Startup Talk The Canadian Startup Podcast

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Are We at Peak AI Is the AI Bubble Ready to Burst? Insights from Industry Experts on the latest episode of Startup Talk.

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Discover the pivotal role universities should play in nurturing entrepreneurial talent and supporting students' interest in startups.

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Tech Layoffs: Boon or Bane for Startups? Exploring the Impact on The Startup Talk Podcast

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Discover the Top AI Tools for Productivity revolutionizing productivity in 2024! We delve into the Top AI Tools for Productivity

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Is the Government Doing Enough to Support Startups? Industry experts Alex, Thyagi, and Jon share their insights regarding government programs

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Disconnecting to Connect in 2024 with guest Jon Irwin, Thyagi DeLanerolle, and Alex Kapelos-Peters, and the Startup Coach, on Startup Talk

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Discussion of raising VC funds in 2024 with guest Jon Irwin and Alexandra (Alex) Kapelos-Peters, and the Startup Coach.

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Talking access to resources and capital for Canadian startups and small businesses with Loop cofounder Cato Pastoll. Explore Loop’s startup story and how they have helped with over $100 million in capital for businesses.

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In this episode of Startup Talk, we delve into the world of AI-powered content creation with Max Sinclair, the co-founder and CEO of Ecomtent.ai. Drawing from his extensive background at Amazon, Max shares how he and his co-founder were inspired to revolutionize e-commerce by harnessing the potential of AI-generated content. Max’s journey unfolds as he … Continue reading AI-Powered Product Image Magic: How Max Sinclair’s Ecomtent is changing photoshoots and the E-commerce Landscape →

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In this captivating episode of Startup Talk, we delve into the world of startups and venture building with Bernie Li, general partner of Antler Canada. Join our host as he sits down with Bernie to uncover the secrets behind the Antler program’s success in nurturing aspiring entrepreneurs. Discover the essentials of identifying the right time … Continue reading From MVP to Venture: Navigating the Startup Journey with Antler Canada →

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Join us on this exciting episode of Startup Talk as we delve into the world of innovative job applications with the co-founders of CoverQuick, Divine and Tosin. Discover how two ambitious entrepreneurs transitioned from a sock-selling venture to revolutionizing job hunting through the power of AI. With personal insights, engaging anecdotes, and a passion for … Continue reading Cracking the Job Market Code: How CoverQuick’s AI Lands Dream Jobs Faster →

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In this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast, the Startup Coach sits down with Neil Weitzman, an entrepreneur who is passionate about helping immigrant entrepreneurs succeed in Canada. Neil is the CEO and Co-Founder of PORCH, an exclusive community for immigrant entrepreneurs and professionals, and the Founder of revenue•x, a Fractional CRO service that helps CEOs build and execute a robust Go-to-Market strategy for revenue acceleration.

Neil’s passion for helping immigrant entrepreneurs succeed in Canada is evident in both his work with PORCH and revenue•x. Through PORCH, Neil is building a community that provides valuable resources and connections to entrepreneurs who might otherwise struggle to get their businesses off the ground. And through revenue•x, he is helping CEOs build and execute effective Go-to-Market strategies that drive revenue growth. We hope that this interview will inspire our listeners and provided them with some valuable insights and advice for their own entrepreneurial journeys.

Links:

PORCH Community on LinkedIn
PORCH Community URL
PORCH on Instagram
PORCH on YouTube
PORCH on TikTok
PORCH on Facebook
Neil Weitzman on LinkedIn

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Unleashing the Power of AI in Cannabis Cultivation with GrowDoc. In this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast we’re speaking with Daniel Lirette, founder and CEO of GrowDoc, a cannabis tech startup that uses artificial intelligence to revolutionize the way commercial cannabis growers approach cultivation problems. In this interview, Daniel shares his insights on the cannabis industry, the challenges he’s faced as an entrepreneur, and the future of GrowDoc.

Key Takeaways:

GrowDocAI is a powerful platform that offers real-time data and insights into plant health, growth patterns, and potential issues.
With access to the latest and most accurate information available, growers can make informed decisions and maximize their success.
GrowDocAI is a valuable tool for commercial cannabis growers of all sizes who are looking to achieve their cultivation goals, eliminate diagnosing guesswork and maximize their success.
GrowDoc is a cannabis problem identification app that uses artificial intelligence to identify plant diseases, pests, and nutrient deficiencies.
GrowDoc is backed by scientific research and partnerships with top cannabis research institutions.
The cannabis industry is constantly evolving, and GrowDoc is at the forefront of innovation with its machine learning AI technology.
GrowDocAI ensures user privacy and security of their data.
Aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start a business in the cannabis industry should focus on education and awareness, as well as staying ahead of the competition through innovation.

Links:

GrowDoc Website
GrowDoc on Twitter
GrowDoc on Instagram
GrowDoc on YouTube
GrowDoc on LinkedIn
GrowDoc on Facebook
GrowDoc on Reddit

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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In this interview, Nabil Tayeb, the co-founder of Draft and Goal, shares his thoughts on the topic of AI-generated content and its impact on human creativity. He believes that AI-generated content does not replace human creativity, but instead enhances it by augmenting the possibilities of the human brain. Tayeb also emphasizes that AI models are limited as they have been trained on internet data, which is not a copy one-to-one of the real world, and they have a bias that does not represent the real world. Therefore, humans still have a huge playing field to be creative because the AI will help them enhance their creativity, but will not replace them.

Regarding the future of content creation, Tayeb sees a shift from focusing on writing the content to focusing on the abstract ideas of the concepts. He also predicts that copywriters will not be eliminated, but rather become chief editors, spending less time writing and more time working on the ideas and correcting what AI generates.

Finally, when asked about the fear around AI, Tayeb believes that unrealistic expectations about what AI can do right now have led to fear. He believes that the fear is not justified and that humans have control over AI and its development.

Links:

Draft and Goal Website
Draft and Goal on Twitter
Draft and Goal SEO Group on Facebook
Next AI

Quotes

“The biggest obstacle to success is fear of failure. If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.” – Nabil Tayeb

“Diversity and inclusion are not just buzzwords or nice-to-haves. They are critical to the success and sustainability of any organization. Without diversity, you lack the creativity, innovation, and perspective necessary to stay ahead in today’s fast-changing world.” – Nabil Tayeb

“I believe that AI is going to change everything that we do. Every industry will be transformed, and I think we are only at the beginning of that transformation.” – Nabil Tayeb.

“I really think that finding new ideas, finding new opportunities, there’s a huge field that’s seen only possible to be done by human brain.” – Nabil Tayeb.

“What we say from our side is that all copywriters they are not going to be eliminated, they are going to become chief editors.” – Nabil Tayeb.

Join us monthly for Startup Investor Drinks

TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community

Angel Investor List

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TorontoStarts YouTube Channel

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Automated Transcript of Revolutionizing Content Creation: An AI-Powered Workflow with Draft and GoalSUMMARY KEYWORDS

ai, content, human, working, startup, ideas, tool, generate, model, people, find, large, company, part, entrepreneur, goal, seo, draft, gpt, toronto

SPEAKERS

The Startup Coach, Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal, Announcer

Announcer

Direct from the six world renowned Canada’s largest city, with Canada’s biggest thinkers, visionaries and hustlers. This is startup talk featuring the founders, funders, innovators and community leaders who’ve led Canada’s startup ecosystem right here in Toronto. You’ll hear the challenges, the failures, the successes, Toronto StartUp podcast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who’ve made a difference. Now, the host of startup talk, the founder of TorontoStarts this startup coach.

The Startup Coach

Welcome back to startup talk. I’m your host, startup coach, founder of TorontoStarts. It’s one of the largest startup communities in Canada. And with me today is Nabil tyabb, co founder of Draft and Goal. Welcome to Nabil.

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Thank you for having us here today.

The Startup Coach

Can you tell us about your background and how you became an entrepreneur?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

It’s funny because I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. But I guess like I had that impostor syndrome for syndrome for for a while back in 2013. I did an MBA here in Montreal, I should say, Montreal, and I think it was the tipping point where I was just like, okay, you know, you are as valid as anyone to be an entrepreneur. And I think it’s always the first step to validate yourself as an entrepreneur, and 2013. I started entered 14 started to enter the startup community and worked on on several projects, started my own business, basically working on different things, and mixing different ideas. We ended up, we ended up like building draft and goal.

The Startup Coach

How does Draft and Goal differ from other AI content creation tools? Yeah,

that’s a very good question. Actually, like all the tools that were on the market, I we call them like the first wave of generative AI, where all the Jasper copy AI copies missing. And so on. These tools were most of the time API’s are in user interface based on on an API that was making calls directly to, to open API’s API, like that was the only one available like since 2020. And they are focusing mainly on the writing part of the content, we want to write some content we go, we use the tool that we have a person in front of the computer that will decide what they want to write and so on. Drafting goal is different because we are a workflow. So we cover the whole content creation process, not only the writing aspect, but we start from analyzing the data from the website of the of the user. And based on that we will close the rise and find new ideas that that are related to the to the main topic of the of the website, we will expand those ideas to find untapped ideas, opportunities. And then from that, we will generate the content. So the content generation is only one link of a whole chain. And this is what we want to do and is actually what we’ve we’ve achieved is to go to take the user not only from, oh, I want to write something, we are going to write it for you. But we do all the analysis in the ideation part. What our tool allows, is really to create content that really align with your editorial line at scale. And this is a huge difference between us and the most well known tools that are on the market right now that are the first wave of of AI tools.

The Startup Coach

Can you walk us through the multimodal approach that draft and goal uses?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Yeah, and this is, this is very interesting. And we can see that, for example, Jasper has already not parted ways with with open AI, but they are also like trying to look at different models. But what we found like working a lot on different models is that some models perform better on different aspects like creating a listing or creating blog posts, and different different aspects of the the contract workflow. The decision that we took very early on is not to stick with one model, but to see what model is the best for a specific task or customization for ideation and so on. And this has allowed us to create like a workflow that’s really good at every single step. And the last part is that we’ve unlocked one of our main feature that we’re working on right now is to be able to have an AI A large language model trained on your very own data. This makes it very relevant for large company. We can see, for example, in Italy now, and in Europe, there’s a huge backlash about like compliance about that safety in that manipulation. Most of the large companies in the next two, three years will need to have their own AI on premise train on their own data. And this is one of the aspects that we’ve added to our model is to help companies also to be able to have their own AI model in house.

The Startup Coach

How does draft and goal ensure the quality of the content generated by your AI model?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

This is a step that we’ve worked on actually, we, my co founder and myself, we come from the SEO industry, we know that search engine at large will want to understand how the content has been generated. And also what we’ve seen is that everybody can see now that there’s a lot of issues about veracity about origination around the large language models. So very early on, we said, oh, yes, we are going to generate a bunch of content, but how good is the content? And how can we help users to see to evaluate in a very efficient manner how the content, or what is the content, if there’s maybe mistakes if there’s, if the AI is contracting to itself. So we’ve created an AI detector at the beginning, that was actually just detecting if the text was perceived as AI. And then we refined it using different techniques, we are able to either regenerate parts that are problematics, or we can highlight those parts. So the good so the user can focus on that and decide if they want to change those those aspects of the content generation.

The Startup Coach

So how does draft and goal help businesses improve their SEO and generate more traffic,

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

SEO is going to change a lot in the next few years. Because one of the aspects is that as we move on to having a lot of AI content published on the internet, and also, as we will have chatbots integrated into search engine, there’s a whole part of SEO that might disappear, which is the evergreen content articles that are not being really updated because they are setting in a specific period of time. And but they still generate traffic, we can think about recipes and everything. Where for example, there’s basically one recipe for for the apple pie, we there’s some variation, but this is mainly evergreen content that you will capitalize on over overtime, this part of SEO is going to be covered mostly by chatbot chatbots will give you like recipes of an apple pie and will give you like maybe some variations, some some other tricks and techniques to improve your recipe. But people want consumers like a full fledge website recipe website to get those recipes. But there’s another part of the SEO which is going to be what’s new, what’s new in the world, because this is what AI cannot do. Ai cannot find out about what you are creating right now at this very instant. So all the new content, all the new ideas, all the new topics, it will be very important for companies to be able to be on those topics very quick because they will generate content, they will generate traffic to their website. And this is our drafting goal helps those those companies because as we are doing that analysis, as we are expanding the ideas and so on, we are able to untap content ideas that are very, very new. And so you can rank you can rank on those ideas very quick. And people will will find you so the the inbound strategy that we use in marketing and that we’ve been using until now, it’s going to change a lot. And it’s going to rely a lot on fast execution. And because Draft and Goal analyze the data automatically and generic contents automatically, we are able to unlock this part where you can generate a lot of content but fast and on new ideas.

The Startup Coach

You mentioned your chat GPT detector before Can you explain how that works and why it’s important for businesses to know whether content is AI generated or not.

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

I think mid January, we launched an AI detector that was already integrated in our main tool so we just spin it off made like a minimalistic landing page so people could use it for free. The idea behind that and there was a lot of fear around around chat GPT fooling like teachers or journalists and so on. And we think that it’s very potent, it’s not that AI content is bad is that people need to understand whether it’s been created by human or by an AI because it implies a lot of things. Because if, if it’s been written by an AI you might have, you might need to have a bit more scrutiny on the content, this piece of content, we use different techniques, we are trying to refine some, we find that AI detection is becoming increasingly difficult. There’s a lot of people like working and lots of paper being being released around that one of the main way to detect AI, which one was of the first one device, which is the purple plague cities, analyzing some probabilities of occurrence of of words and comparing it to human probability of occurrence of words. So technically, AI doesn’t write exactly the same way as as human would do, or wouldn’t use this, the words does exactly the same way, as human where we do AI, let’s say is more craveable in the way choose the it uses the words, humans are more chaotic. So we might not use the all the right word at the right spot, and, and so on. So this is one way, but there’s a lot of many, there’s many other ways to try to narrow down the certainty or the uncertainty of the content being written by a human or an AI. The big challenge is that it always comes down to probability. Today, there’s absolutely no one and in the future is going to be increasingly difficult. So absolutely no one that can give you that can tell you 100%, this content has been generated by an AI. And because the models are going to be more and more refined, will get even closer to what human writing looks like. This is a huge challenge. There’s a huge actually, there’s a huge business opportunity behind that the resources and the r&d around AI detection is is insanely difficult. And we’ve worked on many different techniques and that work, but there’s no like silver bullet for that.

The Startup Coach

How does draft and goal help businesses discover new ideas and keywords for the content.

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

We use some data from Google Search Console, we use data from the main website using this data, we are able to create topic clusters and topic clusters will be present one ideas, what we’ve worked on. And one of our secret recipe is to be able to do a keyword research but not like in a traditional way as you would as you would do it like just like pa people also ask keywords in in Google, but in a wizard with a different technology that allows us to find long, longtail keywords that link to your topic. And so like it’s one of the challenges in terms of UI and UX, because it’s we are manipulating a lot of of data, we are able to find different sub topics on an on that sub topic because we use AI, we can say oh, this is sub topic, what are the ideas around that? That subtopic but the difficult part is to be able to find subtopics that are close enough to the main topic and that are going to have some SEO potential in terms of of generating traffic for the for the user, this path has a huge value for us because we see that it’s not an easy path to sift through a lot of ideas and say okay, this is a good idea and this is a buy the idea and I think like what we’ve achieved so far is pretty convincing. We have some beta tester right now that are quite happy with the with the feature we are startup and we are building our team we are going to growing our team and definitely those features are going to get improved in the future. But what we have now by looking at we are looking at it from a semantic perspective and and this unlocks a lot of possibility for keyword research.

The Startup Coach

What advice would you have to give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their own AI based business?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Get ready for the four huge like roller coaster because I think starting your business is one roller coaster and starting an AI business is building a roller coaster on top of roller coaster especially because right now what we’ve seen since December is that open AI launcher GPT and all those large company that has had like offices full of strategies and so on and say oh you we are going to do a roll out like this is first semester second semester. Now they just like said, Yeah, open the gates release whatever you want to release open source models and so on, you have to do micro pi votes every single week, you need to look at the news. Okay, they’ve launched this new model, how does it affect me? Is it a new opportunity? Or is it like gatekeeping? This, this niche of of AI verticals are very interesting, right? Now, we need to find very good vertical, trying to look at verticals that large companies wouldn’t touch, at least in the next three, four years. And this is the important part, I think it all comes down when we try to because there’s the word AI. So we think about it, like in a very sophisticated fashion. But basically, there’s a very simple approach for that is to say, A, if I give you 1000 employees that are very good at a lot of things that have a skill set, that’s very broad, what would you ask them to do? The AI kind of brains without arms? So most of the AI startups that are going to pop up right now I was going to be like, Okay, let’s build arms for this for this brain. And how does the AI interact with the with the real world, so lots of opportunities, but you need to understand that the landscape is moving very, very fast. And you cannot, you know, blindside yourself and just say, a, you know, I’m still building what I whatever I want, and I don’t mind, I don’t care about what others are doing. Now you need to adjust on almost daily basis with the news and see new opportunities and new challenges.

The Startup Coach

Can you tell us about any future developments or features that you’ve got planned for Draft and Goal?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

So yeah, I’ve hinted about one of the the main feature that we’re working on right now is really to allow companies to have a large language model on premise, we found a large company with sensitive information and very strict guidelines need to have AI, but they cannot use it as it is because the data is going to another server, maybe the data is going to be used to train the model, or so on. So there’s too much risk for large company to do that. So one of the feature that we are working on is to say, hey, you know, how we can specialize a model, make it smaller that it can run internally, in the company.

The Startup Coach

How does draft and goal ensure that the content generated is accurate and factually correct.

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

We use different data source, there’s different ways to do it. And again, this is my part of the internal recipe like that we’ve worked a lot on and I am going to give you like the broad strokes, but I cannot go too much in details. Technically, we use different data source to compare content and some validated data source that that are available out there. Again, we never say Oh, this is 100% inaccurate, but we are able to flag content to highlight it for the for the end user to make sure that this this content is accurate. One of the things that we are doing at the moment is really restricting the content generation to industries that don’t have a direct impact on the on the well being of the of the end user, we don’t want to be part of those people that are propagating like fake news or fake advice or things that can be detrimental to, to end users. So right now, like even our beta testers, and the companies that we will have access to our tool won’t be able to generate content on on specific topics, because we think that AI is not enough reliable on these on these topics. And we have a really ethical approach of the AI. We are not here to replace human. We are not we are here to help human create more. And we are not here to just say, you know, the responsibility is just for the end users about generating a bunch of fake content or misleading content. We want to make sure that our tool is used for good purposes.

The Startup Coach

What would you say to people who are concerned that AI generated content is replacing human creativity?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

And you will have a lot of different answers on that. On that topic. And you there’s a spectrum from real pessimistic to very optimistic. I think it’s somewhere in the it’s somewhere in the middle I think AI Generated Content AI as we see them right now as they exist right now. They don’t have any intent. If your computer is closed, they will just sit there or If the service is not running, the AI will just sit there and we will not decide to create something. There’s always a human behind that says, hey, you know what I want to create that allows me to create it, give me your insight. So one of the things that AI does is to augment the possibilities of human brain, because it has this capacity to merge a lot of data sources information, and put them into one one answer which where we are limited as you as humans is that we can only reference ourselves to some to limited amount of information, I really think that finding new ideas, finding new opportunities, there’s a huge field that’s seen only possible to be done by human brain. And by because we have a model of the of the world that’s way more refined than AI model. Ai models, right now, they have been trained on internet data, okay, and the internet is not a copy one to one of the real world. It’s an alteration of view of the real world. So like, let’s say, if you train yourself only on newspapers, if you train a model on your newspapers, the mental model that the AI is going to create for itself will be based on this information. And this information is not really optimistic, there’s an over representation of maybe problematic events. But a human knows that, yes, people get stabbed in the street, but 99% of your life, if you’re working in the street in Montreal, 99.999% of the time, you won’t get stopped. And this is where we know that AI has a bias that doesn’t represent the real world. And so humans still have a huge playing field to be creative, because the AI will help them to enhance their creativity, but will not replace them. Because the AI is not understanding the world as we do.

The Startup Coach

I think we’re in a evolutionary period, where our focus is going to change. Way back in prehistoric age, our focus was on survival eating, hunting, than we had got better tools, bows and arrows, guns, we had to spend less time hunting now we can just go to the grocery store and order food. So we’re thinking more about content creation and other things in our life. So I started looking at how that applies to AI and content creation. What do you see I drafting goal and AI in general and its impact on the content creation industry? Do we change our focus and say, we’re not focused on the writing of the content now, but now we’re focused on the abstract ideas of the concepts we’re trying to get across?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Absolutely. I think like the the abstraction too, we find it a lot when we generate content, we find that it will not regurgitate, because it will be too easy to say that, but it gets a lot of information puts it together. But there’s no there’s no real dimension to that, that the human can create in its mind. And I really, really see like, the summary intent of trying to make an AI funny, tell me jokes and everything, it will kind of get the gist of what’s a joke, but we joke like friends joke like, on the moment that you were here at the bar, it cannot do it. So really, like when you do content creation, there’s that capacity to say, a you know, there’s two answers to this question. There’s one that’s very smart, and that there’s one that super quickly and people would understand in in a in a context in in a fashion because it’s the it’s the zeitgeist or something like that. And this is what people are going to focus on. When right when using AI generated content. What we say from our side is that all copywriters they are not going to be eliminated, they are going to become chief editors. So they will have more time to decide, hey, you know I want to work more on that angle. I want to work more on that idea. And this is the this is the big difference between what’s going to happen in the future is that people are going to become chief editor they will spend less time writing but more time working on the ideas and correcting what AI is is generated.

The Startup Coach

There’s a lot of fear around AI right now and I call the halt. Ai moving forward Canada even just like a day or two ago released some new legislation around AI development. I haven’t read it yet and I haven’t seen any Indians, but what is the issue the expectation that AI is going to kill us all?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Okay, this is a very philosophical question. And my answer is only my own thoughts. It’s not the truth is, it’s just an opinion. And my opinion is fear on AI. Because the wow effect game with unrealistic expectations about what AI can do right now, I’ve been talking a lot with a lot of people that are not in the AI field. And they just think that AI can do everything, and can do everything right now, it’s not the truth. So this is, this is one thing. What’s scary about AI, if we look at industrial revolution, or the internet is that the transition happened over a timeframe that allowed people to adapt themselves to the new paradigm, this was very important because the industry, the society, the economy, adapted itself to this new technology, the curve of adaptation for AI is very fast is very fast. And even people that are working in the AI field cannot really tell you how sophisticated is an AI, or you know how far it can go in terms of executing. So one of the challenge is how we deal with that transition, where we will go from word pre AI to world post AI, how long it’s going to take and our violent is going to be in terms of changes, my opinion, is that the main danger and again, it’s always like the main danger. The main danger is are humans, when there’s a transition, when there’s uncertainty, when there’s fear, we might have a reaction that going to be to ourselves as a society’s AI, replacing a lot of a lot of activities and lots of jobs is going to be to happen first in all those tedious tasks, all that that requires cognitive loads, but they don’t have a lot of reward as a human on the other on the other end. And this these are things that are the first not jobs, but activities within jobs that are going to be eliminated employee that’s going to sit in the boardroom with the with the rest of the team being an AI, it’s not there yet, it doesn’t it doesn’t exist yet, we need to understand that we are talking about large language models that are probabilistic models, they don’t have consistency over time, they don’t have personality over time, AI is going to remove tasks. And some of those tasks are going to impact the employability of some people. 10 years, 15 years, it’s another story because the pace of development is so fast and the incentive of building those arms, what I was calling arms to the different AI is, in the next few years, the incentive is really high. So there’s a risk there. But yeah, I think we need to have a political framework, we need to have this conversation not only it’s not only the people working in AI that should decide what AI should be capable of doing. It’s the society at large, definitely, there should be some guardrails to protect us from misuses from disrupting the economy without bringing any any value in return. There’s optimism but there’s pessimism at the at the same time. And I think it’s every day you balance between one and the other. But very interesting question. And the answer can be topic of 15 hours conversation. So

The Startup Coach

as an AI founder, we’re talking about the dangers, you know, we’re using AI as a tool to help us perform and do these things. At what point does AI start using us as a tool and AI becomes our boss?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Brian, sir, I think I’m referring to boot from Yuval Noah are real models, I think. And there’s this theory saying that humans are the bootloader for for the AI you Valerie was saying in one of his books he was saying a at the moment AI will be outsourcing to human the activities it cannot do if we talk only about decisions we can see. And we will see in the next 234 years companies for example, companies that are managing risk managing risk is about making pragmatic decision about lots of different data sources and information that we have a lot of difficulty to compute and to assimilate in your in our brain. AI is going to be really, really really good at that. And for sure, in the insurance industry. The main source of decision might be an AI and it might not be a human human would be fed this information but 99% of the decision will be already made because it’s really difficult as a human to say I feel that you’re too billion data points less relevant to my few million data points, it’s very difficult to say that I think working for the AI not going to happen now. But you might end up doing a job where most of the decision would not belong to a human that we belong to in the eye.

The Startup Coach

I used to work for Deloitte and Touche, and at the time, we had 5700 employees, they merged, they’re like, way bigger than that now. And our auditing group was one of the biggest groups and I sit back and I look at all those out in the 1000s of auditors and say, you know, are these types of jobs that are going to be decimated by AI, when AI seems like they can pour through your data and tell you where there’s problems a lot faster than humans?

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

Yeah, it always comes down to how much output that we are able to generate AI will be able to generate on specific task and output that you cannot even compare to human this is as simple as that, again, those jobs, I really think that those jobs will be transformative will be changed will be adapted to, to this new paradigm. And, and maybe because the AI will be able to audit, some aspects that are very data oriented, and maybe some also some that are human oriented, there will be maybe a shift, and people would audit more like how the organization work, and I’ll do the human interact. But man, it’s, it’s super, because each time I say something, I just think about what can happen in the next 10 years. And in the next 10 years, the capacity of an AI to understand human interaction with the organization will increase. And we will be also in that paradigm where it’s going to be able to do on not only quantitative but qualitative assessment, there’s going to be changes and the SWOT I was saying before, the incentive of using an AI for example, to to do audits is super high, because the salary of auditors are very high. If you are able to do an AI that costs you even like alpha of the price of all your auditors for the same output, you might decide to say, You know what, I’d rather have an AI that’s going to do it like all the time, it’s difficult, but it’s difficult also to imagine a world where company companies are just an AI talking to another AI talking to another AI, because where is the human there? Where is the economical incentive for us people are starting to talk about universal revenue, it’s ideas that were not conceivable, let’s say, eight months ago, now are part of the conversation as we as the one on where are we now

The Startup Coach

you’re currently part of the Next AI cohort. Can you tell us about your experience so far, and what the Next AI program for others considering to joining in the future,

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

we’ve started the goat last March, beginning of March. So we are part of the Next AI Montreal, there’s a chapter in Toronto. And then there’s a bunch of other startups that are scattered around. Around Canada, it’s a great incubator, because it’s focused on the eye. Again, the incubator and the value I’m at the office right now we have record offices and so on. But the real value is to be with all these AI intrapreneurs they are working on very different topics, very different problems on a daily basis, you confront yourself, you find new ideas, you for your Exchange, and, and so on, it’s great man, I would really recommend it because what we’ve been doing in a month, it would have taken us like six months to achieve the management that next year I does everything to put us in the best condition. So we have access to a lot of perks, lots of mentors, really like world class mentors. It’s absolutely insane, like people we have access to and the workshops I did, or the company incubators in the in the past. But by far this is like the best incubator I’ve been into. And I really highly recommend it.

The Startup Coach

As an AI founder, you got to be checking out all sorts of new technologies, what tools would you recommend? It’s tough because

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

there’s a there’s like 50 tools being launched, like on a on a daily basis. So it’s and a lot of them, to be honest, like a lot of them are just copycats of other things because building a simple AI tool is so it’s so easy right now are to GPT is the word that everybody has in mouse right now. So to GPT that allows you basically it’s kind of two AI agents talking to each others and they can generate like a whole workflow an old set of, of instructions to execute a complicated task. It’s funny because it’s part of the Twitter community so the I really highly recommend anyone working in AI right now to go on the AI, Twitter, whatever you think about Twitter, but the AI tutor is really interesting, because there’s lots of accounts that are run by people that are just doing like, tests on AI and getting an AI to talk to another one and everything. And then you just find out that man, these guys are solving, like maybe a problem that I could use to solve another problem. Another problem, so but auto GPT is definitely super interesting and how far this can go, I don’t know. But we actually we are working on it at the moment. And it’s, it’s super fun.

The Startup Coach

If you have a favorite book you’d recommend for entrepreneurs.

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

It’s tough, because I’ve read I spent a lot of time reading entrepreneurs books, and now I read more about like, macro and, and so on. And I spend a lot of time reading about news about AI because they are what helps us to do our pilots. I think though, the one that’s the most simple and at large that works for everyone is there is always the Lean Startup because like the premises are always the same. We try to do that. And we always find that we fail at applying exactly what they what they say is like launching fast failing fast and testing a lot a bunch of of things. I think it always works. And it’s industry agnostic. So it should be used by

The Startup Coach

everyone. What is next for you and draft and goal. We have a

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

lot of beta testers, we are opening these to larger accounts. Now we are planning to scale by the end of this year, I think this is really like the main challenge for us internally is to grow the team. And if you’re interested you will you can send us an email, they will I will be think there will be some links somewhere and you can reach out to me or to my co founder to grow the team, there’s good there’s going there’s a high demand for really skilled people in the AI field right now. So this is going to be a real challenge. It’s really developing the AI workflow and understand how we can make an AI very specific to an industry and a company because one of the things that we need to understand is that the what we see with AI and large language models, and whatever will be the form in 1015 years, 1015 years, everyone will have an AI that will be some kind of extension of yourself the same way you have a mobile phone right now, that’s going to have a lot of information about you. And that’s going to help you execute more things or do more interesting things with your life training model and making things smaller and making them more specific. I think this is the way we’re going with

The Startup Coach

draft and go. Where can people go to find out more? First, they

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

can go to our website, it’s HTTPS dng.ai. They can follow us on on Twitter, they can reach out to us we are like our inbox is always open. We this is what’s exciting about the AI right now we’ve made a lot of contact just with people very interesting, contact us people that reach out to us through LinkedIn or our contact form on our on our website. By next week, we are making some announcement, it will be very interesting for people to see what we are doing. And we are opening the beta to the larger public. So it’s going to be interesting to have the feedback of the of the users at the same time. And it will be totally free, by the way, open beta. So everyone

The Startup Coach

should go to dng.ai and sign up for the open beta. Yeah. I really appreciate you taking the time today to be part of startup talk. Yeah, thank you

Nabil Tayeb of Draft and Goal

very much for giving me the opportunity to talk a bit more about what we do because it’s important for startups to spread out the words because most of the time we’re in the office and working on our stuff. And it’s important to let the community know that there’s a lot of things happening. So thank you for organizing startup talks and doing everything that you do.

Announcer

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In this episode of Startup Talk, we talk to Will Greenblatt, founder of OutLoud Speakers School and author of “Transform Your Speaking Skills: Gain Confidence, Captivate Audiences and Advance Your Career.” Will shares his journey from child TV star to professional actor to entrepreneur and coach, and discusses the power of storytelling and the signature OutLoud Method for improving public speaking skills.

Links:

Connect with Will Greenblatt on Instagram: Text ink -https://www.instagram.com/willgreenblatt/
Connect with Will Greenblatt on LinkedIn: text link – https://www.linkedin.com/in/willgreenblatt/
Get the Book “Transform Your Speaking SKills: Gain Confidence, Captivate Audiences and Advance Your Career” on Amazon: Text link – https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1989737803/
Work with Will and OutLoud Speakers School

Segment 1: Will’s background and the inspiration behind OutLoud Speakers SchoolWill talks about how his experience as an actor led him to start OutLoud Speakers School

He discusses the importance of effective communication and the challenges that many business professionals face in this area

Will shares some of the success stories of clients who have worked with OutLoud Speakers School and improved their speaking skills

Segment 2: The power of storytelling and the OutLoud MethodWill explains why storytelling is such an important element of public speaking and how it can help individuals connect with their audience

He introduces the “Five Acts” of the signature OutLoud Method and explains how it can help individuals create, rehearse, and deliver a powerful pitch or presentation

Will also shares some tips for overcoming stage fright and impostor syndrome, two common obstacles that many people face when speaking in public

Segment 3: The challenges and rewards of coachingWill talks about some of the challenges he faced in building and growing OutLoud Speakers School, including how to effectively engage and retain clients

He also discusses the importance of empathy in coaching and how it can help speakers connect with their audience

Will shares his personal and professional goals for the future of OutLoud Speakers School and how he plans to stay up to date with the latest trends and best practices in public speaking and coaching

Conclusion: Will leaves us with some advice for aspiring public speaking coaches and anyone who wants to improve their speaking skills. He emphasizes the importance of practice, persistence, and a willingness to learn and grow. He also encourages listeners to check out his book, “Transform Your Speaking Skills,” for more insights and practical tips on how to become a powerful public speaker.

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In this episode of Startup Talk, we’re joined by Philippe Beaudoin, the CEO of Waverly, the innovative deep tech artificial intelligence company building a mobile reader that understands you based on your waves.

During the interview, Philippe shares his thoughts on:

The inspiration behind the creation of Waverly and its mission to cut through the noise and provide a personalized content experience.
How Waverly’s Empathetic AI and its recommendation algorithm set it apart from other AI-powered news and content platforms.
The process of how Waverly personalizes the user experience and the sources it uses to gather content.
The future plans for Waverly and where he sees the company heading in the next 5 years.
The challenges Waverly has faced and how it overcame them.
The role of artificial intelligence in the future of the news and content industry.
Waverly’s commitment to user privacy and data security.
The response from users since the launch of Waverly and plans for expanding its reach globally.
The future updates and features that Waverly has in the works.

This episode is packed with valuable insights and information for anyone interested in the intersection of artificial intelligence and the news and content industry. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of Waverly and its mission to revolutionize the way we consume content.

Article The perils of a huge pre-PMF Series A: My story at Element AI

https://philbeaudoin.com/2022/12/05/the-perils-of-a-huge-pre-pmf-series-a-my-story-at-element-ai/

Waverly

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In this episode of The Startup Talk Podcast, I chat with Anthony Chiaravalloti and Daniel Francavilla, the co-founders of CreatorClub, a company that makes content production simple. They share their insights on producing high-volume content at an efficient cost and converting long-form video into platform-specific micro content. Listen in to learn how they can help your brand boost its content production game.

CreatorClub Links:

CreatorClub Website: https://www.creatorclubstudios.com/
CreatorClub on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreatorClubTO
Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Francavilla
CreatorClub on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creatorclubstudios/
Anthony on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonychiaravalloti/
Daniel on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielfrancavilla/

Show Notes Introduction:

Brief overview of The Startup Talk Podcast and today’s guests, Anthony Chiaravalloti and Daniel Francavilla, partners at CreatorClub.

Background on CreatorClub:

Explanation of what CreatorClub is and how it helps brands and thought leaders with content production.
Discussion of the inspiration behind the company and how it is changing the industry.

Challenges and successes of starting a business in Canada:

Insight into the challenges faced by the founding team in starting a business in Canada and how they overcame them.
Discussion of any lessons learned and advice for other entrepreneurs.

Innovations in the content production industry:

Explanation of CreatorClub’s unique approach to producing “pillar” content and converting it into platform-specific micro content.
Discussion of the role of technology in the content production industry and how CreatorClub is utilizing it to improve the process for brands.

Future plans for CreatorClub:

Sneak peek into the team’s future plans for the company and how they see it evolving in the coming years.

Working with a network of creators:

Discussion of the process of balancing working with a network of creators while ensuring consistent quality and brand identity for clients.
Insight into any unique or particularly challenging projects the team has worked on and how they approached them.

Differentiation from other content production companies:

Explanation of what sets CreatorClub apart from other companies in the market.
Discussion of how the company is helping businesses of different sizes and industries with their content needs.

Conclusion:

Final thoughts from the co-founders and wrap-up of the interview.

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Who Are These Investors
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In this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast, we were joined by Matthew Lombardi, Managing Director of OneEleven, a 55,000 square foot facility in the heart of downtown Toronto that provides open concept seating and private offices for growing technology companies.

Matthew began by sharing the history and mission of OneEleven, which is to support rapidly scaling technology companies by providing state-of-the-art facilities, programming, and a support network. He discussed how OneEleven’s open concept seating and private office spaces help companies grow with them, with month-to-month leases and secure, turnkey infrastructure.

Matthew then walked us through some of the state-of-the-art facilities and amenities offered at OneEleven, including 60+ meeting rooms, event space, podcast studios, a parenting room, secure bike storage, and a wellness, faith and meditation space. He also emphasized the importance of work-life balance and the facilities and amenities provided to support it.

Matthew also discussed the talent upskilling program offered at OneEleven, which focuses on four areas: marketing, customer success, product, and leadership. This program allows OneEleven companies to get the most out of their talent and ensure that emerging people managers are growing and learning as fast as their companies are scaling.

Matthew also spoke about the role of OneEleven in fostering the local technology ecosystem, from their 1,500-person TechSummer Social, to quarterly investor showcases, and health & wellness initiatives. He highlighted the key partnerships and collaborations that OneEleven has formed and the role of OneEleven in promoting the Toronto startup ecosystem to a global audience.

The interview concluded with Matthew discussing the future plans of OneEleven in terms of expansion and growth. He shared the upcoming events and initiatives that OneEleven is planning to host, and how OneEleven supports the growth of startups in the post-pandemic era.

This episode provided valuable insights into the workings of one of Canada’s leading technology incubators, and the support and resources that OneEleven provides to rapidly scaling tech companies.

For the latest news and updates from OneEleven, follow them on LinkedIn or sign up for their monthly newsletter.

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Alexandra Kapelos-Peters, the founder of Cansulta joins the Startup Coach for this Startup Talk Podcast interview. Cansulta is a platform that makes it easy for individuals and businesses to find and book consultations with vetted experts in a variety of industries. During the interview, Alexandra shares the inspiration behind starting Cansulta, how it differs from other consulting platforms, and the process of finding and booking a consultation. She also talks about the challenges faced while building and scaling the business, future plans, and the team behind Cansulta. This is a must-watch for anyone looking to start their own consulting platform or for those looking for an easier way to access expert advice.

Cansulta Links:

Website: https://www.cansulta.com/
Blog: https://www.cansulta.com/blog/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cansulta/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cansultacom
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/cansulta
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cansulta
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cansulta

Show Notes:

Introduction of guest, Alexandra Kapelos-Peters, founder of Cansulta
Explanation of what Cansulta is and how it differs from other consulting platforms on the market
- We’re AirBNB + Match + Upwork + Etsy combined for consulting—an online platform for businesses to access the expertise of vetted professionals, easily & affordably. We’re consulting for the modern era
- How we’re different:
  - Everyone is vetted; we accept <20% of applicants
  - Consultants set their own prices & can make custom offers
  - No hidden fees, no overhead
  - Flexible! Collaborate as-needed: by the hour, task, project, team.
- Our Benefits page (https://www.cansulta.com/benefits/) explains more about how we’re different
Discussion on the inspiration behind starting Cansulta and the problem it solves
- Business leaders lack the time, knowledge, and resources to tackle every problem and opportunity.
- It’s difficult and expensive to find available, trustworthy and effective consultants to help
- Big businesses & enterprises have in-house teams or support from large consultancies, but startups and SMEs don’t have the same resources
- Every business deserves to benefit from the transformative impacts of great strategy, direction, advice, and consulting from reliable experts and those who have “been there, done that”
- Cansulta bridges that gap, provides access, makes it easy & affordable to get support
Walkthrough of the process of finding and booking a consultation on Cansulta
- Our “How it Works” page explains the simple steps for clients and consultants to work together: https://www.cansulta.com/how-it-works/
Information on how experts on the platform are vetted and qualified
- It’s an intense process, arguably as rigorous or more than securing a full-time position! Steps include: resume screening, recorded video interview, Case Study with live presentation, references from previous clients, legal/financial compliance.
Sharing of success stories of clients who have used Cansulta to solve a problem or grow their business
Explanation of the benefits for independent consultants who use the platform
- We handle the “front end” (sales & marketing) and the “back end” (billing & payment) so that consultants can focus on what they do best: helping clients!
Discussion of challenges faced while building and scaling Cansulta
- Many see consulting as a luxury, premium, or nice-to-have service; but really, it’s a critical component that can impact the ultimate success or failure of any venture
Mention of industries and areas of expertise currently represented on Cansulta
- We’re industry-agnostic and support all business areas
- Currently we have a very strong roster of experienced startup, marketing, strategy, operations, HR and leadership consultants and deep expertise in charity/nonprofit, law/legal, pharma & healthcare, banking/fintech/insurance, food & beverage, retail, manufacturing and transportation.
Information on how Cansulta handles payment and billing for consultations
- Pay with credit card or direct transfer; it’s as easy as shopping online!
Discussion of future plans and developments for Cansulta
- Just launched! Our new Associates program offers vetted junior professionals https://www.cansulta.com/associates/ to complement client internal teams and work alongside senior consultants
- Expanding our offering of Cansulta Solutions: products and services at consistent fixed prices that can be provided by multiple professionals
Explanation of features built into the platform to enhance user experience
- Browse people by skill, language, or location; secure virtual meeting rooms; calendar syncing; file sharing; private messaging; community forums & chat; universal search; Google and LinkedIn connect
Discussion of Cansulta’s plans for growth and expansion in the next 5 years
Introduction of the team behind Cansulta and their roles
Information on how Cansulta supports independent consultants in terms of marketing and visibility
Details on how Cansulta handles customer support and satisfaction
Mention of notable clients or companies that have used Cansulta
Discussion on how Cansulta ensures data security and privacy for both clients and consultants
Conclusion and advice for other entrepreneurs looking to start a similar platform or business

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The Startup Coach live as he sits down with Driftscape COO Dan Pronovost to discuss how the Driftscape app allows you to tour, explore, and discover your city & Canada in a whole new way. Explore thousands of spaces, events, and self guided audio tour from local experts with different perspectives, and how Driftscape makes it easy for businesses promote themselves locally,

Driftscape Website
Driftscape on Twitter
Driftscape on Instagram
Driftscape on Facebook
Driftscape on Linkedin

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Dan Flatt, founder and Chief Neighbour of Naborio joins the startup coach to discuss mental health, the loneliness epidemic, building community, and of course starting Navarino, on episode 137 of The Startup Talk Podcast.

Naborino Website
Naborino on Twitter
Naborino on Instagram
Naborino on Facebook
Naborino on LinkedIn

Naborino Job Posting

Naborino Pitch Deck

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Transcript (automated) of Naborino – The Startup Talk PodcastSUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, building, neighbor, community, startup, adhd, bit, reno, early days, entrepreneurs, toronto, users, facebook group, app, started, buying, thought, company, couple, lead

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Craig Major, Dan Flatt

Announcer

Direct from the sixth world renowned Canada’s largest city, with Canada’s biggest thinkers, visionaries and hustlers. This is startup talk featuring the founders, funders, innovators and community leaders who’ve led Canada’s startup ecosystem right here in Toronto. You’ll hear the challenges, the failures, the successes, Toronto StartUp podcast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who’ve made a difference. Now, the host of startup talk, the founder of Toronto starts this startup coach.

Craig Major

Welcome back to startup talk. I’m your host of startup coach, founder of Toronto Star. It’s one of the largest startup communities in Canada. And with me today is Dan flat. Chief neighbor, at Naborino Welcome, Dan. Hey, Greg, how are you? I’m doing great. Why don’t you tell us about Naborino? And what is your job as Chief neighbor?

Dan Flatt

Sure. So I call myself the chief neighbor at Naborino, and I’m the founder, the company is we started in in around early 2020, once the pandemic started, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about what we do in a bit.

Craig Major

So its chief neighbor, not chief Naborino, I like to start off with what the entrepreneur was like growing up, were you a handful for your parents were you studious in the music, sports socializing, who was young Dan,

Dan Flatt

up until mid high school, I was very quiet. I was kind of shy, had like a few good friends, but kind of kept to myself, read a lot. I started reading when I was early threes. And so I’ve got a couple of kids now and trying to get them to love reading the same way right now, not into too many sports. But then around my teenage years, started to come out of my shell became a bit more of even like a class clown and a prankster among my, my friends became a bit more of a handful for my parents. And I think that looking back years later, I started to see some of the seeds of what has driven me towards life as entrepreneurship. And also I, you know, I talk openly about how I got diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s. And I would say that, in those days back born in 81, the perception that people had of ADHD was that it was, you know, the noisy kid in the back of the class throwing things, but the understanding of the condition is, is has expanded quite a bit right now. And so I love to talk about that as well. And maybe we can chat about it a little bit later in the conversation.

Craig Major

Definitely, I think mental health is something we need to talk about openly as a whole, but definitely in the entrepreneurial space, because there’s so many solopreneurs and so much mental health issues that entrepreneurs have no one to talk to about. And you know, just being able to talk openly makes it people to know that it’s okay, so we’ll get back to that before Naborino, what was your early career pathway?

Dan Flatt

Starting in university, I went to U of T, I did a double major in physics and English literature. And so I always had a lot of interests and sometimes had trouble deciding on on which path to follow. And that that’s still something I deal with even now as an entrepreneur. But I think that it helps sometimes when you when you feel like you’ve found a unifying purpose. After that, I went to law school. And I practiced law for a couple of years article, and then one year post getting called to the bar at a personal injury litigation firm. And then I decided to go back to school again and went to do my MBA at at Ivy, in London, Ontario. And after graduating from that program, I consider going back to law but actually found that I was getting much more interesting offers outside of law in different areas of business where a law degree was was more rare than an MBA was in the legal profession. So I worked in the executive recruiting, I didn’t process based management consulting for a little while. And then the first place I really found a home I was at Bell Canada for about five years I joined their graduate Leadership Program and kind of almost created a role for myself. I was it was the earlier days of social media. I think Facebook and Twitter had already been around for a few years. But businesses were really only just starting to figure out how to use it for their brands. I was at Bell Canada in a completely different department and customer operations, took a look at what Bell was doing on social media and just noticed that all the marketing conversations they were trying to start we’re just getting bogged down by people in the comments, complaining about customer service issues. So I reached out to the director who was leading social media strategy at the company and ended up Putting together a project where I got the company set up with customer service on those channels, and lead analytics and social listening. And, you know, just working in that role. A couple of things, you know, one made me start thinking a lot about social networks, what makes them work, what makes them not, that is really, I think influenced a lot of the thinking that’s gone into napery. No, and what we want to fix about what’s wrong with social networking today. The other thing that that I really enjoyed working on, there was the bell, let’s talk Mental Health Initiative, where my team was very central to that. I think, today that stuck with me in a way that I feel a lot more comfortable talking openly about my own mental health in ways that I hope can help other people. After a bell, actually, I left to start my first startup, and it was a company in the early days of this current generation of virtual and augmented reality. But just before the Oculus came out, I don’t brag about this a lot. But I actually named the company Metaverse back in 2016, before it became a household world word, I think Oxford Dictionaries considering making it the Europe the Word of the Year for 2022. That was my first time going all in on a venture, I’d had a couple of different entrepreneurial side hustles. Before that learns a lot from it, I ended up kind of burning out and exiting after a couple of years to go back to different corporate jobs, I worked at AMD and another early stage Smart Home Hardware startup. And that took me up to about 2020, when I’d already had the idea of napery No percolating for a few years and decided to pursue it full time.

Craig Major

opportunity cost is infinite, you’ve got a lot of stuff running around in your head, you’ve tried a lot of things. Why Naborino versus any of the other opportunities floating around in your head at the time?

Dan Flatt

Yeah, it’s always been, it’s always been a challenge to stick to one of the ideas because I, I would come up with a new business idea once a week and got very excited about some of them, I think, you know, now I understand that that’s something that’s actually very common with ADHD entrepreneurs. But Naborino is very personal for me. And I feel like it’s it’s tied to a lot of my values. And even my, my personal experience, I’ve lived in apartment buildings for most of my adult life, I’ve thought a lot about what works and what doesn’t work about the experience. And I grew up in a way where local community, getting to know the people in your neighborhood was really important part of of my childhood. And in a big city like Toronto, you just really didn’t feel that in the majority of of multi unit apartment buildings, people can go years without knowing the first name of their next door neighbor. And I started a Facebook group in my building, just because it made sense to me that there should be a way for for neighbors to ask each other questions communicate. And that grew over time, into what seemed like a really special community where we were, you know, I just saw a lot of really interesting social practical use cases, to the point where I thought this kind of needs to be its own app, like fit Facebook is leaving a lot on the table with just the generic group’s experience. And even companies like next door that focus on connecting entire local neighborhoods, there was a lot about the experience and apartment and condo buildings, and also just about, you know, the business model that usually persists with a lot of the current social networks that just didn’t seem as conducive to building real community with neighbors. You know, as I said, like, it had been an idea in my head for years before I went all in on it. And I really feel like I’ve kind of found my purpose with it. So that’s allowed me to put all those other ideas that still keep popping up, either file them away for another chapter of my life, or when possible can fold them into the larger roadmap of Naborino.

Craig Major

So we’ve talked in general about Naborio, but what exactly does Naborino do?

Dan Flatt

Naborino, we’re connecting local communities of neighbors, focusing primarily on apartment and condo buildings. And as we bring them together, we are unlocking a lot of the social and economic benefits of local community, starting with group buying. So especially in apartment buildings, where everybody’s essentially at the same delivery address. We’re helping them through a special group buying marketplace, to buy in larger quantities, have everything shipped to one address, and actually save a lot of money with bulk savings as well as some efficiencies on the last mile delivery side.

Craig Major

Saving money is always a good way to get people together,

Dan Flatt

especially in this income. When

Craig Major

I started my first startup had to do with dealing with this loneliness epidemic. And, you know, the fact that since they did a study in the US and in 2014, that mean average of what a North American would call a friend, someone they could turn to if they had financial trouble or something like that became less than one over 50% of North Americans live alone, people who self identify as being single, on average haven’t had a date and over two years, we have a loneliness epidemic. Where does Naborino intersect with this? Great

Dan Flatt

question. And I really think that that is one of several pillars of our of our social mission is to combat the loneliness epidemic by making it easier for people to form first, you know, kind of just utilitarian kind of superficial familiarity with the people who live closest to them, by giving them some of the tools to build stronger connections at the individual level. And at the community level, I started Naborino , in, as I said, in the early days, the pandemic, we live in a multi storey building, you can hear your neighbor, sometimes through the walls and through the, you know, from the floors and ceilings, because and you feel like you’re surrounded on all sides by people and not knowing their names, their faces, it actually makes you feel even a little bit more lonely. Luckily, in our building, we had this Facebook group already. So in the early days of of just being told that we were in lockdown, not really understanding a lot of what’s going on what was going on in the world around us and what was safe, what wasn’t, we weren’t actually getting a lot of direction from the building management about things like how many people can go in an elevator? Are we supposed to be wearing masks, nobody knew anything. And so the Facebook group at this point actually kind of became even more important than it had been in the years prior, I had the adult children of elderly people who were living in the building by themselves, who had joined the Facebook group, so they could figure out, you know, what’s going on in the building on behalf of their parents reaching out to me saying, Hey, can you please just go check in on my mom, there were a lot of other just little opportunities like that, I think that just having this hub that was very informal, didn’t have a lot of rules, there was just a benefit to it, that other buildings were they might not have that they wouldn’t have been able to access some of the benefits that we already had. And so that really just got my mind into overdrive about okay, how, how could we take, you know, the years and you know, manual invitations, you know, when we would put up a poster in the hall or, you know, mentioned it’s somebody in the elevator ride, that we had a Facebook group? How could we accelerate that process? How can we accelerate the process of building trust in a community leader in individual members in a specialized product? And a lot of that thinking went into the features and the roadmap for knavery? No,

Craig Major

you covered a lot of it there, especially during the pandemic, the sense of community, there’s a lot of value in the feeling that we’re all in this together, what are some of the benefits of building a local community?

Dan Flatt

It starts with just information, we had a Facebook group for a building, a lot of neighborhoods have local Facebook groups, you know, next door has kind of turned into an app that’s just about connecting neighborhoods. And a lot of the conversations you’ll see are just people asking each other questions for, you know, asking for recommendations. What’s a good restaurant in the neighborhood? Does anybody have a good electrician or plumber in the context of an apartment building? If the power goes out, if Rogers intranet is out, the first thing you’ll see is people just posting in the group saying, Hey, is anybody else experiencing this? So So there’s definitely an informational benefit? I’d say that the next level is we start getting into asking each other for help, you know, so it could be simple things like, I’m looking for an ingredient for a recipe, the classic stereotype of knocking on a neighbor’s door to ask for a cup of sugar that literally happens in my building. And then, you know, even asking for help. Well, you know, I have had instances where my car battery died, and I needed a boost. And rather than calling a friend or relative to drive in from across town, I could just go in the Facebook group and ask a neighbor, you know, there was a shortage of children’s Tylenol. That was that’s been happening across the North American supply chain. My kids got sick recently. And then, you know, we were looking for some one of our neighbors had an extra bottle. And so I’d say that’s there really is this benefit, just being able to quickly ask your, you know, your very local community for assistance in some of those areas. Then comes real social connections around common interests. So One of the things I really loved is through this Facebook group originally, but then, you know, migrating into in person real life interactions, I had a few neighbors on my floor who just started saying hi to them in the halls, getting to learn their names, people from a lot of different cultures, and we started just exchanging plates of food, you know, so if if I would make too much of something at dinner, or vice versa, we kind of knew that we weren’t going to finish it, we got picky about leftovers in my house, we were just putting it into a Tupperware and just bring it over to our neighbor. And then, you know, sometimes they would surprise us and come back. And I think that was something really, really nice and unexpected, that just added a lot to the experience of of this, you know, multi family unit living that, you know, otherwise could feel very lonely. And, you know, it’s even gotten to the, to the point where, you know, I’ve had a couple of neighbors, give me a key to their, their apartment and say, Hey, can you just feed my cat while I’m out of town for a few days, so you build up the trust over time, and they’re just really becomes utility to it, that you have somebody so close to you, that you trust enough to feed your cat to, you know, to water your plants. And then finally, I would say that there is kind of a next level is shifting some of the power dynamics that exist in the economy in in condo living. So with group buying, we’re trying to connect neighbors who just you know, might not have anything in common other than the fact that they just live in very close proximity to each other to almost become economic units like a corporation, where if they combined their buying power, they just have a lot more bargaining power to to negotiate better prices, combined their deliveries and actually save more money than if they were buying individually. The other thing and this, you know, this is a longer story I can get into but in in our building, a lot of people were not feeling like they were being represented very well by the condo board, both owners and renters building management was often very unresponsive to complaints that were, you know, very reasonable and seemed like they should be getting a response. And one of the things that happened very often in the Facebook group is that these common frustrations would bubble up, you know, people felt very passionately about them. And we almost had a bit of like a unionization effect. It’s like let’s, rather than complaining one at a time, let’s all get together and let management and the board know that this is something that’s important to all of us, you know, an example was reopening the amenities after they’d been shut down for over a year from COVID. And I think that is something that is not going to be part of the first iteration of neighborliness, but it is on our roadmap to, you know, to find some ways to improve the way that a community of neighbors interacts with the management of the building condo boards, homeowner associations, etc.

Craig Major

So I want to ask a little bit about community buying. And then we got a question in the chat room, which I’ll follow up with after that. So first of all, you I think we kind of know what community buying is based on some of the things you said, as a group, we buy stuff, but we don’t buy Slurpees from 711. In Big up, because we’re all on Facebook. So I yeah, I want a Slurpee and 100, restorative at once, what types of things do we buying community buying? And how does that whole figuring out the need and what to buy? And how many buy that system work?

Dan Flatt

Great question. And, you know, I’ll say that we’re an early enough stage that we’re still experimenting and figuring things out. You know, I’ll talk a little bit about the just the, the influences that we had for community buying. So most, you know, a lot of people when they hear the concept, they’ll say, oh, is this like Groupon? And I think that if you remember, like the very early days of Groupon, kind of almost like web 1.0, when most of the deals were being shared, the email forwards, they have this dynamic where they said, if 50 People buy, you know, join the steel, then it’ll unlock a discount. And I think one of the reasons they actually kind of abandoned that dynamic, and it just became this daily deal site. But I think one of the reasons why Groupon and a lot of those other daily deal sites, kind of fizzled, was that there wasn’t really anything connecting the buyers to each other. There wasn’t any community being built there. It was still a very individual solitary buying experience. Our real our real inspiration, if we were to look at another company is actually a Chinese company called Pinto dua. They’re relatively new company. They, I think only about seven years old, but are one of the fastest growing companies in the world and have kind of already overtaken Alibaba and some of their monthly user metrics. And they saw saturated ecommerce industry in China, you could buy almost anything online, except for you know, one of the areas the economy that was left out was just produce from the rural farms making its way into the cities you couldn’t really buy that online. And so very similar to community support it i Agriculture kind of these farmers boxes that a lot of people join, you know, even locally here in Toronto, they started with, with produce, and basically created these offers where if 1020 people all in the same city ordered from a farm, then that would be enough for the farmer to drive in with the truck and deliver it, then they started expanding out into a lot of different product categories, the buying groups got smaller. That brings it back to us, you know, we’ve been studying a lot of the pre existing models. So far, we’re actually we found a lot of traction with direct consumer independent CPGs. So you know, for example, a local hot sauce company, maybe somebody started it out of their kitchen, they’ve gotten they’ve got a Shopify store, they’re selling one bottle at a time, shipping is really expensive these days, if we can offer them a channel that is somewhere in between direct consumer one unit at a time to one customer and wholesale, where they’re kind of losing the individual connection with the customer having to give up a lot more margin, they’re able to create an offer that says Say if five people buy if 10 People buy, and it all gets shipped to one location, then they’re able to actually bring down the cost per unit, the delivery cost per unit in a way that actually doesn’t hurt the bottom line at all. That’s one of the areas we’re exploring. But we’ve actually even experimented with services. So home and auto services, if the provider can cluster their their jobs all in one geographic location, for example, we tried mobile car detailing, in a lot of circumstances, when they’re coming to your house to clean your car, if their next job is half an hour drive away, they’re losing productive time. But if they can cluster a whole bunch of their jobs, one after another in the same location, they might actually be able to fit a few more jobs in they can bring the cost down. So we’re looking at a variety of different products and services always open to suggestions. And you know, we’ve been building up our our list of vendors in our marketplace who see the value as we’re getting ready to launch our groupbuy marketplace app in the new year.

Craig Major

Excellent. I can see all sorts of value in thinking outside the box working with local startups that do like mobile hair stylists, and they you know, saying, Alright, we have a day of the week or the month that we’re going to be at this location because we have 20 Customers potentially here or what have you. Lots of stuff there. So the first question is, how do you make money? So what’s your business model look like? Yeah, so

Dan Flatt

our business model. Right now we’re not charging our, our Naborino ‘s or communities of neighbors to sign up. But what we are doing rather than targeted advertising, like you’ll see on a lot of the other social networks that can be you know, I think we’ve seen over the last few years that is problematic, because of the way that data is mined, and not always lining up with the way that’s communicated to users, we’re taking more of an E commerce model our marketplace has offers from all the different vendors. If a group ID deal goes through successfully, we will take a success fee from the vendor before we pay them out. So we’ll collect will collect the funds from each one of the users who who joins a deal. Let’s say five people need to join a deal before the discount unlocks, we’ll charge their credit cards, the discounted amount. And then before we’ve had the vendor, we take a small success fee. As we move forward and prove the model out a little bit more, we’re going to try to shift over to a monthly subscription model for the vendors that lowers the percentage that we’re taking on each deal, gives them a few more options, access to analytics about about the users in the different neighborhoods and adds value in that way.

Craig Major

Another question here, my building uses condo can control central with a website that tries to build community, but it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve lived in several buildings with the same kind of setup. Why doesn’t it work? And why will it work for you?

Dan Flatt

Great question. Yeah, so we’ve looked at a lot of those, those kinds of condominium portal type apps. And the reason that they don’t work for community is that they’re not they’re not built for the users, you know, in with any business you don’t. They’re not built for the residents, really, they’re built for the management to manage the residents. And so, you know, if you’re not being charged for the product, you are the product in a case like that the the client who’s actually paying for it, it’s the condo board and the management paying for that app as a way to manage the community. I think a lot of these apps will try to include a kind of a bulletin board where you know, where people can post things. They can maybe sell things to each other in the building, but it’s not really built to connect community and when we really start to validate, you know, when we started thinking about whatever This model could be at the very early stages, I spoke to a couple of different property managers of both rental apartment buildings and condominium buildings, and ask them, you know, would you see it as a benefit? If the residents of your building were able to talk and connect more? And actually the majority of them said that they would hate that they they said that they would, you know, they would actually, it would make your job harder. And I think I alluded to that earlier about kind of, you know, this dynamic of neighbors unionizing when they have frustration with management, and it’s a lot easier for management to knock down a complaint one person at a time rather than having, you know, I think one of the managers I interviewed at that time said, you know, I don’t want to an angry mob of, you know, with torches and pitchforks coming at me every anytime I’m in the building. So we’re not, we’re not trying to be antagonistic to management, I think that they really are a really big part of the experience of living in a building and for it to be a good experience for all the residents. And so we actually are already in talks for strategic partnerships with some companies that are kind of in that condo, Portal type of category, four ways that we could integrate and add value to their experience. We’re not trying to compete with them on that aspect, we’re really much more just going directly to the residents, and trying to unlock all the benefits of the neighbor to neighbor community.

Craig Major

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, I think you hit the nail on the head on who the product was made for. And at some point, maybe the landlords or building management don’t want to hear about all the issues that people are having, rather than say, let’s find out what the common things are. So we can fix those things that you know, the most which what they should be doing. But, you know, we all know that. Everyone is different. The questions keep on coming. This is a great startup question. So if you have an online platform or mobile app, Dan, how will you be able to manage it without an IT background?

Dan Flatt

That’s a very good question. So I’m a non technical. I’m a non technical co founder I’ve, my other co founder eras is I say, we’re both tech adjacent like we’ve worked in tech companies, but usually more in the business side. Right now, we actually are actively recruiting for a head of development. We’ve had a couple, you know, we have a couple of great technical advisors, who’ve allowed us to get this far, we worked with a great team of student developers at Centennial College who have built the current version of our app that we hope will be ready in early 2023. But absolutely, it is a gap right now. And I think that what we’re ideally looking for is somebody who both has the technical skills and familiarity with the different code bases can lead a technical team, but also is fired up by the by the purpose and the mission that we have here. And I think that as we see a lot of layoffs from some of the traditional social networks, and a lot of other tech companies, a lot of really talented people are back in the market may be disillusioned with the stated mission of some of the companies they were working at. And we’re hoping to be able to offer something different from the ground up. If anybody who is listening is considering starting or joining an early stage technology company, we’d love to chat because we are in the market and I can share a link to our job posting in the show notes afterwards.

Craig Major

This leads me to naturally to what’s your funding situation.

Dan Flatt

I bootstrapped for the first year and a half kind of self funded even this student team, this team of student developers, we got grant funding that paid for a large chunk of it, the rest of it I was paying for for my savings. I’ve been maintaining a independent consulting practice while building a brewery. No just I’m a dad of got a wife and two kids and just trying to keep the lights on at home. It’s not not the same circumstances if I was in my early 20s And could just live on ramen. So just over the last few months, we actually started raising a friends and family round using a safe note. And we actually decided to host our friends and family round on equity Vesto which is one of Canada’s leading equity crowdfunding platforms, equity crowdfunding, for those who aren’t familiar that’s, you know, there’s a lot of due diligence that’s required before you can set one up as a company, but it essentially allows you to go out into the market and raise from retail investors, sometimes for as little as $100 as a minimum check size for people, for companies who aren’t quite at the stage where that makes sense, when you’re at the friends and you know what they call the friends and family round, there’s a lot more restrictions that are put in place by the securities regulators in Ontario. It’s the Ontario Securities Commission about who is allowed to invest at this stage. And really, that those regulations are put in place. Because early stage investments are inherently more risky, they want to make sure that unscrupulous founders are misleading the public into just giving them money and running off with it, we’re actually really excited. There is a new pilot program that was just announced a few weeks ago in Ontario, by the Ontario Securities Commission, it’s actually going to be expanding the class of retail investors who are allowed to invest in early stage startups, if people have certain education or relevant job experience, they’re able to self certify that they that they understand the risk involved, and they’ll be allowed to invest up to $30,000 a year in early stage startups. So I think I saw Craig just shared a link, I’m co hosting a lunch and learn tomorrow with Alex morsing. The managing director, Aqua Vesto going to be LinkedIn lunch and learn. And we’re actually gonna be talking about this new pilot program, what it means for retail investors who might be interested in, in backing early stage companies and for early stage companies and their founders, where I see this as a really big expansion of the options that we have to fundraise at this at this stage.

Craig Major

And we work with Aqua Vestal all the time, they’re a partner of ours, they’ve been in our community before they launch. And it was great to see how many successful companies have raised with them. And it’s great that they’re these new opportunities to invest in startups, and I can’t wait to hear about it tomorrow. And I’ll probably end up having equal message one a couple of months to talk about themselves directly. I like to try and share both success and failure. So the chance that others won’t make the same mistakes, can you tell us a time where you screwed up or made the wrong pivot or startup decision?

Dan Flatt

Sure, you know, hindsight is 2020. And, you know, one of the other things I think, is that, you know, there’s a lot of standard startup advice that you’ll hear, and sometimes you, you just don’t fully internalize it. But you know, one of those pieces of advice that I have, that I unfortunately, ignored, because I thought that I was different was starting to build, you know, technology before before getting enough business validation to justify it. So in the early earlier earliest days of knavery, no, I actually kind of had a beta version already, I had the Facebook group, from my building. And then I also just built a Shopify store, modified some of the Shopify liquid codes that we could create this group buying dynamic in on on the different offers that we had for our initial community, and was actually getting some traction, I started doing weekly Costco runs, putting some of the most frequently requested items up on the Shopify store and started getting orders. You know, I started having some months where we were already making a few $1,000 in top line revenue. At the time I was, I was so low, I didn’t feel like I had the bandwidth to run that aspect of the business. At the same time, as I felt like I was already ready to start building, the more specialized app had this opportunity to work with the team of developers at Centennial got some some grant access, I kind of just put the the Shopify based business side of it on hold for close to a year as we were building the app. And now I’m I’m finding that when we speak to a lot of the investors, they think it’s great that we’ve already made so much of this progress on the app, but they are looking for a little bit more of the business traction. I think at this point where we’re almost there, where we’re hoping to have the the app ready to go, we’ve already gotten a lot of traction on business development side with many vendors who are ready to put offers on on the app, as soon as we’re as we’ve got it live, if I had to do over again, probably would have held off a little bit longer on building the app kept the earlier stage of how we were generating revenue going a little bit longer. But I think at this point, you know, we’ve benefited from all the lessons that we had doing it this way. And I think that sometimes as as a founder in order in order to be successful, you have to have a bit of stubbornness. You know, if people are telling you this isn’t gonna work, sometimes the right but you kind of have to be able to push through and trust your own conviction, because otherwise people would never try anything new.

Craig Major

You openly talk about getting diagnosed with HD ADHD doing that so as an adult and how it can be both a superpower as an entrepreneur as well as Presenting challenges. Can you tell us more about that?

Dan Flatt

I yeah, very quick story. I think that for a lot of my 30s I, I thought that I just had chronic depression and anxiety and just always felt like I was bored at work, you know, kind of lost focus. And really just, you know, thought that it was it was depression spoke to different therapists about it. And it wasn’t really until my daughter got diagnosed at school with ADHD. And this is actually a very common way that that people who are learning they have ADHD as adults, is that they have kids, they, you know, very often, the coping mechanisms that you learn when you’re younger, before you have a lot of responsibilities, they hold up until you have kids when the responsibility of just keeping another human being alive sometimes can get overwhelming. But my my daughter finding out that she had ADHD, as I started learning, reading up about it to think, okay, how can I support her? What’s, you know, what, what does it actually mean? You know, I think I’d heard about ADHD throughout my life, I think it had always been sort of a stereotypical idea of, oh, look, there’s something shiny and squirrel over there without really understanding what it was. And as I started reading about it, as I started just hearing people’s stories about what life as an adult with ADHD, I just started checking off the box like, that sounds like me, that sounds like me, I went through the self diagnosis test with my therapist who I was chatting with at the time. And we decided that it was pretty likely that I actually did have ADHD and had it my entire life. And what I came to understand ADHD actually is at the neurological level, it’s a kind of under activity in producing dopamine, which is kind of like our, it’s the neurotransmitter that is often known as the reward chemical. So anytime that you level up in a video game, or you know, click on a notification that somebody liked one of your Instagram posts, you may get like a little micro hit of dopamine, and people can get addicted to that with people who have ADHD, because our brains are our and you know, there’s kind of a, it’s not a binary thing, like there’s kind of a spectrum of how, how severe this could be, you know, our, our brains are producing a little bit less dopamine. And so we’re kind of constantly searching for it. And and so that that’s what we can be very distractible. If we see something that looks more interesting than what we’re doing right now. Our focus will shift. And so really, for me, it was it was a gift to learn that that this was the reason that I was having trouble focusing, you know, to the point of sometimes, you know, staying employed and keeping a job because I would start off in new roles, very excited, very motivated. And then after a couple of months, start just feeling like, Okay, I know how to, I know how to do this, but I can’t bring myself to actually do the things that are expected of me. And it was also really interesting, just to the sense of community, as I started chatting with people around the world, I, you know, found some really great online communities, it was the early days of clubhouse in the early days of the pandemic. And, you know, there were some really, really great rooms where people were, were just sharing their experiences of adult ADHD. And a lot of the things that I thought was something that was uniquely wrong with me, I just saw, okay, like, this is exactly how a person in Sri Lanka is experiencing life on a day to day basis. And so getting back to, you know, I focused a lot on the negatives. But the positives of ADHD, when we’re engaged, when we’re really interested in something we can hyper focus are, you know, it’s, you know, the metaphor that I use sometimes is like, it’s like having, it’s like your brain has a Ferrari engine, but bicycle brakes, so you can go really fast in one direction. But it can be hard to shift when you can channel that hyper focus. And you know, some people call it flow state, then I feel like I can get a week’s worth of work done in an afternoon. But if it’s something that I’m not interested in, like filling out one of the many grant applications that I have to fill out as a as a startup or you know, doing accounting and finances, then even though I know how to do it, and I know that I know how to do it, it can just be really, really hard to start. So a lot of different coping mechanisms and ways to deal with it. But I would say that I’ve passed the tipping point where I would say that I’ve been able to harness more of the strengths then feel like I’m held back by some of the negatives which are easier to manage and mitigate these days.

Craig Major

What are your favorite books or podcasts for entrepreneurs?

Dan Flatt

I’ve read a lot of the standard ones like the Good to Great The Lean Startup and I think that they’re kind of table stakes for a lot of entrepreneurs. A few that I’ve really liked that a little bit more off the beaten path. There’s a book I read called everything for everyone by a professor named Nathan Schneider. And it talks a lot about cooperative business models and where the users actually have an ownership stake in in the businesses, rather than just a this kind of top down corporate shareholder, who aren’t necessarily users or customers of the business. And kind of in this model, it’s been in the background for over a century, and there is a legal structure for it in Canada in the US. But I think it’s getting really interesting as we go into sort of the web three models, where there’s a lot more really interesting options for members of the community to actually have an ownership stake, and even a vote in the direction of the company. So that’s one that I found really influential. And then right now, on a similar theme, I’m reading a book called The Network steak, the network states how to start a new country by Balaji, Sreenivasan, and it is talking about how right now, and definitely in the coming decades, online communities who are connected by common values and mission could eventually start to take on the structure and even power that competes with nation states. And I think that, you know, we’re seeing some really interesting examples of that, you know, over the last few years, and it gets me thinking a lot about the future of neighbor, you know, if we’re able to connect local communities, unlock the social and economic benefits for them, and to the point where they can even combine their their buying power at the neighborhood level, but then, at the collection of neighborhoods level, then I think that there’s a lot of really interesting possibilities of how we can even transform large swaths of the economy and help and how consumers interact with large businesses source products and services in a more efficient and more environmentally sound way.

Craig Major

So another question here, will users slash the community members be charged to use the platform, I know

Dan Flatt

that our intention is for the platform to be completely free for our communities of Naborino ‘s our current revenue model is that these community group buying deals that we have in our marketplace from the vendors, whenever a successful deal goes through, we’ll take a success fee from the vendor. Eventually, we’re going to start charging the vendors a monthly subscription fee, we have a few other sources of monetization and revenue that we’re hoping to unlock a little bit further on our roadmap. But for now, we’re focusing on monetizing this community group on marketplace.

Craig Major

So what is next for you, and they were, you know,

Dan Flatt

as I mentioned, we’re hoping to launch launch our app in our first few communities in early 2023. Before we do that, we are actually looking for a very talented back end developer who is familiar with Django and Python, three frameworks, potentially ahead of development, who has those skills and more in the very immediate future, actually, starting tomorrow, we’re going to be selling a holiday gift basket that pulls together some of our favorite local products from the vendors who were hoping to have a new marketplace starting in the new year, and a portion of the proceeds are going to go to support Daily Bread Food Bank. And so I’ll be able to share some more details about that I can I can send the link, we’re actually just finishing that up. So I’m sure you’ve heard the story about in the early days of Airbnb, when they were trying to in survival mode, they printed up a whole bunch of boxes of cereal and started selling them on university campuses, pictures of Obama McCain was during the 2008 election. So we’re kind of trying to channel that energy to to have a push for revenue. Also, some more engagement with the amazing vendors who we’ve met, as we’ve done business development in anticipation of this marketplace go live. So I’d say those are the very short term, and then the the medium term is launching. Obviously, I’ll plug again tomorrow we’re going to be reading this lunch and learn with Aqua Vesto, where I think what we’ll be talking about our other priority, which is bringing in some early stage fundraising.

Craig Major

Yeah. And for those of you listening on the podcast, I’ll have all those links in the show notes to the Lunch and Learn they did to their deck and to any fundraising they happen to be doing at the same time. But where can people go and find out more about you and Naborino ,

Dan Flatt

our website is Naib, reno.com and aborio.com. And right now on social media, I’m definitely the most active on LinkedIn. So you can just look up Dan flot On LinkedIn, and we’re hoping to, we’re on all the other social platforms. But we will probably be more active on them once we are live with our, with our marketplace app and are ready to start accepting users.

Craig Major

I really appreciate you taking the time out of the busy startup day to talk to us today and tell us all about. Naborino

Dan Flatt

Thanks a lot, Craig. And thanks for everything you do for the local startup community in Toronto. I was just chatting with you before, and your startup drinks events that you host every month. Those are some of the places where I feel like I’ve gotten the most experience pitching live in front of a, an audience of human beings, as opposed to the majority of the meetings like that, that I’ve that had been primarily a resume. So another way to get the community get together and and, you know, build these real human connections that I think are lost in these early days but are so important. So thank you.

Announcer

This has been startup talk Toronto StartUp podcast. For more exclusive content, the episode vault and to be part of Toronto starts community, visit torontostarts.com. Get your name on the newsletter mailing list, and check out our upcoming events. For more episodes subscribe now, and please recognize the time and work behind the scenes put into connecting you with the biggest visionaries entrepreneurs and innovators in Toronto by leaving a five star review. Join us for more next episode from Toronto’s most active entrepreneur and startup community on startup doc

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Hover Website Hover on Instagram Cameron on Twitter Cameron on LinkedIn

Know someone on pain? Try The Pain Removers Pain Relief Balm a product we love and use regularly!

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Transcript (automated) of Hover – The Startup Talk Podcast SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drone delivery, people, drone, delivery, toronto, cannabis, startup, canada, big, money, deliver, company, food, thinking, hover, point, restaurants, important, talk, operate

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Craig Major, Cameron Rowe

Announcer

Craig Major

Welcome back to startup talk. I’m your host of startup coach, founder of Toronto starts one of the largest startup communities in Canada. And with me today is Cameron row, founder and CEO of hover the company current Lee doing drone delivery in Toronto. Welcome, Cameron. It’s great to have you.

Cameron Rowe

Thank you for having me. How’s it going?

Craig Major

Great. It’s going great. So why don’t you tell everyone about hover?

Cameron Rowe

Absolutely. So, hover is a four year old company that started off doing sort of typical drone activities that you might sort of know about, we’re taking pictures with photography for real estate, then we transition to commercial real estate. And then over the past year, we pivoted while still maintaining our core business to drone delivery. This is something I’m super excited about. And over the past year, I’ve been presenting, creating, applying for regulations. And over the summer, we’ve launched a pilot successfully doing drone deliveries to the Toronto islands. So this is something that has been a long time coming, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And we’re live. And here we go. And now that that sort of portion of the company has completed and it’s been a big success, we’re now looking into the future to see where we can take it for Canada and eventually North America.

Craig Major

So you’ve been doing this, or you know, a version of this for four years. Now, when did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Cameron Rowe

Very early, I think I was very fortunate to have lots of entrepreneurial figures in my life. My father is an entrepreneur. And he’s still at his late 50s, it’s probably working as hard or harder than me traveling around. And so I he’s a constant source of inspiration. My grandfather, he was in the corporate world and my grandmother, they worked on businesses their whole lives. And so I had a huge influence people and sort of growing up and having my parents both working on the company together. And being relatively successful at it was something that I looked at that and they said, This is what I want to do with my life,

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Cameron Rowe founder and CEO of Hover is Live in Studio with The Startup Coach to discuss how they are doing food and cannabis delivery by drone in Toronto, scaling the business model, raising money, and much more. Hover Website Hover on Instagram Cameron on Twitter Cameron on LinkedIn Know someone on pain? Try The … Continue reading Hover Drone Delivery on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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INVRS on The Startup Talk Podcast Talking with Jennifer Cameron CEO and CFO on INVRS The All-In-One Collaborative Investment Research Platform about building the platform, doing investment research, driving user growth, Equity Crowdfunding, and so much more.

INVRS Web site INVRS on Twitter INVRS on Instagram INVRS on LinkedIn

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INVRS on The Startup Talk Podcast Automated Transcript Mon, 8/29 9:22AM • 41:10

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, INVRS, investing, research, startup, started, build, platform, investor, dividends, company, investment, portfolio, work, toronto, tools, data, grew, analysis, retail investor

SPEAKERS

Announcer, The Startup Coach, Jennifer Cameron of INVRS

Announcer

The Startup Coach

Welcome back to startup talk. I’m your host and startup coach, founder of Toronto Star. It’s one of the largest startup communities in Canada. And with me today is Jennifer Cameron, the CEO and CFO of INVRS the all in one investment research platform. Welcome, Jennifer.

Jennifer Cameron of INVRS

Thank you very much, Greg. It’s a pleasure to be here.

The Startup Coach

Let’s start off with you telling us about INVRS.

Jennifer Cameron of INVRS

That would be my pleasure INVRS is a modern social and collaborative investment research platform. The problem that we are solving is that right now 60% of young people get investing advice from social media, and social media thrives on emotional reaction, whether it is polarizing opinions, or amplifying anxieties. Heightened emotionality, like the fear of missing out just leads to bad decisions. Studies have proved that success in investing comes from having a consistent strategy, doing your due diligence, and knowing yourself. So we know that we are the right solution to solve this problem. Because we work with people’s natural desire to connect and collaborate with one another. We have a social media style feed seamlessly integrated with all of the data and tools that you could want to do good investment research. And we allow our users to collaborate. And we believe that collaboration, especially in investment research should go far beyond just a conversation on our platform. People can share not only ideas, but tools, research data, they can share their portfolio, they can work together on investment analyses. And yeah, so that’s kind of is the story of what we are doing right now. And we are a Live platform, we have over 4500 people on it right now.

The Startup Coach

We’re gonna get into a lot more about INVRS in a bit. But I’d like to start off with who you were growing up. Were you a handful for your poor parents. Were you studious? Were you into music, sports socializing? Who was young Jennifer?

Jennifer Cameron of INVRS

Well, young Jennifer, in school, I think I was a mix of being studious, but also being rebellious.

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Jimmy Zachariah co-founder of Ymmij Joins the Startup Coach on this episode of The Startup Talk Podcast to discuss how to get to your true self, leaving a legacy, is the unexamined life worth living, and how Ymmij helps you build paint a true picture of yourself authentically in a private space. Ymmij is currently … Continue reading Ymmij on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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The cofounders of GTA Yachts Issey Abraha and Jeffrey Nham join the Startup Coach on this episode of The Startup Talk Podcast to discuss the launching a startup during the pandemic, making yachts available to everyone, and expanding to other cities, and more. GTA Yachts Website GTA Yachts Instagram GTA Yachts on Facebook Other … Continue reading GTA Yachts on the Startup Talk Podcast →

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Eric Brass founder of Tequila Tromba joins the Startup Coach to talk about launching a tequila brand in Canada, becoming the number 1 independent Premium Tequila Brand, and starting up in Canada. Invest in Equivesto the Equity Crowdfunding platform Other Great Podcasts: Who Are These Investors Who Are These Startups Open Your Energy Guided Meditation … Continue reading Tequila Tromba on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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Trevor Shorte joins the Startup Coach live to talk about the new Elevate Entrepreneurship program on this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast. Launched for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC), and Women entrepreneurs, Elevate Entrepreneurship, a project developed by TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario and Fanshawe College Corporate Training Solutions, will support entrepreneurs in acquiring … Continue reading Elevate Entrepreneurship on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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Trevor and Jesse two of the cofounders of Vibe Hard Kombucha join the Startup Coach to discuss the hard kombucha market, getting into the LCBO, hustling and more all on the this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast. Find out more at: Vibe Hard Kombucha Website Instagram Other Great Podcasts: Who Are These Investors … Continue reading Vibe Hard Kombucha on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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Matt, Adam, and Oren the founders of Kitchen Hub Virtual Food Hall, join the Startup Coach to discuss what is a virtual food hall, how takeout tech is evolving, raising $10Million, and of course the Kevin Smith’s Mooby’s Popup all on this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast. Get $10 off your first order when … Continue reading Kitchen Hub Virtual Food Hall on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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Looking ahead at 2022, Daniel Francavilla partner and strategist at King Street Media and fractional CMO, joins the Startup Coach in a forward looking discussion on the Role of Content Marketing and Branding in 2022 and what startups should be looking at to build their brand and audience in 2022. Topics include: Shift to a … Continue reading The Role of Content Marketing and Branding in 2022 →

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Kelly Pigeon, CEO and co-founder of Loopt joins the Startup Coach to discuss how the circular economy is changing everything, her entrepreneurial awakening, the process of raising startup rounds, their experience in the Google Accelerator, and lots more. Find out more at: Loopt website LinkedIn Register for Startup and Entrepreneur Events here TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and … Continue reading Loopt on The Startup Talk Podcast →

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Ali Shah founder and CEO of TapeReal.com joins the Startup Coach to discuss why the world needs another social media platform, De-platforming, fundraising, privacy over profit, and more Check out TapeReal at TapeReal.com Links Mention in the Podcast TapeReal Equity Crowdfunding Campaign Upcoming Events Equivesto Equity Crowdfunding TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community https://ghost.org/ The Tipping … Continue reading TapeReal on The Startup Talk Podcast →

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

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Vincent Lam and Sean Huang co founders of Matidor join the Startup Coach to talk about starting up in Shanghai, serial entrepreneurship, raising capital, startup screwups, and who is the better badminton player on episode 116 of The Startup Talk Podcast

Check out Matidor at https://matidor.com/

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Upcoming Events
Equivesto Equity Crowdfunding
TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community
Google Accelerator

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Assel Beglinova co-founder and CEO of Paperstack joins the Startup Coach to talk about growing up in Kazakhstan, the road to Paperstack, Startup Cashflow problems, Startup pricing strategies, how they raised their seed round, Google accelerator and more.

Check out Paperstack at https://paperstack.us/

Links Mention in the Podcast

Upcoming Events
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Google Accelerator

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La Vance Dotson of WooYourBoo a great app that makes “working on Your Relationships” fun, sits down with the Startup Coach to discuss the entrepreneurial journey that led to WooYourBoo, how to take the work out of relationships, and why a dating app for people who are in a relationship?

La Vance is the Founder & Chief Experience Officer at WooYourBoo. A devoted husband and father of three.

WooYourBoo is a decision-making app that suggest date ideas to experience couples based on their love languages. They are helping couples have fun while “working” on their relationship, one Woo at a time. Find out more at: https://www.wooyourboo.com/

Links Mention in the Podcast

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Equivesto Equity Crowdfunding
TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community
StartupFuel

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EventMobi CEO Bob Vaez on the Startup Talk Podcast EvwntMobi CEO Bob Vaez sits down with the Startup Coach to talk about changing landscape of events, the good, bad, and ugly of events, differences between online, in person, and hybrid events. What makes a good event and how EventMobi has evolved to the demands of todays events.

Links Mentioned in the Podcast:

Upcoming Events
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TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community

Find out more about EventMobi on social:

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other resources:

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uCast Co-founder Rand Abou Ras on the Startup Talk Podcast uCast co-founder Rand Abou Ras joins the Startup Coach to talk about growing up entrepreneurial, connecting podcasters and advertisers, and staying true to yourself along the way. oh we also talk about uCast a marketplace for that makes it east podcasters and advertisers of any size to find their perfect ad match.

Links Mention in the Podcast

Lisn ‘Discover. Clip. Share. podcast segments – https://www.lisnclips.app/
Notion ‘All in One Workspace – https://www.notion.so/
Super.so. ‘Build simple websites with nothing but Notion’ – https://super.so/
Building with Gen Z – https://genz.fm/

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OutLoud Speakers School Co-Founder Will Greenblatt on The Startup Talk Podcast Actor, Musician, and Pitch Coach Will Greenblatt joins the Startup Coach to talk about how being a childhood actor, struggling to find yourself, travelling the world, and launching OutLoud Speakers School where they help people communicate with impact and deliver a powerful pitch.

Will Greenblatt is an Actor, Musician, Pitch Coach with numerous acting credits including Life with Derek, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Radio Free Roscoe, and more. You have heard him in Assassins Creed Games and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Teaching public speaking, communication skills & pitch coaching. OutLoud’s clients include Google, ICBC, DMZ and TechStars, and collectively have raised over $40 million USD in investment. Will travels all over the world coaching individuals and companies, helping entrepreneurs and professionals tell their story with more passion, clarity and confidence.

OutLoud Speakers School Powerful Pitch Program

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Creative Oxygen Labs on The Startup Talk Podcast “Everyone on planet earth has a right to clean air” and startup Creative Oxygen Labs solution will have your walls actually removing harmful substances from the air you breathe. Christopher Shahabi founder of Creative Oxygen Labs joins the Startup Coach to talk about how they are making walls breathe clean air!

Find out more about Creative Oxygen Labs and how you can invest starting at $250: https://portal.equivesto.com/offering/oxygen

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oxio Co-Founder Marc-André Campagna on The Startup Talk Podcast Marc-André Campagna cofounder of oxio joins the Startup Coach about how oxio is changing everything about what it means to be a network operator. Challenging Canadian monopolies and bringing high speed internet, television, and phone services with transparency. Topics include building next generation customer support, rethinking the business from the ground up, being in Y Combinator and Demo Day, raising $40Million, tips for raising funds, and startup screw-ups.

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Lightfoot Founder Adam Johannson on the Startup Talk Podcast Lightfoot founder Adam Johannsson joins the Startup Coach live to discuss how they are becoming the “stripe of climate change”. How they are offering the tools and tech to track and automatically offset your carbon footprint.

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Phyxable Founder Dr. Jim Feng on the Startup Talk Podcast Phyxable is where healing begins. Join founder of Phyxable serial entrepreneur Dr. Jim Feng as he talks to the Startup Coach about how Phyxable empowers you with world class practitioners and technology to treat your injury and pain, while building a better you.

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Leyton Canada’s Technical Director Jon Irwin on The Startup Talk PodcastJon Irwin of Leyton Canada joins the Startup Coach to talk about building a Canadian practice to over 70 employees. How they support businesses of all sizes to find the capital they need. Jon gives us some insider tips and the latest insights on government grants and tax credits in Canada.Government of Canada Funding Finder mention on the show Find out more about Leyton Canada or on social: TwitterJon Irwin on LinkedinWatch the Interview on YouTubeRegister for Startup and Entrepreneur Events hereTorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup CommunityAngel Investor ListVenture Capital ListJoin us on RedditTorontoStarts YouTube ChannelStarting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and ScaleupsStartup Pricing StrategiesThe Startup ListMonthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed DatingJoin us for Startup Pitch Battle

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YEDI (York Entrepreneurship Development Institute) on The Startup Talk Podcast Maria Konikov, Director of Operations of York Entrepreneurship Development Institute (YEDI) joins the Startup Coach to discuss how YEDI is leading the way in building great entrepreneurs and startups. YEDI is the Top University Business Accelerator in the World! Find out more about their mission, VC Fund, Programs, and more. YEDI’s mission is to create a rigorous and free institute where innovators can pursue training, top-tier education, and mentorship in order to to produce high-calibre effective businesses and not-for-profit organizations. Apply to their 16 Week Free program

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Lightster Founder Pativet Sathiensamrit on Ep104 of The Startup Talk Podcast Getting customer feedback early and often is critical for business success and can be difficult. Pativet Sathiensamrit founder of Lightster discusses how easy it is to get customer interviews on demand for as little as $1 per minute and get the feedback you need. Lightster Founder Pativet Sathiensamrit joins the Startup Coach to talk about the value of getting customer feedback early and often, launching the startup Lightster, and how easy the process of customer interviews can be.

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AdMass Founder Yuri Kaplan on Ep103 of The Startup Talk Podcast AdMass founder Yuri Kaplan joins the Startup Coach to talk about how AdMass is bringing content / influencer marketing to all businesses for $1-$9 per post! AdMass has a unique business model, as the only creator marketing platform with a pay per post plan. Listen to the conversation including sales, social media, content creators / influencers and how they are using technology to leverage all of the above to help drive sales and grow businesses.

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Marlow Founder Nadia Ladak on Ep102 of The Startup Talk Podcast Marlow founder Nadia Ladak joins the Startup Coach to discuss how they are transforming menstrual health, sparking conversations, and and as a startup bringing better products to market. Be part of the discussion live. Find out more about Marlow at https://www.wearemarlow.com/ Watch the Interview on YouTube Register for Startup and Entrepreneur Events here TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community Angel Investor List Venture Capital List Join us on Reddit TorontoStarts YouTube Channel Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups Startup Pricing Strategies The Startup List Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating Join us for Startup Pitch Battle

Automated TranScript of Marlow Founder Nadia Ladak on Ep102 of The Startup Talk Podcast

00:00:02 - 00:05:05

Direct from the six world renowned Canada’s largest city with Canada’s biggest thinkers visionaries and hustlers. I this is Startup. talk featuring the founders’ funders innovators and community leaders who've led Canada’s Startup ecosystem. Right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges. The failures the successes Toronto Startup cast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers move made a difference now the host of Startup talking. The founder of Toronto starts this Startup coach. Welcome back to start off. I'm your host and starred coach founder of Toronto starts in with me. Today is Nadia Ladak of Marlow. Welcome now here. Thanks for having me great. Glad to have you tell us. About Marlow. Marlow is really exciting. Journey so far it actually started when one of my co-founders We're all having a conversation amongst us as friends. And she mentioned that every month when she had her period and she wants to go to the gym. She actually can't do that. And that's because she has a lot of trouble inserting tampon. It's quite painful for her and so right now. Her only alternative is to use the pad which is quite bulky. Essentially feels like a diaper each month. And so, it really limits you from doing a lot of your daily activities when you're on your period Prevented from wearing certain types of clothing from going to the beach Going swimming And so we really thought about that and we spoke to hundreds of customers and realized that it was a pinpoint for several of them as well actually eighty six percent of them said that they also experienced tampon on insertion pain could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe they had batch no china's maybe they were on birth control so they had a bit of a lighter flow There were so many different reasons and so we really tried to dig into this. What we could do about it and the fun. The founder that experienced that pain she went to the gynecologist and the gynecologist told her to fit on her tampon. And we were all just so shocked free. Thought that's not. That doesn't really sound like a great solution. there must be some better way And so we've designed the first ever lubricated tampon kit. It has one hundred percent organic. Cotton tampons with a plant-based applicator compostable rapper. So really prioritizing those sustainability pieces as well Than aren't lubricant is all natural. And so together. You can dip your tampon into lubricant bottle for a really easy smooth insertion process and so It's delivered through direct-to-consumer subscription. And so, you also don't have to worry about running out of product each month. It's always there for you and showing up on your doorstep. So that's a little bit about Marlow and we're launching August so really excited to kind of bring that to market and see the demand green. We're going to get into a lot more about that in a little bit. But I like to start about who the entrepreneur was growing up. Were you a handful for your parents? Where you studious into music sports socializing.

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One Development Corporation Founder Jason Ferreira on Ep101 of The Startup Talk PodcastOne Development Corporation Founder Jason Ferreira joins the Startup Coach live to talk about how they are changing the way people can invest in real estate and the challenges of launching a business.Investing in the Toronto real estate isn’t just for the rich any more. With One Development Corp you can invest in the Toronto real estate market for as little as $500. They are currently offering preferred shares with 10% dividend. With investments being TSFA/RRSP Eligible.One Development Corp – https://www.onedevcorp.com/Invest in One Development – https://portal.equivesto.com/offering/onedevWatch the Interview on YouTubeRegister for Startup and Entrepreneur Events hereTorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup CommunityAngel Investor ListVenture Capital ListJoin us on RedditTorontoStarts YouTube ChannelStarting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and ScaleupsStartup Pricing StrategiesThe Startup ListMonthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed DatingJoin us for Startup Pitch Battle Automated Transcript of:One Development Corporation Founder Jason Ferreira on Ep101 of The Startup Talk PodcastDirect from the six, world renowned Canada’s largest city with Canada’s biggest thinkers’ visionaries and hustlers. This is Startup Talk featuring the founders’ funders innovators and community leaders who've led Canada’s Startup ecosystems. Right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges. The failures the successes Toronto Startup. podcast gives you the full story. Direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers move made a difference now the host of Startup talking. The founder of Toronto starts Startup coach. Welcome back to start of talk. I'm your host to start coach. Founder of Toronto starts in with me. Today is Jason Ferreira. The founder of one development corp. and they're changing the way property acquisition and real estate redevelopment Model is happening in Toronto. Welcome Jason. How's it going craig. It's going great. Why don't we start with what is One Development Corporation? Yeah so. I formed one development because I saw an opportunity to do things a little bit differently in the in the market the Toronto real estate market specifically so a real estate development Startup Our focus is primarily modern contemporary homes in the GTA. And so, what we do. are we take these dated, Houses transform them into these uber, Cool homes And I saw a bunch of the aca look book on your site, in back in the seventies look book was a whole different thing but it wasn't a bad thing? These homes look great! Like they're nothing I would normally see. Yeah, and that's and that's the kicker Not only for that design style of vomit architecture. But it's very desirable. There's a huge demand for these. And yeah you. You're starting to see some pop up, but you don't see them often in knots because you know this style has relatively. It's relatively new in Canada You know you a traditionally find you know. Modern homes have been around for over fifty years. You know and so but generally in warmer climates California for example or Florida or you know Mediterranean etc. and that's because You know they have the temperatures there to build those sets of houses and so now we're able to build these ultra-modern houses here, because the materials have gotten that much better so you can get creative in design style. You don't have to use the typical brick and mortar type houses. You can do. A lot of this at prefabricated paneling stucco and so you know. These materials are well designed now to sustain the weather conditions. Here in Canada energy. Conserving windows and doors. Things like that so you can now that they're you know. More readily available that demand for him is very high and so that's the area of the market that we're trying to tap into, so I like to start with who the entrepreneur was growing up.

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CanaWho Founder Pedro Correia on Episode 100 of the Startup Talk Live Pedro Correia was a professional soccer player before a life changing severe head injury. During recovery he began to questioned the side effects of the treatments and medications. Which led to a deep interest in medical cannabis and founding CanaWho. Find out the whole story in this interview with The Startup Coach

CannaWho is a community centric platform that unites cannabis worldwide. https://www.canawho.com/

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Teleport ‘The First Real Dating App’ Founders on Episode 99 of The Startup Talk Podcast The Startup Coach sits down with Tyler Greenberg and Chad Goodman founders of Teleport “The first real dating app”. Discussing the journey that led them to launch Teleport and the struggles and triumphs along the way. Join us live and get some dating tips like why a first date should be only 5 minutes. How is Teleport the first real dating app?

Teleport is the first real dating app. Meet real people, on real dates – an online experience inspired by the real world. Teleport is community driven, and hosts themed dating events to connect with singles who share your interests. Skip the endless swipe and go on 5 dates for 5 minutes each. From events around Buddhism to Salsa Dancing to Pixar movie fans, there’s something for everyone. Community leaders, podcasters, and influencers can also sign up to host Done-For-You events on Teleport, and earn a passive stream of income.

Check out Teleport here

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Canadian Equity Crowdfunding on Episode 98 The Startup Talk Podcast Do you have questions about equity crowdfunding as a startup or an investor but not sure if it’s right for you. The Startup Coach hosts an Ask Me Anything about Canadian Equity Crowdfunding with Alex Morsink Managing Director of Equity Crowdfunding Platform Equivesto. Listen to Alex as he answers all the audiences questions about equity crowdfunding.

Equivesto connects innovative, driven, inspired Canadian businesses with the capital they need to succeed through their community-focused equity crowdfunding platform https://equivesto.com/companies

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Razzall Founder Joe Rubini on Episode 97 of the Startup Talk Podcast Razzall founder Joe Rubini joins the Startup Coach to discuss his entrepreneurial journey that led him Razzall. We talk about the struggles and successes experienced along the way. They have coined the term “Crowdpurchasing” and discuss the meaning and impact it will have on ecommerce.

How Razzall gives you a chance to get the things you want a fraction of the price! Right now You can Razzall Tesla Model 3 for $50 PlayStation 5 from $1 MacBook Air from $20 $4000 Hilton Niagara Getaway from $8

Check them out at https://razzall.com/

Invest in Razzall at https://portal.equivesto.com/offering/Razzall/

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Ontario Digital Media Tax Credit with Jon Irwin on Episode 96 of The Startup Talk Podcast You may be able to recover 40% of eligible labour costs and up to $100,000k in marketing and distribution costs? Jonathan Irwin of Leyton takes us on a deep dive of the Ontario Digital Media Tax Credit program. Recorded live with Q&A from the audience

Leyton Canada – https://leyton.com/ca/

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Brand Positioning for Sales and Marketing Success with Mark Evans on The Startup Talk Podcast Mark Evans Joins The Startup Coach for A look at how to to position your brand what it means and why it is crucial for marketing and sales success.

Mark Evans is a fractional CMO for fast growing B2B SaaS companies, formerly the principal with ME Consulting, which helps fast-growing B2B technology companies drive more leads and customer engagement through brand positioning, strategic planning, and amazing content. Mark is also the author of Marketing Spark, a book that provides entrepreneurs with strategic and tactical guidance to embrace the power of story-driven marketing. He blogs marketingspark.co/blog and publishes a weekly newsletter that features curated content about marketing and sales.

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Startup Faceoff 7 Episode 94 the Startup Talk Podcast This lively and interactive session has our panelists discussing entrepreneur and startup topics of the day. They Face Off against each other on 4 topics and this group rarely agrees and things will get heated! Get different points of view from founders who are living it everyday. Join us live

Panelists Imran Mouna – Co-founder InStage Ali Shah – Founder & CEO TapeReal George Boutsalis – Co-founder Cast Craig Major of TorontoStarts.com

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Startup Funding Sources on The Startup Talk Podcast TorontoStarts brings together funding experts from Fundica, OCI, and Equivesto to discuss all the Startup Funding Sources other than angel and VC Investment. What are the other sources of funding you should be considering. According to Entrepreneur magazine Raising capital for their startup is the number one concern of founders. Yet only 0.05% of Startups receive VC funding, what happens to the 99.95%? This panel will discuss the many other sources of funding available to Canadian startups.

Featuring:

OCI Ontario Centres of Innovation – https://www.oc-innovation.ca/ Fundica – https://www.fundica.com/ Equivesto – https://equivesto.com/

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Building Community Around Your Business on the Startup Talk Podcast Building a community around your business is more and more important. Growing your community of customers and business partners enhances your reputation, capabilities, and predictability of revenue. TorontoStarts has brought together a group of community builders from The World Trade Centre, Toronto Board of Trade, Startup Fuel and Equivesto, to share what works and what doesn’t and to answer your questions.

Recorded Live Featuring:

World Trade Centre / Toronto Board of Trade Startup Fuel Equivesto

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Hutsy Founder Tefari Bailey on Startup Talk Podcast The Startup Coach talks to Tefari Bailey of Hutsy Financial. Hutsy is changing how you do banking. Hutsy is a free pre-paid, reloadable card with a companion app to help you get cash back, save, and track your finances with ease. Want to Invest check out Hutsy’s Equity Crowdfunding Campaign Find Hutsy Here Watch the Interview on YouTube Register for Startup and Entrepreneur Events here TorontoStarts Entrepreneur and Startup Community Angel Investor List Venture Capital List Join us on Reddit TorontoStarts YouTube Channel Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups Startup Pricing Strategies The Startup List Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating Join us for Startup Pitch Battle

Hutsy Founder Tefari Bailey on Startup Talk Podcast

(Automated Transcript)

00:00:02 - 00:05:15

Direct from the six world renowned Canada’s largest city with Canada’s biggest thinkers visionaries and hustlers. I this is startup. talk featuring the founders funders innovators and community leaders who've led Canada’s startup ecosystem. Right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges. The failures the successes Toronto startup. podcast gives you the full story. Direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers made a difference now the host of startup talk. The founder of Toronto starts this startup coach of the start of talk. I'm your host Craig major. The startup coach and founder of Toronto starts and with me today Tefari Bailey founder and CEO of Hutsy. How you doing. I’m great. how are you today. thank you so much for having me on your Amazing podcast. I'm doing great and something. I didn't say probably should've said beforehand and for those of you who know me This is day. six without coffees. I normally have at least a pot of coffee before. I go and get coffee. And so, this is it's been a change for me I'm a little grumpier than usual. But I think that's going to pass so we're here to talk about Hutsy and let's get off right away. Tell us what is Hutsy up. Alina brief level overview Hutsy is a prepaid card that comes through companion app to help our clients build credit invest earn cashback save track. We also do have a vertical that allows our clients to get early access to payroll so that they don't have to any short-term loans last baby yeah, I saw that I saw If you're using your card under regular that you can get a prepayment or pre-views it before your money's in how does that work yep scrape washing. so how does work is for users that are with financial banking. And if they do harm direct deposit set up they will be able to get access to early payroll a couple days early access to three hundred dollars within five days due to the manner that you know No he will get paid every two weeks. And that's something that was introduced since the sixties since people were working factories and things of that nature. Everything else has changed. Everything is also involved. But why not your paint cycle. Why is that those aims and we really want to make a change there. That's great and I know a lot of people get stuck in those I don't remember off the top head to big yellow signs of money mart and the pay whatever. The payday loans are trying to get a few bucks extra for the weekend or whatnot. I'm in this hopefully will eliminate some of that because people. That's a trapping that just did it kills you financially once you start doing that most up. No, we'd zoo trapped in the life cycle of debt. That you really can't get out of and you don't really pay attention after a while. You'll be getting one payday loans to cover the fees for the other payday while that's where they get you. So, what would you like growing up. Where a handful for your parents were you. Studious indie music sports socializing. Greg questions are not necessarily music or up. But I was really athletic. I was yard.

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CAST Founder George Boutsalis on Startup Talk Podcast The Startup Coach talks to George Boutsalis of Cast an anonymous social media voting platform that removes the friction, and the social pressures, of sharing your opinion online. Cast assembles and aggregates the demographic data to promote transparency, curiosity and encourages users to think for themselves. They are not the subjective authority of “public opinion”, rather the objective assembly of public opinion. Want to try CAST Get the App Here Watch the Interview on YouTube Register for Startup and Entrepreneur Events here Angel Investor List Venture Capital List Join us on Reddit TorontoStarts YouTube Channel Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups Startup Pricing Strategies The Startup List Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating Join us for Startup Pitch Battle

Transcript of CAST Founder George Boutsalis on Startup Talk Podcast (Automated Transcript)

00:00:02 - 00:05:01

Direct from the six world renowned canada's largest city with canada's biggest thinkers visionaries and hustlers. I this is startup. talk featuring the founders funders innovators and community leaders who've led canada's startup ecosystem. Right here in toronto. You'll hear the challenges. The failures the successes toronto startup. podcast gives you the full story. Direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers move made a difference now the host of startup talk. The founder of toronto starts this startup coach. Welcome to start of talk. I'm the startup coach. Founder of toronto stars candidates start up and entrepreneur community and with me today is george boots co founder of cast and cast is the objective assembly of public opinion. Is that correct. That is correct. This cracked craig. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Big fan of the looking for to china and then i pronounce your last name. Chris did you did which a lot of people honestly i've earned of so many different ways it's been said but For shots guys. Leagues really really appreciate that. I usually asking the pre conversation chapel. We just got into chattanooga looked. let's just take a shot. See what happens so Tell us about cast so As you said our Our our vision is to be the objective assembly public opinion. And what that means is our goal is to is to bring objectivity back to Social media media as a whole One of the main reason this platform started in was founded. Was i just myself. My has got really tired of being served. Kind of subjective. In one-sided narratives one-sided data on that fits certain. Agendas you watch the news. And one channel has sixty percent of people think this. The other channel thinks eighty percent. Think this and i mean that not a mathematician but that he was more than one hundred percent so you know he's like the wonder who are these people who are they asking what's the demographic Look hampton they fall in. They get a step further to social media. Easy trending topics very well could be the most popular talking about. But it's very hard to see what side people foreign is it trending reason expiries and why and we just felt that to start wanna bring people objective data. Bring them facts. Let them think for themselves for own opinions and just kind of bring some healthy discourse back to social media platforms. And i think that's great. I think we've all seen a lot of one-sided media these days and Ganging up on political opinions. You don't agree on. And i don't know i'm old school. I've been around a long time. And i remember you know fire fighting for freedom of speech and it seems like it's disappearing little bit and it upsets me somewhat But at the same time is it pendulum. Or is this you know do we. Is it technology companies like you that are gonna bring it back what we're hoping for and obviously should be clear we're not trying to create the wild west and let people just say whatever they want.

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Powerful Pitch Automation on The Startup Talk Podcast with Will Greenblatt Powerful Pitch Automation on The Startup Talk Podcast is brought to you by TorontoStarts and OutLoud Speakers School present. We discuss the tricks and techniques that take your pitch to the next level. How to be prepared to pitch in any situation and overcome fears, anxiety, and distraction to deliver your best pitch with Actor, Musician, and Pitch Coach Will Greenblatt as he joins The Startup Coach in the last in the 5 part pitching series. Will Greenblatt is an Actor, Musician, Pitch Coach with numerous acting credits including Life with Derek, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Radio Free Roscoe, and more. You have heard him in Assassins Creed Games and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Teaching public speaking, communication skills & pitch coaching. OutLoud’s clients include Google, ICBC, DMZ and TechStars, and collectively have raised over $40 million USD in investment. Will travels all over the world coaching individuals and companies, helping entrepreneurs and professionals tell their story with more passion, clarity and confidence. Startup Talk Recommended Resources Watch previous video on our YouTube Channel TorontoStarts Toronto Startup Live Events The Startup List Startup Book Club Starting a Business in Ontario Startup Angel Investor List Startup Venture Capitalist List What is your Startup Pricing Strategy

Startup Pricing Strategies

Cannabis Dispensary Just Flowers Deliverys

Transcript of Powerful Pitch Automation (Automated Transcript)

00:00:02 - 00:05:09

Direct from The Six, world renowned, Canada's largest city with Canada's biggest thinkers’ visionaries and hustlers. I this is startup. talk featuring the founders funders innovators and community leaders who've led Canada's startup ecosystem. Right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges. The failures the successes Toronto startup on cast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who made a difference now the host of startup talking the founder of TorontoStarts The Startup. CoachWelcome to Powerful Pitch Automation with actor. Musician and pitch coach Will Greenblatt. The co-founder of OutLoud Speakers School. How are you doing?Well. I'm doing shitty but I don't know if I can swear on this? But I’m okay. I'm sick but I’m going to be fine for today. I'm going to be great. Powerful Pitch Automation is going to be awesome. I'm super excited for this. But yeah, it's really nice to be back other than being sick. I'm doing quite well my Businesses kind of all gone virtual. So, I’m one of those lucky people who is able to do my stuff Online and not have to rely on in person events or spaces so I’m doing great and as my wife she's able to work from home so yeah. We're good fantastic so while you get your presentation going. I want to remind people who are on YouTube era Join us on zoom here in the chat room that we all your questions so if you have any questions about this we'll be answering them pretty much at the end or will might be. Sometimes he asked questions in the middle because it's interactive but we'll answer and we'll get to all your questions and will probably have an opportunity for you to pitch at the end. We'll give you some feedback so Definitely look forward to that. And when you're ready over to you will let's do it So we are here at act five for anybody who doesn't know me. Craig introduced me but my name is with green. I'm the CEO and co-founder of out loud speaker school and we help founders and teams and executives tell powerful stories to grow their business. We mostly work with public speaking training and communication coaching. And we have a number of services that I can link to at the end if anybody's interested in taking their public speaking storytelling and their marketing game to a whole another level through developing really good communication skills. Today is the last Stage of our five-step model which we call five ...

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Startup Faceoff 6 on The Startup Talk Podcast This lively and interactive session has our panelists discussing entrepreneur and startup topics of the day. They Face Off against each other on 4 topics and this group rarely agrees and things will get heated! Get different points of view from founders who are living it everyday. Recorded Live.

Mithulan Perinpanayagam – X-matik Will Greenblatt – Outloud Speakers School Zeba Dantas – Sway Mgmt Craig Major of TorontoStarts.com

Book Recommendations:

Profit First Built to Sell

Topics include:

What is the priority for your startup in 2021? How much Social is too much and how do you deal with it? Does Canada need to revise legislation to allow more access to early startup investments? How do you deal with founder depression, demotivation, and boredom?

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Angel Investor List

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

Startup Pricing Strategies

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Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating

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How to Pick Equity Crowdfunding Investments While Investing in Startups on Startup Talk Podcast Investing in Startups: How to Pick Equity Crowdfunding Investments with Alex Morsink from Equviesto. On this episode we talk what to Look for when Investing in startups. How in this era of low interest rates and market volatility, people are expanding their investment portfolios and putting their money in early stage startups in which they believe. But what do you look for when it comes to investing in startups, Alex Morsink takes us through his tips on what to look for when evaluating a startup for investment. This has been made easier by equity crowdfunding where you can now invest in startups with as little as $100. We’ll talk about who should consider startup investment, how to evaluate a startup, and is startup investing right for you.

Raising capital for their startup is the number one concern of founders. In fact only 0.05% of Startups receive VC funding, what happens to the 99.95% who don’t? With equity crowdfunding the rules have changed allowing startups to take their funding into their own hands. Learn the details of being successful at equity crowdfunding for your startup at equivesto.com. Equivesto connects innovative, driven, inspired Canadian businesses with the capital they need to succeed through their community-focused equity crowdfunding platform

https://equivesto.com/Investors

Find Past Videos here TorontoStarts YouTube Channel

Angel Investor List

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating

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Startup Faceoff 5 on The Startup Talk Podcast This lively and interactive session has our panelists discussing entrepreneur and startup topics of the day. They Face Off against each other on 4 topics and this group rarely agrees and things will get heated! Get different points of view from founders who are living it everyday. Recorded Live.

Daniela Kelloway of BooknBrunch – https://www.booknbrunch.com/ Candace Huntly of SongBird Communications – https://songbirdmarketing.ca/ Doug Mochrie of Airo.Life – https://airo.life/ Craig Major of TorontoStarts.com

Topics include:

What makes you want to attend one virtual event over another? Will in real life (IRL) events return to the way it once was? Should we be reaching out to influencers or content creators now to work with our company? Is it worthwhile working with influencers? The environment and energy, should Canada secure a position with Helium-3 to help deliver clean energy to the planet? How to keep inclusion top of mind as a solo entrepreneur early stage startup when you are marketing

Watch the Interview on YouTube

Angel Investor List

Venture Capital List

Join TorontoStarts on Reddit

TorontoStarts YouTube Channel

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

Startup Pricing Strategies

The Startup List

Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating

Join us for Startup Pitch Battle

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Youth Entrepreneurship with Y2 Entrepreneurship Labs with Lucas Chang on the Startup Talk Podcast The Startup Coach talks to Lucas Chang of Y2 Entrepreneurship Labs about working with grades 6-12, Getting the desire to get involved after Startup Weekend, and starting Amp-Up York (formerly Startup York). It’s a great conversation that includes a discussion on the KFC Gaming Console (yes, you read that right).

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TorontoStarts YouTube Channel

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Andie The Contact Tracing, Curbside Pickup, Wait Time App on the Startup Talk Podcast The Startup Coach talks to the three founders of Andie.work, Todd, Baba, and Dan.. They are helping Canadian businesses stay open and safe during COVID-19 with curb side services, wait times and lineups for Grocery, Liquor Stores, and Pharmacies, and contact tracing. Find out more about Andie at https://andie.work/

Watch the Interview on YouTube

Angel Investor List

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Join us on Reddit

TorontoStarts YouTube Channel

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

Startup Pricing Strategies

The Startup List

Monthly Entrepreneur & Startup Investor Speed Dating

Join us for Startup Pitch Battle

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5 Step Pitch Process to Unlock Venture Capital on The Startup Talk Podcast Dream of delivering that perfect pitch that unlocks the funding your startup needs to get to the next level? In Unlock Startup Venture Capital, Kevin Smith takes us through his 5 Step Pitch Process to build the perfect pitch giving you the keys to unlock Venture Capital. Kevin is the founder of The Story Architect where they help start-ups and social enterprises figure out what their story is, and help them get that story to market so that they can grow and make an impact.

Watch previous videos on our YouTube Channel

TorontoStarts

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What is your Startup Pricing Strategy

https://torontostarts.com/startup-and-small-business-marketing/startup-pricing-strategies/

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2021 Venture Capital and Startup Funding Landscape on The Startup Talk Podcast

TorontoStarts brings together Startup VC investors to talk about what the startup investment landscape looks like in 2021 and what startups should be doing differently to get funded.

Panelists Allison Weil – Hyde Park Venture Partners Stuart Browne – Pycap Venture Partners Alex Morsink – Equivesto

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TorontoStarts

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What is your Startup Pricing Strategy

https://torontostarts.com/startup-and-small-business-marketing/startup-pricing-strategies/

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Powerful Pitch 4 Alignment with Will Greenblatt on The Startup Talk PodcastTorontoStarts and OutLoud Speakers School present “Powerful Pitch Series ACT 4 Alignment ‘Speaking from the Heart and Getting Others Onboard’ ” with Actor, Musician, and Pitch Coach Will Greenblatt as he joins The Startup Coach in this fourth in the 5 part pitching series.Will Greenblatt has been acting professionally since he was seven years old. After graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in 2010, he took a hiatus from acting, moving to Spain to teach English, and then co-founding an ESL & business coaching company in Hangzhou, China.After returning, he co-founded OutLoud Speakers School, a team of actors teaching public speaking, communication skills & pitch coaching. OutLoud’s clients include Google, ICBC, DMZ and TechStars, and collectively have raised over $40 million USD in investment.Will travels all over the world coaching individuals and companies, helping entrepreneurs and professionals tell their story with more passion, clarity and confidence. When Will is not coaching and running OutLoud Speakers School, he is still an active performer in film, TV and theatre, most recently appearing in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey for Ubisoft, and in Kat Sandler’s Yaga at the Tarragon. Watch previous video on our YouTube ChannelTorontoStartsToronto Startup Live EventsThe Startup ListStartup Book ClubStarting a Business in OntarioStartup Angel Investor ListStartup Venture Capitalist ListWhat is your Startup Pricing Strategyhttps://torontostarts.com/startup-and-small-business-marketing/startup-pricing-strategies/ Cannabis Dispensary Just Flowers Deliverys

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Airo.Life Founder Doug Mochrie on The Startup Talk Podcast Join The Startup Coach as he talks with Airol.Life founder Doug Mochrie as he tell us about his company motto “Never Pay for your mobile phone or data again!” and how that could possibly a business model! Join us live

Get the AIRO.LIFE Be Free Phone, a top quality smartphone and data plan for free with the understanding you’ll see content and ads atop a thin layer of the device thus paying for your phone.

Want to Invest in Airo.Life

Watch the Airo.Life interview on YouTube

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Youth Entrepreneurship with Futurpreneur Vice President Scott Bowman Talking Youth Entrepreneurship with Scott Bowman, Futurpreneur Vice President Ontario, Prairies, and Northern Ontario. Discussing things like: What resources are available to 18-39 year old entrepreneurs How can young entrepreneurs qualify to up to $60k The easiest way to create a business plan How to find mentors? Where to Network?

Futurpreneur Canada has been fueling the entrepreneurial passions of Canada’s young enterprise for two decades. The only national, non-proﬁt organization that provides ﬁnancing, mentoring and support tools to aspiring business owners aged 18-39. Their internationally recognized mentoring program hand matches young entrepreneurs with a business expert from a network of more than 3,000 volunteer mentors. Futurpreneur’s mission: To provide early-stage financing, mentorship and other resources to help aspiring entrepreneurs age 18-39 launch successful businesses that contribute to sustainable economic development in their communities and for Canada.

Find Past Videos here Startup Launch Online Series

Join The Startup Book Club, Get the Books, Get access to The Book Club Discussion Group

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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What is an Exempt Market Dealer with Alex Morsink Cofounder of Equivesto Alex takes us through the details of the exempt market and what it means to be an Exempt Market Dealer (EMD), and most importantly why you need to know who is and who isn’t an EMD when it comes to equity.

Topics Include

What is the Exempt Market? What are some Investment types in the Exempt Market? What is an Exempt Market Dealer? What Role does Exempt Market Dealers Play? 1What are some employee roles at an Exempt Market Dealer or EMD? What requirements do Exempt Market Dealers have? How does a company become an Exempt Market Dealer? Q&A with Alex Morsink, the Startup Coach, and the audience

https://equivesto.com/Investors

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Startup Faceoff 4 the Startup Talk Podcast This lively and interactive session has our panelists discussing entrepreneur and startup topics of the day. They Face Off against each other on 4 topics and this group rarely agrees and things will get heated! Get different points of view from founders who are living it everyday. Recorded Live.

Justin Ford of Javelin Sports – https://www.javelinsportsinc.com/ Trevor Shorte of SongBird Marketing Communications – https://songbirdmarketing.ca/ Deanna Burger of commUNITY – https://communitymasks.ca/ Craig Major of TorontoStarts.com

Watch Startup Faceoff 4 on Youtube

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Award Pool Founder Reuven Cohen The Startup Talk Podcast Serial entrepreneur Reuven Cohen talks with The Startup Coach about how he was coding AOL when he was 12, building the amazon cloud, working on the US Government website and his latest Startup Award Pool, and so much more on this episode of the Startup Talk Podcast.

Visit the Award Pool website

Invest in Award Pool at Equivesto

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

Startup Pricing Strategies

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Conflict Resolution for Founders and Investors with Emi Garzitto on The Startup Talk Podcast TorontoStarts and Creative Edge Present “Conflict Resolution for Founders and Investors” with Emi Garzitto

·Signs to look for, to avoid costly conflicts in life & business ·Strategies & Resources to help you manage conflict ·Q&A

Emi is the Conflict Alchemist find out more here: https://creativeedgeconsulting.com/

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Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Shareholder’s Agreements with Alex Morsink on The Startup Talk Podcast TorontoStarts and Equivesto present “Preparing Shareholder’s Agreements for Equity Crowdfunding” with Equivesto. In this session we talk about all the considerations you need to think about when preparing your shareholders agreements with some extras on specifics things to look for related to equity crowdfunding.

Raising capital for their startup is the number one concern of founders. In fact only 0.05% of Startups receive VC funding, what happens to the 99.95% who don’t? With equity crowdfunding the rules have changed allowing startups to take their funding into their own hands. Learn the details of being successful at equity crowdfunding for your startup at equivesto.com Equivesto connects innovative, driven, inspired Canadian businesses with the capital they need to succeed through their community-focused equity crowdfunding platform https://equivesto.com/companies

Watch the video here

Find Past Videos here Startup Launch Online Series

Join The Startup Book Club, Get the Books, Get access to The Book Club Discussion Group

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

Startup Pricing Strategies

The Startup List

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Art of Negotiation with Marcus Dickinson on The Startup Talk Podcast TorontoStarts and the How To Project present “The Art of Negotiating” with Marcus Dickinson. Marcus takes us through the Negotiating process offering his unique insights to help you negotiate a great deal.

Marcus, has worked with a variety of industry giants including Cossette Communications, Fuel Advertising, Taxi and other creative advertising agencies, to working with Aecon, Amherst Crane, Veridian and other construction and utility corporations, to helping financial institutions such as ScotiaBank & Royal Bank, to streamlining media giant Rogers, the systems that Marcus and team implement have proven industry agnostic.

Watch the Video here

Find Past Videos here Startup Launch Online Series

Join The Startup Book Club, Get the Books, Get access to The Book Club Discussion Group

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

Startup Pricing Strategies

The Startup List

TorontoStarts YouTube Channel

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Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make with Dr. Sean Wise on The Startup Talk Podcast TorontoStarts and 100 Steps 2 Startup Present “The 3 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Starting a Business” with Dr. Sean Wise

Dr. Sean Wise has seen over 30,000 ventures pitched including his years working with Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank. He shares the 3 biggest mistakes entrepreneurs can make when starting a company from his years of experience working thousands of startups.

Dr. Wise is currently a partner at the seed fund, Ryerson Futures. Through that fund, he has supported more than 23 startups, investing in 13. He helped found Ernst & Young’s Venture Capital Advisory Group in Canada and the startups he has supported have raised more than $2.1 billion after training with him. This interactive session was recorded live

100 Steps 2 Startup https://100steps2startup.com/entrepreneurs/

Find Past Videos here Startup Launch Online Series

Join The Startup Book Club, Get the Books, Get access to The Book Club Discussion Group

Starting A Business in Ontario: A Resources Guide For Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Scaleups

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Direct from the Six, world renowned, Canada's largest city, with Canada's biggest thinkers, visionaries, and hustlers. This is Startup Talk episode 19 Autoklose, featuring the founders, funders, innovators, and community leaders who have led Canada's startup ecosystem right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges, the failures, the successes.

Toronto's Startup podcast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who have made a difference. Now, the host of Startup Talk, the founder of TorontoStarts, the Startup Coach.

Startup Coach: Welcome back to Startup Talk episode 19, Toronto Startup podcast. It's the Startup Coach here, and on this episode, I talk to Shawn Finder, CEO and founder of Autoklose. We talk about his growth hack to get $48,000 in sales on day one of launch, the B2B sales handbook, how to avoid your sales emails going to spam, and so much more on this episode of Startup Talk

Welcome back to Startup Talk podcast episode 19. It's the Startup Coach here, and I'm here with Shawn from Autoklose. Welcome, Shawn.

Shawn: Thanks, Craig.

Startup Coach: Tell us about Autoklose.

Shawn: Autoklose is a sales engagement platform that has a built-in B2B database that helps with the prospecting at the top of the sales funnel.

Startup Coach: We're going to get into that, but before that, I always like to talk about the history of an entrepreneur. Where did you grow up, what was your background like, were you a handful for your parents? What happened there?

Shawn: Perfect. Well, I grew up in Toronto. I used to play semi-professional tennis, so I was always playing competitive sports. I did my MBA in finance, went down the finance route, worked at some of the big banks down here on Bay Street, and then realized that I was a little bit too social for the people in my finance team, so I ended up becoming an entrepreneur about four and a half years ago, and haven't looked back.

Startup Coach: You were just telling me a few seconds ago that this is not your first startup.

Shawn: Yeah. No, my first startup was about four and a half years ago, which was a data company, and it provided B2B data to a lot of the big players here in Canada as well as the U.S., and then what we did was we parlayed that business into the sales engagement tool that has the database inside, so both companies currently run independent of each other, but with Autoklose, they're both actually built in.

Startup Coach: Oh, interesting. When did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Shawn: I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur at a very young age, so after I stopped playing competitive tennis, when I was teaching it for 10 years, I ended up meeting a lot of people that were twice my age, and I was always selling, trying to be the best tennis coach at the place I was working, and it was always in my blood. I was always enjoying networking. I always enjoyed entrepreneurship, the dragons and the shows, and then I finally took the leap about four and a half years ago and left my six figure paying job, and made $49 and started from there.

Startup Coach: So let's talk a little bit about your tennis career. I can't find someone on the street and say, "Hey, that's a tennis player," or, "That's a tennis body," because you can tell a basketball player or maybe a football player the way they're shaped, but a tennis player can't. Is there a lot of fame that goes with tennis? How you do get to be one of the top in Canada like you were?

Shawn: I started playing tennis at age seven, and my body definitely hasn't changed much. I always had a good heart when I played tennis, but I was never the fittest athlete, but what tennis taught me was being very competitive at a young age, and also networking. When I did my MBA in finance up at McMaster,

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Collision 2019 was an incredible event where over 25000 innovators, leaders and entrepreneurs descended on Toronto. The The Startup Coach and the TorontoStarts Leadership team were there taking it all in. While Andrea and Meagan were following the different content tracks and there was something for everyone. The Startup Coach spent most of the conference talking to TorontoStarts community Startups connecting them to investors and other resources and talking to new ones. Here are some pictures and highlights from Collision 2019 with The Startup Coach

Therapy Innovations at Collision 2019

Great to see Therapy Innovations at Collision 2019. Said is changing the physiotherapy landscape with his patented technology. You can hear me interview him in an upcoming episode of the Startup Talk Podcast

Stage at Collision 2019

Sheetal Jaitly of Tribalscale after his speech at Collision 2019 with The Startup Coach

I can’t say enough good things about Sheetal Jaitly and the tribe at TribalScale. They really believe and support the community. They were hosting TorontoStarts events long before they had an event space. TorontoStarts owes him and TribalScale a lot for helping us become Toronto’s Startup community! Thank You! Oh yes and if you ever get a chance to see him speak like he did at Collision 2019 make sure you do!

Armin of Node App at Collision 2019

Armin from Node App showing how they are the Influencer Marketing Platform for Food and Beverages Brands providing businesses and influencers with a platform for collaborations and social media campaigns. Are you a restaurant looking to grow your business check them out.

Ilya of VanHack with The Startup Coach at Collision 2019

Ilya from VanHack we have known each other for a few years now but this is the first time we have met thanks Collision 2019.

Michael of Horizon Blockchain Games at Collision 2019

missed both of Michael’s appearances on stage at Collision 2019 and only got to say hello looking forward to getting together with him and getting the latest on SkyWeaver and Horizon Blockchain Games. But I did get a good picture.

Bitbuy with The Startup Coach at Collision 2019

Great to catch up with Jordan, Dean, and Charlie from Bitbuy.ca at Collision 2019. BitBuy is where Canadians buy and sell digital currency. They have been part of TorontoStarts community for a long time. Fun fact The Startup Coach can often be found discussing which hats are the best with Dean at various events across the city

Collision 2019

Jay from Bicom and The Startup Coach at Collision 2019

Jay from Bicom and the Startup Coach catching up at Collision 2019. Jay is a new mentor for Marketing and PR for TorontoStarts and an avid Raptors fan so I may not see him again till after the finals. Go Raps Go!

Akon with The Startup Coach at Collision 2019

One of my highlights of Collision 2019 was bailing on Will and Ryan very unceremoniously (sorry guys) when I had the chance to meet Akon.

Will - OutLoud Speakers School, Ryan - Equivesto, The Startup Coach

Having a great time at Collision 2019 with my friends The best pitching coach in Toronto (and TorontoStarts mentor) Will from Outloud Speakers School and Ryan from Equivesto. Did you know that together we run amazing pitch prep sessions for conferences and pitch competitions? You can hear me talk to Ryan and his co-founder Alex on Startup Talk Podcast Episode 18.

Great content on stage at Collision 2019

The Nix Sensor at Collision 2019

Great Discussion on stage at Collision 2019

Roverparking at Collision 2019

Hey Toronto tired of expensive and hard to find parking? Have you tried Roverparking.com seriously the solution is great. We met the Rover parking team at the Geo Web Summit 2018 they were on a panel The Startup Coach was part of. If you drive and park in Toronto go to roverparking.com now!

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Direct from The Six. World renowned. Canada's largest city. With Canada's biggest thinkers, visionaries, and hustlers, this is Startup Talk podcast episode 17 featuring the founders, funders, innovators, and community leaders who have led Canada's startup ecosystem right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges, the failures, the successes. Toronto's Startup Podcast gives you the full the story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who've made a difference. Now, the host of Startup Talk, the founder of TorontoStarts, the Startup Coach.

The Startup Coach: Welcome to an Ask The Startup Coach episode of the Startup Talk podcast. Today's question, what is intellectual property? To answer, I speak with Erika J Murray, serial entrepreneur who has a true passion for scaling startups. As a PHD in Engineering, and an IP lawyer, she draws upon extensive background and real life experience to deliver practical business and IP advice to high growth companies. Let's get right into the interview.

Welcome back to Startup Talk episode 17, it's the Startup coach here, and I'm here with Erika J. Murray, an IP lawyer from PCK Intellectual Property. Tell me a little about you and PCKIP.

Erika J Murray: Hi Craig. Thanks for having me. Basically PCK Intellectual Property is a law firm that obviously specializes in intellectual property. It's a boutique law firm that's been founded about 15 years ago by Stephen and Andrew and they're located in Toronto and Waterloo, Boston, as well as Washington, DC. So we are a Canadian and US intellectual property firm. I, myself, am an intellectual property lawyer with a background, so I have a PHD in Engineering.

The Startup Coach: And you're a serial entrepreneur as well and that's kind of where I've known you from before all of this. And just for the record I sent a lot of companies to PCK IP when they're looking for IP stuff. So its interesting coincidence that you happen to be working there now. So, let's start at the beginning.

What is Intellectual Property?

Erika J Murray: Intellectual property is an intangible asset. So, unlike when you buy real estate, you can step on the ground of your house and that's property. So that's tangible asset. Whereas intellectual property is intangible, so you can't step on it or see it and it's essentially a right to exclude others and granted from the government.

Why should startups care about IP? Why does it matter to them?

Erika J Murray: Intellectual property is fundamental to a startup in a way because generally you're innovating when you form a startup. It's not always the case, you could have a startup which is just a simple storefront selling chips, right? But in this space, which you typically have founders, they're innovating so they're in a new space, creating new business models, generating new ideas. So it's important to understand what intellectual property other companies have, so your competitors, as well as your branding. So your trademarks and your logos. So basically from both a protection standpoint as well as a defensive standpoint.

What's the difference is between copyright versus trademark.

Erika J Murray: Copyright is the exclusive legal right to produce, reproduce, publish original artwork you could think of it or it could be musical work, et cetera. Oftentimes we give the example of the painting of Mona Lisa, and usually the copyright owner is the creator. So just from making that painting, they have copyright in that work of art. Whereas trademarks deal with what you would think of as branding. So your company's logo, slogan, it could be a symbol or design associated with your branding.

What can be trademarked?

Erika J Murray: Yes. You can trademark various types of things, you can even trademark a sound, but typically startup companies look at trademarking their bra...

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In Startup Talk episode 13 I speak with Will GreenBlatt co-founder of OutLoud Speakers School on going to acting school, traveling and teaching in Spain and China, and how an injury turned into starting OutLoud Speakers School and training executives and entrepreneurs on pitching, selling, and public speaking. Will teaches Techstars, DMZ, and TorontoStarts Startup Launch Accelerator co-horts preparing to pitch to and meet with investors and can be found at Toronto’s Startup Drinks giving advice and feedback.

Direct from the six, world renowned, Canada's largest city, with Canada's biggest thinkers, visionaries and hustlers. This is Startup Talk episode 13 featuring the founders, funders, innovators and community leaders who've led Canada's startup ecosystem right here in Toronto. You'll hear the challenges, the failures, the successes. Toronto's startup podcast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who've made a difference. Now, the host of Startup Talk episode 13, the founder of TorontoStarts, the Startup Coach.

Startup Coach: Hey, it's the Startup Coach here and I'm here today with Will Greenblatt from OutLoud Speakers School. Welcome Will.

Will Greenblatt: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Startup Coach: So we've worked together for a little bit now but I'm sure most of our audience don't know who you are. So first of all why don't we tell us about Will. Where did you come from? Where did you go to school? What happened to Will?

Will Greenblatt: Sure. I guess it kind of all started when I fell into child acting when I was seven years old. I started doing film and TV. My family was in the business and I kind of just, yeah, very much walked into it. I had an agent through my father and through my sister and got this kind of big feature film right at the age of seven. That sort of launched me before I even knew what was going on. Then I just kind of worked pretty consistently throughout my childhood and then slowed down a little bit in high school because my mom wanted me to have a sort of normal social life, which I hadn't up to that point.

Will Greenblatt: Then I thought, "Okay, well I'll perfect my craft and go to theater school." Because I never really had any formal training. I'd just been doing film and TV. So I went to the National Theater School of Canada in Montreal and I just hated it. I could not have hated it more really. It was a really toxic environment. It was 12 of us and we spent every day together, 13 hours a day, 6 days a week, very militant teaching style. There was emotional breakdowns. There were eating disorders. It was really, really bad. The main thing was they didn't seem to care who we were or to explain anything to us. They just kind of treated us like young children who needed a spanking and who weren't intelligent enough to understand why we were doing anything.

Will Greenblatt: I quit acting shortly after that because I was so jaded by that experience. Then I knew I wanted to travel so I got my teaching certificate in Toronto and I went to Spain looking for work. I found some work and spent a year and a half in Spain learning Spanish and teaching English. I discovered I liked teaching. Then some other English teachers, friends of mine from Toronto, came up with this idea. We all got together and thought of starting a school in China, like a school for children. That didn't quite work out but we ended up starting a ESL, English as a Second Language, and business coaching agency called West Group in Hangzhou China. I spent a year and a half there.

Will Greenblatt: Then I came home and I kind of put everything together in OutLoud Speakers School, which is basically like the English teaching,

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10 STEPS TO QUICKLY VALIDATE YOUR BUSINESS IDEA The Startup Coach Recorded live as part of TorontoStarts Free Startup Event Series

So tonight I'm gonna talk about idea validation and problem solution fit. So this is Trevor, it's a real story, it's a real name but it's a fake picture. Trevor searched for a solution on Google. Haircuts in home services. He was looking to get his hair cut at home. Someone to come and do it and he found a website and he signed up for it. What Trevor didn't know was the website only launch a day early, it only took one hour to build, and it cost zero dollars, oh and there's no product and the company doesn't exist yet. So when Trevor signed up and and put his e-mail in what do we do? We called him up or e-mail them depending the information this story actually...we called the people up because they gave us their phone number. We ask them why they were looking? Why were you looking for this product or service? Why would you use this product or service? How would it make your job easier? And what are the minimum features you would need in this product in order to solve your problem and for you to buy? Trevor in this story bought the real product when it was launched. 10 STEPS TO VALIDATE YOUR BUSINESS IDEA So we're gonna talk about ten secrets of quickly validating your idea. So lean Startup. I'm not sure if everyone is aware of lean startup? So everyone is aware of what Lean Startup is? So lean Startup came out of an idea of the seventy's called lean manufacturing. It was Toyota and someone else that came up with that. They created the standard for lean manufacturing which was basically new standard how to create physical objects. So Eric Rice and Steve Blank came out with the Lean Startup. It's a concept is how do we build Startups, not products but build Startups that succeed. And how do we do that in the least amount of time? With the most confidence so that you're always learning. You're always validating what you're doing and you're never guessing or at least not guessing too far, and that's basically what Lean Startup is. DOES YOUR BUSINESS IDEA SOLVE A PROBLEM So we're gonna talk a little about idea validation. So you have an idea. Does your idea solve a problem? Can you find the potential buyers? Is there a market? Does anyone care? 1. WRITE DOWN YOUR BUSINESS IDEA So we're talking about the ten steps for quickly validating your idea. So step number one write down your product concept. So just a simple act of writing forces you to consider things you may have previously glossed over. I'm not talking about writing a business plan. I mean you can do that later when someone's asking for it from a VC (Venture Capitalist) financing point of view. But I'm talking about answering a few key questions and that you can go out and test. For this I usually use a tool like the business canvas that we taught last night and a lean validation board. I'm going to show you a little bit later. So we wanna write down our assumptions that sooner or later we wanna test and the sooner we test then the less risk you have as a Startup. Many Startups come to me they've already built a product. So I built this product. It's out there to use, but I don't know who or why they would use it? You have no idea who is a client, so don't do that.

You're coming out with this great thing! But do you know who do I sell it to? So this is why we wanna write down your concept? Write down your business plans, so who are your costumers? make some basic assumption if you say, everyone, you're already setting up yourself for failure. If everybody is your client no one is your client. You can't say, unless you have the miracle pill that will cure all yo...

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Startup Talk Toronto’s Startup Podcast Episode 2: A Tech Experiment We speak with a couple of the founders of TribalScale about starting in Toronto, working with Silicon Valley, and building a lean tech community in their office as an experiment – www.tribalscale.com

Startup Suggestions with the Story Architect how to build messaging that catches attention – http://www.thestoryarchitect.com/

We talk to the founders of local startups FinalBlueprint.com and Worktango.io and find out what they are working on www.finalblueprint.com www.worktango.io

Thanks for listening to Startup Talk from the founder of TorontoStarts Craig Major and remember to leave a good review in iTunes and the google play store it really means a lot to us.

Thanks to our audio producer Yovi – yovirecords.com & TribalScale

Join us next week for another episode of Startup Talk – #StartupTalk

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Startup Talk Episode 1: The #1 Rule of Networking We speak to the fabulous Bobby Umar talks about how he became a 4x TedX speaker, how he became a social media influencer with over 377K followers on twitter, and the number one rule of networking. We discuss tools, resources, and community and we even talk about what he loves about Toronto

We talk to Mike Lee President of Fundica about funding tools Discover Your Personal Brand Conference Aug 12 – 13 WWW.DYPB.CA We discuss how the Fireside Conference was created with founder Daniel Levine and what you can expect at the event in September

Winners of Startup Toronto Perfect Your Own Pitch Competition Toronto Startup Fiix tells us how they are disrupting the car repair industry

Thanks for listening to Startup Talk from the founder of TorontoStarts Craig Major and remember to leave a good review in iTunes and the google play store it really means a lot to us. Follow us on twitter: @TorontoStarts @startupCoach_CA

Thanks to our audio producer Jovi – yovirecords.com and Bobby Umar and www.dypb.ca Join us next week for another episode of Startup Talk

Startup Talk The Canadian Startup Podcast: Recent Episodes

The Startup Coach founder of TorontoStarts