5 Questions with... David Crow
It's time for a coffee break. And you know what that means? It's time for this week's edition of 5 Questions!
David Crow is a simple man. He can be found at the centre of a vo rtex trying to enable entrepreneurs in Toronto's tech, web, mobile, startup communities. He started DemoCamp. He brings together Founders & Funders. He writes about startups on StartupNorth. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/davidcrow or at his blog davidcrow.ca. In 2008, he was named Toronto's Best Tech and Web Evangelist. He's employed by Microsoft where he runs the BizSpark program in Canada.
What motivates you to do what you do on a daily basis?
I love learning. Whether it's connecting with entrepreneurs, technologists, designers and funders or building new products, it's about learning how to make things better.
Do you have any success start-up tips for people wanting to create a name for themselves in your industry?
Traction matters most. Traction is real customers. Go get real customers using your stuff. If you charge for your product, than it's paying customers. If it's free, then it's active user base. The goal is to find a successful business model for your offering in a market. Go create an offering that your customers love. Without the customers, it's hard to really argue that a startup is successful. My advice, go close some customers and figure out how you're going to scale to take over the world.
In your opinion why is Toronto a hotbed for cool tech start-ups?
There's a lot of really cool things going on in Toronto. I think it's because of much of what we think of as innovation is the creative tension between differing viewpoints. There are a couple of things that are helping the Toronto scene. There is a community DNA of connections. The connections allow all of the unique individuals and experiences to collide. It's through the connections that sparks fly. You see marketers talking to developers. Musicians talking to marketers. Foodies talking to policy makers. It's the incredibly diverse population with diverse interests and experience collaborating.
What's your favourite tech toy and social media site and why?
It's funny, I love tech. But lately it's not tech that I'm jones-ing. It's a really good bourbon Manhattan. It's a great bottle of wine. It's dinner with friends. I bought my spouse an iPad. I have a Nexus One. They're cool, but it's less about the device or object and more about how it improves my connection with friends and family or new entrepreneurs.
To this end, I love the brevity of the 140 characters of Twitter. I'm also digging Rapportive and Xobni.
Who would you say are Toronto's social media/tech stars and why?
There are so many people in Toronto who are doing great things.
- Social Media - Saul Colt - he's the smartest man in the world.
- Startup CEO - David Ossip at Dayforce - he knocked it out of the park with Workbrain, he's going bigger at Dayforce.
- Marketing - April Dunford - she gets enterprise marketing & product development for early-stage companies.
- Venture Capital - Scott Pelton at GrowthWorks and Amar Varma at Extreme Ventures - they are knocking it out of the park.
- Social Innovation - Tonya Surman and the team at the Centre for Social Innovation.
- Open Web - Mark Surman at the Mozilla Foundation.
- Open Gov - Mark Kuznicki doing the ChangeCamp and GovCamp activities along with toronto.ca/open.
- Tech/Accordion - Joey deVilla is the best accordion player/Brittany Spears impersonator I know.
