Busbud is pleased to announce that it has been selected to participate in the Emerging Entrepreneur program at the C2-MTL conference to be held May 21-23 in our hometown of Montreal, Quebec.
The 2013 edition of C2-MTL will feature amazing speakers like Richard Branson (Virgin Group), Barry Diller (IAC), Philip Starck (architect and designer), Bobbi Brown (Bobbi Brown Cosmetics), Tom Mycoskie (TOMS shoes) and many more.
The Emerging Entrepreneur contest is run by the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation to offer 25 Montreal-based startup entrepreneurs the opportunity to attend the conference. The value of the prize includes a ticket to the conference (3600$), special programming and access to 1,000+ high-level executives from innovative companies around the world.
The Busbud team is really looking forward to this year’s C2-MTL event to be held May 21-23 in our hometown of Montreal, Quebec.
This year, the second edition of C2-MTL, will continue to fulfill its mission to be a different kind of business conference, one where participants meet to find “creative answers to commercial questions”.
Last year, the conference attracted A-list luminaries like Francis Ford Coppola (cinematographer), Michael Eisner (Disney), Ariana Huffington (Huffington Post), Patrick Pichette (Google) and Daniel Lamarre (Cirque du Soleil)
The 2013 edition picks up where the previous edition left off, offering sessions with business icons like Richard Branson (Virgin Group), Philip Starck (architect and designer), Bobbi Brown (Bobbi Brown Cosmetics), Tom Mycoskie (TOMS shoes) and many more to be announced in the coming weeks.
For the second year in a row, C2-MTL has teamed up with the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation to offer Montreal-based startups the opportunity to attend the conference.
Our own marketing director Alain Wong shot the video below to recap the participation of Montreal emerging entrepreneurs at the C2-MTL 2012 conference.
There are still some tickets available for C2-MTL! You can buy them here.
The first few days of the program were filled with various sessions with leaders from the New York startup scene, including mentors, entrepreneurs and angel investors. Most leaders had strong ties to Canada, which made the conversations even more interesting. International startup coach Permjot Valia (who leads the Mentor Camp event in Eastern Canada) ran interesting workshops to help participants refine their elevator pitches. CTA program leaders Miriam Leia Bekkouche and Irena Harris have been doing a great job introducing us to the NYC startup scene and offering many helpful resources along the way.
CTA@NYC intro session
Consul General John Prato also dropped by a lunch session and described the role of the Consultate as an “innovation partner” for Canadian businesses seeking to develop their business in New York.
Program participants work out of General Assembly, a co-working space in the Flatiron district in New York City. So far, GA has proven a great place to work and connect with the NYC startup ecosystem. Thanks to the GA team for making us feel at home.
Panel discussion in the General Assembly community area
Busbud was present at the South by Southwest Festival held in Austin, Texas from March 8-17th, 2013. The festival offers the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies.
This year, on the Interactive track, keynotes Elon Musk (Tesla Motors, Space X), Tina Roth Eisenberg (Creative Mornings) and Matthew Inman (the Oatmeal) shared the stage with hundreds of feature sessions, panels and workshops. Session topics ranged from the future of creativity, education, media, gaming and politics.
Among the more popular themes were the advent of the maker movement, including 3D printing, and the potential of Google Glass. My personal favorite sessions were with angel investor Esther Dyson, statistician Nate Silver and investor Peter Thiel.
Nate Silver session “The Signal & The Noise”
I had the opportunity to attend the Harvard@SXSW meetup and catch up with all the great work that is happening at the Harvard Innovation Lab, which is helping support entrepreneurship at Harvard and in the Boston ecosystem.
I also had the chance to check out the awesome charity street hockey game featuring (non-surprisingly) lots of Canadians, including players from Hootsuite and a host of other startups.
Hoot Hockey street hockey game
Finally, it was great to see Quebec represent with its Planet Quebec at SXSW booth, featuring local startups like E-180 and Float 4 Interactive! Also nice to see Montreal-based analytics guru Alistair Croll presenting his brand new book on Lean Analytics and to run into Greg Isenberg from new “video concierge” startup 5by. Always great to see fellow Montrealers abroad!
Planet Quebec at SXSW – Interactive microtile screen by Float 4
Busbud is pleased to announce that it has been selected to participate in the Government of Canada’s CTA@NYC program in New York City, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Canada in New York.
The Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) Initiative aims to provide digital media entrepreneurs with access to unique resources and contacts to accelerate the growth of their start-up on a global scale.
As part of the program, Busbud CEO LP Maurice will be working from General Assembly, a startup community space in the heart of New York City, from March to June 2013.
Other participants include: Authintic (Toronto), Elevate (Toronto), Picatic (Saskatoon/Toronto), Shiny Ads (Toronto) and Viafoura (Toronto). Previously, the last companies from Quebec to participate in the program were e-commerce clothes retailer Frank & Oak and location-based marketing startup SweetIQ.
Busbud is very excited to participate in this program. In addition to being the most vibrant travel hub in the world, New York City is increasingly taking center-stage as a hot-bed for internet-based technology entrepreneurship.
GROWtalks is a one day conference focused on how to create simple, actionable metrics, and use them to make better product and marketing decisions. Industry experts share actionable advice on how to improve design, product and customer development, acquisition, retention, and more.
There were great presentations from author Brant Cooper, Greg Isenberg of Fiveby.tv, Kate Rutter of Luxr, Laura Fitton of Hubspot, Scott Kveton of Urban Airship, Dan Martell of Clarity, Alistair Croll of Solve for Interesting, and iNovia’s David Nault, who also performed double duty as MC for the event. Topics covered ranged from customer acquisition, lean UX, scalable business models, growth hacking and financing.
Alistair Croll at Growtalks Montreal
Personally, my favorite presentation was Alistair Croll’s, who gave us a preview of his upcoming book Lean Analytics. Interestingly, Alistair challenged the crowd to find the one key metric that matters for their business. He also gave a few interesting examples of Airbnb and other companies that use metrics to carry out experiments in order to better understand the key drivers in their business models. The Lean Analytics book, co-authored with Ben Yoskovitz, is scheduled to hit the (virtual) bookshelves in early March 2013.
The conference definitely gave audience members plenty of ideas to go back to their startups and “measure, test and try” towards product market fit.
Thanks to the organizers, presenters and sponsors. Lots of great content and it was great to see so many familiar faces at the event!
If you missed it, you can also catch the conference in Toronto on Feb 21st. Register here.
Busbud is happy to be joining forces with E-180 as an organizing partner for their upcoming Knowledge Market – Travel Edition on February 26, 2013 from 6 to 8pm at Café Matina in wonderfully chilly Montreal.
E-180 is a matchmaking website that allows you to connect and learn with like-minded people, face to face, in a cafe, bar or over lunch. Once you’ve found someone whose knowledge interests you, you can contact them via E-180’s message service and propose a place and date to meet.
Travelling soon? The Knowledge Market (Travel Edition) is a 6@8 of knowledge exchange with an international flavour where you can leave with practical advice from other participants and event partners, to plan your next getaway.
On the program, the venue will be organized in themed areas by continent, making it easy to meet participants with similar interests and special projects such as:
International Cooperation
Sailing
Work and study abroad
WOOOFing
Couchsurfing
Hitchhiking
Limited budget
Around the world
Members of the Busbud team will be there, doing our best to answer questions for travellers. Come say hi!
Busbud will be present at the McGill Entrepreneurship Society career fair on February 22nd 2013 from 11ham to 3pm.
We’ll be looking to meet talented students in Computer Science, Engineering, Marketing and Finance. International focus is a plus.
We have various open positions in business development, engineering and sales/marketing. We will also offer internships for Summer 2013 and part-time/full-time positions all year.
Management Undergraduate Society Entrepreneurs(MUSE), aka McGill Entrepreneurs’ Society, is a student-run club dedicated to promote and celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit in McGill community and Montreal.
It has been my pleasure this weekend to serve as a mentor at the 2013 edition of Startup Weekend Montreal. The event, held at the HEC Montreal business school, allows budding entrepreneurs to pitch ideas and work on startups during an exhilarating 54 hours.
Busbud is proud to help support the local entrepreneurship system and to contribute to this event. Events such as Startup Weekend help foster connections amongst members of our startup community, and hopefully give rise to innovative new products that make the world a better place.
Startup Weekend Montreal 2013 local sponsors (including Busbud!)
The Startup Weekend organization is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Participants come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups. Created in USA in 2007, there have been more than 672 events organized in more than 320 cities and 90 different countries.
The event in Montreal kicked off Friday with Pitch fire, where every entrepreneur gets 60 seconds to pitch an idea. The best ideas make it through to the next round. On Saturday, the teams brainstormed and started producing early prototypes to implement their idea, even working into the late hours of the night. On Sunday, the teams got their pitches ready for the judges. All of this happens in a fun, fast-paced environment where entrepreneurs work feverishly to get the most done before their final pitch.
To get an even better feel of the event, check out the cool recap video our own Alain Wong had made for the 2012 edition:
That said, for the 2013 edition, the winning team on Sunday night was CrowdMedia, a platform allowing users to sell eye-witness photos to media outlets instantly. Congrats also to runners-up Dashbook and Smartalyzer, as well as all the teams who poured their passion into their pitches.
A big shout out goes to amazing organizers Julie-Anne Larose, Komary Ly and Marc-Antoine Baril for investing time and energy to make this event happen for our local startup community.
Startup Weekend: you were great, see you next year!
Today, we are very pleased to announce the launch of our new iPhone app aimed at giving travellers easy access to intercity bus travel information on the go.
Available for free for iPhone and iPad users, Busbud is your ideal bus travel companion, gathering together intercity bus schedules for 4000+ cities in 60+ countries.
At Busbud, we are uniquely focused on the problem of intercity bus travel, especially making the process of finding a bus schedule and buying a ticket as easy as possible.
With the launch of our mobile app, travellers can now:
Instantly access bus schedules on the go.
Sort by the best price, shortest duration and departure time.
View schedules in 10 languages and see prices in 15 currencies.
Auto-detect their current city and easily view top destination suggestions for that city.
Search
Results
In the example above, if a traveller searches for buses from Montreal to Toronto around noon, the Busbud app will display the next departure (13:00) closest to the current time for each company. This gives travellers a helpful at-a-glance comparison of multiple options, allowing them to find the right bus for their trip faster.
