Tag: Startup

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Karos Health is hiring

Logo: Karos Health

I’ve been at Karos Health for several months now, and I’m excited by what we’re building here.

Our team is doing innovative work to connect health care records to the stakeholders that need them, supporting collaboration that improves the quality of patient care. It’s a huge area in which to work, there’s a lot to do, and our products make a meaningful and positive impact on people’s lives.

We’re building not just great products, though, but a great company. While we’re a small startup with a great team, we’re growing to ensure that we can continue our success and take it even further. We currently have a two full-time developer positions open, as well as a co-op/intern position for the Winter 2011 term.

Have a look at our careers page and get in touch if you see a fit.

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Learning about cameras at Snapsort.com

I worked with many engaged and thoughtful people at Primal Fusion. One of them was Alex Black, who left the company last summer to launch a new venture. The fruits of his and his team’s labour first emerged last January with a very simple initial release of Snapsort.com, a resource for people who are shopping for cameras. Since then, they’ve continuously improved the product, incorporating feedback from their users and adding functionality that has pushed Snapsort.com forward. Last week’s most recent release has taken the product well beyond what it was less than six months ago.

For example, visitors can now explore the similarities and differences among ultra compact cameras, among other types, with nice faceted navigation for filtering the presentation. There are also some fine learning resources for helping visitors understand how they might best think about a camera purchase.

The approach that Alex and his team took has made for a fine product, but is also a model for how to make progress with a consumer-facing software product: release early, listen to your market, and iterate often.

Congratulations on the new release guys!

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Startup Lessons Learned Conference

Jim Murphy has organized a fun looking event for next Friday, April 23 from noon until 9:00pm at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo. It’s a simulcast of the Startup Lessons Learned conference happening in San Francisco. From Jim’s event description:

Startup Lessons Learned is the first event designed to unite those interested in what it takes to succeed in building a lean startup. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful lean startups.

Enjoy the thought provoking presentations and panels from San Francisco, and talk about it with like-minded people here in Waterloo. All that, and it’s free! What are you waiting for? Go sign up!

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After the split, what’s next?

Having left Primal Fusion, I’ve been giving some thought to what’s next. At the moment, I’m really in discovery mode — thinking about possibilities, talking to friends and colleagues, and generally trying to keep an open mind. It’s a liberating state to be in, as is the beginning of any new adventure, though it’s obviously not without its moments of uncertainty.

Having said that, I’m still pretty committed to living and working in the Waterloo area. There’s a great technology and startup community here with a lot of thoughtful, engaged, and passionate people who share their knowledge and experience through a variety of activities. And, Waterloo is also a fine place to live — as I’ve written previously, there are many reasons why my family and I enjoy living here.

Which brings me to what feels like quite an odd request.

I’d like to hear from anyone who would like to share any ideas on how I might think about what’s next. Let’s get together for coffee, or talk at a community event, or exchange email or tweets, whatever. I’m always impressed by the depth of knowledge, the wisdom, and the generosity of spirit that I’ve encountered in people in our community, and I want to find out whether its possible to tap into that at this stage in my adventure. It’s not quite crowd-sourcing a next career move; it’s more like seeing what I might learn by opening up the thinking process. For that matter, I’m also happy to share my own thoughts with anyone who has their own career questions and would like to chat.

For context, I hope that it’s clear from my various posts on this blog what my interests, skills, and experiences are (user experience, software products, startups, etc.).

Beyond this blog, I write in much shorter bursts on Twitter as @uxMark; reading my tweets there may or may provide more clarity! Connect with me there, or send me an email. My email address is my first name [at] connollydesign [dot] com.

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Founder smashed like a bowl of eggs, company listing badly

It’s been a bit of an indulgence on this blog to write about movies that provide a good metaphor for a startup. Two of the movie ‘startups’ ended well (The Dam Busters, The Adventures of Robin Hood), while one was a disaster (King Kong). With today’s post, it looks like I have a series going!

Barrett’s Privateers isn’t a movie, but a ballad written and performed by the late Stan Rogers. It’s a rollicking sea tale that, to me, is a fine metaphor for a path that some startups end up taking.

Barrett’s Privateers features a founder (Captain Elcid Barrett) who has an idea, though not an innovative one on its own, (become a privateer — “A letter of marque came from the King”) to solve a pressing problem (England was at war with its American colonies) and to get rich (by cruising the seas for American gold).

Barret hires his team (“twenty great men, all fishermen”, including the song’s narrator) convincing them that his vision will lead to success (“We’d fire no guns, shed no tears”).

This particular startup is underfunded and poorly equipped (“The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight… She had a list to the port and her sails in rags”), but the team was ready and willing to work hard (“It was ninety one days to Montego Bay, pumping like madmen all the way.”) to deliver.

The team went to market (“On the ninety sixth day we sailed again”) and it looked like they had a chance to make an early success (“When a bloody great Yankee hove in sight, with our cracked four-pounders we made to fight.”). They redoubled their efforts (“But to catch her took the Antelope two whole days”), but the market place was a much tougher one than anyone had planned (“Our cracked four-pounders made an awful din, but with one fat ball the Yank stove us in.”).

The startup couldn’t survive in such a competitive market (“The Antelope shook and pitched on her side”). Things ended particularly badly for the founder (“Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs”), while the narrator (“And the main truck carried off both me legs”) and the rest of the startup’s team (“But I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett’s Privateers”) faired little better.

The bad ending for Barrett’s crew provides some perspective for a real startup!

By the way, there’s a great line-by-line exploration of Barrett’s Privateers by Dan Conlin that is well worth a look if you’re a fan of the song.

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StartupDrinksWaterloo

StartupDrinksWaterloo is a fine initiative aimed at, and enabled by, the sociable tech community here in Waterloo. Basically, it’s an opportunity to meet people in the greater startup/tech community and engage in conversation over drinks. It’s part of a loose federation of similar events in other cities. I managed to get out the the second edition last month, and I enjoyed the low-key conversation (and even the beer). Happily, it’s on ongoing event, happening on the first Tuesday of every month, and tomorrow night is the third Waterloo edition. It’s at 6:00pm at McMullen’s in Waterloo. Come on out and relax, talk with like-minded folks, and enjoy the connections.

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Waterloo Region Tech Startups

I occasionally post items in this blog about technology- and startup-related events in Waterloo Region that I attend or plan to attend. A terrific new resource has recently appeared that makes it easy to keep on top of these events, as well as much more. Waterloo Region Tech Startups includes a calendar, links to blogs and other resources, and a stream of related tweets. It’s the brainchild of Jesse Rodgers and Joseph Fung both of whom are active and visible in the community through various other initiatives. Great work, guys!

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Primal Fusion gets out of the house

This week was active on the Primal Fusion front, with two milestones of a sort.

Screen image: Halton County Radial Railway, as understood by Primal Fusion

First up, we released an update to the alpha version of our thought networking service. Our initial version was launched last Spring at the DEMO09 conference. We’ve received a lot of feedback since then, and have made improvements that address the biggest issues. You can read all about the details on the Primal Fusion products blog.

A whiteboard with messy notes

Next up, my Primal Fusion colleague Tom Ayre and I demonstrated a brand new Primal Fusion prototype at StartupCampWaterloo. The prototype is an automatic website generator (“Instant web sites! Just add water!”) that’s built on our thought networking platform. While still quite rough, and not yet released in any form, we feel good enough about this prototype to have shared it with the community at this great event and get feedback. There were interesting questions, some great suggestions, and even a little healthy skepticism. It was all appreciated, and we do listen closely to what we hear. We also appreciated all the votes that we received after we made our pitch to demo — great pitch, Tom! We both also enjoyed the rest of the demos and conversations. If you haven’t been to one of these events, it’s well worth a visit.

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Rampaging giant ape foils startup’s plans

I’ve written a couple of previous posts on movies (The Dam Busters, The Adventures of Robin Hood) that are good metaphors for a startup company. I recently re-watched another favourite movie, King Kong (the original version from 1933), and enjoyed the startup elements in the story. In contrast with the previous posts, though, King Kong doesn’t end well at all for the startup!

King Kong features a visionary serial entrepreneur (movie maker Carl Denham) who has an innovative idea (a trip to a scary and mysterious island to make a movie like none that anyone has seen) to solve a pressing problem (putting patrons in seats at movie theatres despite the hard economic times).

Denham hires his key employees (Captain Englehorn and his ship the Venture, ship’s first mate Jack Driscoll, lead actress Ann Darrow) convincing them that his vision will lead to success (“It’s money and adventure and fame. Its the thrill of a lifetime and a long sea voyage that starts at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”) Denham successfully grows his startup company and hires a team who buy into his vision (he recruits a large crew for the voyage), and then goes deep into R&D mode (sets sail for the mysterious island on his ship of choice, the Venture).

Having achieved initial technical success (camera tests on the voyage, discovering the island), Denham and his company suffer one great setback (Anne is taken by islanders) after another (Ann is taken by Kong, a giant ape). Through determination and effort Denham’s team survives early trials (attacks by various giant beasts: Brontosaurus, T. Rex, Stegosaurus, Kong), recovers from early losses (they find Ann, though several crew are lost), and adjusts to new market conditions with a bold and risky plan (they decide to bring Kong back to New York, rather than just a film). Denham puts together an equity sharing plan (excitedly tells the survivors that he’ll share the money they make by exhibiting Kong).

Denham and his team take their product to market (with a plan to exhibit Kong live on stage) and appear poised to reap their rewards (lots of buzz in the sold-out theatre). The product launch is a disaster, though, (Kong escapes his bonds and rampages through New York looking for Ann) and a key employee is lost (Kong again abducts Ann). Denham’s hubris has left his company with nothing, having led to untold damage in his intended market (Kong’s rampage through New York was costly), and the loss of his biggest asset (Kong dies, falling from the Empire State Building, though Ann survives). Disruptive innovation indeed!

Son of Kong (1933), a sequel, isn’t as good as the original, but is fun and interesting for its references to the consequences (lawsuits, etc.) of the action in the earlier film.

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Ten thoughts on what matters at a startup: Deliver

Why does deliver matter at a startup?

Not everyone has to deliver. I have three little boys, the two oldest of whom play soccer. I go to the games and I have a wonderful time watching them run around, get the ball, occasionally score, and generally try to play the game. When they’re done, I tell them that they played great, and I ask them if the had fun. Effort and having fun are what they’re going for; I don’t expect them to deliver goals or a win at this stage.

A startup is different. Effort is great, but results are what matter. Effort can, of course, lead to results; in the end, being able to deliver matters more than anything.

In a sense, the other posts in this short series are really about behaviours that support being able to deliver results.

At Primal Fusion, we saw how making an effort delivered results when we launched at DEMO. All the work and preparation were invisible to the world, though, and what mattered was what was visible on stage: our founder showing our thought networking service live on laptop computer. The effort would have been worth far less without that successful demonstration.

We have more milestones to reach in our journey at Primal Fusion, and we know what it will take to reach them and to deliver results.

This is one in a short series of posts called Ten Thoughts on what matters at a startup. The thoughts started life as a presentation I made at VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. While they’re far from definitive, and aren’t a top ten, they’ve mattered to me in my software startup experience.