Thanks to Jordan for whipping us all into shape — check out the Strutta holiday page for the main post of this video.

If you haven’t seen it, First Round Capital did an excellent holiday video with all their portfolio companies.

The long story short is that if you’re a startup interested in using Microsoft technology — from desktop software licenses to server software to some of the new cloud computing tech like Azure — come see us at Bootup Labs and we can recommend that you get accepted into the BizSpark program for cheap or free access to some of these items.

Startups are also always looking for visibility, so while you’re filling out your StartupIndex.ca or Crunchbase listing, go ahead and yourself to the BizSpark DB as well.

» Montreal Start Up raises another $2M | StartupNorth

Montreal Start Up announced today the closing of an additional $2,000,000 for its venture fund from the Solidarity Fund QFL, bringing total assets under management to $5,000,000. The Solidarity Fund QFL joins Investissement Québec, la Conférence Régional des Élus, and 20 of Montreal’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors who partnered with Montreal Start Up to address the need for more early stage capital and mentoring.

“We have met with hundreds of entrepreneurs since our launch and the quality and creativity of the ideas we are seeing is constantly improving. We were having to turn down good deals because of the limited amounts of capital available to us. The support of Solidarity Fund QFL will allow us to support more of Montreal’s best startup companies.” John Stokes, Montreal Start Up

Also revealed were Montreal Start Up’s four latest investments: Mobilize Central, KeenKong, The Book Oven, and Oneeko all of which are based in Montreal. These investments are in addition to its previously announced investments in Standout Jobs and Akoha.

www.startupnorth.ca

We don’t yet have enough data to see if this new model “works” from Montreal Startup, but similar models like Y Combinator and Techstars do have enough data to show success. I firmly believe that these relatively small, very early stage investments “prime the pump” for a cycle of entrepreneurs starting companies, learning from the experience, and doing it again.

Having the “big idea” is something that has often been talked about, so I’m going to skip that one - Mark Peter Davis of DFJ Gotham covers some of the points today in Want VC? Then Be Ready To Go Big, with his last paragraph being a good summary — “entrepreneurs should know that getting into bed with a VC typically means setting your sights on going big - very big. If you’re looking for a small lifestyle business or a small exit, venture capital is probably not right for you.”

Other than the “big idea” that you think you can execute on, here are the 4 items that every startup needs to complete if they want to get funded.

1) A Co Founder

Doing a startup all by yourself is hard, especially your first one. Unless you’re a very well rounded individual, being able to balance technical, marketing, and business skills in one head is going to be a lot to handle. More practically, a second person whose “day job” is the startup means that they’re investing their sweat equity, meaning you can ideally get your company that much farther along.

A lot of the founders I talk to really want to have someone who fills in a technical, marketing, or business hole in their own skillset. Now, that doesn’t mean that each founder needs to narrowly fit into one role — the fact is that you will be wearing many hats and need to have some familiarity with everything.

Finding the perfect second person (or third … more than three and it starts getting messy) can be the defining moment for a startup: things gel, many hands make light work, and you’ve got the personal networks of multiple people to get things done.

2) Executive Summary

You should have this. It’s arguably more important than a business plan filled with some meaningless spreadsheets with made up numbers that you can’t prove you can execute on.

The way I like to think about an executive summary is that it’s a prose-based description of the direction you intend to take your company in. You can refer to it whenever you are reviewing new opportunity — client X is asking you to customize the system to add feature Y, or to do a white label version — what does your executive summary say? Does it fit with the direction that you are planning to grow the company?

What needs to go in an executive summary? Well, this is a written document, so it’s pretty flexible. Talk about the problem you are addressing, your particular solution, how you’re going to make money (including how you’re going to make a lot of it, which will actually warrant that funding you’re looking for), your competition, etc. Here’s an executive summary template to get you started — feel free to use it to get you started (it’s not perfect by any means — feedback welcome!).

Writing an effective executive summary and tuning the wording and messaging is more than just one blog post. Get a start on it, as it’s the first piece of documentation that will actually let you share some information about your business.

3) Pitch deck

AKA the Powerpoint presentation. Some people are going to be better at presentations than at more written documents like an executive summary, or vice versa. Regardless, at some point you are going to be at Angel Forum, VANTEC, New Ventures BC, or some other forum where you’re giving an investor presentation.

The key to the presentation is that it needs *some* information that is directly consumable without you presenting (e.g. some financial projections), but the bulk of the material is going to really sing when you stand up there and tell the story of your company. The executive summary can cover the more extensive written material that can stand on its own without you explaining / talking to it.

I’m a big fan of the story model of presentations. Tell us the story of the problem, how you came up with the solution, and then the details of your company. As soon as possible, clearly and concisely make it easy for people watching you present understand what you do and why they should care. I find the model of telling a story or real world use cases make it easiest for listeners to put themselves in the mind of an actual customer or user of your product.

Of course, an investor focused presentation is going to need to then focus on the business fundamentals of your company: at the end of the day, neat technology that doesn’t have an investment story isn’t going to work. Technically minded founders will often spend too much time on the gee whiz bits. Investors care about the technology to a degree, but really, they want to know if there is potential to make money, including how *you* can execute to make this work.

I don’t have a good template for pitches per se, but another piece of material from Mark Peter Davis is useful — his recent presentation is in our favourites in the Bootup Labs Slideshare group. Slide 7 covers what materials do you need.

4) Prototype

Recall that Bootup Labs works with technology startups that work on “digital delivery” of products or services. More narrowly, that means consumer internet, mobile, casual gaming, or enterprise internet. In this space, you *can* build an alpha/beta/prototype/whatever of your company. Even if the founding team aren’t developer types themselves, it is possible to work with a firm or contract developer to get something live. In fact, it’s a nice benchmark that proves you can execute — whether directly in terms of code, or indirectly in funding and managing a development process.

Mockups, Flash, or Powerpoint “prototypes” all have their place, especially in terms of sharing ideas or vetting markets. But, this should happen early in the life of your startup, when it really just is an idea or three in your head. Get out there and register that killer domain, throw up some code, and get going. You expect someone else to give you money when you haven’t built *anything*? And you don’t even have a blog up?! (Remind me to tell you the story of why Cover It Live doesn’t have a blog — the short version is that Keith McSpurren is right and I’m wrong )

I’ve been thinking of using this yardstick to at least open discussions with companies. There are exceptions to these 4 points (as there always are). But, if you can get these 4 pieces together, I believe you have a much higher chance of success. Most venues where you will be seeking funding or partnerships or some sort of business arrangement, will want this same set of materials. Putting time into this collateral will definitely be rewarded.

I don’t want people to think its hopeless if they haven’t done these things. But if you’re looking for concrete directions on what to do next to help build your idea into a startup, or to take your startup to the next level, I suggest you check these items off the list.

For the record, I finally decided to post this list because I sat down with the team from NetHooks today. I first saw them almost exactly a year ago at DemoCamp Vancouver, where they gave their first pitch ever. The peer feedback, if I recall, was pretty harsh. Now, a year later, Chris and Brenda have checked all 4 items off the list and are about to do a broader beta launch. I’m impressed with how far they’ve come, and am looking forward to “what’s next” from them.

They came to Gastown to find out more from developers and companies working in mobile here in Vancouver, to tell us more about themselves and the services they offer, and to feed us free beer and pizza.

Michael ran the evening admirably. He had everyone sit in a circle, introduce themselves, their company, their projects, and talk about challenges they were facing around mobile here in BC. We didn’t get very far before some person’s commentary on anything from embracing the web as THE path for mobile development or a discussion on funding realities right now evolved into a discussion by everyone in the room.

I talked a bit about Bootup Labs, a bit about the VCC program (info on BC’s Venture Capital Programs here) that we’re applying for, and a plea for less duplication and more working together on common issues. Things like “HR bootcamp” or a seminar on getting investor ready is not at all specific to mobile startups, and I’d hope that local industry groups work together on co-sponsoring or organizing such events.

Lastly on the funding side of things, I mentioned the JumpStart program from the BlackBerry Partners Fund — this is something to keep an eye on to get started with really early stage. For those that are currently iPhone crazy, getting some investment dollars to focus on BlackBerry might be what it takes for people to look at the platform more closely. I definitely think there are interesting demographics around it, and of course folks are much more guaranteed to have things like data plans.

Back to the discussion, the huge theme was seeing the web as the primary platform for delivery, and anything like device specific applications being a step backwards. There were a handful of Nitobi developers there that in particular esposed this point of view, hence their involvement in the open source Phone Gap project, to make native iPhone apps (and soon, Android) using just web technologies. Parveen Kaler from Smartful Studios – who comes from a game developer / console background where he has dealt with lots of “gatekeeper” companies with much stricter rules and is now building iPhone apps – was the main contrarian: he’s loving Objective C and developing natively for the platform, and his business model fits with the rules in place.

It was great to find out more about Wavefront and the programs they’re currently offering. The item of biggest interest, judging by the crowd, is probably the handset library they are going to build up. They have a couple of G1 Android phones today, and one of them already got lent to the guys from Handi Mobility. I still see a little bit of overlap with, for example, WINBC, but it would be great if Wavefront focused on the developer / technology / direct carrier interactions. I think leading these type of developer-centric gathering events would be a great direction for Wavefront, and hope to see more of them as they get ramped up.

It will require a culture that pushes rapid assessment and admission of mistakes, rewards innovation and compensates heavily for successes that can be broadly applied. Most large venture firms find this activity too time-consuming and capital inefficient to warrant much attention. In the future I believe that getting the base right will be the key to success in the large-scale venture field.

Bootup Labs is the base of the Pyramid.  We live to serve the rest of the Venture Capitalists who don’t feel like changing their model or letting go of their management fees.  Help us, help you.

Thanks Guillaume, Thierry, and the rest of the San Francisco and Palo Alto office teams for putting this event on. We’re looking forward to be involved in the regional Boot Camps as well. Full post of the results / press release after the jump.

Title:  SFRAN0029 - Canadian Technology Start-ups Plug and Play in Silicon Valley!

1. Summary:

The Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco /Silicon Valley, in partnership with the Canadian Chapter of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP), organized a venture financing “Boot Camp” for IT start-ups in conjunction with an Investor Forum and EXPO at a successful local incubator, Plug and Play Tech Center.  The two-day program was delivered to 21 Canadian companies and five Canadian incubators, October 20-21, 2008, in Santa Clara, California, with a view to prepare companies’ investment pitches and put what they learn immediately to practice in front of  Silicon Valley investors.  Detailed program click here.

2. Key Findings/Outcomes:
High client demand for VC access services: 25+ Canadian technology start-ups indicated strong interest after a first broadcast (Company Profiles click here) as well as 5 incubators (OCRI, MaRS, Waterloo, Victoria, and Bootup Lab/Vancouver)
High client satisfaction for this formula as indicated by spontaneous client testimonials and follow-up survey: Business Plan/Pitch Review + Exposure to about 30 Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists/ Angels (Full agenda click here)
Immediate success was recorded from a few participating start-ups in securing funding and/or partnerships (at least 3 tangible transactions)
One of the participating Canadian companies, Redwood Technologies, won the Plug and Play pitch competition (43 international participants)
Post is actively working with a number of these new clients, introducing them to additional VCs and other contacts
AURP and participating science parks would like to repeat the exercise and possibly open a Canada Pavilion at Plug and Play as an added-value service to clients - At least one company decided to move to Plug and Play in order to get access to network of investors and partners
There would be value to host regional “Boot Camps” in selected Canadian cities ahead of time of a follow-up start-up mission to the Silicon Valley.  This would also allow a better qualification of companies for this activity
In spite of financial crisis, a number of Silicon Valley VCs are still in an investment mode
3. Next Steps:
In association with IT cluster organizations and DFAIT regional offices, SFRAN will coordinate a series of “Boot Camps” in selected cities across Canada, to be facilitated by Chris Gill, the Executive Director of  the Silicon Valley Association of Start-up Entrepreneurs (SVASE).  This may take place in the early spring in preparation for a follow-up mission by qualified companies before the summer.
Most suitable technology start-ups will then participate in the second phase of the program in the Silicon Valley with a view to get maximum exposure to VCs and Angels: very early-stage start-ups would participate in the Plug and Play Tech Centre EXPO/ PACT (Date TBC in April/may 09); more mature companies would participate in “Launch Silicon Valley” (Date TBC in April/may 09)
Post will assist in the identification of resources for opening a Canadian Pavilion at the Plug and Play Tech Center to facilitate the temporary stay of Canadian start-up entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley, to allow them to quickly be “up and running”.

4. Report:

The Silicon Valley is home to more than 500 VC firms and received last year approximately 35% of all VC investment in the US (+$10B).  This is also the home of the largest concentration of entrepreneurs, including numerous Canadians who moved to the Valley to launch or grow their own business.  This market is therefore of great appeal to Canadian techno-entrepreneurs who can get access to venture financing, strategic partners, clients (including some of the largest IT  and life-science companies) and share experience with peers in a highly networked environment.

Targeting this clientele, SFRAN/PALTO arranged its first IT start-up boot camp with the support of Chris Gill, Executive Director of SVASE, a local association devoted to assist technology start-ups excel in the Silicon Valley, and some VC friends of the Consulate.  The program was developed in order to give start-ups as much exposure as possible to venture capitalists while providing them with the education/right tools to succeed in this very competitive market.  Recruitment for the project was undertaken through DFAIT regional offices, DFAIT HQ colleagues, NRC, Industry Canada, and Various Research Parks and Incubators across Canada.

The program started with a coaching session led by Chris Gill. Many topics were covered in this session from “how fundable is my business” to “what should I include in my pitch” to “what potential investors are looking for”.  Two guests from RIM and the new Blackberry Partners Fund were invited over lunch as keynote speakers.  The afternoon session was a dry run for participating start-ups in pitching their business in front of two panels of three local venture capitalists and an opportunity to receive constructive feedback following their performance. This component of the program was key in order to assist start-ups to prepare their pitches to 30+ venture capitalists the day after.  Beyond communication aspects, it turns out that the session was also useful in refining some aspects of business plans.

The second day was essentially concentrated on the pitch competition and EXPO, although Post arranged a visit to Google headquarters, in Mountain View, a global company which was not so long ago a small “garage” start-up.  More than 300 people attended the pitch competition and EXPO, and several high-level players from the Valley shared insights on where the industry goes and what are their expectations.  Canadian start-ups, with competitors from other countries such as Israel, Spain and Australia to only name a few, were given 2 minutes to pitch their business to a crowd of venture capitalists during the “extreme” pitching session. It is a total of 43 companies who pitched, whom from which 21 were from Canada. Start-ups that were the most fundable were then given an additional 10 minutes to present their ideas in more details; two Canadian companies were selected to come back for the 10-minute presentation and Redwood Technologies from Calgary actually won first place. The program concluded with a networking reception including all start-ups that were in attendance, various industry players and venture capitalists.

5. Feedback:

We administered an e-survey to capture everyone’s feedback and improve this program moving forward. Feedback received so far were very positive ranging from “I have learned more in 4 hours that in 4 months” to “Thanks for opening my eyes to Silicon Valley … we are now planning our next trip to San Francisco to meet with VCs” to “First exposure to the Valley and gained significant insight on the opportunities in the Valley and what VCs are expecting”. For complete analysis matrix, please click here.

6. All company profiles of participating start-ups can be found here.

7. Lessons learned on the format and follow-up:
Develop this program on an annual basis
Run 2-minute extreme pitching dry runs on the preparatory day
Hold “Boot Camps” in major Canadian IT clusters while ensuring a national reach
Have more lead time for adjusting presentations
Open a Canadian Pavilion at Plug and Play Tech Centre to facilitate entry of start-ups in this market
AURP will spread the gospel among their 27 national members and post articles in their monthly newsletters
8. Conclusion and Acknowledgement:

We wish to thank all participating Canadian start-ups for the hard work and professionalism they have put into fine tuning their pitches and plan. Special thanks to the Canadian Chapter of the Association of University Research Parks for partnering with DFAIT to make funding available to participating start-ups. The energy emanating from the group was stimulating and everyone in SFRAN/PALTO look forward to build on the success of this project.

Drafted /Released: Guillaume Parent, Trade Commissioner
Consulted /Approved: Thierry Weissenburger, Senior Trade Commissioner

Congrats to Steve, Mike, Kirk, and Hans.  But more importantly, I think this is a big win for the Vancouver tech scene in general.  Many funds around town have put themselves in maintenance mode, and angels are in a wait and see pattern, which has all but halted any new innovation in BC.  I’m hoping that Yaletown folks will be acting like kids in a candy store.

My favorite warren buffet quote: “Be fearful when people are greedy, and be greedy when people are fearful.”

As Sean says, Chris Gill from Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) did a great job of running the presentation Bootcamp organized by the Federal government trade commissioners. I think there was consensus that running such a Bootcamp on a regional / provincial level would be ideal: get everyone trained in their home locations, and then do an investment roadshow to Silicon Valley similar to how TechStars, Y-Combinator, and Seed Camp do.

There were lots of connections to be made with Canadian companies from across the country, and we’re still navigating our way through introductions at both the Federal and provincial level. There definitely are resources to lean on, it’s a matter of finding the right ones. To continue those connections, please join the PACT Canada 2008 LinkedIn group so we can stay in touch.

Image by bmann via Flickr

And yes, the Mai Tais were delicious, and *I* think they helped loosen us up for presenting the next day.

1. Slide Deck
2. Executive Summary
3. Financial Projections