Tag Archives: Startups

Growtalks Montreal Recap

20 Feb
Growtalks conference Montreal - 2/19/2013

Growtalks conference Montreal – 2/19/2013

Busbud was at the Growtalks Montreal conference today!

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 CooperGreg 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.

Allistair Croll at Growtalks Montreal

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.

Startup Weekend Montreal 2013 Recap

11 Feb

Startup Weekend Montreal Masthead

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!)

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.

The teams in action

The teams in action (source: Startup Weekend Montreal)

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.

SW 2013 participants - the big group pic!

SW 2013 participants – the big group pic!

Thanks again to other local sponsors like Fasken MartineauBDCReal Ventures, iNovia CapitalSAJECEIMGoogle MontrealGithubFounder FuelGrowtalksAnges QuebecRho VenturesTandem LaunchTP1F & CoExecution LabsFrank and OakStartup Academie and others.

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!

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