Posts Tagged start-ups
Canadian Crowdsourcing Superheroes
Posted by The Running Start in Entrepreneurs, Inspiration, Online businesses on February 1, 2011
Many people have heard of popular crowdsourcing businesses like Threadless and CrowdSpring. However, you may not have heard of some of Canada’s budding companies in this arena. I thought it was worth noting some of the Canadian superheroes who are leading the charge in developing crowdsourcing technologies to support market research efforts.
The benefits of why a brand may want to crowdsource for future marketing and product innovations are simple. Companies are able to harness the wisdom of the social web and engage with groups of people to define and refine what they need to do next as a brand. Here’s an outline of two emerging Canadian crowdsource-focused research companies.
1. Chaordix – Chaordix is an enterprise-based crowdsourcing software platform and service. According to their website, the Chaordix platform was developed out of their own crowdsourcing research efforts – with input from a 50,000 member crowd. Their enterprise platform helps companies to uncover product innovations and consumer insights. Chaordix’s definition of crowdsourcing is ”a way of engaging groups of people to submit, discuss, refine and rank ideas and submissions for a specific question posed by an organization.” Here is a link to a video produced by Chaordix which explains why crowdsourcing matters.
2. TrendHunter - TrendHunter.com boasts that they are the world’s most popular trend website. They gather hot trend information from the “collective insight of 42,000 crowdsourced trend experts.” With millions of views of data, TrendHunter is able to identify which trends are about to take off. Their founder, Jeremy Gutsche, recently published an award-winning book entitled Exploiting Chaos. This book helps to explain how companies can spark innovation during times of change.
Here’s a video from TrendHunterTV which explains how their platform works to help companies to identify the hot trends in their industry:
Both of these companies were listed as part of Canada’s top 20 hottest technology companies last year by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. It will be interesting to see where they both end up in a year from now.
A List of 8 Great Canadian Mobile Apps
Posted by The Running Start in Entrepreneurs, Inspiration, Online businesses on November 12, 2010
Canadians are doing amazing work in the mobile space. Just recently, Microsoft hired Toronto-based developer Polar Mobile to develop 500 mobile apps for their Windows 7 phone. After reading about that huge win for Canada, I thought it was worth digging around a little to see who else is doing interesting things in this space. Below is a list of some great Canadian apps and Canadian start-ups in the mobile space that I have discovered in the past few months.
(1) Simply Good Apps – This Canadian company considers themselves “more than an apps developer” as they use their proprietary point-of-interest and image processing platforms to redefine the way people navigate and participate with your brand. They recently signed a contract with Scotiabank to provide free mobile applications for their sponsored Toronto festivals. The app boasts the ability to share images using their proprietary Capturefy© technology, integrated GPS/Mapping, event-specific information and social connection, and location-specific mapping to events and public transit.
(2) Burstn – This made in Canada app is a simple tool to help you snap and share photos instantly on the web and via mobile devices. Burstn is also a social network of photos, people and places.
(3) Pushlife Mobile Media Player – This Toronto-based company has taken the experience of playing all of your music on your desktop media player (if you’re not an Apple user) and made it accessible on your Blackberry. According to their website, the Blackberry app features and “easy-to-use, interactive Media Carousel which gives you one finger control of playing a song, going to the next or previous song, seeking forwards and backwards in a song, accessing the Mobile Jewel Case, rating a song, posting acomment about the song on TwitterTM, editing playlists, editing track information and more.”
(4) iMock-ups – Endloop Studios is a Toronto-based start-up that has created iMock-ups as a downloadable app on iTunes for your iPad. This tool helps designers on the move to mock-up Websites and layouts by choosing from a menu of options that include device wireframes. The options include video and text icons that can be swept onto a digital whiteboard. Within the whiteboard, a designer can shrink, enlarge and move things about on the screen as clients sit next to them.
(5) Toronto Maple Leafs – This wouldn’t be a blog about Canadian apps without mentioning how they are helping hockey sports fans to stay connected to their favourite game. I thought it was worth mentioning Polar Mobile’s app for the Toronto Maple Leafs because I grew up in Toronto. This tool helps Leafs fans to stay connected to their favourite team on their smartphone. App users can get live game scores, past results, current roster stats, league standings, game schedules, and all the latest team news and updates.
(6) Nat Decants – This app is great for foodies and wine lovers as it is a comprehensive and delicious guide for the iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android, Nexus, Nokia, Palm Pre and other smartphones. This app is an evolution from Natalie MacLean’s original bestselling “Drinks Matcher” app. Basically, Natalie has developed ten wine apps rolled into one. The app will help you when you’re trying to figure out what wine to pair with what meal when you’re out shopping at the grocery and liquor store. The app also boasts wine reviews, winery listings, recipes, articles and more.
(7) TripIt – Created by Five Mobile Inc., this Blackberry app allows users to access their upcoming travel itineraries from their phone. The app boasts the ability to access calendar integration, flight monitoring and travel confirmations – making it a best in class travel application. Five mobile makes a whole slew of mobile apps worth noting – check them out here: http://www.fivemobile.com/portfolio
(8) The Score for iPad – Score media recently acquired 20% of NuLayer Inc., a developer of web, mobile and iPad applications. The Score recently launched an iPad version of their sports results app which was created by NuLayer Inc. This app allows sports fans to get the latest sports scores, stats, news and more about their favourite team or league.
If you know of any other interesting Canadian apps that should be added to the list, definitely let me know.
Related Articles:
Toronto: mobile app centre of the universe, Toronto Life, July 23, 2010
Apps born in Toronto, The Globe and Mail, May 28, 2010
The Race is on to be the Next Groupon Contender in Canada
Posted by The Running Start in Inspiration, Online businesses on November 4, 2010
You must have been hiding under a virtual rock this summer if you missed being bombarded online by Groupon ads that displayed photos of delicious food – enticing you to click and sign-up for their daily social deals. Once I became obsessed with Groupon, I started to notice a myriad of other daily social deal sites explode onto the Internet scene.
A lot of the original daily social deal sites were based in the US and just targeted Canadian cities. However, I’ve seen a number of Canadian sites launch in the past few months. Most recently, TorStar Digital launched WagJag.com. I heard from a source at the company that they recently sold almost 14,000 burgers in a “Buy $5 for $10 worth of Burgers” deal on behalf of South Street Burger Co. Man, had I known about that deal, I would have definitely bought-in!
So, how does one find out about all of these daily social deals in the frantic, busy lifestyle that we lead? The solution – daily deal aggregator sites. I’ve discovered two daily deal aggregator sites based in the US and one of them has just launched in Toronto – DealGator.com. Yipit.com is another daily deal aggregator of note but they have yet to launch in Canada. These sites aggregate daily social deals from other sites based on your specified interest in deals like restaurants, spa/beauty, travel and more. I guess that the race is on to see who aggregates all of the daily social deals in Canada first? I’m excited to see what other sites will evolve out of this mass daily social deal site frenzy.
I’ve read a lot of articles lately that talk about whether or not the business model for sites like Groupon is sustainable – especially when it comes to negotiating deals with larger retailers. I’m sure there will be an eventual shake-up in this newly developed industry. However, I will enjoy the fruits (or cupcakes if they’re the deal of the day) of their labour in the meantime 
The Rise of Niche Social Networks in Canada
Posted by The Running Start in Entrepreneurs, Inspiration, Online businesses on November 1, 2010
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I feel that Canada and Toronto in particular,
is just ripe for start-ups. I wanted to share some proof of this statement. As Facebook
has inevitably become a verb for connecting with friends (i.e. “Facebook me”), niche
social networks seem to be the next phase in the social media evolution. There are
a number of start-ups emerging in this space in Canada right now.
Here’s a list of some of my favourite new Canadian niche social networks. These sites foster social networking in a more focused environment, rather than just creating a group or page on Facebook:
(1) Sprouter.com – This is a site based in Toronto that connects entrepreneurs worldwide. Entrepreneurs can tweet questions out to the online community and share advice on the Sprouter platform. Sprouter hosts frequent live chats with successful entrepreneurs to allow community members to learn from their peers online. A key ingredient to Sprouter’s growth has been their offline events called “SproutUps” that enable entrepreneurs to connect face-to-face and share best practices.
(2) WineAlign.com – Based in Ontario, this site is a free community-based service for reviewing, sharing and discovering wine. This site is ideal if you are trying to find the perfect bottle of wine to go with the meal that you are planning. Their site is synched up with the LCBO database to help you find the right wine at the right price at an LCBO near you. Site visitors can also connect and share information about their favourite wines and new wine releases.
(3) LoonLounge.com – This is a site dedicated to connecting new and prospective Canadian immigrants to various Canadian immigration services groups via an online community. LoonLounge was created by a Canadian immigration lawyer David Cohen, who realized that there was a missing link in the process of immigrating to Canada. The site’s mission is to “improve the Canadian immigration process for the millions of people involved: applicants waiting in the queue, new immigrants adjusting to life in Canada, Canadian employers waiting for skilled workers to arrive, and the many people around the world who dream of one day making Canada their home“.
(4) UrbanMoms.ca – This site was inspired by a woman whose friend Madeleine, a mother of 2 children, had recently lost her battle with cancer. This motivated the friend to raise money as a trust fund for the kids who were left without their mother. The support from mothers helping to raise money across the country was astounding and inspired the friend to create an online community for brave mothers to share advice, opinions and expertise on various motherhood topics. The site includes a collection of motherhood blogs, community postings, product reviews and contests.
(5) Vestiigo.com – This is a fairly new Canadian career site that makes jobs searching more social. Job seekers are able to contact the hiring manager directly when applying to postings. When you sign-up, you receive personal messages from the site owners to welcome you to the site. They also want to know how they can help you and welcome you to contact them directly – which makes you feel welcomed. Daily job postings are sent out to the community via a number of social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups.
(6) Rypple.com – This Toronto-based start-up creates community-based software that helps managers to encourage a constant feedback loop for their teams. A major focus of the software is to encourage the idea of “giving thanks” to your peers. This site is inspired by the idea that employees need constant recognition in order to feel valued. This idea of providing constant feedback within the team also helps to make quarterly and annual reviews a breeze for managers.
(7) TeamPages.com - This B.C.-based social networking site provides a platform for sports teams and leagues to set-up their own pages/sites – making organization and communication a lot easier. Benefits of the site include: managing team and/or league schedules online, scheduling games and events, sending out e-mails and text messages to your team and/or league, displaying team scores and player statistics, and much more. There is a fee associated with managing your team page(s) – packages are based on the level of sophistication required.
(8) ShesConnected.com – Founded in Toronto by Donna Marie Antoniadis, this social networking website was created for busy women by women. The site allows women to manage both a personal and a professional social media profile in one place. The site also boasts a community database of over 400,000 bloggers and offers community management to help advertisers take a meaningful approach to spreading the word about their products and services to women online. ShesConnected.com just recently hosted their first social media conference in Toronto in October 2010.
Not many of these sites have advertising on them yet, but I feel that it is only inevitable that I will soon be targeted by Rogers for Small Businesses on Sprouter and Food/Lifestyle brands on sites like WineAlign very soon.
If you know of any other Canadian niche social media communities worth noting, definitely let me know and I’ll add them to the list.
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