Why be a Wantrepreneur when you could be an Entrepreneur?

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Being an entrepreneur is all about starting something that will be sustainable over time – the best entrepreneurs create startups that address customers’ specific, ongoing needs. The worst thing you can do is start up and stand by a business that’s drowning. Think you’re doing this? Want to know how to quit being a Wantrepreneur?

Lucky for you, GrowLab can help!

What’s GrowLab?

GrowLab supports entrepreneurs in Vancouver and San Francisco by giving them workspace, funding and mentorship. They’re all about providing entrepreneurs with the resources they need to be successful.

Wish you lived in Vancouver or San Fran? No need, GrowLab is going on tour.

Join us on Tuesday, February 14 from 5 – 7 pm at Chainsaw Saloon to find out if you’re an Entrepreneur or a Wantrepreneur (you can register here). Debbie Landa and Jason Bailey, the founders of GrowLab will be there along with Michael Litt, the CEO of Vidyard, to let you know what being an Entrepreneur is really like.

What you’ll learn if you come out: how to attract the best people to work with you, where you should be looking for funding, what you should know about competing with the rest of the world’s entrepreneurs & more.

We look forward to seeing you there!

@UWVeloCity

Tags: Debbie Landa, entrepreneur, GrowLab, Jason Bailey, Michael Litt, vidyard, wantrepreneur
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Whoa, it’s the Grand Opening of the (new) VeloCity Space!

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

It is 6:30am & the sun is starting to rise, there is lots of hustling here as everyone comes together to mark an amazing milestone in tech culture for the community, the Grand Opening of VeloCity’s brand new space in the newly expanded Communitech space. The past 48 hours have been a blur as we moved our startups from our old space in the other wing of the building to this new addition, more on this in a future post. Enough said because…we’re all moved in and ready to get working, hacking, and making things happen! The resources here are phenomenal – good things are going to happen, it’s definitely in the air. We are very fortunate to have some VIPs here to join us for the opening of our new space; they have been instrumental in sharing our vision for entrepreneurship and tech culture:

Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario
McGuinty has been a great supporter of all the technological innovation happening in Ontario. He has starting funding many new initiatives that will support the advancement of technology in Ontario, including the Emerging Technologies Fund and the Innovation Demonstration Fund, which will help innovative companies develop new technologies.

Feridun Hamdullahpur, President & Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waterloo
Hamdullahpur has been a great supporter of our VeloCity program.  With his background in engineering, he naturally understands tech culture and the influx of technical ideas that our students & alumni are working on to solve everyday problems.

John Baker, CEO of Desire2Learn
Baker has played a key role in the Waterloo technology community. As a University of Waterloo alumn and entrepreneur, he can appreciate the foundation VeloCity provides for Waterloo’s emerging entrepreneurs. His online learning platform, Desire2Learn, has made it easier for students to learn online.

Iain Klugman, President & CEO of Communitech
As the CEO of  Communitech, Klugman is dedicated to supporting tech startups. He has also been a much appreciated supporter of VeloCity & is widely affiliated with numerous tech related endeavours throughout the community.

A huge thank you for all of the support – our team loves the new space and are looking forward to see our startup culture continue to grow. There is lots of momentum and energy in the air and we hope to continue harnessing this as we cycle through the crest and troughs of startup life. Stay tuned for more details about our new space in the next few posts to come!

@UWVeloCity

Tags: Dalton McGuinty, Feridun Hamdullahpur, grand opening, Iain Klugman, John Baker
Posted in Events, News, Updates, VeloCity Startups | No Comments »

They came, they saw, they conquered – Winter 2012 Venture Fund Winners!

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Last Thursday was our 3rd VeloCity Venture Fund Final – the competition where we give 4 startups $25,000 each, as well as mentorship, incorporation, and workspace – no strings attached! Everyone who came out had the opportunity to hear pitches from our 10 finalists who did an amazing job trying to convince our judges that they deserved the big cheque. Lots of delicious food was shared and many new connections were made. It was an extremely tough decision, but after lots of deep discussion, our panel of judges - Michael Stork, Ted Hastings, Ali Asaria, Mike Kirkup, and Brett Shellhammer - chose 4 winners.

The VeloCity Venture Fund winners of Winter 2012 are:

BufferBox - Mike McCauley, Aditya Bali, Jay Shah and Bradley Moggach are bringing convenience into the lives of everyone who shops online – they are eliminating the problem of unattended delivery and pickup by letting people get their packages in an accessible location, 24 hours a day.

Planboard - William Zhou, Suraj Srinivas, Tony Cui, and Ryan McKay-Fleming are going to make every teacher’s life a lot easier with their web application that fully streamlines lesson planning.

PolyGaze - Emad Mir and Vlad Kvitnevski have created amazing eye-tracking and voice recognition software that will make human-computer interaction way more intuitive.

Reebee - Tobiasz Dankiewicz and Michal Martyniak are providing access to all of your local retailers’ flyers online with lots of features to make creating your shopping list much easier.

Congrats guys – stay tuned for a feature on all of our winners in the following weeks to come!

@UWVeloCity

Tags: Ali Asaria, Brett Shellhammer, BufferBox, michael stork, mike kirkup, Planboard, PolyGaze, reebee, ted hastings, VeloCity, venture fund, winter 2012
Posted in Events, VeloCity Venture Fund | 2 Comments »

Pitch Night!

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Monday night at the Tannery Event Centre in downtown Kitchener, we had the opportunity to hear our VeloCity students’ final Brainstorming Week pitches. The students worked on their ideas all last week and spent last weekend coding whatever they came up with. Equipped with some great information from our coaches, they were able to come up with some inspiring, innovative ideas!

Some of the most exciting ones were:

• Converse, created by Patrick Tardiff and Wen-Hao Lue, a communication app that includes common questions as well as follow up questions that will allow you to have a conversation with someone who speaks an entirely different language.
• Cost Converter, created by Tom Price, an app that converts actual cost, not just currency. It factors in tax rates and tells its users a country’s tax reimbursement policies – and it doesn’t need a data connection which makes it perfect for traveling.
• Cyrano, created by Scott Tolksdorf, a VeloCity alumnus who gave us a special presentation on his new idea. He created an app that sends your girlfriend the texts you wish you would have sent. You can pick your intent and tone and automate when and how often you send your girlfriend texts. It will even have a feature that shuts the app off if your girlfriend is near you.

Tags: pitches
Posted in Alumni, Events, Updates | No Comments »

Perfecting your Pitch with Carol Leaman

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

On Sunday afternoon, Carol Leaman, CEO of 17 muscles, joined our VeloCity students to teach them how to perfect their pitches. She outlined a 20-minute pitch with 10 steps that will effectively help you answer every question potential investors might have.

These 10 steps include:

1. Elevator Pitch
2. The Problem
3. Your Solution
4. Market size
5. Business model
6. Proprietary Technology
7. Competition
8. Marketing Plan
9. Team/Hires
10. Money/Milestones

For a shorter pitch, Carol recommended not overstressing any of the previous points. You should provide your potential investors with specific, important information from each category. Areas that were highlighted as most important are the elevator pitch, the problem, your solution, your team, and how you plan to make money.

The Elevator Pitch is one of the most important steps that will allow you to grab your audience’s interest. Carol said that this should be short, simple and memorable. She suggested asking yourself the questions “what do we do?” five times to drill your idea down to the core principles. Whatever overlaps in your answers should help you create your concise elevator pitch.

When describing the problem that you will be solving to potential investors or anyone interested in your company, you need to be obvious. You should make your audience feel like the problem is one that needs to be solved: they have to relate to it and understand it. You should make them feel as though it is a problem that is relevant to them that they will actually encounter.

In order to get your audience on board with your solution, Carol said that you need to convince them that you have the painkiller, not the vitamin – they need to know that your product will eliminate the problem, not just make it a little bit better. She suggested describing how your product will make customers happy. Tell your audience how your product does it better and different than anyone else.

When pitching to anyone, especially an investor, it is important for you to tell him or her about your team. They need to know whom they are getting involved with. Tell them what each member of your team will be in charge of as well as what experience they have. Carol mentioned that venture capitalists (VCs) especially like geeks, entrepreneurs who have sold to companies and sales/marketing people who bring in customer’s money.

Explaining how you will make money convinces your audience that you are creating an actual business. You need to specify your market and it’s size so that investors know there is actually money to be made.

We really appreciate all of Carol Leaman’s advice! We hope everyone uses these tips while working on their VeloCity Venture Fund pitches.

Tags: 17 muscles, Carol Leaman, Pitching
Posted in Events, Updates | No Comments »