TeamCamp

So what’s PitchFest?

Do you have a great idea for a web application? Do your ideas keep you awake at night? Then come on down to TeamCamp for an idea “Pitch Fest”. Pitch your idea to a friendly group of people just like you. Together, we’ll explore and build on your idea. You’ll meet new friends and who knows, maybe you’ll meet a co-founder?

The Format

The format is simple: you talk, we listen and contribute. The output is better ideas. You don’t need a fancy PowerPoint presentation, or a working prototype for that matter (although that would be really cool). However, if you want people to understand your idea make sure you’re clear and concise and in particular explain what value your idea brings to your target customer.

If your not sure where to start I highly recommend reading So What? Who Cares? Why You? by Wendy Kennedy (an Ottawa native) which is hands-down the best resource I’ve read on how to turn an idea into an opportunity. Wendy recommends a simple 4 step process to translate tech-speak into the language of value:

1. Describe the pressing need or pain that the customer feels right now
2. Explain the value of your solution to your intended customer
3. Talk about the attributes of your technology
4. Back up your idea with proof (i.e. sort of evidence that your solution could solve the problem – like a customer).

Using this methodology to express your idea should be as simple as stating “Our customer’s _______ (problem) will be solved by our ______ (solution) because of our _____________ (technology attributes) that are backed up by ___________ (proof)” (fill in the blanks).

Prerequisites

I hate fine print just as much as anyone else; If you have a job, be mindful of  your employer’s Intellectual Property rights. TeamCamp does not exist to steel other peoples’ or companies ideas. Make sure your ideas are original. By the same token, no one at TeamCamp is going to sign your non-disclosure agreement; If you’re unwilling to share your idea then a) you’re likely going to fail anyway, and b) you’ll never find anyone to work on it with you. Best of luck to you.

For these reasons, if you plan on pitching or attending a pitchfest I ask is that you review and accept the TeamCamp Participation Agreement.

In addition, it would be great if you contribute something to The Code Factory’s Cookie Jar after the meeting.

What Comes Next

Inspire, lead, execute is TeamCamp’s mantra. Pitchnight is the first part. You’ll find TeamCampers are a friendly bunch eager to hear your ideas. But don’t expect everyone to jump and and down and scream “OMG, your idea is brilliant – let’s work on it!”. It doesn’t happen that way. Give people a chance to ask questions, understand, and absorb your idea. You’ll also likely need to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before people will really start to “get it”.

Inspiring people to work on your idea takes leadership; it’s the hard part. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of people pitch their idea and walk away feeling disappointed. Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of tenacity, perseverance and hard work. A good idea is just the tip of the iceberg. Take what you hear, continue to develop your idea, and then come on back.

Resources

Since we started TeamCamp we’ve built a pretty good set of resources on this Blog. Take the time to look at some of the posts. There’s good information there and links to plenty of external resources. The best thing is that these ideas are generally from entrepreneurs in Ottawa. They’re always willing to help. Ottawa has an awesome startup community.

Update: This meeting was so interesting and much fun that we’ve decided to hold another on March 18th.

Sign up here

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Tonight is TeamCamp Pitchfest. Lot’s of people have been asking “what is that?”, which is a darn good question. Although we’ve done many pitchfests before we’ve also had a lot of new people joining the group. So here’s a description:

Do you have a great idea for a web application? Do your ideas keep you awake at night? Then come on down to TeamCamp tonight for an idea “Pitch Fest”. Pitch your idea to a friendly group of people just like you. Together, we’ll explore and build on your idea. You’ll meet new friends and who knows, maybe you’ll meet a co-founder?

We generally spend about 20 mins per pitch. Format is not important, just be convincing

When: Thursday Mar 4th 18th, 2010 at 5:45PM to 8:00PM

Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St. Ottawa (ring the buzzer to come up to the 2nd floor)

While it’s not necessary to register for the event, it would be great if you could let us know if your coming via Twegather.

Hope to see you there!

- TeamCamper Chris

PS – please review and acknowledge the TeamCamp Participation Agreement beforehand

PPS – don’t forget the “cookie jar”

It easy to compare yourself to your closest competitor and say “I can do it better” or “I can do it for less”. But what makes you think you can do it better or cheaper then the incumbent who’s been at this game far longer than you have? You better have some “secret sauce” at your disposal that your biggest competitor doesn’t have and can’t easily replicate.

Don’t settle for the same but cheaper or better. Instead, change the rules of the game. For example:

• If your competitors’ software is overkill and complex offer a simple “no frills” version, e.g. Basecamp vs. Microsoft Project
• If your competitors’ offer a usage-based service, offer a flat rate instead, e.g. old long distance plans vs. new long distance plans
• If your competitors’ offer a low entry fee and but then over-charge for add-ons, charge a higher base rate and then offer the add-ons for free, e.g. TELUS, Bell and Rogers vs. Globealive wireless
• If you competitor makes money from advertising, offer an ad-free service and charge for the service instead

Don’t simply settle for offering the same thing your competitor offers – change the rules of the game.

Bootstrapper or not, at some point in time you’re going to be interested in finding some external funding for your startup. There are a number of government programs that you can tap into and despite what you hear in the news there are angel investors willing to invest in your company if you’ve got what it takes. But learning the ins and outs of funding can be a bewildering process.

TeamCamp very pleased to have John Shannon (@me_now) as a speaker at our next meeting.  John is a well-known personality in the Ottawa startup community and will be sharing his insights into some of the “tricks and traps” of funding.

John Shannon is one of Ottawa’s quintessential entrepreneurs. Early in his career he worked in Canada and Europe developing low-level software, systems and mobile networks with Bell Northern Research and then Nortel. In 2000 he left Nortel to be CTO and co-founder of the company that became Bill Me Later, ultimately acquired by eBay in 2008. John has also been a co-founder and early contributor to at least half a dozen other Ottawa startups and one of Ottawa’s active Angel investors. Besides helping raise significant venture capital for several companies, he’s orchestrated millions of dollars of angel investment and government programs. In addition to his experience applying technology to business opportunities, John is an expert at early stage financing and business development (from http://www.theottawanetwork.com/).

We’ll be starting a little early for this meeting because John will be racing off to a Founders and Funders event immediately following his talk.

When: Thursday Dec 3rd 2009 at 5:30PM to 8:00PM
Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St. Ottawa (ring the buzzer to come up to the 2nd floor)

While it’s not necessary to register for the event, it would be great if you could let Twegather “bot” know that your coming:
Reply Yes › or
Reply Maybe ›

Hope to see you there!

- TeamCamper Chris

PS – don’t forget about the “cookie jar”

On Tuesday night, after months of hard work, we demonstrated the Twegather service at DemoCamp Ottawa 12. Three members of the team walked a crowd of over 80 through the process of creating a “twegathering”. We received a very positive response and great feedback. Afterwards I talked to many people who shared my view of how lucky we are to live in a city which such a supportive start-up community.

It’s hard to believe that only 1-year ago I was sitting beside Ian at The Code Factory giving him a demo of a wish list application I’d built. Before I knew it, on Ian’s prompting,  I was giving a nervous demo to the crowd at DemoCamp Ottawa 10.

Out of that night TeamCamp was born:  a series of events aimed at forming like-minded individuals into teams for the purpose of turning smart ideas into startups.

Twegather is the first project born completely out of TeamCamp: from concept, to prototype to a fully functioning application. It’s been a wild ride but one I wouldn’t give up for anything. You can read more about it here.

If you would like to pitch your idea at TeamCamp then come on out to one of our TeamCamp twegatherings.  Maybe it’ll be you and your team giving a demo at the next DemoCamp!

What is Twegather?

Twegather is a Twitter-based event creation and management tool for people in a hurry – it literally takes 3 mouse clicks to create and start promoting your gathering. You create a “twegathering” by sending tweet to @whowantstogo specifying a description of the event, the time and location.
In seconds the mysterious “Twegather-bot” lets you know it’s ready and you can tweet the details to your followers.

It’s just as easy for people to let you know whether they can make it to your gathering: send a reply to @twegather with the hashcode and short url provided in the event tweet and a confirmation (yes, no or maybe).  Twegather does the rest – keeping track of who’s coming, who can’t make it and who’s thinking about it.

If you’re interested in being one of our early testers you can sign up for Twegather here. Twegather is a new concept in event planning and we’d love to see how people use it.