the journey of your next startup.
Seeing that Albert founded and sold the successful photo sharing site Bubbleshare.com, I figured I should probably talk to him seeing MadWhips.com is an exotic and modified car photo sharing site. I was lucky to snag Albert for 5 mintures after the final presentation and asked him about what MadWhips.com should be focusing on, 30 days after its successful re-launch. Albert was very articulate and very quick to give me some directives to accomplish in the next couple months which I am excited to start hammering out.
Albert, thanks for the amazing energized keynote speech and for the near term advice you gave MadWhips.com!
On to the startups that were voted to present.
Freshbooks.com (Toronto Based Startup)
Mike McDerment CEO and Co-Founder
Sunir Shah Marketing & Community Development
Freshbooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional.
Features
Easily create, send and manage invoices
Track time (for you and your staff) Totally Redesigned
Send invoices by snail mail or email
Accept payment with PayPal, Authorize.Net, & more
Automatically send invoices & late payment notices
Create robust reports and import/export your data
Some Learnings
Freshbooks has been around since May 2004 and has 250,000 some users.
They have about 1000 RSS subscribers, active forums.
They consider themselves a service and not a technology
They specialize in creating “high fidelity relationships”
They basically have 1 employee devoted for every 20,000 users.
Mike and Sunir are awesome guys and they had one of the best presentations of the night (which they should after 3 years).
I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Sunir about both our entrepreneurial endeavors back in May 2007 at the Mesh conference in Toronto and I was more than impressed with all of Sunir’s advice that I have since followed through on with many positive results!
I am not sure why Freshbooks were considered to demo, they have been around for about 3 years now and seem to be a fairly mature startup and many would argue to be well past the ’startup’ phase.
Defensio (Montreal Based Startup)
Carl Mercier CEO, Co-Founder
Self funded Defensio launched a month ago, and if my memory serves me right, they also demoed at BarCampMontreal3 which we participated at, but we had just launched the day before and unfortunately after we demoed I had to bury my head in my laptop and work away at some bugs that had been brought to our attention that morning.
Defensio claims to be currently operating at a 99.79% accuracy rate and sorts blocked comments by “Spaminess”.
Defensio is not a plugin, they are an open API with liabraries for Rails, Python, Java, PHP, .NET and Perl.
Their product is slick, just like their logo, their website and their API reporting capabilities.
They have RSS delivery options, personalized filters, smart algorithms that learn and adapt, and statistics via easy to read charts.
Blogging Platforms Currently Supported
Wordpress
PixelPost
Umbraco
Drupal
Mephisto
Movable Type
Developer Plugins
Ruby On Rails
Microsoft .NET
Java
Perl
PHP 4 + 5
Python
Strategy: Word of Mouth, getting featured on review websites like TechCrunch.
Their service is free if you have less than 50,000 comment/month, or less than $250/month in direct revenue.
Competition: Akismet
Jevon recently posted blogged that “Six Apart Should Buy Defensio“, and I couldn’t agree more. I think an acquisition is inevitable in 2008. So congratulations ahead of time Carl!
CakeMail (Montreal Based Startup)
Francois Lane - CEO
Duncan Moore - Marketing
Privately funded and also launched a month ago, CakeMail is a Montreal based white label startup which we also saw demo at BarCampMontreal3.
CakeMail is an adaptable white label email marketing platform with multilingual capabilities and an architecture that is open to extension by third parties.
It’s only available through resellers; there is no CakeMail brand for end users.
The interface code is publicly available and is hosted separately from the rest of the application, giving resellers complete control over the branding, interface design and all URLs used.
Strategy: Contagious brand, cool logo (who doesn’t like cake?), crowd sourcing, adaptable PR and marketing
I managed to get smoked in the head with one of their softer than soft promo shirts (thanks Jonas) and it being a medium, it fits like OJ’s glove.
CreateWorkSpace.com (Toronto Based Startup)
Martin Drashka Co-Founder
Workspace is a online development environment that facilitates the complete management of your Web-based projects. With a syntax highlighting editor built right in, it provides the ability to edit text, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Java, Perl, SQL and other types of files directly on a remote server. Finding and managing those files is made easy with a cutting-edge file management utility embedded right in the app. With this utility, users can connect to, and manage the files on an arbitrary number of ftp sites simultaneously. Don’t have access to an ftp server? No problem — every account gets a bit of storage to play with on our servers.
Utilizing the latest JavaScript techniques, Workspace can be used without any plugins at all.
Revenue Strategy: Basic account $7.50/month, Premium Account $15/month
Features
Connect to multiple ftp servers simultaneously
Always connected to your space on our servers
Create, rename, and delete files and folders
Upload and download files
Download archived folders
Cut/copy and paste files and folders
Investmate (Toronto Based Startup)
Ian
Rohan
6 Software Engineering students from the University of Toronto.
They are trying to capture the amature 18-35 year old investors with $1000-$50,000 to invest by creating a very easy and intuitive online service application to aide in buying and selling stocks.
Their demo was cool, their application looked very easy to use and I think Ian and Rohan have entrepreneurial blood. You will be seing further future starup ideas from these 2 and their team of soon to be graduated Engineers.
Being a successful stock trader myself, I could appreciate and understand what they were trying to accomplish with this idea of theirs and seeing that more and more people have been entering into the stock market in the last couple years their timing is perfect.
However, this venture of theirs is not an easy one even with funding and financial experts on board. I am not sure why 6 Software engineers would choose this problem to go after as this is definitely not an easy first startup to maneuvre. There is just too much intricate and delicate levels to deal with from economic and finance issues to customer service and liability not to mention online brokerages already in this game.
There is already a company/product in Finland called InvestMate Portfolio Management Software.
I personally think they should go back to the drawing board and focus on something more achievable and suitable that would better utilize their Software Engineering eduction.
Announcements
Next up was 2 Engineers Amer Varma and Sunny who have started their own Venture Capital firm called Extreme Venture Partners.
They claim to have a pool of about 10 million dollars available and will be specializing in 1 million dollar venture capital funded projects.
Robert Montgomery announced that Sean Wise, Rick Nathan and himself will launch the the inaugural Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), a new event focusing on innovation in Canada, which will take place April 29 and April 30, 2008 at The Carlu, Toronto. The two-day event will feature an innovation marketplace, flash-forward presentations on the state of technology, and facilitated networking opportunities. Key participants from the U.S. and other countries will be invited, as befits the world-class status of Canada and the Toronto area with the highlight of the event being a showcase of Canada’s top startup companies.
Vincent from Montreal announced that the first StartupCampMontreal will take place on January 23, 2008 at SAT - La Société des Arts Technologiques.
Mic from Waterloo also announced that StartupCampWaterloo2 is planned for February 26th, 6-9pm at the Accelerator Centre.
Finally Yong, one of Albert Lai’s friends and founder of couple hardcore websites which I can’t remember for the life of me announced a new website called StoryBlender.com.
This site will be a configurable video mashup site which will allow interactive video exchange and video-card type services.
After all these presentations and never ending Announcements (I was waiting for someone to propose by the end of them), I made my way downstairs to setup my laptop with other demoers to demo our websites and network with other like minded entrepreneurs.
Jevon and Jonas, thanks for the successful event, we are all looking forward to the next!
On Friday November 2, 2007 at 11am MadWhips.com officially launched. It wasn’t until later that night around 9pm when we were 1 hour out of Toronto on our way to Montreal for BarCampMontreal3 that Vinay and I decided that we had to attend the 1st BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas.
Our friend and CarZi co-founder Nate Whitehill had continually invited us out to Scottsdale Arizona all summer but unfortunately we were in the middle of developing our new site and had very little time available for anything else other than designing our dream site; we didn’t have to explain this to Nate as he is an extremely focused young man himself.
During our drive to Montreal, we concluded that after 1.5 years of giving MadWhips.com every waking hour we had that we should attend the Blog Expo to celebrate our successful launch, finally meet with Nate and his boys, and learn as much as we could from this inaugural event in a wild city I had never been to.
I have never felt so welcomed by anyone that I have met for the first time in person as I felt when Vinay and I met Nate and his boys (Matt, Josh & David) in Vegas. Vinay and I first came across Nates blog about 8 months ago when it first launched and had a handful of readers. Being business partners with the same focus (cars, money, web development) we followed Nates blogging as he started out from scratch on his entrepreneurial journey in Scottsdale. It wasn’t long until Nate, David Wilkson (the UK’s 13 year old super blogger) of TechZi.net and Vinay & I started up a successful collaborative automotive blog called CarZi.com.
Nate, thank you for the warm welcome, all the introductions and most importantly the inclusion into your family. You are very lucky, as they are lucky to have you as their leader (as I am to have Vinay as a business partner) that you have Matt, Josh and David on your team, they all have mad skills, determination and the vision and passion required for you guys to succeed in everyone of your endeavors. If everything outside of meeting you in Vegas had been a complete disaster and failure, Vinay and I would have still felt that this had been our most successful business trip yet! Cheers to our successful futures, they have only just begun!!
It was evident that the 2 day BlogWorld event was a very successful one for all who attended, participated and showcased their product.
We had the opportunity to listen to some very interesting keynote interviews, panel conversations and speeches by Matt Mullenweg, Jeremy Wright, Tom Frey and Mark Cuban.
Vinay had a chance to ask Mark Cuban 2 questions - see the 1 hour mark!
At night after the Blog Expo, Vinay and I were able to roll in stretch Hummers to hang out and party with Nate, Josh Mullineaux, Matt Blancarte, David Bjorn and their friends Ms. Danielle, Mr. Gary Lee, Chris, Greg, Darin, Prija, Shoemoney, Neil Patel and John Chow.
Bloggers are legit. One thing I kept hearing among the group this weekend was, “This is the most legit group of people I’ve ever hung out with.” I couldn’t agree more. And it has nothing to do with money. I believe a majority of bloggers are like-minded people, regardless of topic or intention. Bloggers are motivated, driven, technical to a degree, inclusive, intelligent (usually), opinionated, and creative. This is why we’re drawn to each other (at least the ones I know), and this is why we’re legit. What bloggers are not are quitters.”
Many thanks to Ms. Danielle who knew DJ Dust @ Tangerine Nightclub who got us escorted to a VIP table despite the club being at capacity and an hour wait for bottle service. Ms. Danielle you ROCK, thank you so much, I can’t believe we had the opportunity to finally meet you!!
You can see more great photos and a writeup of our wicked awesome time at Tangerine thanks to Mr. Gary Lee’s post: BlogWorld Expo Nights. Another super chill intellectual we met and partied with was Mr. Gary Lee. Gary really looking forward to the next time we’re all together, I had a blast thanks for all the drinks!
Other amazing down to earth and super fun individuals we also rolled around Vegas at night included Chris Burdick, the gentle genius behind Egonitron and Automoblog (I think there might be another automotive opportunity here), the confident, calculated, personable and life of the party Darin Carter of DarinCarter.cc (this guy is a serious baller with style and a crazy ass blingy watch), Prija the super creative, ambitious and extremely talented documentor of blogging the movie and the super brilliant SEO rockstar Neil Patel co-founder of ACS and CrazyEgg who sounded more articulate and insightful than Mark Cuban (not joking ask anyone) who I would personally like to thank for the words of wisdom and many SEO tips; hopefully I’ll see you in Orange County soon!
We would also like to send many thanks to Mr. Chow for inviting us to the John Chow Blogger Dinner which took place at Benihanna Japanese Steak House in the Hilton Hotel. The meal was spectacular but the company was tops!
Jeremy Schoemaker aka the notorious internet guru helping you gain “skills to pay the bills” Shoemoney was also in attendance for all of these shenanigans and rolled harder than I anticipated with his own personal sexy female bodyguards borrowed from UBD !! Jeremy, thank you so much for all the drinks and for showing us how you Nebraskin’s really party! I would love to share some of the details about all the crazyness and partying we got ourselves into (willingly or not) but I’m going to have to play the Vegas card right about now ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’. You should be able to estimate the kind of trouble we got into just by the company we were with and the photos I have posted.
All these photos were taken using my trusty Canon SD300; The Unoficial Bloggers Choice For Cameras.
Other great Blog World Articles from these individuals:
Sorry this post was so late, but we wanted to do this post justice and give proper thanks and shout outs to all the people that contributed to our successful visit at the Las Vegas BlogWorld Expo 2007. See you all soon!
Congratulations (to both) it’s about time ProductWiki finally got featured on TechCrunch in an article by Erick Schonfeld titled: ProductWiki’s Formula For Unbiased Reviews.
Less than a week after getting some love in a CrunchGear post, Schonfeld met Omar at the TechCrunch Boston Meetup and had the following to report in his article.
“The idea behind ProductWiki is to create collaborative product reviews that boil all the judgments about a product into one single review. It avoids revision wars by requiring every reviewer to list both pros and cons, and then every other ProductWiki reader can vote on each pro and each con until a consensus emerges.”
“ProductWiki is another bootstrap startup with three employees (Omar, his sister Amanie, and her husband Erik). It was launched in November, 2005, and has about 15,000 product reviews.”
I find it amazing (but typical of TechCrunch) that these reviews mention nothing about the amazing system software they’ve designed, let alone the 3 major design iterations they have implemented since 2005. It is pretty evident that these writers know nothing about the actual technology. If they did, they would be writing about how amazing their custom Wiki software really is and not about “I know the iPod and the Zune are related products, but what about the more tangential connections, like the toaster oven with the iPodish design? That is what I’d like to see.”
ProductWiki System Facts:
ProductWiki runs on their custom Wiki software platform using a .NET framework from the ground up, MySQL DB, FCKEditor, and Ajax.NET Professional.
ProductWiki got some love from Matt Hickey over at CrunchGear in yesterday’s post ProductWiki: Your guide to gear works great with CrunchGear.
“Meet ProductWiki, a new user-organized and edited resource that is just what it sounds like: a wiki of stuff you can buy. If you want unbiased reviews of a cellphone, for example, by someone who’s actually used it, and you’ve read our thorough reviews, you can use Product Wiki to see if it’s as advertised.”
Matt’s conclusion: “We like gear, and we like Wikis, so we like ProductWiki.”
Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum)
About 2 months ago, The Trump Blog held a contest called Ask Donald J. Trump! Vinay and I submitted about 12 questions and one of Vinay’s 10 questions was chosen among the 10 winners!
You can view Vinay’s Winning post here: Ask Donald Trump Contest Winner: Vinay Menon of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Vinay’s winning question “If you were to give an 8 year old the only reliable financial advice he would ever receive in his life, what would it be?”
And the answer from Donald J. Trump . . . “Learn enough about money and finance so that you could become your own financial adviser. Financial education is the way to financial freedom. Understand how money works, and on a global level as well. That’s a big assignment but it will serve you well.”
Aside from having MadWhips.com mentioned in the winning post, Vinay also wins his choice of a Trump University Course!
This past Saturday, November 3, 2007, Vinay and I recently re-launched MadWhips and were invited to demo at BarcampMontreal3 in beautiful Montreal, Quebec. This event was amazing, and by far the most professionally hosted *.camp we have attended yet! Thanks to all the sponsors for having us, everyone we talked to had an amazing time!While there, Vinay and I had the opportunity to hang out and speak with Kareem Sultan, founder of RaceDV.com for most of the day regarding his awesome product.
RaceDV.com offers an amazing product called “Memoir”, which involves your car and some amazing recording technology that doesn’t just capture the experience. It enhances it. Multiple cameras that can be mounted almost anywhere. Sound so clear you can hear your heart race! All wrapped up with their data acquisition technology in a little black box that never lies so there will never be any doubt about how fast you actually conquered any corner!
You! - No simulations here. This is your car, your skill, and your real experience.
Real Footage - Two cameras mounted in almost any location on your vehicle.
Real Data - GPS - Accelerometer and vehicle data sampled at more than 5Hz.
Graphic Overlay - Actual performance data overlaid and perfectly synced to video.
DVD - Includes DVD, menu, case and a performance sheet data insert.
Online Presentation - Fastest lap video and all data available online for performance tracking, comparing and sharing.
Finally, videos of amazing cars, where the SOUND is absolutely memorizing… no wind noise, music or jibber jabber from the cockpit, just PURE AWESOME ENGINE MUSICALS..UN REAL!!!!
Vehicle: Ariel Atom 2 2007
Date: September 15, 2007
Track: Autobahn Country Club North
Well, only 9 more hours before Vinay and I (WhipDaddy) jump on a plane to LAS VEGAS to hit the World Blog Expo and meet up with Nate Whitehill and his entourage of .COM ROCKSTARS! SEE YOU THERE! 
[Source: RaceDV.com]
