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Startup Founder Lessons: Ben Yoskovitz On Starting Standout Jobs, Running It and Selling It

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:48:08 +0000

Ben Yoskovitz is a founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. He previously founded Standout Jobs (and sold it).Ben has been an entrepreneur for 14+ years. He founded Standout Jobs, in 2007 and sold it in 2010.

Ben Yoskovitz shares his insight and tips on starting Standout Jobs, Running it and eventually selling it.

# Success is never as easy as it seems when someone else talks about it, and failure is rarely as dismal as it seems either.
# Although we did exit Standout Jobs it was not a financial success. In fact, personally, I have less money now than when I started the company.
# Our timing was terrible. We launched the paying version of our application in the fall of 2008 about 5 minutes before the economy collapsed.
# In fact, I think most failures of CEOs and startup founders fall under the category of, “didn’t react quickly and aggressively enough.”
# Simply put, I wasn’t bold enough. I absolutely believe that taking a more analytical approach – driven by Customer Development and Lean Startup principles – can bolster your sagging ego and help you make rational, honest and difficult decisions. With Standout Jobs, I wasn’t rigorous enough in this process. I won’t make that mistake again.
# I didn’t have a strong enough understanding of the HR / Recruitment market going in.
# I just didn’t do enough homework. And doing homework while you’re writing the test as fast as you can is pretty damn hard.
# The lack of market understanding ultimately meant that we couldn’t match the right product to the right market at the right price.
# I had an exceptionally strong team. Best I’ve ever worked with. But in reality we didn’t code and launch fast enough. We didn’t get product into customers’ hands fast enough.
# In the future I’ll focus a lot more on a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and getting it into the hands of customers as early as possible. And even more importantly, I’ll solicit real, hard feedback from them.
# If you find yourself in an argument with a market, you’re very likely to lose.
# I was able to simplify Standout’s value proposition to the point where it was clear, but that’s not always enough. Part of the problem was that our value proposition lacked immediacy
# I didn’t make a strong enough case for tying the value proposition to something immediate that HR could sell internally to their bosses.
# I raised too much money, too early for Standout Jobs (~$1.8M). We didn’t have the validation needed to justify raising the money we did.
# I had a great group of investors. I didn’t engage them enough for introductions to potential partners and customers. I didn’t follow through as frequently as I should have.
# I think the key to successfully managing and leveraging investors is consistency. You need to be consistently knocking on their door, asking for help with specific issues, and providing them the ammunition they need to promote your startup.
# In some ways we tried to offload responsibility of selling our product to our channel partners. It worked, to a degree, but not well enough.
# Having said that, I think founders have to be very cognizant of their startup’s lifecycle. When it’s time, put a bullet in it and move on.
### I’ve now moved on to Year One Labs, an early stage seed accelerator based in Montreal. So I’m (sort of) on the other side of the table, although I can’t ever really picture myself as an investor.
This post was originally posted on Instigator Blog

4 Early-Stage Startups To Pitch At StartupCamp3 In Miami

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:34:02 +0000

Four early-stage companies have been selected for presentation slots at next week’s “StartupCamp3, Comms Edition”, collocated with ITEXPO East, taking place February 2 – 4, at the Miami Beach Convention Center, in Miami, Florida.

StartupCamp Communications is a joint production of TMC, a leading global media company based in Norwalk, CT, and Embrase Business Consulting of Montreal.

A panel of experts along with the live audience will actively provide feedback, and help choose a winner of the night.

The following startups have been selected to pitch at the event:

Call Loop offers virtually any business a simple and automated way to create fully integrated marketing campaigns that combine power of voice, text and email.

SatCourier is a patent pending transceiver that allows smart phone users to connect to the Iridium satellite communication network. This innovative Bluetooth bridge between a smart phone and Iridium offers access to rich data communication services in areas where cellular communication is otherwise impossible.

Hoot.me is a knowledge network that switches Facebook into study mode. Built on Facebook’s application platform, Hoot allows users to collaborate with their friends via video/voice conferencing and smart chat.

HookFlash sees SIP as highly underutilized and poorly managed by small businesses and enterprises, respectively because of the complexity of deployment – particularly as it relates to mobile devices. Hookflash is an over-the-top platfom designed to enable companies around the globe to sip-enable and manage mobile devices at will.

Startup Camp Montreal 2010: Top 5 Startup Presentations

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:05:02 +0000

Startup Camp, Montreal is an event dedicated to everything Startup. It is the forum where early stage companies, investors and on-lookers alike can share information and validate pitches live. The event is scheduled for May 6th, 2010.

Five Startups have been give a brief 5 minute presentation on their startup following which, a panel of 3 startup experts will ask 5 minutes of questions, and then the audience will ask questions and give 5 minutes of valuable feedback to the startup in an open forum format.

The presenting startups at this year’s event include :

Slot 1 – Shwowp
Shwowp promises to put WOW in e-commerce and and change your online shopping experience.

Slot 2 – Nirvana

Slot 3 - SWIX
SWIX is like Google Analytics for social media. SWIX allows you to create tracking pods for each of your social media properties (videos, pages, blogs, etc.).

Slot 4 – Backfed
Slot 5 - Akoha
Akoha Inc. is a Montreal-based social media company that leverages the Web and mobile technologies to encourage people to embrace and share special moments that make life a little more awesome. Akoha offers an abundance of real-world activities designed to invite people to discover life’s special moments, to capture them, and to share them with friends.