What happens when you take the best parts of a good old roadtrip and mash it up with one of Canada’s coolest startup conference? I wasn’t sure either but ThreeFortyNine Roadtrips is my best guess.

“No Talk, All Action, Launch a Startup in 54 hours.”

Heard of Lean Startup Machine?

“Lean Startup Machine will change the way you view entrepreneurship forever — for the better”

While I’m only an outside fan of event’s like these, what I love most about them is their unrelenting focus on action based networking. Networking is second nature to established entrepreneurs. For the rest of us, it doesn’t come as easy yet. These events shift the focus away from networking for the sake of networking and instead get straight to the action. Through the action, networking occurs.

We already have a lot of networking, let’s get together and have a drink, events. What we need more of is, let’s get together and build something together. My question, would you participate in an event with the following framework that we’d run in conjunction with Startupify.Me?

• One evening, starting at 7pm at ThreeFortyNine, ending whenever we’re done or pass out.
• Project to work on is set in advance. We’ll need to build a process to select them, possibly taking on some hack-for-good projects? They will likely be new projects, however, we may have some that span events?
• 6 to 8 attendees, ideally with diverse skillsets, ie not all coders.

Starting at 7pm, we quickly set the work agenda for the evening and decide on deliverables. Then we get to work and build it, in an evening. We’re not likely building a startup in an evening but you never know.

This is an opportunity to work on something tangible with people in your community. It’s a chance to get a taste of this whole startup thing. It’s a chance to try your hand at something you don’t work on all day at your work.

Interested? Please let me know? Comment below or email me directly with your thoughts.

PS. I’m working with Leila and Corey to bring a HackDays event to Guelph early next year. Update, registation page is up for Guelph HackDays on Feb 18th.

Finding Demos

I do not want to chase people to submit demo pitches. It’s a lot of work to find people who want to demo. So let’s distribute that work. I’m looking for 5 volunteers to help me with this. All that I’m asking is that you make the commitment that you will find us two people who will submit a pitch for a demo spot. That guarantees our selection committee will have at least 10 demos to choose from. Please contact me directly if you’re willing to make this commitment and help us find great demos. I will make sure to recognize your efforts publicly at our event.

Music

Having live music after our event was an experiment. For some reason I never took it beyond ourselves. Part of the motivation of having live music was to provide a means for our local arts and music scene to collide with our tech scene. That isn’t happening as we’re doing it today. We’re basically exposing a single artist to the tech scene. So this time around, we’re going to promote the music show on it’s own. The intent being that when we wrap up, some music fans will trickle in and they’ll have no choice but to co-mingle with us techies.

Thoughts? Feedback?

In the meantime, let me clarify some of the key points.

Forced Exit

We are not a custom development shop focused on building prototypes for clients. We will turn over our entire team every 6 months. All the developers exit at the end, ideally into a new business they’ve helped prove. For the client, we offer an opportunity to find the technical cofounder this new business demands. For our developers, this is your chance to step into a new business and ride shotgun.

Built To Accelerate

While we are talking about creating startup companies here, it is a unique model. We want these new products to have the best shot at survival. What our client companies bring to that is an existing business. They have an experienced team who has created value, marketed it, sold it, delivered it, and done it all within a financially viable model. Ie, they’ve proven they can run a business. Some, or all, of those are what a new entrepreneur needs to learn in a hands on fashion. Once Startupify.Me has proven this new product can get to it’s market, we now have everything required to truly accelerate it. We don’t need to find angel investors. We don’t need business mentors. We don’t need a market, a sales team etc.

Scale

All our clients have existing businesses. Most of those businesses are services businesses, which means each dollar in is tied directly to people, which means they are difficult businesses to scale. As well, most of businesses are necessarily connected to their founders. What we’re offering those client’s is a chance to co-create a new technology based product business. It will certainly have to leverage their existing business but in the case we’re successful, it will scale well. The leverage points may be technology they’ve built to deliver their services better, their client base, an ability to access a particular market, etc.

We have a few more spots left on the bus for client businesses and software developers willing to take their first step down this entrepreneurship path. Let me know if you’re either of those!

If you’ve attended before, what are some sweet demo’s that you’d like to see? Write up a blog post listing them all, preferably with a link to http://next.demoCampGuelph.com so people can sign up to attend or submit demos. Or just use this tweet link to share on twitter.

Bottom line, maybe if we ask, we’ll receive. Some demos I’d personally like to see?

• Anything to do with the Hudson/Jenkins split. Compare the two etc.
• I’d love to see a 5 minute all out terminal/ssh/emacs/vi whatever shell demo that leaves me wondering what the hell just happened. Then post the script somewhere for me to figure out what went on.
• Something zombie related….just because.
• I dig plug computing so anything to do with it.
• For that matter, if anyone can get their hands on some raspberry pi, that’d be dreamy!

I agree with Chris Dixon that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who’ve started a company and those who haven’t. Upon first read, that post comes off exclusionary but his first sentence says it all, “You’ve either started a company or you haven’t” and that’s a fact.

So it’s a fact, no different than saying you’ve either snowboarded or you haven’t, you’ve either skydived or you haven’t. All of which can change tomorrow. Hell, you can snowboard, skydive and start a company tomorrow.

Entrepreneurs are born right? Even if this is true, born talent has to be cultivated. In Canada we may have the beginnings of one but do not currently have a true thriving startup ecosystem.

That means most of our born entrepreneurial talent sits in a cubicle right now, reading this post twitching when someone walks by in case it’s their team lead. Are those jobs cultivating that entrepreneurial talent in any fashion? Clearly not. That talent is wasting away filling out 360 reviews, building a case for their next promotion, job title, salary raise, or simply trying not to be fired.

I’m someone who enjoys working for myself but it is not for everyone. I love defining and chasing real goals. I have a low tolerance for the gamification inside companies. At their worst, companies are thinly veiled skinner boxes. Building your own company is real. You define a customer/market and you either deliver real value or you fail. There are no buffers between the two. You can’t miss that mark but nail your 360 review in order to live another day.

Not everyone can handle those realities, which is why companies make a lot of money building and maintaining that buffer for you. That’s part of the reason we need large corporations and entrepreneurs. Companies protect you from some harsh realities and they get paid well to make decisions for you. They pimp you out and take a healthy cut on doing so. They decide what your health care should be, how much vacation you have, what time you wake up, how much money you will make, what you spend 3/4 of your life doing, etc. If you aren’t ready to be in control of all that, and more, then keep paying your company to handle that for you.

For the few of us who crave the autonomy, freedom and thrill of those realities, how the hell do you make that first step? If you were lucky enough to work at paypal or amazon in the early days then you’re set. You’ve seen it, you know what it looks like, how it walks, what it’s days look like. You’re already spending your days with Dave hammering it out. For the rest of us, the gap between corporate life and startup founder is monstrous.

In my opinion the key to bridging that gap is getting out of those environments and surrounding yourself with experienced, operating entrepreneurs. Yes, you need to pay your bills, build your network, and eventually develop an idea/project but if you have a job today the best thing you can do is immersion.

I want to help you with that. I want to move our coworking space here at ThreeFortyNine in Guelph away from being straight up coworking to being a halfway house for software entrepreneurs. For those ready to take a shot, I want to help you get there.

If any of this rings true, please have a look and see if startupify.me is for you?

This is all early stage, highly speculative so I need feedback on the concept but ultimately I need to know if you’re interested in seeing this become real, so please let me know!

You may notice that we’re now sold out of ‘live music supporter’ tickets. Thanks to everyone who supported the tunes and a special thanks to Amy and the crew at Wildeboer Dellelce for snapping up the rest of those so we can enjoy Jessy Bell Smith.

Stuff We Still Need Your Help With
Yes, you knew I was going to ask for something. The reality is that ThreeFortyNine is still a going concern. Without the support of the Guelph community, we won’t, and shouldn’t, last long. You can help us out with any/all of the following:

• Come visit us and/or come work for the day with us. Coworking‘s tough to explain but simple to try out.
• Spread the word!! Write about us anywhere, tell people about what we’re doing, blog, tweet, yelp, tumble, whatever your poison. Help us fill our space with great folks.
• Sign up to our mailing list to let us know you love us. We’ll occasionally email you about local events. As well, we’ll be giving away day passes, memberships, etc to people on our list.
• Help us find supporters and partners in our community who can help us make this place great.

Stuff We’ve Done

• Successfully sponsored and hosted The Guelph Seven.
• Helped reboot Guelph Coffee and Code.
• We’re slowing converting the office itself to better support coworking, including building a massive table in our shared space room as well as buying a whack of cozy Herman Miller chairs for our lazy asses.
• Welcomed Microsoft Canada as a sponsor.

I wanted to try something a little lighter though. Inspired by Brad Feld’s random office hours, I’m setting aside an entire day on April 11th which I’d like to fill with 30 minute meetings at the Innovation Guelph offices.

Although clearly I’m most interested in discussing Guelph technology related stuff, there need not be any agenda. I’m happy to talk about the Leafs or how much love I have for planet bean espresso, it’s entirely up to you. I’d suggest it’s a good opportunity if you’re curious about Innovation Guelph services and whether you, your project, your company should engage with us.

So if you’d like to take me up on this offer, please schedule a 30 minute meeting with me using tungle for April 11th or contact me directly to set something up?

Now we need your help on three fronts:

1. Attendees: Remind folks that it’s next Wednesday and get them registered.
2. Demos: The list of demo submissions could be larger so please drum us up some demo submissions as we need to announce the demo spots later this week.
3. Music: In order to fund the live music, which includes venue, sound setup, musician etc, I’ve opened up a bank of $10 ‘tickets‘. No you don’t need a ticket to get in, this is simply a way of showing your support for the live music. You’re welcome to purchase as many as you like.