Jevon MacDonald
bio here
The Gravedancer Fund
It’s painfully obvious and we should stop ignoring the facts: RIM is catering and there is nothing that can be done to save them, short of firing the confused people who are running the show these days. I won’t comment on what exactly is happening at RIM, there are more than enough people doing that [...]
Coradiant acquired by BMC software
On the heels of yesterday’s acquisition of Tungle, BMC Software has announced today that they have acquired Montreal’s Coradiant, which was co-founded by Year One Labs partner Alistair Croll. We are happy that Montreal has managed to win something in the last few days. The price is currently undisclosed, but the back of the napkin calculation tells [...]
Startup Festival coming to Montreal – Why it’s important
I know that David just posted about the upcoming Startup Festival, but I thought I would add my own thoughts: I have definitely been getting the feeling that the whole “startup conference” format is getting a little stale. The same formats in the same cities with most of the same speakers. The real benefit of [...]
Year One Labs — The Perfect “Incubator”?
I abhor the term “incubator”. I remember in fifth grade when our teacher brought in a chicken incubator to show us how chickens are born. We waited and waited and waited a while longer still. All the little Chickens were dead, it turned out. We weren’t quite sure why but most of us thought that [...]
A vendetta to get you up in the morning
I always like to say that a little vendetta is healthy for a startup. A vendetta, or keeping frenemies as Mark Suster wrote, can be a positive way to differentiate yourself if you understand the bigger picture. It is risky as part of of a company culture, but when you believe in something enough you [...]
Cognovision acquired by Intel
Another great exit for the Toronto startup community and some great news in advance of CIX in a few weeks. Toronto based Cognovision has reportedly been acquired by intel. According to DailyDOOH, which covers the digital out of home market, the pricetag was $17m. Cognovision was the winner of the CIX pitch competition last year. [...]
It’s about to get a little crazy out there . . .
Ok, here’s the thing. The “is this another bubble?” conversation has been going on for a while, and everyone was able to agree that there hasn’t been a bust imminent so far. It might have been dragged out by the sluggish economy, it might have been a function of a lot of effort going in [...]
John Ruffolo joins OMERS to manage new Venture Capital arm
Some great news for Ontario, and the national startup community, today. We are hearing from multiple sources that John Ruffolo will be joining OMERS as Senior Vice President of Knowledge Investing. He will start in the position on January 3rd 2011. This position, which is focused on managing direct Venture Capital investments, has been the [...]
Has KIK finally arrived?
I have been using kik pretty much since it launched last April. It was particularly useful for me because I was spending most of my week in the US at that time and kik allowed me to TXT back home while avoiding Rogers/Fido/Telus/Bell’s atrocious $1/message TXT roaming fees. The kik app was always very solid [...]
Learn to get burned
Picking co-founders and early employees will always be one of the scariest things you do. Even as you are doing it for your 3rd, 4th, 5th of 15th time, you never feel like you are getting better at it, you just start to get a bit more paranoid and careful. There is however a certain [...]
