DISQUS

Sylvain, I got you covered for your outing at Club St-James:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/319Ihcdtv...

Hey thanks for the idea and talking about us. We'll consider this, it's a great idea! We encourage people to contact us with more ideas..

Nice...! I'll have to get my dusty board out so that we can go for a session together :)

Awesome! Congrats Marc-André!

Ben, it was great..! Thanks for coming, it's always great to have entrepreneurs encouraging the future generation :)

There are many notable examples of bad design that works. Craiglist is another one. A lot of people will judge a site by its look; it’s the human nature. Would you trust a car seller dressed like a vagrant? Now that being said, if the vagrant looking seller is of exceptional help, you might return and talk to your friends about him.

Some sites have amazing design but have very bad usability. You don’t know what to do. My mantra is to think Apple. Look at the iPod. How simpler can it get? Even my mom can use it. The design? Nothing really amazing about it…

Fred,

I'm working on this and I'd really like to hear about what you think. I think I have a decent model and perhaps we could exchange notes. Please contact me to discuss further about this.

Great stuff however the picture is slowly changing. There are more and more startups in Canada (especially in Vancouver) and we need to stop saying that in order to be successful you need to move south. I think a great idea will work regardless of where you are, good ideas will require some work and bad ideas will require you to move to Silicon Valley in order to get financed.

Great stuff however the picture is slowly changing. There are more and more startups in Canada (especially in Vancouver) and we need to stop saying that in order to be successful you need to move south. I think a great idea will work regardless of where you are, good ideas will require some work and bad ideas will require you to move to Silicon Valley in order to get financed.

Jevon, I hope you guys will come visit us! It will be very interesting..!

Jevon, I hope you guys will come visit us! It will be very interesting..!

Guys,

You're most welcomed to join us in Montreal. Montreal's weather in January is, ehh superb!

Seriously, it will be very fun and I hope many of you will join us for this event! Thanks for mentioning about it!

Guys,

You're most welcomed to join us in Montreal. Montreal's weather in January is, ehh superb!

Seriously, it will be very fun and I hope many of you will join us for this event! Thanks for mentioning about it!

Michelle: there is a Blitzweekend coming up in early 2008. It's going to be very similar.

Great post Ben.

I read Phil's blog and took many mental notes. You can't learn to ride a bicycle without falling a few times. If you don't then you're just lucky or damn good. Most people will fall, some even AFTER they learned to ride.

Some people will laugh at you when you fail. However these people rarely take initiatives like Phil did. They would rather work at Mcdonald's and one must learn to ignore them even though it's very hard. If you think that you did the right thing then no one can make you change your true belief.

@Daniel: nice way of seeing this. It's kinda true. We're looking for the golden ticket and we don't know when (or if) we'll even get it.

We need to keep trying. Failing to keep trying is not an option! Hang in there phil!

We're geeks looking for startup tips :)

Not that I went, but heard exactly the same thing. I just couldn't believe the 500$+ picture package. I guess it IS real... Better spend that money on a photo course and do it yourself.

Good luck Dan and Frank!

Good luck Dan and Frank!

@Sylvain, yes please. It is definitively interesting!

@Ben, I already mentioned it in my blog, but 2 thumbs up for you on that one (and all posts as usual!)

Ben: Getting off topic but who cares :) FYI, I imported my car a few years ago when I left the USA and moved back to Canada. Unless things changed radically since 2003, it's very easy, trust me.

Timely post considering what I had to go though last week (and still going through)...

http://quebecvalley.com/2007/10/04/why-do-we-ta...

McDonald's can treat its customer badly - people will return anyways as they know they can't expect full customer service from a 15 years old teenager. But getting bad service when you buy top of the line equipment (knowing very well the margin they made) is one sure way of losing customers.

Just yesterday, I read a newspaper article about Canadians buying cars in USA. Well it said that Honda Canada (among a few other vendors) ignored the US warranty if people imported their cars. The journalist speculated that Honda wanted to keep selling higher margin cars in Canada. Well if someone were actively looking into importing a Honda and were to find out about that, then they wouldn't buy a Honda in Canada knowing they would get screwed up many $1000's. They will buy another brand in USA (that's what I would do anyway).

So ignoring your customers BEFORE a sale is made is not an interesting option either. Honda Canada has some lessons to learn regarding customer satisfaction.

Ben, that’s a good question and in fact a great topic so let me write down my wish list as I want a lot of things :)

Ben, I was actually considering writing a plugin for Wordpress because I can’t find exactly what I’m looking for. However I just don’t have the time anymore :( Maybe a quick hack will do the work…

Great article..! I think this list will help me..! I always have this problem unless something "major" is going on. And this made me think that an hybrid between Blog and Twitter would be nice for me. Sometimes I would like to talk about something but don’t feel like writing a lot so I skip until I have a topic which I can discuss in a lengthy way.