A Personal Blog
Archive for November, 2006
Markham Space Race
Nov 24th
I had the pleasure of being on a panel last night at the awards dinner for the Markham Space Race. While the panel was great (more on that later), the real treat was the concept of the event itelf.
Basically, Colliers (business real estate leasing) decided to run a contest where the best seed startup idea would win free office space for a year in Markham (30 minutes north of Toronto, though still part of the Greater Toronto Area).
Then other businesses jumped in, multiple prizes were created and apparently more than 100 companies from all over the GTA entered. Third place prize included more than 15K in stuff from free legal advice to servers to research to insurance. Second prize was similar, but worth about 25K. First prize included all of that, office space for a year at a premium location worth about 60K/year, free office furniture, computers, installation, phone system, etc.
Essentially, one young company would win a totally kitted out professional office to help them ramp up really quickly.
The panel was done before the final awards, and consisted of 3 folk. A local real estate software guy, a Chinese gentleman who moved here in the 70s and has done rather well for himself (Harvard grad) and me. The real estate guy actually prepped his answers to the questions (we got them ahead of time), and the Harvard guy was fantastic.
I was “the blogger”. Which was fun because I decided early on to freeform it, try and get some discussion happening, to grab a few laughs and to try and share a bit of what I’ve learned in running a few companies. Not that I’ve “arrived”, but b5 is a few steps ahead of the companies at the dinner – so if I could help them at all, it made sense to do so.
The panel got a fantastic reception, and the mix of personalities was about the best I’ve ever seen. Really, really great.
The 3 finalists were Valtx (secure chips for embedded devices), Flatline (smart meter reading and data aggregation using P2P-style data collection) and Rescue7 (medical technology and services firm).
Our table picked Flatline to win, based on innovation of product, ability to hit the market and growth potential for the market (4.3M to 100M smart meters in 5 years). And Flatline won, very deservedly.
Congrats to the whole Flatline team! And thanks to all involved for inviting me. It was fun, inspirational and educational :)
JavaScript Guru Wanted
Nov 17th
b5 is looking for a JavaScript guru to help us debug some issues. If you’re interested (and do, in fact, qualify as someone who knows his JS (and AJAX)) drop me an email: jeremy@b5media.com.
Not Replying to Emails
Nov 15th
Just a note that I had 2 people tonight tell me I hadn’t responded to emails. Generally, I respond to all emails in about 48 hours. Sometimes longer, but as a general rule if I haven’t responded in 48 hours, ping me.
That said, this next week will be different. Over the next week, a chunk of the b5 team is locked down in strategy and operations sessions. I’ll only be catching up on email in the evening and mornings. So in all likelihood I won’t be actually *responding* to much email during this period.
It sucks, but yeah.
Google Maps View of Our New House
Nov 4th
Some folk have asked where specifically at “Yonge & Eglinton” we’re living. I’ll have pictures once we move in. But, here is an aerial view of where we are going to live.
It Take A Great Team
Nov 4th
It really does take a great team to build a great company, and b5 has one of the best teams anyone could ask for. Great founding team, amazing CE’s and fantastic bloggers. Every person in the company continues to astound me with their passion and dedication to making b5 all it can be.
This week, though, one team in particular has done an absolutely amazing job. The Tech team, led by Aaron Brazell has tackled massive obstacles this week and come out largely on top.
3 weeks ago, the team was given 2 large projects, both with a deadline of this weekend: buy, setup and move to a new server cluster and design a new b5media homepage.
I’m very, very proud to see that both projects were completed on time and exceeded my expectations. A huge, huge thank you to Aaron, Sean, Ben, Jonic, Brian and Mark for making these projects happen. Either of these projects would have stressed even the best team, and you guys pulled off both ahead of schedule.
Thank you!
Aaron has some more info on the new site as well as the new servers at his blog.
If you’ve ever had pressures based on tight deadlines, head over to his blog and congratulate him and the whole team. Ditto for Ben, who led the design work on the new site, thanks Ben!
