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All About #StartupFest

thoora — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:23:58 +0000

Last week, Thoora hit up La Belle Province of Quebec to take in the International Startup Festival. The attendees were a superb mix of old school and new school entrepreneurs, and sessions were programmed à la speed dating. This made time for lots of ‘Off-Festival Events’ and optimal networking time in sunny Montreal.

The Thoora team in attendance give us their top takeaways from #Startupfest.

Carrie Shaw, Head of Product

▸ The vibe. Montreal has always been hopping. Now it’s hopping and full of smart, enthusiastic startup-ers who are trying to change the world, and many were in attendance. The conference reflected that vibe in a festive and casual way. I loved meeting talented, young entrepreneurs and listening to their ideas and philosophies. Plus, as a Montreal native myself, I was totally impressed with the trifecta of true Montreal delicacies: Schwartz’s, St. Viateur Bagel, and Felix & Norton. Yum.

▸ Paul Kedrosky‘s talk – slide-free and slyly humorous – was one of the best, IMO. He doled out a lot of practical advice through some good story telling that we’ll need to keep in mind as we move forward with the financing side of this business. To wit: VC’s are stocking their shelves, and we startups are the cans. So go be cans.

▸ Chris Shipley as the parental voice of reason in a room of excited teenagers just waiting to get behind the wheel of the car for the first time. Maybe one – but most likely none – of us will have the success of a Zuckerberg or a Jobs, who had luck and timing on their sides in addition to genius. So focus on building value into the business, and whether this is a boom, a bubble, a froth, or a burst, we’ll still have a business worth running. All stuff we knew, but inside of this echo chamber filled with app fatigue and competition for users, always a good reminder.

Sean Evans, COO

▸ As with any conference, don’t be shy. Some of the best insights gained at the event were from conversations outside of the formal presentations, including @danmartell (co-founder of Flowtown and founder of Maple Butter), @tabilloinc, @tradyo and @TopHatMonocle.

▸ From @randysmerik, 90% of exits are buy-outs, M&A or acqui-hires. The bulk of these are done for under $20 million. If he’s right that this trend will continue, best to start thinking early about how much money you’ll need to get your business scaled and a decent return for your investors (and yourself).

▸ Get a good lawyer! And get them involved early. Ashraf Hebela from @SVB_Financial and Mark White from @WhiteandLee are wise men; a little up front pain may be worth the sanctity (and sanity) of your team.

▸ Paul Palmieri from Millenial Media doled out sound advice on how to maximize the value a startup can get from its advisors. @readwriteweb’s article is worth the read.

Any other attendees care to add to our list? Any mind blowing moments or major learnings to share? Let us know in the comments below, on Get Satisfaction, Facebook and Twitter.

And if you haven’t given Thoora a try, sign up today to get in on the action.

Our demo at DEMO

thoora — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:12:42 +0000

We’re back from the DEMO conference in beautiful Palm Desert, California (what a relief – albeit temporary – from this horrible winter) where we re-launched Thoora into private beta amid much fanfare. You can watch our six minute pitch below (grab some popcorn; it’s a nail biter!)

The conference was a terrific event for us; we got lots of good feedback and made lots of new friends. We now have our heads down working furiously to get the beta out to you all. Stay tuned! (And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@thoora) and Facebook).

- the Thoora team

Thoora’s Re-Launching!

thoora — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:15:04 +0000

Dear current Thoora users,

We’d like to start by thanking you for your loyalty over the last two years. We love that you love us and hope to continue to provide you with the best, most interesting content on the web.

Having exhausted the possibilities of being a news aggregator in today’s online environment, we are excited to be re-launching Thoora as a new way for anyone to quickly curate and share beautiful, discoverable, and self-updating content. To that end, we’re replacing the current Thoora with a private beta of our new product.

We guarantee that all existing registered users of Thoora will be granted priority access to the new beta, provided you register for the beta with the same email address you used for your Thoora account. Initially, the beta will be available on any 7” or greater tablet device. We expect to roll it out to the web shortly.

You can sign up here. And you can provide feedback here.

Again, thanks for your loyalty and we hope you’ll be as excited about the new Thoora as we are.

- the Thoora team.