DemoCamp Toronto Showcases Great Canadian Startups

This is a guest post by Alex Bucataru, from ALRUX

The 29th edition of DemoCamp Toronto last night was an uplifting display of Canadian innovation and entrepreneurship. David Crow and StartupNorth put together a first class event, in front of a capacity-filled Auditorium at Ryerson University, Ted Rogers School of Management.

To kick off the evening, Howard Lindzon took the stage and fired up the audience with a fun and engaging keynote that provided many serious tips and ideas for founders. It is impossible to do it justice in a quick recap, so these are just my main takeaways:

DemoCampHamilton2: Another Success

This is a guest post by Jim Rudnick, from www.canuckseo.com

Last Friday, May 27th, saw the second ever DemoCampHamilton2 held up at Mohawk College and it was another great success for one and all!

First, big kudos once again to Kevin Browne, founder of softwarehamilton.com community and DemoCampHamilton founder and driver of this type of community grassroots mission to get our city up and running when it comes to moving our town into the knowledge world! So thanks Kevin!

More help for innovative Canadian entrepreneurs

During the past couple of years, I have noticed a shift in many entrepreneurs, from a "me-too" mentality to a "dare-to-be-different" one. Innovation seems to be the new cool today, and it is fostered by a growing interest from government and Universities, in research, new technology and new sciences.

In order to support this movement, more innovation centres are popping up Canada-wide, with the mandate to assist entrepreneurs find financial resources to bring their ideas to life. Most of these centres offer an office space and a hub of governmental advisors, mentors, angel investors and VCs.

It's great to see so much interest in innovation, and while there is no doubt that investing in research, technology and new sciences are important for Canada, I think, more needs to be done to cover startups in all fields, regardless of province or age of their owners.

However, no matter your industry, these centres provide excellent knowledge through free seminars and programs that can help you create a successful business.

To help you locate a centre near you, I started a map with the ones I knew of. Do you know other centres that are not there? Let me know and I'll add them on the map.

View Helpful places for canadian innovative entrepreneurs in a larger map

TeamBiz Updates

A while ago, we announced new personal and company profiles coming up at TeamBiz. What happened to them, some of you may have asked? Wanting to give our members even better value, we rolled them directly into the new platform that we plan to launch this summer.

So how will the new TeamBiz be like? Well, the way a social network for entrepreneurs should be! Filled with relevant people and information, business opportunities and time-saving networking and collaboration tools. In short, a great community of entrepreneurs where you can feel at ease and grow your business faster.

If you are not a TeamBiz member yet, go to www.TeamBiz.net and let us know that you would like to be notified when we launch, or keep an eye on the TeamBiz status blog where we post information on our progress.

Meanwhile, we have more exciting news!

In partnership with the local Small Business Enterprise Centre, who has been a great TeamBiz supporter from our beginning, we are organizing our first social event of the TeamBiz Hamilton Community.

So, if you are in driving range, we invite you to join us on May 25 for a warm evening filled with great friends and plenty of networking!

We also have 6 spaces available for entrepreneurs who want to promote their business more actively, so make sure you book your spot now.

Here are the event details and how to register..

 

We are making plans to expand our events to other communities, so stay tuned for more details.

Tips From the Pros: What to Do When You-Know-What Hits the Fan

As an entrepreneur, it's guaranteed that there will be times when you walk into your office to start your usual work day, and suddenly everything changes. You are in the midst of a big crisis. Your biggest client cancelled their orders, you have to pay your creditors by the end of the week, and you discover that one of your partners is making arrangements to take over the company behind your back.

As your company grows, there will be many times when you face potentially disastrous situations like this, and how you respond to them usually makes the difference between failure and the survival of your business.

This was the theme of a very informative and entertaining seminar at VentureLAB, yesterday - "What to do When the 'Bleep' Hits the Fan: Defeating Business Ruin" where several entrepreneurs and professionals shared their stories and gave practical advice on how to recover from your worst business nightmares.

3 Innovative Ways to Generate Buzz About Your Business

Entrepreneurs are always looking for new ways to spread the word about their business and using PR is a great way to reach potential customers fast. Besides the more traditional methods (like getting coverage in your local newspaper, for example), usage of on-line marketing and social media are gaining momentum, especially for those who are serving wider geographic areas.

Here are three innovative ways to generate on-line buzz about your business, for free, or low cost:

1. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) is a free PR service that brings nearly 30,000 reporters, journalists and bloggers, over 100,000 news sources and thousands of small businesses together to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services. Starting from the idea that "Everyone is an expert at something", the service wants to make that expertise available to journalists and reporters who need ideas to write their stories.

Online Tax Resources for Canadian Small Businesses

Let's face it: managing projects, getting new clients or working on that new big idea take up most of our time, and filing taxes (rarely an exciting activity) gets almost always pushed to the bottom of our to-do list. I, for one, don't look forward to sifting through my shoebox once a month, checking if I didn't miss anything before handing it over to my bookkeeper.

As taxes are part of your obligations, understanding what is involved will save your business money. A recent article in Moneyville (a publication of TheStar.com) talks about 7 tax mistakes people do with their taxes, and among them, claiming out of the ordinary expenses and categorizing a hobby as a business can trigger red flags for the CRA. Canadian Bookkeepers Association also talks about costly mistakes small businesses make - and two of the most common are: not saving receipts less than $50 and miscategorizing expenses.