When you think about your business, any business but start-ups in particular. There are arguably two types of tasks that you perform; Value adds tasks and administrative tasks. Value Add tasks are good because they create goodwill for your company and contribute positively to your top line. Administrative and backend tasks that are required to support your business do not add value to your company and in fact take time away from your Value Added tasks.
One of the benefits of being at TheCodeFactory is that we take care of as much of the administrative burden as your would like to share with us. This lets you the Start-up focus on building your business and doing value add tasks. The more time you spend doing value add tasks and the less time you spend doing administrative tasks the better your probability of success and the faster your company will grow.
Cheers,
ian.thecodfactory (at) gmail.com
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TheCodeFactory survey is online and live until this Saturday at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=NDZgQRZCJaFrwSmtAIrmNQ_3d_3d
If you are thinking about finding your own space within the next year we would like to hear from you.
TheCodeFactory is an early stage business accelerator intended to help entrepreneurs and start-ups improve productivity, better manage costs and minimize the risks associated with setting up your first office. We provide team space and service to entrepreneurs and start-ups.
Cheers,
Ian Graham
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DemoCamp5Ottawa last night was well attended and the crowd was attentive and enthusiastic. It was no wonder everyone was attentive the demos, at least in my opinion, were all very good to excellent. I had many comments from people after the event how impressed they were with the quality of the presenters. Before you start to worry that things are getting too polished I wanted to mention that code was shown on the big screen at least once. Jerome during his demo on his new development language and platform showed several snippets of code. Perhaps a little bit frightening I could actually read and understand much of the code from my old C programming days.
The first three presenters were Steve Lecomte from lead to Close, Darcy Whyte from Siteware, and Aydin Mirazee from bOK. Everyone did a great job and I was super impressed by Aydin. His bOK product seems like a real winner. What really impressed me about Aydin were his confidence and the way he handled questions from the audience. With 6 patent pending, a confident manner and solid product bOK is a company to watch.
After the break David Nadeau, Jerome St Louis and Scot Lemieux presented. All very competent and capable presenters. I liked David’s name entity recognition demo and think this may have potential. Jerome’s new language and development tools were very slick and he showed some code to boot. Scot was one of the more unique presenters we have ever had and he has his own design and development studio right here in Ottawa. His children’s DVD demonstration was excellent.
I wish all our presenters well and success in the future. This is our last democamp before the fall but hope to see everyone in September.
Cheers,
ian.thecodefactory @ gmail.com
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Fred Ngo from Montreal is in the process of starting out on a bold new adventure called standout jobs. We here at TheCodeFactory wish Fred and all the folks at Standout jobs great success. I also believe that there is the opportunity for start-ups to learn from their experience.
Fred’s’ recent post “The Wild and Wacky Start-up World” provides some excellent insights and lessons for would be entrepreneurs and start-ups. Too summarize Fred’s’ post there is a whole lot of work in getting an office set up. Don’t just take my word for it have a read of Fred’s post and learn.
“The bootup sequence of a new office is incredibly long, even when it’s only a temporary space. We had to put in an order for an internet connection, …
Without an internet connection, the office is basically useless, but since we’re receiving deliveries of furnitures and equipment, we’ve pretty much had to station someone at the office during all the daytime working hours. …
This week we’ve also brought on a sysadmin,”
The somewhat painful lesson is that setting up an office for a start-up is a whole lot of time, effort and frustration. The second part of the lesson is that time spent setting up your office is time that you were not working on your business. Therefore setting up an office is a loss of productivity for a start-up. Not only that, it continues to be a drain on resources over the life of the business.
Well, this is where we at TheCodeFactory can help. Our value add is that we take that painful getting the office up and running step and help smooth the transition from a desperate team working from home and in different locations to a functional team working from a single location. We also provide support for your business for the duration of your stay with us.
Our goal is to make our tenants more productive and successful.
Cheers,
ian.thecodefactory @ gamil.com
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Had a great meeting this morning with Peter, Scott Lake, Craig Fitzpatrick and myslef. It seems that many of us here in Ottawa are on the same wavelength. That wavelength being the one were we want to take some positive steps to help bring the start-up community together. In fact it is even more than just a meeting it is also a desire to collaborate, build an entrepreneurial culture and help kickstart Ottawa’s startup community.
Where there is a will theres a way.
Cheers,
ian.thecodefactory@gmail.com
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I am even keener on the idea of an open source cluster after reading an article in National Capital Scan by Denzil Doyle in his column Loud and Clear entitled “Risk Money for High Tech”. The article is on the second page of the PDF found at this link:
http://www.nationalcapitalscan.ca/news/print_editions/files/060107SCAN.pdf
The gist of the article is that in order to grow the new Clean Tech cluster Angel investors are going to have to pony up plenty of cash, to the tune of $350M for the burgeoning Clean Tech Sector. Don’t get me wrong I think the clean tech cluster is a great idea and very timely, however, coming up with that sum of money based on local experiences in the past two year will take some significant assistance and government incentives to achieve. Therefore there will be some latency in getting the clean tech sector up and running because it is hardware based and will require plenty of cash for the new companies to develop prototypes.
There is also an interesting post “By the Numbers” on Guy Kawasaki’s blog about how he started up a new Web 2.0 company called Truemors on about $12k.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/by_the_numbers_.html – By the numbers link
Taking a step back and looking at the skill sets and resources available in our great city of Ottawa it seems that open source specifically and software in general may be the low hanging fruit when it comes to starting a cluster and effective economic development. Just think of how many open source start-ups you could create and grow with a minimal amount of cash. Also consider that Ottawa has an excellent source of software engineering programs at our local Universities and College and a new and dynamic Ottawa Software Cluster.
Perhaps the open source cluster could be associated with the Software cluster. In terms of fit, capabilities and value per dollar an open source cluster makes a whole lot of sense.
Cheers,
Ian.thecodefactory@gmail.com
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The Ottawa tech sector has a number of cluster initiatives and the cluster program that seems to be working quite well in Ottawa. Kudos to OCRI for supporting the clusters. Little known to many people in the Ottawa Tech community there is a burgeoning new centre of excellence and potential new cluster already in process. This centre of excellence is already starting to demonstrate its value.
What is this Centre of Excellence you speak of?
Why the TIM program at Carleton University have applied the focus of their program on Open Source software development. The program is still defining itself; however, they are off to a great start and have already created the OttawaTechWiki to support the technology sector in Ottawa, and there are a number of other projects. When you consider that the Eclipse Foundation is a world leading open source company and that Mike Milinkovich Executive Director is a former alumni you have the makings of a potenitally highly successful cluster. Add to this Community Camp where the winning project submission will be developed by the team at Carleton and you have an innovative group focused on building open source success stories.
The seeds for the open source cluster have been planted.
Cheers,
ian.thecodefactory@gmail.com
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If you have a minute and think space in ”The Code Factory”sounds interesting please take our online survey.
The Code Factory Survey
Thank you for your support.
Cheers,
Ian Graham
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I came up with this analogy as a way to show the entrepreneurial evolution when Peter and I would present to various stakeholders around Ottawa. I believe that this is an important element in setting the context for my next couple of posts. If you understand the Hockey analogy then understanding why it is so important to have a vibrant start-up community to support the other tiers of knowledge based businesses.For those in other parts of the world please feel free to substitute the sport of your choice for hockey; US-Baseball, UK-Football (the real kind of football), India-Cricket, Australia-Football (the Australian kind) or whatever your national sport may be. The sport is actually less important than the concept. Being a good Canadian I have wanted to use hockey.
You can think of the hierarchy for a sport like a pyramid. There are very few exceptionally great teams of the highest calibre at the top of the pyramid; these teams are the equivalent of large multinational companies. For Hockey this elite level is the NHL and there are 32 teams in the NHL. The next level of excellence is somewhat broader and the equivalent of the OHL (Ontario Hockey League), Western Hockey League, Quebec Junior Hockey league and the like, these teams are like the Cognos and Corel of the world. These leagues are a feeder for the NHL made up of very talented highly competitive teams of the highest calibre and there are likely a couple of hundred of these types of teams. The OHL level feeds the NHL and the OHL is feed by competitive level. The competitive level is much broader than the OHL and only the best players from competitive advance to the OHL level, competitive teams are roughly the equivalent of you $10M to $50M company. At the base of the pyramid is house league. In house league those who can afford equipment and fees get to play. Only those that do well in house league move onto competitive, some don’t make it some do, that is the law of the jungle. With the proper coaching, equipment and practice many can make it. These are companies with <$10M in revenue. It is the nimbleness and the agility of the start-up companies that create innovative products and approaches to doing business.
In my opinion Ottawa stopped supporting house league a few years ago and the result is there are very few companies working their way up the pyramid.
This is why I believe that for a long-term solution private support and government policy need to be directed at the foundation cohort (or base of the pyramid). Help the companies get started and let Darwin deal with which ones evolve better, stronger and faster. Supporting the foundation cohort is planting seeds for future prosperity.
Radiant Ventures has a solution to build the foundation cohort and foster growth at the grass roots level.
Cheers,
Ian Graham
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What do you get when you cross the Industrial Revolution, with Knowledge Based Start-ups?
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Why … “The Code Factory” of course.
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Word of “The Code Factory” hit the airwaves in Ottawa tonight at DemoCamp4 and the announcement seemed to be of resonate many of those in attendance. In fact it even dwarfed the hockey game announcements, quite a feat for a hockey-obsessed town. Actually there were no hockey announcements but hey it sounded good.
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The Code Factory is co-working space for entrepreneurs and start-ups at reasonable rates. The code factory is much more than just space; it’s community, it’s culture and a facility focused on development; personal and product.
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The factory is the result of more than a year of research by co-founders Peter Childs and Ian Graham. The concept of the co-working space was started with a handshake in Starbucks at Pinecrest. The co-founders wanted to capture the essence of the coffee shop meeting, add generous portions of DemoCamp and mix in a physical location until you have entrepreneurs and start-ups with ideas entering at one end and team based knowledge businesses exiting at the other end.
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Careful consideration has gone into how to peacefully co-exist and compliment the existing Ottawa eco-system. We have a list of over 70 stakeholder and contact information for the Ottawa area. Over the past year we have talked at some length with most of these people. Our intention is to build on the talents and resources that are already in place.
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In fact Tony Bailetti, Director of the Technology Information Management at Carleton University, is our Technology advisor. Michael Dunleavy from Lebarge Weinstein is our Legal Advisor and before the end of next week we expect to have our business and two investment advisors in place. All of the advisory board are respected senior members of the Ottawa technology community and a great resource for us to draw on.
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This will be a P2 project (Private Funding) and we are in talks with a number of groups that have expressed interest in helping support this project. We expect to be ready for prime time and live in June of 2007.
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More to follow in the coming weeks. Peter and I are off to Toronto on Wednesday and Montreal the week after. This promises to be an exciting ride with the goal of helping the Ottawa Start-up community.
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Cheers,
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Ian Graham
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