One aspect of the development of TheCodeFactory I am particularly pleased with is the number and quantity of great people I continue to meet. There any number of people to thank but two in particular that I wanted to highlight; Chris the Team Camp guy and Allan Isfan Start-up club guy. Just like the secret to successful online sales there is a secret to developing great home grown or organic content.

Here is the magic formula for facilitating great organic or home grown content:

1) Listen
2) Take Action (lets do it)
3) Have fun

Chris had approached me back in November I think, anyway just before DemoCampOttawa11 at the Velvet Room with his idea for team camp. I listened and thought this is an awesome idea, let’s make it happen. In about 30 minutes we hashed out a plan to announce at DemoCamp and have our first meeting the week after. Our February 5th meeting will be the ninth TeamCamp. We have had our first company spin out of the group, will probably have the second by the end of February and our membership continues to grow.

Allan called me about 6 or 8 weeks ago with his idea for start-up club an open and inclusive sort of peer to peer group for early stage start-ups. Listened to his vision, thought wow this is a great idea lets make it happen. Within about two weeks we had our first meeting and co-incidentally at noon on February 5th we will be having our second meeting.  Our membership on linkedin is now at 26 and there is some good online discussion.

I had three calls yesterday from start-up entrepreneurs with ideas at various stages of fruition. One will make a very cool event possibly a series of events, the other is HUGE and I am totally jazzed about it but not at liberty to disclose any details yet and finally some great potential synergies with the third contact. Expect some announcements in the coming weeks.

If you have an idea regarding anything start-up related please feel free to get in touch. Always happy to have a coffee (gives me an excuse for another cup) and discuss how to “Gitter Done”.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Ottawa, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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What are the corner stones of culture? In my opinion the foundations of culture are set upon the four corner stones of:
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Mission,
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Vision,
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Values,

Principles.
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Mission (Who and What) is the companies’ long term purpose. Here is a very clear and concise definition from “Strategic Analysis and Action” (notice the word ACTION) “A firms mission communicates its basic identity and purpose.” Sounds basic enough and really it should be, however, drafting a clear and concise mission statement is probably one of the most challenging tasks to get right. In order to get where you are going you have to have a solid understanding of who you are and what you do. More on this in a future post.
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Vision (Where) is your long term goals and objectives. Here is the definition of vision; “An effective vision describes a possible dream – a dream that will hopefully marshal the energy, confidence, and efforts of all the people in the organization.” Vision is essentially where you want to be in 3 or 5 or 10 years. More on this in a future post.
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Values (How) are how you conduct business along your way to achieving the dream, essentially the company norms. “A corporate vision statement presents the basic beliefs that govern individual and group behaviour in an organization. Vision is where you want to get to.
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Principles (When) are the corporate compass. They are steadfast and remain constant over the life of the organization. When in doubt refer to the compass for decision making guidance. Principles remain constant through out the life of an organization, unlike mission and vision which may adapt to circumstance and changes in direction. More on this in a future post.
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This will be a series of 6 posts with today’s overview of the cornerstones of culture as the first post.
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Ian Graham

Filed under: Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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What do you get when you cross a lack of funding with a desire to create some great web aps?

Guerrilla Innovation of course.

Guerrilla’s the world over, the revolutionary kind rather than the mammal; tend to be lean, hungry and innovative. Not because they are smarter than the average bear, but because they have no choice. The scarcity of certain resources like food or funding causes them to look elsewhere for ideas. They find low cost innovative ways of doing things because they want too, but because they have to and survival depends on it. Perhaps in part economic circumstance in part necessity will in fact spur the proliferation of an already strong open source software community or rather communities or tribes built around different open source ideologies; Ruby, Django, Java, heck even Microsoft is moving in the open source direction.

Canada is experiencing a surge in open source software guerrilla innovation. The tools to develop the software are free and readily available. There is an abundance of talent and resources in town to leverage and with the downturn it is a time to think about starting your own web ap using the simple three step; Great Ap, Price, Profit formula for success. Software start-ups are being forced to become successful in their own right and personally I think that may in fact be a good thing creating stronger businesses with real customers. The year 2000 may have brought on the bubble babies but 2009 will bread a tough and sinewy “burst” baby forced to fight for survival from day one. Perhaps survival of the fittest will end up producing some solid long term prospects for our little start-ups of the burst. Each cloud has its silver lining.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, Open Source, Ottawa, Start-up by Ian
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Congratualtions to Marwan and the team at ebillme.com Check out the video here.

Filed under: Ottawa, Start-up by Ian
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I have been pondering the effect of social media on small business for some time. For example how valuable is twitter to the local pizza guy or the Green Papaya on Queen Street or the Starbucks or Bridgehead on Bank Street in Ottawa? Will twitter affect the top and or bottom line of the average small business owner?

I don’t think so.

I understand the value of communication and connectedness and business relationships but how do you translate that into tangible business results?

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Ottawa, The Code Factory by Ian
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I am very encouraged by what I have seen this week. A number of people thinking about starting a software company have dropped by TheCodeFactory to exchange ideas. What I particularly like is that instead of doing a bunch of coding first people are actually thinking about who their customer will be and then going out to talk with them.

The lesson here is find the problem you are trying to solve before developing a solution.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Ottawa, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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I have heard entrepreneurship referred to by many great people as a bungee jump (Misha Nosik), a roller coaster (Ben Casnocha) or just a series of highs followed by gut wrenching lows from a great many other entrepreneurs. The key bit that gets the entrepreneur out of the trough of the deepest rut is the “F… That” moment.

The “F… That” moment is when the resilient entrepreneur reflects on whatever set back has gotten them down, picks themselves up by their boot straps and says “F… That” I am going to keep pluggin away at it. In fact the “F… That” moment is when the best entrepreneurs actually become more resolved than ever to gitter done. When the going gets tough an “F… That” moment gets the entrepreneur going harder.

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” Friedrich Nietzsche

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Ottawa, The Code Factory by Ian
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It was not long ago that you were only somebody as a start-up if you could chat about how much money you had raised, at least according to our speaker last week. Forget about how much sales or customers you had the hip metric was money raised. Times change and many of the hipsters are now history, however, the uncool bootstrappers continue to do what they do, get customers and grow organically. Successful bootstrappers are becoming the rockstars of the recession.

We had just such a bootstrapping rockstar speak at The Ottawa Network “3 x 10 Boot Strapping for Success” event. Tim Upton of Titus Labs was interesting, engaging and insightful. I had a chance to chat with Tim before the event and asked him what his most important lesson learned in his bootstrapping experience. I think it is important to put things in to perspective as well.

Titus Labs started out as an IT or Software consulting business which Tim founded. The first product originated by solving a problem for one of their consulting customers. This was turned into a product which they decided to put on the internet or hang it out there as Tim said and guess what; customers started to come to them. Their first win was the Australian equivalent of Canada’s RCMP, shortly afterwards a major financial institution came on board and then it was full steam ahead. The company continued to grow organically and they have never accepted any external money, bank, VC or whatever. For the past 4 years their revenue has grown by at least 100% per year and staff has doubled each year.

Back to the original question of that important lesson learned. THE #1 lesson is get customers; they are a great source of revenue says Tim with a gleam in his eye. Titus Labs has always focused on the customer by building what they want and Titus can sell. That is the most important lesson.

Second, first most important lesson; Google is your friend. Titus first two customers were both won through Google searches.

Finally an interesting insight that I really liked being organic keeps you in check and when your resources are limited you need to be constantly re-evaluating and applying due diligence to every decision, basically the leanness of the model forces you into this state.

I also wanted to take a minute to express my sincere gratitude to Bob from IRAP for introducing me to Tim and helping get the event going. Here is Bob’s presentation on IRAP a most excellent and valuable resource for any would be bootstrapper to leverage.

Thank you Bob and Tim.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, Ottawa, Start-up by Ian
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I think that how you act and behave says a whole lot about your character and the sort of culture any organization you are affiliated with will have. If you are honest, genuine and sincere in your dealings with people and other organizations then you will earn their trust and respect. If you are all “cloak and daggers” then people that you deal with will learn what they can expect is a polite smile followed by a knife in the back.

Coworking and open source are movements built on the principles of collaboration and cooperation. Any organization that begins its journey in a deceptive and adversarial manner certainly runs counter to these founding principles.

TheCodeFactory adheres to the open source principles of; open, transparent and meritous.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Camp Culture, Entrepreneurship, Open Source, Ottawa, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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Check this out: Loyalty Match on FOX 

Very Cool, congrats Mike.

Filed under: Ottawa, Start-up by Ian
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