Disqus - Latest Comments for sylvaincarle

Re: Canada Is Going To Be The Next, Great, Entrepreneurial Tech Country

Sylvain Carle — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 13:56:01 -0000

Jason, no worries, Montreal is not standing still. Check out https://medium.com/believin... for a start.

Re: The Religion of Silicon Valley

Sylvain Carle — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 15:44:11 -0000

Actually, when I try analyze what SV has that others don't have, the best answer I found is: "better history" (and better and telling their story).

So this mythology quote is really powerful. "What the Dormouse Said" by John Markoff being one of many, many examples.

"It has narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that aim to explain the meaning of Silicon Valley and/or to explain the origin of Silicon Valley."

Re: Extreme Startups and GrowLab Merge to Become New ‘Highline’ Accelerator

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:07:37 -0000

This is great news. It clearly demonstrate how active this sector is. It's only the beginning. We will see the emergence of many other accelerators this year, either specialized/vertical or regional/universities. Some will be bigger, some will be focused on new sectors of the economy not yet impacted by accelerators. It's going to be a really interesting few years. I am really looking forward to the impact the network of accelerators in Canada, the US and the world will have on society.

Re: Why Most VCs Won't Intro You To Other VCs (Unless You Follow These Steps)

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 00:47:11 -0000

Twitter messages are just too easy, that's where this algorithm breaks...

Re: Should the Canadian Government Stop Investing in Startups?

Sylvain Carle — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 13:35:05 -0000

This: "injecting capital at the formation stage makes a meaningful difference" is the key insight, as the private sector has no incentives to get in so early. I will not pretend that I'm unbiased though, but it has been my experience as an entrepreneur and advisor for the last 10 years at least.

Re: FounderFuel's New Chief on Montreal's Startup Ecosystem and the Future of His Accelerator

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 14:32:55 -0000

http://founderfuel.com/en/a... to apply, would love to answer any questions about FounderFuel here, to the best of my knowledge (or find you the answer if you stump me).

Re: Le Québec voit son extension déployée sur la Toile

Sylvain Carle — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:30:03 -0000

J'ai testé 3 des "partenaires" suggérés et pas un n'offrait réellement le .quebec, même pas une option.

Il aurait été intéressant d'avoir au moins un partenaire avec une interface en français (par défaut) pour enregistrer un .quebec, aucune des 20 partenaires ne semble offir cette alternative (quoi que 2 ou 3 offrent de changer la langue au français, parfois ça fonctionne).

Par contre, certains offrent .qc.com ce qui semble une autre option du même genre.

Re: Dark Side of the Moon: How We Unknowingly Encourage Bad VC Behavior

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 06 May 2014 13:50:41 -0000

I don't think it's about nature, I think it's about math. Let's posit that the distribution curve for VCs is the same as for Startups: from Awesome (wild success, unicorn) to Awful (makes all the mistakes, fails horribly).

Mathematically speaking, there are not so many awesome investors out of the total pool. There's some data to back my intuition somewhere, I don't have the link handy.

It's statistically hard to match fantastic founders to amazing investors on a global scale (or even on a local one). Good networks, good filters, sure help, but it's still pretty hard. Those we hear/read about most are often outliers, they don't represent the bulk of the market (both VCs and Startups).

"Matching Outliers" would be a cool title for a book on both sides of the startup ecosystem/market.

Re: The untapped Open Data opportunity: who will unlock government data?

Sylvain Carle — Thu, 01 May 2014 12:45:28 -0000

Check out what Michael Lenczner and team are doing at Ajah, exactly what you mention here. They are focusing on a small piece of the public data set, but it's impressive work. http://ajah.ca/

Re: Why have several early-stage companies turned to the public markets for funding?

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:49:43 -0000

A good series A is not mostly about money, it's about access to networks and markets (for your product). How can the TSXV provide the same value? This is a genuine question, a series A is one step in a strategic growth plan, what does the growth plan looks like post TSXV listing?

Re: Why Won't Consumers Pay for Productivity Apps?

Sylvain Carle — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 15:32:33 -0000

I think this is the wrong question. Usually productivity apps are bought for business purpose, with business budget. It's really hard to buy apps yourself if you work at any company that has more than a few employees. As an employee, you usually don't have buying power and expensing apps is not something so common even in 2014.

Open Source is an amazing model in enterprise *because* you get to skip budget approval from IT... What's missing for productivity apps is the right model to go to market bottom up while still getting top level approval. SaaS software has a much easier time doing this, maybe it's just the mental model of users/buyers.

Productivity apps should market themselves as SaaS with a great mobile UI...

Re: European startups: Here’s how to (not) raise capital in the US

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:45:03 -0000

I would add an additional benefit: meeting US investors is a great way to raise your profile with local investors.

Local VCs/Angels will be delighted that you were active abroad, had meetings with US investors, are learning from the process and keep those contacts active. This is a great way to differentiate from all the other local startups that don't get out of their backyard...

Re: Canadian Startup Yafoy Launches Timehub, an Invoice Solution for GitHub Coders

Sylvain Carle — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:02:54 -0000

Link to TimeHub - http://timehub.net/ (this should really be in the post).

Re: Who not to take money from…

Sylvain Carle — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:24:02 -0000

I just couldn't resist writing a quick list of how to avoid/test for these types of VCs...

The banker: Ask them to tell you one of their worst time ever as a CEO/VP and to talk about the startup rollercoaster. If they can't, you have a banker.

The name dropper: Ask for actual email cross-intros and make sure you meet at least two of those. Most likely you will not event get to the email where you are CC'ed...

The dude on 20 boards: Ask for a commitment of X hours PER WEEK (1,2,3). If you are just getting started, you will need them.

The guy with a yacht club membership: schedule a meeting at a dive bar (aux foufounes maybe) or "not in his niehgbourhood" (aka Westmount or Ste-Anne de Bellevue). If he doesn't how to get there, pass.

The generalist: Ask for what she think is hardest in your space. Easy.

The celebrity: Easy, we don't have those (yet) in Montréal.

The ‘non seed’ VC: Real angel/seed VC sign real checks. I would take 25K from a real entrepreneur/angel before 100K from one of those "non seed" guys.

The outsider: Cross check your references. Ask Evan, or Mark or Tara or Seb if they know about that fund. If not, be wary.

The penniless VC: Ask for 3 most recent funding. And by recent we mean "in the last 12 months" not "last 10 years".

The opaque VC: See "the outsider" and "the name dropper".

The blabbermouth: Be careful. Usually an intern, or recently hired grad, doing "research" for his fund "really lovin' what you guys are doin"... Don't be another data point in their spreadsheet view of the world. Trust takes times and social graph proximity.

Re: http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2012/07/10/twitter--un-progres

Sylvain Carle — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:47:23 -0000

Le coeur de l'argumentaire est simple: la politique de "querelles" ne fonctionne pas. Ni sur Twitter, ni ailleurs, à mon avis. Si "the medium is the message" dans ce cas précis, ce n'est pas pour sa qualité intrinsèque d'être "disponible à tous" mais plutôt d'être une plateforme d'écoute, peut-être plus que de diffusion...

Re: Why a Developer Laptop?

Sylvain Carle — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:47:32 -0000

I went to look at the specs to see if I could seriously consider this laptop... but on the page to order it (http://www.dell.com/us/p/xp... there seems to be no options to use Linux instead of Windows. Sounds like a missed opportunity in the developer market.

Edit: Duh, I should have just followed the links in the post... so Ubuntu is the core OS of project Sputnik but it is not available currently from Dell (directly).

Re: Best big push by a city to build a startup ecosystem: Montreal

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:41:45 -0000

You got the blog right, but not the author, it's a guest post by Ty Danco.

Re: Stunning Lady Link [Cosplay]

Sylvain Carle — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:49:12 -0000

This could also be posted on the photoshop disaster blog (look at the legs above the knees, anatomically awkward)...

Re: http://bryce.vc/post/13198157725

Sylvain Carle — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:41:14 -0000

One insight that was helpful to me as I ride the startup rollercoaster, came from my co-founder @sebprovencher: "You are not your startup".

A startup is a specific organization built around a product, a market and a team (maybe funding too) for at a certain point in time. You have to be bullish and over the top confident in all these elements, but sometimes the mix just doesn't work.

You have to be ready to walk away from this specific combination at any time (your checklist is a great way to evaluate when to do it). You can still believe the product, the market, the team (and maybe even the investors) but there is a lot of sanity in knowing you can let go some of these. Often you have to.

Sometimes, long roadmaps and product/market fit happen over the course of a few startup organizations...

Re: Comparison between Montreal, QC and Tel-Aviv, Israel as a tech hub

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:58:09 -0000

It's interesting, but you should either compare countries (Israel vs. Canada) or cities (Tel Aviv vs. Montréal) no? I don't know what difference it would make, but it sure seems more correct to compage apples to apples.

Re: Comparison between Montreal, QC and Tel-Aviv, Israel as a tech hub

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:57:59 -0000

Re: Facebook founding president Sean Parker joins Twitter, apologizes to Mark Zuckerberg

Sylvain Carle — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:16:48 -0000

I find the list of people he's following much more interesting than his followers count...

Re: Three Montreal Startups Joining Start-Up Chile

Sylvain Carle — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:12:33 -0000

Active discussion thread in the Montréal + Startup facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/gr...

Re: Montreal's Needium selected to present at Demo Fall 2011 in Silicon Valley

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:04:03 -0000

More details in today's press release (it was embargoed until DEMO Fall started).

http://needium.com/needium-...

Re: Show me the money

Sylvain Carle — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:03:30 -0000

I started a Quora thread for VCs actively investing in Montréal at http://www.quora.com/Which-...

I would love to see a similar list for other Canadian cities.