Recently I announced that we’ve launched a Startup Travel Program in Nova Scotia, with the immense help of Volta Labs and ERDT. This will give early stage entrepreneurs the chance to spend 2+ weeks in Silicon Valley/San Francisco (or elsewhere), soaking up the startup culture and bringing it back. I’m excited to see the results […]
Launching a Startup Travel Program with Volta in Halifax
In April I wrote a blog post titled Governments Should Fund Startup Travel Programs. It’s a message I’ve shared with a number of folks in different government agencies and amongst entrepreneurs. The premise is simple: We need to get more early stage founders visiting Silicon Valley and New York to experience what a startup ecosystem […]
The Hardest “No” in Angel Investing
Investors say “no” a lot. Actually…a lot of investors provide confusing euphemisms for “no”, giving the impression that there may someday still be a chance of raising money from them. For entrepreneurs, it might feel a bit better emotionally than outright rejection, but ultimately it’s frustrating as hell. I know what it feels like. I’ve […]
7 Steps to Building a Recruiting Engine That Works
We all know recruiting is hard. Almost everyone, universally, complains about it. I’ve never heard anyone say that they’re always able to hire the best people, whenever they want, easily. It just doesn’t happen. More often than not though, at least in my experience, it’s actually a problem of effort and not something else. Sure […]
My First 9 Months as an Angel Investor
As a founding partner of Year One Labs (an early stage accelerator), which operated actively in 2010-2011, I participated in 5 very early stage investments. But that wasn’t angel investing (although it had some similarities). Nine months ago I made my first independent angel investment. I’ve made 7 in total. They include: anonymous company (can’t […]
Raising Capital and Lying
It should go without saying: don’t lie when raising capital. And yet in the last few months I’ve been party to a handful of incidents that suggest otherwise. Without naming names, I’ve seen three lies: Lying at Demo Day. I know Demo Days for accelerators are meant to be big shows and you’ve gotta find […]
Building Startup Ecosystems Outside of Silicon Valley
I’ve been involved in building startup communities for awhile. In Montreal I started an entrepreneurship breakfast event, launched NextMontreal, spent time advising startups/founders, spoke at events, and more. It was a lot of fun and a shit ton of work. Now that I’m in Halifax, I’m still doing stuff, but taking a different approach. These […]
The New GoInstant – Come Check it Out!
Working at GoInstant has been an incredible experience. I joined in the fall of 2011. About a year later we announced the acquisition by Salesforce. Everyone asks me, “What’s it look to work at Salesforce?” My response is usually something like, “Pretty damn good.” We’re well taken care of. We’ve grown the team, have lots […]
Xobni Recruitment Video Still One of the Best Ever
One of the first things we focused on at Standout Jobs (a startup I co-founded in 2007 in the recruitment space) was recruitment videos designed to show off a company’s culture and attract the right people. I still think it’s a good idea–you can do so much more in a video that you can’t get […]
Tiny, New, Addictive Behaviors (or How to Build an Awesome Minimum Viable Product)
Early on, once you’ve identified a problem genuinely worth solving, you need to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and put it into the hands of early adopters. In Lean Analytics, we call this the Stickiness Stage. I recently wrote that most startups fail at this point–they simply don’t get the traction they need (in […]
Founding Partner at 