This Week in Canadian Startups: Black Swans, Toronto's Startup Ecosystem

Mark Evans' This Week in Canadian Startups

	A Guide to Toronto's Startup Ecosystem There's a lot going on within Toronto's startup community. David Crow put together an extensive list of the different parts - events, people, incubators, VCs, bloggers/media and resources.

The federal government plans to launch a new visa to attract high-tech entrepreneurs. TechDirt suggests it's a progressive move compared with the U.S., but it could be a step backward given Canada already has open borders to job-creating immigrants.

Anyone remember Jonathan Abrams, the Toronto-native who started Friendster, the hot social network before Facebook? Abrams turned down an offer from Google, and then Friendster pretty much disappeared. Abrams is back with a new startup called Nuzzel.

In financing news, Vancouver-based LemonStand, which offers an e-commerce platform for mid-sized companies, raised a seed round from BDC and a group of angels.

At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, the only Canadian company to make the "Battlefield" was Waterloo's Maluuba, which makes a Siri-like product for Android devices.

Creating a startup is relatively easy these days. The hard part is gaining any kind of traction given the competition. After reading a story in the Toronto Star about Wondereur, I put together some thoughts on this challenge.

Startup tidbits: Joseph Puopolo pulled the covers off Printchomp at Techcrunch Disrupt. I met with Olivier Berger, the cofounder of Wondereur about buying art online and the Canadian startup scene, and sat down with Faizal Karmali, the co-founder of Quinzee, a startup focused on helping consumers be smarter about their energy usage.

If you're looking for startup bloggers, here's a list of nine picked by Search Engine Journal. And, of course, you can read my blog. :)

Paul Graham (aka the guy behind YCombinator) has a new blog/essay called "Black Swan Farming" on how investing in startups can be counter-intuitive. As interesting is Vinod Khosla's belief YCombinator companies get excessive valuations due to the hype surrounding them.

Andrew Chowaniec believes Canadian companies should support the startup ecosystem with a "Buy Local" approach. it's a good approach but I believe it only works if a startup is offering products that are competitive on a price, features and value perspective.

For startups, an "official" launch is a big deal to get the attention of media, bloggers and users. VersionOne Ventures has some suggestions on how to measure a launch's success.

Is Hootsuite's Ryan Holmes' everywhere? In a chat with Matchfwd's Phil Gauvin, Holmes offers insight on recruiting, keeping and managing startup employees.

What are the things a startup CEO needs to do every week? Andreessen Horowitz's Scott Weiss maps out a plan, including talking to customers.

- Ladies Who Code is looking to raise $10,000 to cover the costs of moving to a new office. You can donate through Indiegogo.
- Applications are open for the Branham 300, who ranks Canada's leading publicly-traded and private ICT companies.
- The meshmarketing conference happens Nov. 7 in Toronto. Early-bird tickets can be picked up for $249 until Sept. 21.
- WattPad is holding a ping pong tournament for Toronto startups on Nov. 1.

Did I miss something? Hit Reply or send me an email at mark@markevans.ca

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A Guide to Toronto's Startup Ecosystem