By Alexandra Reid
Scott Annan is widely known in Ottawa for being a startup champion. He’s an entrepreneur who has strong opinions about the local startup ecosystem and what needs to change to increase our competitiveness on the global stage. According to Annan, Ottawa punches above its weight when it comes to startup talent, yet we are lagging behind other major cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver because we lack the cohesion and organization necessary to drive a vibrant startup community. It is with this mentality that Annan relaunched Mercury Grove, a startup accelerator, to advocate for local startups and provide them with the mentorship and financial support they need to be successful and drive a startup community that is proud to call Ottawa its hub.
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By Peter Hanschke
I was a panelist at the latest Agile Ottawa meeting where we discussed our experiences with the process and concepts of Eric Ries‘ lean startup methodology. Today, I will share some of the points I made during the discussions.
By the time I got to reading Eric’s book, I was well on my way to using and advising clients and my employers on many of his teachings. Even though he focuses on startups, the principles in general are applicable to larger companies that need to bring new products to market with little investment. Note that larger companies have other challenges to successfully introduce new products quickly with little investment — Clayton Christensen‘s book The Innovator’s Dilemma does a good job of outlining these challenges.
The area I want to focus on is the balance between investment, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and time to market.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Joe Pulizzi, Fast Company, ReadWriteWeb, SpinSucks and The Accelerator Gazette.
Five reasons why content marketing is no buzzword
Most people who aren’t involved in the industry on a daily basis may think that the term “content marketing” and the industry came out of nowhere. Joe Pulizzi puts together an interesting list of happenings that may (or may not) change your feeling on the matter.
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By Leo Valiquette
In early May, I blogged about the need for everyone in the National Capital Region involved with getting technology to market to check their baggage at the door and work together for the common good.
It was a post sparked by my recent discussions with various entrepreneurs and other economic stakeholders at a time when the newly minted Invest Ottawa was getting its house in order and engaging in a long-overdue dialogue with the business community.
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By Francis Moran
When the Canadian federal government announced in its April budget that it would be kicking up $400 million to help increase private sector investments in early-stage risk capital and to support the creation of large-scale venture capital funds led by the private sector, I figured it wouldn’t take long before someone stepped up to tell the feds what to do with the three quarters of that pot of money that wasn’t earmarked for the Business Development Bank of Canada.
First past the post with its recommendation was the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, or CATA Alliance, which this past week issued a well-reasoned report that examined and rejected three possible models for doling out the new money before making the case for Canada adopting what has generally become known as the Israeli, or “Yozma-inspired,” approach. The model would see the BDC — which is essentially the government’s own venture capital arm anyway — manage a competitive RFP process to select Canadian or international VC firms, or groups of firms, that would act as general partners for new funds. Those GPs would then recruit additional limited partners who would match or better the government’s contribution to create new funds of at least $200 million each.
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