DISQUS

socialwrite: » 30 Ideas that need to be Funded | StartupNorth

  • Kevin · 1 year ago
    Great post, thanks for mentioning my blog! Cool to see all the great Canadian startups working on these big problems.
  • James · 1 year ago
    12. Fix advertising.

    I believe we're swinging for that pitch. Ready to hit it out of the park. AdHack.com
  • Adam · 1 year ago
    Doesn't Kijiji fill the role of competitor for Craigslist pretty well?
  • SAG · 1 year ago
    This is a great list. Paul Graham is definitely a brilliant guy and what he's built out of YCombinator is fantastic, but I don't think they're addressing the biggest problem in software development: bridging the gap between business people and technologists. It seems like Silicon Valley is being dominated by the technology side right now, resulting in a lot of great products being created but very few ones which are true businesses- ie ones which solve serious market needs and can be turned into revenue generating companies. I think it's a tough one given the unfortunately common animosity between tech and business teams, but the key to real success (which I'm sure we all hope we're going to see in Canada asap), is going to be from bridging that gap.

    Great software products require four inputs:

    - Marketing Vision
    - Systems Architecture
    - GUI / Design
    - Coding

    To make it a great software company it needs two more:

    - Business Management
    - Technology Management

    I'm willing to bet almost anyone who's the best at any one of these is only the best at that one. Canada's a nice and friendly place, maybe we can all start working on bringing the parts together better than anywhere else.
  • John B · 1 year ago
    I can't really talk about it quite yet, but I've got an 20-guage iron in the fire... Look for news soon.
  • Michael Garrity · 1 year ago
    Hey David - I saw this list recently and thought it was great, I actually sent it to all of our shareholders. It was quite affirming to see how our launching a lending and investment auction (#10) which employers could use for offering employee loans (#07) and borrowers could use for an alternative payment method for big debts(#17)could fit into their list. Cheers.
    - M
  • George Favvas · 1 year ago
    Great list, David. Sometimes we have the tendency to forget what's brewing in our own back yard, but there's an impressive amount of innovation and disruption happening in Canada.
  • Jeff K. Ward · 1 year ago
    For #29 "Easy site builders for specific markets", our YikeSite (www.yikesite.com) is accomplishing this and we're currently trying to make it even more market specific.
  • Bryan Bogensberger · 1 year ago
    David, it just so happens that my cofounder, James Duncan, and I totally agree with you on #19 - application hosting. And, we are currently based in Montreal.

    The alpha version of our Platform-as-a-Service, http://reasonablysmart.com/ was launched about 4 weeks ago and the response has been fantastic.

    And guess what, we are now looking for the funding required to build out, what we believe to be, a highly disruptive, valuable (to the business community) technology.

    Wish us luck!