There’s a wealthy Montreal entrepreneur-investor who holds a unique mantra when he writes cheques.

He lives life according to the phrase, “choose a job you love doing and you will never have to work a day in your life again.” He invests in companies that do stuff that he’s really interested in, like travelling, sports, music and entertainment. Generally the startups are seed stage and some of them are from first-time, fresh-faced founders.

It may sound strange in today’s business world, but this is the life of YOLO Ventures founder and CEO, Marco Gomez.

Gomez is a 35-year-old University of Toronto graduate who earned a comfortable living in the world of finance before he started investing. He feels strongly that everything we do in life should in some way be related to things we love, otherwise we’re simply existing and not living.

He makes select $25,000-$50,000 investments in small startups, mostly Montreal-based. One of them was Outpost Travel, a notable startup that was founded by Hamed Al-Khabaz and Ovi Mija. Al-Khabaz was shoved in the national spotlight three years ago when his CEGEP college at the time expelled him for a “Cyberattack” on the school’s server. Outpost Travel, since rebranded as Zilyo, is a site that aggregates peer-to-peer vacation rentals through online community marketplaces like Airbnb.

The other portfolio companies of YOLO Ventures include a reviews website for beaches, called BeachBelievers. “We always review hotels but we never really review beaches, and when you travel you’re always looking for the best beaches to go to,” said Gomez.

As well, the fund has invested in a pair of companies that resemble Zilyo, in Stay22 and likeahotel.

Gomez sees his fund as more of an incubator than a traditional venture capital firm. YOLO Ventures’ headquarters is a sprawling, 3000-sq. ft. open-concept office space in Old Montreal where Gomez said he frequently invites young startups to work out of, whether he’s investing in them or not.

He made it clear he doesn’t simply hand out cheques, saying that many of today’s young university graduates starting a company for the first time are nearly impossible to invest in. However, he will let the work for a few months “with a gentlemen’s agreement that if I see that you’re starting to progress than I may invest.” He likes to help out and get involved, and if he likes what he sees after a few months then he’s open to longer chats.

But what about those 20-something founders who may think they want to run a company only to change compete direction a year later? In other words, is Gomez hesitant to invest in some of today’s millenials, knowing they may not really know what they’re passionate about?

“It’s a huge risk,” he agreed. “Many times they don’t have the marketing experience and they don’t even know how to write an email or talk to people. They may be really good at programming but they don’t know how to run a business. So what I hope for is they will be good at what they do and that if we give them enough guidance they can grow to eventually attract people with more business experience.”

Take Zilyo, or the former Outpost Travel for example. YOLO Ventures partook in the company’s seed round of $200,000. Yet just a few years later, Al-Khabaz and Mija split. They were just 19 at the time of the business’ conception in 2013.

To that point, Gomez admitted that returns aren’t guaranteed in the game of baby startup seed investing. “When I write a cheque, I don’t expect any type of return. I know what I’m getting myself into and I know I may never see that money again,” Gomez told MTLinTech.

Many would agree that these types of bold investors are sorely needed in a startup ecosystems. Perhaps the real gamblers aren’t the ones who partake in $200 million series C rounds along with nine other funds, but those who drop $50,000 on a lotto ticket that they’ll probably never see again.

What motivates me is to see all the greatest technological developments over the past eight years and the fact that I really haven’t been part of that wave of innovation. YOLO ventures is there to at least try to be part of that.

The Innovation we’ve seen has not come solely from business-related startups. We have things that are fun like Snapchat, Soundcloud and all those great apps that really changed the way we live and made it easier for us to do the things we love. So when I look at the great successes over the past 10, 15 years, it motivates me to know that I could potentially come across the next big thing. When you write a cheque it’s really like a lottery tiket. You’re hoping that you may be contributing to the next big thing.

Getting him to chat about his fund is one thing, but finding out about the somewhat-private Gomez was more of a challenge. All we know for now is that Gomez and YOLO Ventures are content to lose on a few small bets and eventually hit a home-run on a special bet. They encourage young startups in those areas of interest that the fund wants to focus on (travelling, leisure, entertainment and sports) to get in touch with them.

“A lot of people come to my office and tell me they don’t know anything about me and I kinda like that,” he said. “It’s nice to remain private because as long as you’re doing good things and you’re happy with what you’re doing then everything will be okay.”

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Over 22 million people all over the world are dropping, taking cover and holding on today as part of ShakeOut Day, and one Montreal startup is keenly aware of the importance of such action.

ShakeOut Day, or ‘La Grande Secousse‘ in Quebec, is held one day a year where people get together to practise safe earthquake drills. Over 26.5 million people took part in 2014’s ShakeOut. It’s popular in high-risk areas like California, but B.C. and Quebec are also prominent regions that take part in the event.

It’s all part of earthquake awareness, said brothers Farshad and Mehrdad Mirshafiei, the cofounders of Montreal-based Sensequake. Nearly 500,000 earthquakes strike every year, about 100,000 of which can be felt. Most importantly, they can create massive damage almost anywhere.

Sensequake, a new startup born out of McGill’s X1 accelerator (along with at least five years of research and development by the Mirshafiei brothers) is developing a brilliant new software tool to help prevent all of that damage that could happen. And it can happen in places like Quebec (more on that later).

The brothers Mirshafiei

The brothers, who both earned their PhDs in strands of engineering (Farshad from McGill University, Mehrdad from Laval University), say they are making cities safer and smarter. They’ve built what’s likely the world’s first high-tech sensing platform to develop fast and accurate seismic assessments of structures, like buildings and homes.

The technology, called 3D-SAM, is a three-dimensional seismic assessment method that utilizes the latest advancements in sensors and vibrations to save engineers time, effort, and money – all while providing results based on real world data.

Both brothers were born in Iran, and both were bronze medal recipients of Iran’s National Physics Olympiad. It should come as no surprise that the guys come from one of the most seismically active countries in the world, being crossed by several major fault lines that cover at least 90 percent of the country. As a result, earthquakes in Iran occur often and can be devastating.

But where they did much of their most important work as professionals was Montreal, a city that Farshad warns could be in big trouble if precautions aren’t taken.

When Farshad started his PhD at McGill five years ago he had access to critical structures in Montreal provided by the city, as part of a project. “To use the earthquake technology in the practice at the time we had to find all the detailed engineering plans and build theoretical models of the buildings for each individual case,” the cofounder told MTLinTech. “However, most of the time the engineering plans were missing and even when we found them they were of poor quality. The process was very complex, time-consuming, not robust and the accuracy really depended on the engineer performing those kinds of methodologies.”

As a result, the brothers created an algorithm that can perform earthquake assessment based on real ambient vibration data gained from sensors deployed on the structures (floors and roofs). After running the tests through their software, Sensequake can predict how a given structure is going to react to an earthquake, whether its going to be safe or damaged and how much damage it will suffer.

The technology, which will cost several thousand dollars per client (which the cofounders mentioned is far cheaper than any existing solution), can be used by governments, insurance firms, engineering firms or even real estate buyers. These entities can all perform damage and risk assessments and receive their results in just days with Sensequake. The tests can provide benchmarks of vastly complex structures, almost like a building’s DNA, which can be used to track future changes.

Canadians may want to listen up too, said the cofounders.

Every year there are more than 1,800 earthquakes with a magnitude of more than five on the richter scale. In Canada in the past 300 years there have been at least 24 major earthquakes, mostly in BC and Quebec. A 2013 study predicted that potential major earthquakes in BC and Quebec within the next 50 years could end up costing Quebec $60 billion and BC $70 billion.

Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec City all have a risk and they’ve all had minor earthquakes in the past few years,” said Farshad. “That’s why we need modern technologies to prevent such catastrophes. We have to be ready before the next big earthquake, and when we say the next 50 years it could be tomorrow.

Nobody can know, said the brothers. But the way that we can deal with it is to be ready and to have good structures in place that can withstand these quakes. “In areas like Montreal, which are seismic regions, and which have the second-highest seismic risk in Canada, people are not aware of this risk. So its much more dangerous than compared to the other parts. Californians are ready for earthquakes, Japanese are ready but in Quebec nobody cares. There could be a huge earthquake and the structures won’t be good enough, and we don’t have shelters,” said Farshad.

The guys, currently completing the City of Montreal’s InnoCite accelerator program, feel that Internet of Things technology can adapt well to their technology in the future. Mehrdad said their sensors can connect to IoT through a wireless connection, and users within client companies will be able to work together anywhere with the data through the cloud.

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Two Montreal entrepreneurs have today released what they’re calling the world’s first integrated emergency evacuation mask meant to be used in extreme situations like fires or disasters.

With fall in the air Montreal’s startup community is ready to open their doors for the Startup Open House event tomorrow evening. For the third consecutive year, dozens of companies will showcase their offices to eager onlookers.

In Montreal, Sharethebus will be providing a free shuttle bus from four stops around the city, between 4:00 and 7:00 PM. The fun isn’t restricted to Montreal only: for the first year, multiple cities will be hosting their Startup Open House on the same evening, with Toronto and Vancouver also opening their doors on October 29.

Before all the fun tomorrow evening we’ve put together a list of five spaces we recommend visiting, in no particular order. (In reality all of the startups participating in Montreal are set to put on a warm reception for anyone coming.)

Lightspeed – 700 Rue Saint Antoine E

It’s #Castletime at Gare Viger, where Lightspeed is ready to welcome curious onlookers. Led by founder Dax Dasilva and founded back in 2005, Lightspeed is is a point-of-sale software provider.

Tomorrow evening the company will show guests what it’s like to “work in a castle” in an atmosphere loaded with beer, wine, hors d’oeuvres and music. Lightspeed said in its blog that guests will also meet “the most creative and innovative members” of the startup, like Dax Dasilva, Founder and CEO, JP Chauvet, Chief Revenue Officer, Jean-Luc Dery, Vice President Engineering, Raff Paquin, Director of Data Science and more.

AppDirect – 279 Rue Prince

Based on Rue Prince in Old Port, AppDirect‘s completely renovated office space in Montreal is ready for the masses. What makes this company especially great for startup job-seekers tomorrow evening is that founder Daniel Saks told MTLinTech this month that he’ll be aggressively hiring in the city. The company wants to go over 100 employees at its Montreal office and with all the work they’ve done re-making the office, Saks feels they’re ready.

“We’re this high growth company that’s investing in the Montreal community and sharing best practices,” he said. “I think that gives street credit to Montrealers working in the Valley because all of our engineers see how great Montreal is, and vice-versa.”

Earlier this month San Francisco-based AppDirect raised $140 million in funding from J.P. Morgan along with the company’s existing investors. Led by cofounders Daniel Saks, of St. Catherines, Ontario, and Nicolas Desmarais of Montreal, Quebec, AppDirect has now raised $245 million since it was founded in 2009.

MAKEACHAMP – 412 Rue Du Champ-De-Mars

An undeniably cool athlete funding platform, MAKEACHAMP was all the talk earlier this year when MTLinTech highlighted how fast the profitable startup was growing.

For those guests tomorrow evening who are keen to check out an original startup with an original idea, head over to 412 Rue Du Champ-De-Mars. Founded nearly three years ago, the company is a sport-specific crowdfunding platform that helps athletes all over the world reach their dreams in various sports, like judo, weightlifting, cycling, ultramarathon, mixed martial arts and dozens more.

The backstory involves two of the team’s founders in David Ancor and Michael Shpigelman, who both represented Canada on the international stage in Judo. They raised about $2,000 on Kickstarter a few years ago and realized a need for an athlete-catered platform in 2012.

Head to the startup’s office tomorrow night to connect with their team.

Notman House – 51 Sherbrooke St. O

Notman House: Montreal’s home of the web. Anytime there’s a big startup event bringing Montreal together, one knows it must in some way involve Notman.

As in previous years, one of Startup Open House’s community partners from the beginning will play a large role tomorrow evening, with dozens of startups set to show onlookers their tech.

“It’s a unique event that connects many major players in Canadian tech. I’m excited to see our communities working together to showcase our collective achievements,” said Noah Redler, Notman House’s Campus Director and Montreal lead for Startup Canada, “If you’ve ever been curious to learn more about startups, to get a peek behind the curtain, I can’t think of a better opportunity to discover the space.”

Frank & Oak – 160 Rue Saint Viateur E #105

Any Startup Open House must include Frank & Oak’s sprawling Mile End office space, which takes up a massive open-concept floor of a Saint Viateur office building. While photographers snap shots of models, programmers code away and busy guys and girls pick and pack orders all under the same roof.

Frank & Oak is an online clothing shop for men, founded by Ethan Song and Hicham Ratnani.

Over the past few years the company has took part in the event and they always seem to be hiring.

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Paid acquisition should be a great channel for your startup. One of the most critical decisions early stage companies have to make is how to invest for growth. Each dollar is like oxygen, and you need that dollar to come back to you within a predetermined amount of time. This is why I always recommend focusing on measurable channels as much as possible.

If you can’t track it, don’t invest.

A few good Montreal startups have used paid acquisition with monster success. Beyond the Rack, Frank & Oak and Lightspeed all have mature paid programs that generate great returns month in, month out.

I’ve outlined 5 key ways to think about your paid program and how to approach it diligently.

Start with strategy

How much you invest has a lot to do with your market and its maturity. You will need to secure a budget, allocate resources and more importantly, tie the investment to your core KPI. You should treat it as investment decision and set growth targets as well as a payback period.

Pull beats push

Always go where your potential customers are. People search products & services on Google & Yahoo. Your customers identify their interests on Facebook. There is no secret that Google & Facebook are the first places you should invest (9 times out of 10). That doesn’t mean they are only ones. Twitter, Pinterest, Bing and other niche properties can also drive results. After all, you should only care about your LTV and CAC metrics.

Testing for life

If done properly, testing will always drive incremental results. This is why testing needs to be baked into your program each week. Ad copy, calls to action and landing pages are good places to start.

One caveat that needs to be mentioned: sample size is super important. You need to have enough users to obtain a statistically significant result.

Investment decisions should be challenged daily

What was the ROI of your campaign yesterday? Last week? Please make sure that you don’t waste money on campaigns that are not working. Allocate your investment based on results and shift towards what’s working. To do this properly, proper metrics need to be in place. LTV, CAC and attribution need to be well understood.

Bring in outside help

Eventually, you may need to insource your paid acquisition. Until then, try to connect with freelancers and agencies in Montreal that can help you increase your maturity and performance. The very good ones are rare, thus your network here is important to understand who the best people are.

This is also tied to how much you invest and when does it become economically feasible to hire head count versus hiring an external firm.

Ultimately, don’t become overly reliant on your paid program. Customers gained by organic channels tend to be more valuable over time. Furthermore, investors frown upon startups that employ paid acquisition as their primary acquisition channel.

Paid media is a great weapon in your arsenal to drive growth. You’ll need to better understand each platform and their differences. I love this quote that summarizes ads well: “‘everyone hates advertising in general but love advertising in particular.” Staying relevant is the key to success.

Nectarios Economakis is the Founder of PNRDigital, aspiring entrepreneur, ex-Googler, souvlaki lover, startup investor and fitness junkie. You can shoot him a question or comment at nectar@thepnr.com

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My father was a business person who worked in a corporate environment his entire life. He did well for himself, my mom, my brother and I, and he always discouraged me to become an entrepreneur.

He said being an entrepreneur means crazy long hours, a lot of stress, that it was insecure, too much of this, and too much of that.

My father was RIGHT: Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of work and it’s really, really, really hard!

Finding the perfect cofounder, finding customers, growing a user base, raising capital, bootstrapping, building a rock-star team, keeping the team happy, etc. Nailing all of these are hard.

Today in 2015, we’re all well-aware it’s easier than ever to launch a business, and since more and more people are giving it a go, a lot of founders are learning just how hard it is, well, the hard way.

When I meet struggling founders I listen, I empathize, I try to point them in different directions, and I offer introductions when I can, but there’s one thing I hate hearing from founders in a rut and unfortunately it seems like people are saying it more and more:

“Things would be so much easier if my business was in the Valley.”

It discourages me and even angers me when people say it. I spent 4 years in the valley building a mobile startup. Our company raised a total of $11M from Reid Hoffman, Joey Ito, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. We grew the team to about 40 people and eventually exited to Shutterfly, and let me tell you, I experienced first hand just how hard it is.

Yes, of course, there’s a bigger startup community in the Valley.
…a stronger entrepreneurial culture.
…more engineering talent.
…more potential partners.
…more investors.
…more. more. more!

But, they don’t realize there’s a lot more competition.
…talent is paid much, much more.
…engineers hop from one startup to the next.
…rent and other fixed costs are higher.
…there’s no tax incentives like SR&ED.
(and this list goes on and on, and on)

Thinking it’s easier to build a business in the Valley is nothing more than an easy excuse, and it’s lying to yourself.

Plain and simple, it ABSOLUTELY isn’t easier to build a business in the Valley.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. Not in Montreal, not in San Francisco, not in Boston, not anywhere!

The entrepreneurial journey actually, truly is a roller coaster of ups and downs. That’s not just something people say.

The Lows are really low, the highs, well, they’re really high and one of the best feelings ever. Remember, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

An old friend of mine always says, “Excuses are for losers.”

Entrepreneurs will certainly never be losers, so buckle up, keep going and remember that it well get great!

The post It ain’t easy…anywhere! appeared first on Montreal in Technology.

Nobody expected 21-year-old web entrepreneur Artur Minacov and his cofounder John Brechisci to make a fortune in the startup game, but they sure did.

The guys hit the tech headlines in a big way in late June. That’s when it was reported that their online business that acts as an escrow system to allow CounterStrike gamers to buy and sell weapons online was raking in a daily profit of $12,000. That story was first reported by Montreal’s Les Affaires, and VICE’s Motherboard was quick to jump on the story.

“It definitely did us some good,” Minacov, the team’s CMO and cofounder, told MTLinTech. “It put us on the map.”

Five months later, Montreal’s OpSkins is still the top dog in the CounterStrike online weapons marketplace with no plans to slow down, and a very successful ambassador of North American esports in general. According to the company, OpSkins gains an average of 10,000 new users every 48 hours, currently sitting at just under 900,000 total users. Over 2.85 million skins have been sold through the site and many of these guns are selling for around $15. The most expensive skin ever sold on OpSkins went for around $8,000.

“One thing is for sure,” said Minacov. “We have what most startups don’t: a true business model that generates real cash.”

Born in Chișinău, Moldova, a small country between Romania and Ukraine (he identifies as half-Russian though, as his father is from Siberia), Minacov immigrated to Canada when he was seven years old.

His first company didn’t go so well two years ago, but not for lack of effort. Modreal, or as it was later rebranded as Modde, was a fashion app where fashion and clothes enthusiasts took a picture of their outfit. The app would automatically tag brands and allow other users to know where they could buy each piece around where they lived.

Minacov was just 19 at this point, and it’s safe to say he was wrapped up in the at times glitzy allure of running a startup. He went to a FounderFuel demo day and soon after wanted to launch an app that could gain millions of users.

“It was not making money, and I dared call it a business. I did everything in my power to get it off the ground, but unfortunately it didn’t work the way I wanted,” he said.

I was chasing a dream and that allowed me to hustle my way through and commit mistakes. Many people are scare of failure, but they shouldn’t be. Failure is part of success and it’s a matter of time before you achieve what you always dreamed off. I realized that dreaming is great, but you also have to be realistic and make sure that you’re passionate about the product you’re building.

Fortunately, he did have a passion and a high knowledge for the game Counter-Strike, the popular first-person shooting video game developed by Valve Corporation. He had been playing it, astonishingly, since he was just five years old, around the time the first “Half-Life Counter-Strike” game came out in June of 1999.

The latest version of Counter-Strike (Global Offensive) allows players to trade gun skins between each other, but there was no way to sell it for real money, in a safe environment. “Browsing Reddit, as I do every single day, I noticed that a lot of players were complaining about getting scammed when they tried selling their gun skins to another player via PayPal, or another online Payment Method,” said Minacov. “It was quite a regular thing, so I knew there was something that could be done here. There was an obvious need in the market that was not filled, so my team and I built OpSkins and have been successful since Day 1.”

Skip ahead to today, and Minacov’s story, far from over, seems to be going quite well after a rocky start. “I started from nothing and I’ve hustled my way into what I have today,” he told MTLinTech.

Even with all the hustle, OpSkins stays pretty humble. Minacov still works out of his parent’ basement in Montreal, even though they now employ 26 people around the world.

In the future Minacov sees more competitors in his space. He thinks more online games will get involved in eSports (essentially when people compete with each other through video games, or a computer interface). To that end, OpSkins was a major player in a highly regarded Counter-Strike competition held in Montreal last summer shortly after the media reports brought the company all the attention at the time.

The ESWC Counter-Strike: GO World Finals was a huge event in which the best Counter-Strike players in the world came to Montreal for a grand final after qualifying online. OpSkins was the main sponsor and forked out as much as $100,000 in organizing the event and throwing the after-party (which, from the Youtube video, seems like it was pretty fun).

For now, the company is all about growth, They’ll keep trying to bring their users the best possible experience and the best features as they buy and sell their skins. Minicov said the team doesn’t have any specific hiring goals this year, but that it’s “always hiring family and close friends.”

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It’s going to be a big year for Montreal-based MAKEACHAMP, according to the company’s unique cofounders David Barkay and Michael Shpigelman.

Let’s take a step back to nine months ago in cold, windy February 2015. That was when MTLinTech ran a story about how a completely bootstrapped company working out of downtown’s Notman House for about two years had hit comfortable profitability in athlete-centred crowdfunding. Their platform helps athletes reach their dreams in various sports, like judo, weightlifting, cycling, ultramarathon, mixed martial arts and dozens more.

In fact, at that time they had already helped raise over $1 million for athletes without taking a dime of venture capital. That’s set to change as the company is strongly leaning towards raising a future series A round.

To date over 10,000 athletes or teams have used the platform to raise money.

To understand the creation of MAKEACHAMP, one truly has to sit down with the cofounders Barkay and Shpiegelman and watch them play off each other (a third cofounder, David Ancor, is a professional judo martial artist currently training for the Rio 2016 Olympics in Brazil.)

The two cofounders usually speak Hebrew to each other, while Russian, English, French or Portuguese can be heard in the company’s small and rustic Old Port office on any given day. Both Barkay, 59, and Shpigelman, 25, immigrated to Canada more than 10 years ago. Barkay came from Israel on the old Canada investor visa, and Shpigelman from Russia with his family when he was just 12.

Barkay’s first company once he settled in Montreal in 1997 sought to build an android robot, but he admitted he was ten years too early. His next company, called Simbionix, was eventually sold to 3D systems (NASDAQ: DDD) for $120 million in August 2014. The next stop from 2008 to late 2009 was Immersion Medical, where he served as VP and general manager. After that, from 2010 to late 2011, Barkay was VP of global sales for CAE Healthcare, where he helped grow revenue from $60,000 to over $6 million.

During most of this time Barkay’s first decade in Canada, he trained in judo at Dojo Shidokan with a few guys that would end up cofounding MAKEACHAMP (at the time, Canada’s national team was also training there). It was a young Shpigelman, in his early-twenties at the time, who said he would pester Barkay everyday at the judo gym about new business ideas that they could pursue. Finally in 2013 when Shpigelmen pitched Barkay on what would become MAKEACHAMP, the elder cofunder was all in.

The idea wasn’t from nothing, either: All three cofounders represented or are representing Canada on the international stage in judo. Before MAKEACHAMP, they had to turn to traditional crowdfunding to raise the huge funds needed to sustain participation in this sport. Stuck with plane ticket bills, enormous tournament fees and more, they all realized a need for an athlete-catered platform.

“The fact we are Judokas is very significant,” said Barkay. “We’re used to training hard, fighting with determination and reaching our targets. We’re mainly used to feeling the pain and we’re champions of endurance. So at that point I was convinced on the idea and we all started meeting.”

Today the company is still small, at under 15 employees, but Barkay and Shpigelman told MTLinTech over coffee in the Old Port that things are about to go full-steam ahead. It’s all part of a series of grand plans that the visionary Barkay has. The conversation frequently paused for laughs, as Barkay is all-too-aware that he isn’t the “normal” CEO with respect to the way he thinks and leads.

Barkay wants MAKEACHAMP to propel an entire generation of athletes to their dreams. He wants it to be so successful that one day it will hopefully be the driving force behind a city-wide corporate venture capital firm solely for athletic business ventures. He wants to collaborate with existing players in the Montreal scene who can also make it happen.

“Montreal is the right place,” he said. “Let’s not forget we have one of the highest number of sports facilities in this island in the world. We’re an Olympian city and we have a leading role here to show the world whats is sports democratization.”

Partnering up with the City of Montreal for such a venture could be difficult though. Mayor Denis Coderre’s has been quick and forceful in getting things done for the city that he deems most necessary, but it looks like any focus on a citizen-centric fund for sports startups isn’t his main priority. As the Montreal Gazette reported last week, “six of council’s eight current permanent consultative committees haven’t held the minimum four public meetings so far in 2015, as required by a long-standing city bylaw.” Those include the committee on culture, heritage and sports. It didn’t hold a single meeting in 2014, either.

It seems in Barkay’s case, there may be only one solution for him: “Maybe I will have to run for Mayor one day then,” the smiling cofounder said.

First thing’s first though: the building of MAKEACHAMP into a world-class startup from Montreal that helps Canadian athletes raise money for their dreams.

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In its 12th year the greatest gaming conference on the east coast will be putting on a big show.

MIGS 2015 (the Montreal International Gaming Summit) is set to return November 15-17 with a headlining list that includes a legendary figure in the industry.

Over three days beginning on Sunday (the first time ever the conference will stretch longer than two days), MIGS will welcome Sir Ian Livingstone, one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry. He’ll give a session called “Life is Game,” detailing his struggles and how he overcame many challenges as an entrepreneur in the 1970s, from the creation of Games Workshop, to the inauguration of Dungeons & Dragons in Europe or the launch of Tomb Raider, not to mention writing the multi-million selling Fighting Fantasy gamebooks series.

Also making headlines this year is the addition of Jade Raymond and Amy Hennig, who are working on a new Star Wars project in Montreal. Raymond, General Manager at Motive Studios of Electronic Arts, will also share her vision on how to manage creativity and the challenges of building a studio.

“That’s a pretty phenomenal addition to the show having Jade back in Montreal with Amy working on star wars. The fact that they’re working on this project is super cool,” said David Lipes, the new President of Alliance Numérique, the organization which puts on MIGS every year. “Between jade, Amy and Ian, it’s a testament to the allure and power of this show and the fact that we have unbelievable people doing unbelievable things in gaming.”

The show will be packed once again, as well. Over 2,500 participants are expected to flock to the summit with speakers and attendees from over 20 different countries set to speak. In total, about 60 conferences will be held within MIGS.

In addition to sessions and training, several special activities will be available for people to check out. MIGS15 will present live demos on the latest technologies like PlayStation’s PS VR, Google’s Project Tango, Microsoft’s Azure, Samsung Gear for Oculus presented by the Centre Phi, and many others. It’s an exclusive opportunity for MIGS attendees to join this Canadian Premiere and try successful new games, including a For Honor tournament, Ubisoft’s next big hit, or Hibernum’s Magic: The Gathering – Puzzle Quest.

“It’s an exciting event,” said Lipes. “Montreal is a hub on the international scene in terms of video gaming and this is our show to showcase the buzz of the city.” He added that over 10,000 jobs can be traced directly or indirectly to the gaming community in Quebec, with 120 different gaming developers and publishers within the province.

One of the more exciting things this year for Lipes will be the 11-12 “master classes” organized in collaboration with TECHNOCompétences to help strengthen the skills of Quebec’s workers. Experts such as Warren Spector and Mike Acton will give intensive training on targeted and technical content, to help boost the industry’s needs.

“The master classes are about learning and sharing: this is why people attend. To hear from industry experts and to learn in a more intensive setting,” said Lipes.

Since 2004, Montreal has showcased it’s gaming companies big and small at MIGS, and this year will be no different.

“We’re very fortunate,” said the new president of Alliance Numerique. “It’s an amazing community of video game companies large and small, independent and multinational, working on well-known properties from console to mobile.”

So what are you waiting for? Grab your tickets before the show is sold out.

The post UK gaming legend Sir Ian Livingstone headlines as MIGS 2015 returns appeared first on Montreal in Technology.

Montreal companies had a strong showing at Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Awards Thursday night.

Menswear brand and online retailer Frank & Oak was named top dog in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Awards, selected for their technological innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and rapid growth.

Along with Montreal startup stalwart Frank & Oak, five other companies from the city were selected among the Top 50: gaming studio Budge Studios (4), eXplorance (35) and CM Labs Simulations (38), CloudOps (40) and Thinking Capital (50).

About half of the Fast 50 companies come from Ontario. In an encouraging sign of of the innovation economy across Canada, eight of the 12 companies with the highest growth rates come from Quebec and British Columbia.

Congrats to the founders and team @FrankandOak for winning #1 in @Deloitte's #fast50 award !! @MTLinTECH pic.twitter.com/758WsxRXia

— David Nault (@VentureBuilder) November 13, 2015

We are proud to be part of this prestigious @DeloitteCanada Technology #Fast50CA list: https://t.co/aWjiqJIkjL pic.twitter.com/JIXzwunTry

— CloudOps (@CloudOps_) November 12, 2015

Proud to share that Budge is the 4th fastest growing company in Canada in the @DeloitteCanada #Fast50CA ranking. https://t.co/RujkMDBt1e

— Budge Studios (@budgestudios) November 12, 2015

Frank & Oak topped this year’s Technology Fast 50 list with a four-year revenue growth rate of 18,480%. Based in Montreal, the technology-driven brand has created a dedicated community of followers by offering personalized style advice, curated product selections, and an elevated shopping experience via its online platform and retail stores.

“The tremendous gains and innovation demonstrated by this year’s Fast 50 winners are exciting,” said Robert Nardi, technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Managing Partner for Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 program. “It signals that the sector is strong and that we have the right conditions here in Canada to encourage and nurture small businesses as they grow and scale up.”

Now in its 18^th year, Technology Fast 50 celebrated companies with an average four-year growth rate of 1,293%.

“Young Canadian tech companies from coast to coast are experiencing staggering growth,” Nardi said. “However, for these firms to maintain their trajectory they need to have the right talent mix. For today’s fast-growing companies, finding and attracting talent is of great importance.”

Fast 50 companies are both private and public companies representing a variety of industry and sub-sectors including hardware, software, telecommunications, emerging technology and digital media. This year, more than half of the winners represented the software industry (31) and 22 companies were new to the program.

Check out the full winner’s list here:

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Montreal’s Lightspeed, the well-known point-of-sale (POS) platform for retailers and restaurateurs, is about to unleash full service to online retailers through the launch of a new eCommerce platform, Lightspeed eCom.

The company made the announcement today after it acquired Amsterdam-based company SEOshop, the fastest growing eCommerce platform in Europe with 1900 percent growth over the past five years. SEOshop currently serves more than 8,000 online merchants including Philips Lighting, National Geographic Netherlands and the Van Gogh Museum.

Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva alluded to his company’s huge $80 million funding raise in September, which allowed the company to answer a big need.

“One of the things that we talked about when we got funding was we wanted to go much further with ecommerce,” Dasilva told MTLinTech. “Our retail and restaurant customers both wanted to have a strong online presence, so that was one of the usages of the fund. The other was international expansion, so this acquisition ticks both boxes.”

Lightspeed initially launched as a better POS system for offline retail and restaurant businesses in 2005, first on the Mac and eventually heavily focusing on the iPad once it came out in 2011. It gave clients a POS with the same back-office tools used by big retail in a user-friendly, mobile package. “We embraced using a combonation of desktop computers and mobile devices such as iPhones, iPods and iPads to really make the in-restaurant experience great,” said Dasilva.

But now with the industry rapidly digitizing, online-only merchant demand was an obvious goal for the company. The company called Lightspeed eCom “now the most robust, all-in-one eCommerce solution on the market for independent retailers.”

The company now serves 26,000 businesses in more than 100 countries, processing US $11 billion in annual transactions.

Lightspeed will “definitely compete for certain customers” with Ottawa-based eCommerce platform Shopify, said Dasilva, but his customers are typically mid-market customers with more complexity to their inventory.

Lightspeed’s online customers do around US $50,000 in revenue while Shopify’s will do an average of $25,000, said the CEO. But Lightspeed’s average retail customer with a physical store does a whopping $600,000 a year, “so we’re dealing with bigger businesses and they’re selling more inventory.”

The reason people would choose Lightspeed is it has all the tools to manage complex inventories in-store: managing all the customer relationships, the purchasing histories, all of the different elements of running a retail store. And of course now when you go online you want to have an eCom system that’s going to have all of the depth that is mirrored in your retail store in a single view.

Bringing SEOshop into the conversation gives Lightspeed a huge boost in scaling globally, while its current and future store owners just got the ability to sell smarter regardless of where their customers are shopping. It also boosts the amount of businesses now using Lightspeed all around the world, with the company’s user count now at 8,000 post-acquisition.

As part of the deal, SEOshop CEO Ruud Stelder will join the Lightspeed leadership team as Director of Global eCommerce Revenue, and CTO Dennis Cuijpers will become Lightspeed’s Director of eCommerce Development and Architecture.

Dasilva’s plan now revolves around strengthening its online eCom platform for all its customers in North America and Europe.

“We’d like to integrate our existing offline products really, really tightly with Lightspeed eCom because that’s what our customers have been really asking for,” said Dasilva. “They’ve been asking for more features selling online and that’s going to be a big focus over the next few years.”

There’s also lots of room for headcount growth too, said the CEO. The company recently moved into the historic Gare Viger building, where it occupies several floors that it’ll gradually move into over the next several years. Dasilva said Lightspeed has big expansion plans in Montreal, which includes 10 new hires a month, as well as expansion in all nine of its other offices around the world.

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Montreal startup Smooch.io says the writing is on the wall: people want to communicate with the businesses they use through messaging, and eventually companies will get smart.

And as it turns out, the Montreal startup’s 5.2 million active users are enjoying the service they’re providing.

Cofounded by Mike Gozzo and Hamnett Hill, Smooch.io was spun out of parent company Radial Point (Zero Knowledge Systems back in the day). It helps businesses add messaging to their apps faster, providing developer API & SDKs that instantly enable business-to-user messaging, along with cool features that make the conversations better for both sides.

Gozzo said Facebook messenger and WeChat are starting to make messaging the main way people both talk to each other and with the businesses they use.

“We built a platform that allows businesses to get all of this functionality within their own app or website, over SMSnow and soon over all the other channels as well,” he told MTLinTech. “We’re helping businesses and their customers to talk.”

Hill took it a step further. He said the number of companies using messaging to communicate with their customers today is still very small. But customers don’t want to wait on hold over the phone or send a form into the ’email abyss.’

“We fundamentally believe that over the next few years the third leg of how you communicate with companies is going to be through messaging,” said Hill.

Hill is CEO at EDO Capital, a venture capital firm that focuses on sustainable food businesses. Even with his time commitment to his firm, he said he simply couldn’t keep away from Smooch.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of exciting businesses and this is honestly one of the biggest opportunities I’ve ever been part of,” he told MTLinTech.

Some of their current customers include Harry’s, the men’s care products, Treat, a mobile pet care app, KPCB Edge, a private messaging app that connects founders, Yo, the single-tap zero character communication tool.

Smooch.io’s ‘5.2 million users’ claim comes from these apps and the people that use them, since Smooch.io is powering the messaging technology. It’s free for apps to integrate Smooch.io, but only if they have less than 10,000 users using the app. Anything over that will cost them a penny-per-user per month. That means the startup has been earning revenue for six months.

With the solid numbers, the growth and the recent rebranding, Gozzo wants people to know that Smooch.io is here to stay, too.

They’ll be moving to a new office at 5333 Casgrain in the Plateau and they plan on bringing on new hires.

“Our core metrics are all moving at 30 percent month-over-month and we’re on the scene now and we’re going to be hiring, so start following us,” said Gozzo.

What may be most interesting about the Smooch.io platform is what more it can provide than just messaging.

As Gozzo put it, “We’re not meant to be just a communication tool, that’s not the point. We’re really a developer platform.”

The business will continue to use whatever communication platform they already use to communicate with each other – Slack, for example – but now they can bring customers into those conversations. And its more than text, using rich messages, cross-platform sync, push and in-app notifications, automation user properties and more.

We asked Gozzo how a company like Air Canada could better communicate with its customers using Smooch:

AC could drop our SDK into their app and an AC user could communicate with a real person on the AC side. They could do the standard text-based chat over the AC app but because our platform is open and we have all these interesting API-level features, they could also do things like propose a flight and then book a flight. Or they could handle the payment transaction and the scheduling in the messaging channel without having to go into other UIs and other interfaces of their app. Everything can be inline with the conversation stream.

On the payment front, Smooch.io will be launching a stripe payment integration over the next few weeks, so businesses can sell customers or request money for something in special tags within their messaging.

“We’re really thinking about what you can build on top of messaging,” said Gozzo. “That’s why its different.”

Hill feels it’s only a matter of time before businesses smarten up and start talking with customers in the manner they choose: messaging.

“Enlightened brands have got it figured out,” he said. “Smooch makes it dead-simple for any company to start messaging their customers. We really think we can help be a new communication channel for brands that want to have real conversations with their customers.”

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Mile End’s coolest new coworking space is opening with a big party Thursday night.

The folks at La Gare will put on an event called “Le Grand Depart” to officially kick-off the space. Residing at 5333 Casgrain, Suite 102, La Gare has actually been in use for several months now with full occupancy. It’s the idea of Credo Productions, which was cofounded by Stephanie Brisson, LP Maurice, Christian Bélair and Marie Eve Boisvert.

“When we launched Credo last year we had this idea to create a physical space for startups and everything fell into place when we saw this 10,000 square feet space,” Brisson told MTLinTech. “So we decided to move forward and actually launch a coworking space.”

La Gare is expecting between 150 to 200 people attending tonight’s festivities. While it’s invite only, a simple email to their website may do the trick for an invite.

There’ll also be several important announcements related to big-name sponsors, as Brisson told us, mostly relating to resources provided to members. La Gare members will soon have access to professionals and mentors, along with office hours with a law firm and an accounting firm.

The space itself is almost completely open-concept, save for some conference rooms that members can take advantage of. Members have their own reserved seats towards the back of the space while hot-desk seats are positioned near the front. Everyone sits at big tables. While teams are welcomed, they won’t have their own private space.

The price of a seat at La Gare depends on the time commitment one gives them. Currently a seat costs just $295 based on a one-year contract, $350 based on a six-month contract and $400 on a one-month contract. While no space is currently vacant, Brisson expects some people to leave at the end of the month, thus opening up some seats.

The debate on which type of coworking space works best for everyone rages on.

There are many options in Montreal, some having received more attention than others in the past.

There’s also Notman House at 51 Sherbrooke St. O; NEXUS Workspace at 4529 Clark Street; 6Cent1 at 400 Avenue Atlantic #601; Regis Montreal at 1000 Rue de la Gauchetière O; Le Co Lab at 4267 Boul St-Laurent; Espace 360 (two locations in the Plateau); Station C at5605 avenue de Gaspé, suite 204; La Commune at 440 Place Jacques Cartier; and many more.

Notman House is arguably the most high-profile based on the amount of community work it’s been a part of, not to mention that both the FounderFuel accelerator and Real Ventures resides there. (Disclosure: some of the founders of MTLinTech work out of Notman House).

But Notman House, with its private offices for startups and less of an open-concept philosophy, may not be for everyone. It also may not work for those who wish to work closer to where they live in the Plateau.

“Some people want to have an office where they interact with people and meet randomly, and that’s something I’m really proud of,” said Brisson. “People meet at the coffee machine, at the lounge, they run into each other randomly, they do business together, they help each other and bring value to each other. And that doesn’t necessarily happen at Notman house, because they’re in closed offices.”

In an open space, said Brisson, it allows for that special kind of moment. At La Gare, one may run into startups like MakerBloks, TSHU, Provender and more on any given day.

Tonight, however, those attending will be running into one fun party.

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Love them or hate them, meetings play a crucial role in startup life. At a practical level, meetings are one of the main settings for problem solving, decision making and brainstorming. At a cultural level, meetings are a key tool for shaping norms for how people work together.

Running successful meetings is especially challenging for scaling startups. But startups that work hard on this transition vastly increase their chances of success.

Creating an effective meeting culture starts with choosing what meetings to run. By mastering a few key formats, startups can create a strong weekly rhythm while setting the tone for how all meetings will be run.

Standups

Standups are brief, standing meetings usually held in the morning. In the traditional standup, each team member answers three questions: 1) What did I do yesterday? 2) What will l do today? and 3) What’s blocking me? When run well, standups can be a powerful tool for building transparency, trust and professionalism.

If your startup has a tech or product team, they’ll most likely run a standup. For lots more on the topic, try this great deck.

Here are three keys for running successful standups. Hold standups at the same time every day. No exceptions.

• Appoint a strong meeting leader to keep things on track (and under 10 minutes!)
• Shame people who don’t raise their blockers at standup.

Weekly Kickoff

The work week is a deep social construct. Even in early stage startups where people grind on weekends, Monday still means something. Weekly kickoffs are an ideal way to leverage this natural rhythm.

Most importantly, it’s a chance to set expectations.

Kickoff answers the question: what do we want to achieve this week? It’s also an ideal place to celebrate wins, clarify strategy, provide funding updates, and introduce new team members. As your startup grows, Kickoff is a place to feature other leaders and team members.

Here are three keys for running successful kickoffs:

• Take the time to prep properly. A tight agenda and clear messaging are essential to setting the proper tone.
• Throw in some jokes or a fun weekly feature. It’s Monday morning, after all.   
• If you can afford it, spring for bagels or pastries. A little free food goes a long way to starting the week off right.

One-on-Ones

Startups that scale establish managerial relationships. One-on-ones are the essential tool for making those relationships work. The concept is simple. Meet with your direct reports on a regular basis, ideally once a week, to check in on work goals, satisfaction levels, and personal life as appropriate. For lots more on the topic, try this piece by Ben Horowitz .

Here are three keys for running successful one on ones:

• Mix in walking meetings. It’s a nice change of pace and healthier.
• Create a running agenda that both sides can add to in advance of the meeting.
• Use at least 1 meeting each quarter for a more formal checkin.

Debriefs

Startups are learning organizations. Debriefs are an ideal tool for harvesting that learning. Again, the basic concept is simple: after completing an important piece of work, bring people together to discuss what happened. Many debriefs are arranged around a failure or mistake, but general debriefs can be run at the end of any project. 

One debrief approach worth mastering is ‘5 Whys,’ a technique that originated at Toyota and popularized for startups by Eric Ries. In the ‘5 Whys’ format, you begin with the most obvious manifestation of a problem and then create a chain of “whys” back to a deeper cause. When run correctly, ‘5 Whys’ can help turn surface level issues into deeper insights about process, culture and personnel.  

Here are three keys for running successful debriefs:

• Use a white board to make sure everyone’s contributions are visible.
• Take good notes and circulate them. Real learning needs to be codified.
• Share your insights with other teams so they can benefit.  

Demos

Startups are full of makers. Demos are a time for makers to share what they’ve made.  

For the business, demos facilitate communication and information flow. For individuals, demos are a chance to build their profile in the company while becoming better presenters. Most importantly, demos help create an environment that celebrates the joy of good work done well.

Demos should be a mix of business and pleasure. The content should be serious but the mood should be light. If you are OK with drinking in the office, alcohol is recommended, and Thursday or Friday EOD is a good time to hold them. Attendance at demos should be highly encouraged, but it should also be OK to miss them if you are closing a contract or pushing a patch.

Here are three keys for running successful demos:

• Stay consistent. Demos work best if people know they will happen regularly.
• Try to get non-technical makers involved. What are marketing or operations working on that they can share?
• Curate the agenda and remember that most people need a bit of prodding to present.

Thanks to Daniel Souweine and Lucas Pellan for commenting on drafts of the post.

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Montreal’s FounderFuel accelerator program is graduating seven tech startups Wednesday evening. The companies will all make their way on stage at the Olympia Theatre to showcase their ventures to an expected crowd of 1,300 people.

The glitzy event held twice a year by FounderFuel is meant to showcase its seed-stage startups to a crowd of investors, media and tech enthusiasts. This Fall 2015 cohort is FounderFuel’s eighth since the program first started in Fall 2011.

FounderFuel’s general manager, Sylvain Carle.

General manager Sylvain Carle said each cohort is different, and each startup is unique. Upon admitting companies into the program, Carle said he looked for founders with “the right mix of passion, maturity, resilience, audacity and dedication”

“From smart contracts to always-on education, from immersive experiences in VR to autonomous security solutions powered by artificial intelligence, we run a pretty wide gamut,” said Carle. ““I am pretty excited about this cohort.”

Program manager Emma Williams will depart her role after several cohorts to pursue a new opportunity in the startup world.  Replacing her is Thibaud Maréchal, a familiar face in the Montreal startup community, having previously launched the McGill X-1 Accelerator.

READ ALSO: McGill’s new X-1 accelerator models itself on MIT program

Upon being asked to reflect on her time at FounderFuel, Williams said she learned that nothing is ever the same with a FounderFuel cohort.

“You think you figure out how to run a cohort and manage companies and it’ll be the polar opposite the next time. There’s no science to it: every cohort is vastly different and they all need a personal touch,” Williams told MTLinTech. “It never gets boring.”

In alphabetical order, the companies of the FounderFuel Fall 2015 Cohort are:

Delve Labs | Autonomous Security Solutions. Complete enterprise security coverage through collaborative AI and nonstop autonomous testing.

GradeSlam | Democratizing the Tutoring Industry. Instant Homework Help for The Modern Day Student.

OneSet | Get fit together, one set at a time. Share your journey on Oneset, your community for health and fitness.

PACTA | Turning contracts into smart contracts. PACTA’s proactive management system for business contracts increases visibility and decreases risk through team collaboration, proactive alerts, and instant access from anywhere on any device.

Periodic | Time Based Commerce. Periodic is creating the standard for Time-Based Commerce by powering service marketplaces with real-time inventory and instant transactions.

Sphere Play | The Immersive Experience Player for Web and Mobile VR. Sphereplay delivers world leading technologies to distributors of immersive video and VR content.

Zora | Land and Keep great tenants. Zora gives landlords a quantifiable tenant score to assess reliability of rental applicants.

The seven companies will now have a chance to show the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) why they should be selected for the $150,000 convertible note typically given to a handful of graduating companies every year.

This cohort was unique for the FounderFuel accelerator program in that it teamed up with the City of Montreal’s InnoCitéMTL accelerator program. Program manager Béatrice Couture worked closely with FounderFuel brass to help develop several entrepreneurs passionate about building ideas relating to smart cities.

Five different projects were originally selected in September to partake in the cohort, and they’ll pitch on stage Wednesday along with the FounderFuel teams. Those teams are:

Prkng develops digital tools to improve urban mobility and facilitate parking. The mobile “prkng” app shows users where they can legally park nearby and sends alerts to avoid getting parking tickets. The free app is available on the App Store, in Montréal and Québec City.

Ubios is the future of the smart connected home that promises increased security, unparalleled comfort and lower heating and insurance bills, and seamless integration with the surrounding neighbourhood, city and spaces.

Sensequake is making city safer and smarter. Sensequake is the first sensing-based earthquake vulnerability platform to deliver fast and accurate seismic assessment of structures.

Digital State is a complete Digital Public Services platform that transforms the way governments deliver services online. It lets governments use drag and drop tools to rapidly build digital services, engage with citizens, and report on service performance.

Dasbox offers a collection of industrial sensors that are reconfigurable, available at a low price and easy to connect to Internet applications.The versatile Dasbox allows you to gather a variety of data, making it an exceptional measuring and analysis tool for smart cities.

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Worximity, a Montreal-based company that focuses on digitalizing manufacturing production through the Internet of Things, has raised $2 million in funding from W Investments and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ.

The company specializes in the “smart factory”: monitoring manufacturing production in real time through its mobile Tileboard application and smart sensors. The new capital will increase Worximity’s computer development team to pursue opportunities in the U.S. market while allowing it to develop new technologies so factories can become even smarter.

“The digital shift, which a number of industry leaders have already embraced, will undoubtedly become more pronounced with the rise of the Industrial Internet of Things,” said CEO Yannick Desmarais. “In the coming years, all manufacturers will be monitoring their operations in real time from anywhere in the world. This investment will allow us to maintain our position as a leader in this field and to better meet the growing demand.”

The company was founded in 2011, but the idea for it came in 2009. That was when the founders noticed that companies had a “real need for intelligent tools to better manage productivity on the ground floor.” There was no tool on the market to connect machines and systems while providing real-time production information, so Worximity set out to transform the industry through mobile tools and productivity innovation.

Worximity’s goal is to provide managers with key data so they can take prompt and effective action. Rather than waiting for Excel or paper reports at week- or month-end, managers can have access to these crucial figures right away. They know what is happening in their facilities at any given time, whether their operations are centralized in Montreal or are spread across separate continents – Yannick Desmarais

Employing 15 people, the company has been able to some big-named clients, such as Weston, Cargill, Interbake Foods and Bimbo Bakeries and even the City of Montreal.

“This is a great example of how more traditional sectors of the economy can benefit from innovation, and how manufacturing firms can improve their productivity and performance,” added Alain Denis, senior VP for innovation at the Fonds de solidarité FTQ.

The company is located in the Cité du Multimédia district in Montreal. Its technologies are being used on more than 250 production lines in North America.

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The Montreal startup community’s holiday bash, TechNoel, is just around the corner. Beers will be clinking, handshakes and hugs exchanged and a good time for all will be had.

But the impact of this annual party goes far beyond the startup community.

Just ask Kate Arthur, the founder of Kids Code Jeunesse, a Montreal-based non-profit dedicated to teaching children how to code. This year again, proceeds from TechNoel will go towards building the ‘KCJ Fund,’ which helps bring programming to girls and underprivileged communities in Montreal.

The tickets range from “The Startup,” a $10 entry now completely sold out, all the way up to “The Zuckerberg” price tier of $100. That and more will go towards Arthur’s team, which relies almost entirely on volunteers and a few paid coding teachers to go into schools.

But the feeling she gets while seeing children learning how to code for the first time is worth all the hard work.

“It’s awesome. It’s really what keeps me going, definitely not the salary,” said Arthur. “It is so rewarding to see any kid who didn’t realize that this was something that they’d be able to do, and they realize how many creative opportunities it opens to them to be able to express and play around. I wish I could show it to every teacher so they understand how important it is.”

Arthur, a former english lit major who entered the tech community through the communications and marketing route, said coding is the new reading and writing. Once more children understand this new language it opens the door to opportunity and, one could argue, more economic equality throughout different regions.

She started Kids Code Jeunesse in 2013 while she was running her own IT company. Gradually the side project became her full-time concern.

Events like TechNoel will help provide the funding that the non-profit needs to keep afloat.

“We have no government funding to support us to bring our programs into the schools,” Arthur told MTLinTech. “It means that when a school in Verdun or Lasalle contacts us we can say yes because we have the funds to be able to pay our instructors.”

As for the event, last year was Arthur’s first time at TechNoel. She enjoyed the diversity of the event, noting how it wasn’t simply startup-affiliated people celebrating with each other. Coding nerds, lawyers, tax specialists, venture capitalists, students, CEOs and more all converged for a night of merry ale and laughs. “It was a lot of fun,” she said.

Phil Telio feels the same way. He’s the founder of the International Startup Festival, a long-time familiar face in seemingly everything startup-related in Montreal and one of the original people involved in getting TechNoel off the ground.

Telio said everyone has their own company parties they need to attend during the holiday season, but TechNoel is a place where everyone can come together and celebrate.

“Christmas parties are about uniting corporate culture,” said Telio. “But we’re all little cultures in startups and together we make one big corporate community, if you will.”

Along with that, the Startup Fest maestro said it’s simply a time for tech folks in Montreal to unwind and spend a nice night within a friendly setting.

“It’s a pure social opportunity with people where there’s no expectation of pitching and there’s no expectation of talking business,” said Telio. “It’s really just truly going and having a beer with people.”

Tickets to TechNoel are available at TechNoël.ca

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A new Montreal coworking space inside of a giant church will offer its offices to the public free of charge for one week next week, December 14-18.

The Co-Creation Lab is housed within Le Salon 1861, which is a planned multi-functional event hall, restaurant and startup hub. It’s all housed within the St. Joseph Church, which is located at 550 rue Richmond, between Griffintown and Little Burgundy. It’s been “reinvented to be a connector of like-minded business leaders, startups, community groups, universities and local residents to be a new business model eco-system, for networking events, trainings, resources and contracts.”

In a newsletter, the space’s management proclaimed that the Co-Creation Lab will gather the community around morning activities, business lunches, co-creation workshops and more.

“Everyday from 9 to 5, you will have the opportunity to come and work in a collaborative atmosphere, seize new business opportunities, meet potential partners, and explore everything that the co-creation lab has to offer,” wrote the new space.

Those interested in attending can visit the Facebook page here.

Co-Creation Lab appears to be another in a solid line of new coworking spaces available for entrepreneurs in the city. Just last week La Gare coworking space, at 5333 Casgrain in the Mile End, opened with a large event. It’s run by a foursome of entrepreneurs, including Busbud founder LP Maurice.

There’s also Notman House at 51 Sherbrooke St. O; NEXUS Workspace at 4529 Clark Street; 6Cent1 at 400 Avenue Atlantic #601; Regis Montreal at 1000 Rue de la Gauchetière O; Le Co Lab at 4267 Boul St-Laurent; Espace 360 (two locations in the Plateau); Station C at 5605 avenue de Gaspé, suite 204; La Commune at 440 Place Jacques Cartier; and many more.

The post Huge Montreal church remade into coworking space, will open its doors for free appeared first on Montreal in Technology.

Greg Isenberg took to his Facebook profile on December 3 to tell his family and friends the inevitable: StumbleUpon was formally shutting down 5by.

It was the startup Isenberg founded in Montreal and eventually sold to the San Francisco-based mega-company.

“Today 5by was shut down. We built one of the most popular video discovery apps. Hell of a ride,” Isenberg wrote.

That was it. There was no official explanation by StumbleUpon in its email to 5by users, but those close to Isenberg knew the deal. Over a year after being acquired, Isenberg left StumbleUpon and was already starting on his next big consumer app.

Still, the day’s events hit him hard. Isenberg sat down with MTLinTech for an exclusive interview.

“On one hand when you sell your company, and you put the control in someone else, part of me said ‘alright, its over.’ It was over when we signed the term sheet,” he said. “The other part of me saw that tens of millions of video plays were on our platforms. I literally got hundreds of emails from users today saying “wtf?” And it’s sad.”

And that was that.

Photo by Sachin Monga

Founded in 2012, 5by scoured the internet for the best videos, and hand-delivered the ones users wanted to watch through intelligent algorithms, all for free. StumbleUpon acquired it in September 2013 and relaunched it about a year later as an app for chatting about videos with friends. The base technology, or the ability to get curated video plays, still runs strong on StumbleUpon.

The sale wasn’t exactly easy for Isenberg, 26, who sold the company at just 24. Before founding 5by he had already ran a successful web agency and was a partner and investor in Wall Street Survivor, the world’s most popular stock market simulation game.

The experience of leaving Montreal ended up being a heartbreaking affair after he sold to StumbleUpon and packed up for San Francisco. It was why he wrote a popular Medium post at the time explaining his departure.

Still, Isenberg and his team forged ahead. The CEO said he grew immensely after his time in San Francisco. He called it ‘levelling up.’

“I grew in almost every area as a founder, whether it be product development, design, connecting with people, understanding the legality of things, doing deals, reading people, speaking, everything,” he said.

A day in San Francisco, he said, is like 100 days spent in a smaller startup market. He compared it to tennis. He loves playing tennis, but he doesn’t want to play someone who’s worse than him. Moving to SFO meant surrounding himself with a lot of people who had achieved much more.

“It makes you work harder because everyone else is more successful than you. The guy next to you sold his company for $50 million, the guy on the other side just raised a lot of money, and obviously that’s going to level you up,” said Isenberg.

But while at StumbleUpon, Isenberg felt the ‘itch.’ He wanted to create something brand new again.

First he thought he was going to take a year off and travel the world, but that didn’t happen. In fact, he lasted two months before he got bored. An that’s how he arrived in Montreal in early December chatting with MTLinTech at a small bar tucked away on rue William in Griffintown.

Here’s what we learned from Greg: his next project is going to be big. He’s starting it with the same founding designer he’s always worked with, Marius Ciuchete Păun, who now splits his time between San Francisco and Vancouver. It’s going to be a consumer-social app that “millions of people are going to use to communicate daily.”

Isenberg said it’ll be just like the other products he’s released: a viral product with no revenue model.

“The Facebooks, the Twitters, the LinkedIns: That’s my goal, to build something mainstream. I want to meet someone on a plane and find out they use the app every day and that it makes their life better,” he said.

Isenberg was vague about the specifics of his new project, but he referenced the fact that the big four messaging apps have now eclipsed the big four social networks in monthly active users. Perhaps it was the writing on the wall back in 2014 the day Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion.

He’s ready and willing to hire Montrealers (or anyone else for that matter) for his new project, which will be based in San Francisco.

“But they have to be the best,” Isenberg warned. “I’m serious: they have to be incredible at what they do.”

Having founded a startup in Montreal that was acquired, Isenberg also wasn’t afraid to talk about how he sees the Montreal ecosystem. He’s been known for acting hard on Montreal, having argued in the past that it isn’t anywhere close to a premier startup city, like New York or San Francisco.

Speaking with MTLinTech, he was perhaps even more forceful in those views.

He’s proud of the Luxury Retreats, the Frank & Oaks, the BusBuds, Lightspeeds and more, but Isenberg wants to see more from Montreal companies. He feels Montreal has the biggest competitve advantage over any other city in North America in terms of starting a company, referencing the city’s beyond-wild ratio of university students per capita. The rent is perennially low for sizable apartments in great parts of town, and the cost of doing business is low.

I’m in Montreal and people here are saying the scene is amazing and things are off the chains. But lets be real: we need more billion-dollar companies. Hootsuite is a billion dollar company in Vancouver, Toronto has Kik and Montreal has Lightspeed, which is great. But I see a ton of raw talent, I see a great quality of life and it’s cheap to build things, so honestly, I expect more from the Montreal community. I expect more billion dollar companies.

But Isenberg himself could have continued his own company in Montreal, but he chose not to.

“Nexology‘s founder Claude Theoret told me a great quote by Mordecai Richler. It was something like, ‘every great Quebecker has left and come back.'”

Only time will tell if this entrepreneur will make his great return to Montreal one day.

The post Post-StumbleUpon, Montreal’s Greg Isenberg set his sights anew appeared first on Montreal in Technology.

Wavo‘s founder Conor Clarke said “thanks, but no thanks,” this week on an exciting episode of the popular CBC show, Dragons’ Den, during it’s “Next Gen Den” segment.

Clarke, who founded the company prior to joining the FounderFuel accelerator programs’s inaugural cohort in 2011, pitched investors Harley Finkelstein (Shopify), Michael Hyatt (Bluecat) and Nicole Verkindt (OMX).

Clarke tried to wow the money-spenders with a $100,000 ask for 1.6 per cent of Wavo, at a valuation of $6,250,000.

Wavo calls itself the world’s leading music promotion tool. It’s engagement tool for musicians, Wavo Boost, is recommended on the web’s “most respected music publications.”

Clarke explained to the Dragons that millennials get their music through being connected to mobile devices 24/7. Wavo helps artists shift their marketing budget from more traditional media windows to online, which can “caputure this fragmented but highly engaged audience” with superior data and targeting.

Wavo can get artist’s tracks on partner sites that people “would kill to get their music on,” said Clarke, through native, natural-looking ads.

The CEO said his startup’s revenue was $50,000 in October, 2015 and $60,000 in November, getting the startup past its burn rate since it started monetizing in January.

“You’re giving musicians the tools that typically only the largest artists could afford, but you’re giving them to the smallest. And that is democratization,” said Finkelstein, who offered Clarke $100,000 for five per cent of Wavo. Clarke couldn’t justify it given the company’s growth, and countered with two per cent. Finkelstein felt he wouldn’t make enough money on his investment and pulled out.

“That’s not going to stop us,” said Clarke after the show. “We’re going to continue growing Wavo into one of the biggest marketing platforms in the world.”

The post Wavo’s Conor Clarke deadlocks investors in new Dragons’ Den episode appeared first on Montreal in Technology.