Canadian Startups Share Stories of Success and Failure at Mesh 2012

Yesterday marked Day 2 of the Mesh12 Conference in Toronto, Ontario. There were some inspiring and passionate presentations during the morning session, with speakers like Rebecca MacKinnon, author of The Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, David Weinberger, co-author of Too Big to Know and The Cluetrain Manifesto, and Canadian Dr. Michael Evans, founder of the New Health Design Lab.

Mesh12 Conference organizers Mark Evans and Stuart MacDonald moderated an afternoon breakout Q&A session entitled “Tales from the Trenches. Stories from Startups” which boasted an impressive list of Canadian startup founder speakers including: Aliza Pulver, Andy Yang, Evgeny Tchebotarev, Dups Wijayawardhana and Heather Payne.

Below are their stories – from getting started to surviving the twists and turns of running a business:

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Toronto’s Wave Accounting Secures $12 Million in Series B Funding

Today, Toronto-based startup Wave Accounting, a free cloud-based accounting software platform designed specifically for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs, announced that they have secured $12 million (USD) in Series B funding from the Social+Capital Partnership, a Palo Alto-based investor group aimed at turning venture capital into a socially progressive and constructive force that creates progress on a global scale, with participation from existing investors Charles River Ventures and OMERS Ventures.

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Share Your Ideas for the Future of the CBC on TheStar.com’s Microsite ‘The Network’

In anticipation of the federal budget cuts to the CBC and the release of former CBC Executive Richard Stursberg’s new book The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC, TheStar.com launched a microsite and contest called The Network. Since its inception in March, The Network has provided a platform for Canadians to share their ideas about the future of the CBC and national public broadcasting.

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Help BroadbandTV Raise Money for Charity by Creating or Simply Watching a YouTube Video

Last week, BroadbandTV, the largest online video aggregator in Canada, announced the launch of their first social video fundraiser. Now the three year old startup is seeking global support for a local cause. VISO, BroadbandTV’s consumer-facing YouTube channel, has reached out to its network of 5,000 video content creators from around the world to help tell the story of Mission Possible, a local charity that helps residents in one of Canada’s poorest postal codes find jobs.

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Toronto’s ShopLocket Launches Open Beta Today

Katherine Hague, co-founder of Toronto-based startup ShopLocket, has always been an entrepreneur at heart. Just after graduating with a BBA from the Schulich School of Business, she worked in Marketing with Toronto’s ecobee and then went on to consult with other digital media startups. 

When she began looking for a new and creative way to sell some T-shirts that she had designed to promote her services, she couldn’t find an eCommerce solution in the marketplace that met her needs. Other than listing a T-shirt on Craiglist or Kijiji, or paying a ton of money for set-up costs and ongoing fees for a Shopify storefront, there was no way to sell just a single product in a professional and simple manner.

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Toronto’s Siren Advertising Invests Own Money into Client Ad Campaigns in Exchange for Revenue Share

Six years ago, Max Entin, founder of Toronto-based Siren Advertising started his own outsourced software development firm. When his developers had free time on their hands, they would work on creating proprietary products that the company could sell.

That’s when Entin’s team started to experiment with online advertising. Soon, they realized that they could make more money by focusing on online advertising, rather than software development. So, the company pivoted into Siren Advertising.

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Card2Contact is the First Business Card Conversion App for Blackberry with Human Verification

Card2Contact ImagesThere are tons of business card scanners on the market but most of them are not 100 per cent accurate. Typically, card scanner users still have to go in and fix some of the contact details manually when letters are misconstrued as numbers and vice versa. A new Blackberry App called Card2Contact, which launched last month, provides an easy and accurate solution to this problem.

Waterloo’s Card2Contact is the first BlackBerry App that converts business cards into contacts and stores them directly into Blackberry Contacts with 100% accuracy – supported by the company’s Human Verification Workforce.

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'She Takes on the World,' a Guide for Women Who Want to be Their Own Boss

She Takes on the World Book CoverHow does a woman turn her passion into a successful business? Canada’s very own Natalie MacNeil, an EMMY Award-winning media entrepreneur, popular blogger, and thought leader in the areas of entrepreneurship and leadership for women, tries to answer this question in her new book entitled She Takes on the World. The book just launched today and can be purchased on Amazon and at select Chapters and Barnes and Noble stores.

The focus of MacNeil’s new guidebook for aspiring female entrepreneurs is to teach them how to work happy and live on purpose. At the very beginning of the book, MacNeil suggests that the secret to success is “love plus passion plus a need in the market.”

From sharing “lessons and confessions” from other successful female business owners, to identifying ways to develop a “Master Action Plan (MAP),” MacNeil offers helpful advice and actionable steps to take in designing the business of your dreams. Throughout the book, she provides her favourite “gems” which are small tidbits of information about software, websites, or tools that she personally uses to make her work life easier and more efficient.

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Social Media’s Influence on Film and TV Audiences: An Interview with Alexandra Samuel

Photo of Alexandra Samuel

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and co-founder of Social Signal, one of the world's first social media agencies. Earlier this week, she spoke at the Women in Film and Television (WIFT) luncheon in Toronto about strategies and tools for online branding, and reaching broadcasting audiences through social media.

Samuel explained to the WIFT luncheon attendees that “the audience dictates the success of a film or television show—even before it is made.” She gave the example of a Finnish-German-Australian sci-fi comedy called Iron Sky, which raised roughly one million Euros via crowd funding from internet audiences. Because the film was promoted heavily online to seek audience funding, it generated so much buzz that it sold out at the Berlin International Film Festival premiere.

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