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:

• “The trend is your friend” not only for investing, but also for identifying startup opportunities. Once you found a strong trend that you think is sustainable, jump on it and find ways to leverage it.
• How do you spot trends? Pick up a newspaper once a week, or even once a month, and see what stocks are at all-time highs. Over a six months time-frame you will be able to see the trends.
• Have a flat-world view. Start in a corner, secure it, then expand. If you start in the centre of the map, you will have too many borders to defend, which will wear you down and will wipe you out.
• Angels invest mostly in the entrepreneur, based on domain expertise, clarity of purpose and passion. It is more about momentum and sentiment, than crunching numbers and spreadsheets.
• Raising angel money is very much like stand-up performance: find a strong trend to ride, have a sharp attack angle, tell your story persuasively, and enjoy poking fun at yourself.

The demo part of DemoCamp featured six startups from Toronto, Montreal and Halifax:

500px provides professional photo galleries for art photographers, in a community environment that helps promote the best works and makes it easy for artists to showcase and sell their creations.

TitanFile makes sending files simple, secure and trackable; it helps lawyers, accountants and corporations securely transfer confidential files with proof of delivery, without requiring the recipient to create an account.

High Score House turns household chores into an engaging game for kids; parents decide the reward for each task and can award bonus points for special achievements, and kids can exchange their “earnings” for treats such as TV time or a new toy.

Vizualize.me creates a powerful visual representation of your LinkedIn resume; the winners of StartUp Weekend Toronto plan to extend their technology to other types of data, and become a leading application in personal branding.

We Are TO Tech is a community service that will profile Toronto's developers and founders; they are looking for local tech heroes and they set up a form where you can apply to have your story told .

AlphaSlides allows a slide-show presentation to be shared on multiple devices, so that it can be viewed in-sync by all attendees at a meeting or conference, and everyone can take a copy with them.

 

The audience favourite was High Score House, with a very well-rounded product and an amazing user interface. Check them all out and let us know which ones you like most and why.