Big news, friends!

We’re proud to announce the Cambrian House community as we know it is taking its first steps towards its next evolutionary stage: crowd-powered capital.

First, the CH community proved people from all over the world could collaborate to think-up and polish ideas, then work collectively to build the best ones into real products and businesses (eg: Gwabs, OGGtours, FilmRiot, Mob4Hire, and more..)

Now we’re becoming VenCorps, a new community that will use crowdsourcing to find and fund startups, with $50,000 in fact!

It just seemed like a natural next step for us to join forces with Spencer Trask (the NYC firm who financed Thomas Edison, and who helped launch InnoCentive) to create a crowdsourcing community with a fund attached.

Starting today, we’ll be sending personal invites to all Cambrian House members to move their Cambrian House profile over to VenCorps.

Not a CH member yet, but want access to VenCorps? Join the CH community and we’ll make sure you receive an alpha invite too!

What does this mean for the Cambrian House community as it stands today?

It means the CH community will evolve into VenCorps - where members can submit startups for funding, access for advice & investment, and select winning startups in Startup Showdown (the new version of IDEAWARZ).

After a set period of time, all members should be up and running on VenCorps.com, but fear not our friends: we want all members to continue to have access to their ideas and businesses on CH for three months.

What do you want to see in VenCorps? Accept your alpha invite and let’s get the conversation started…

We promise to give you plenty of updates (blogs and video) over the transition period. We’re here to celebrate with you and make sure the process is squeaky clean (and fun).

Got questions? Check out the FAQ, the press release or send us a note at info(at)cambrianhouse.com

Very first investor pitch I ever did could be an all time worst investor presentation. Straight out of school. Didn’t have a subscription agreement. Didn’t know what pre-money was. Didn’t even answer all the basic questions. I just had enough confidence to do the pitch. -MJ

Couldn’t identify his target market. Showed up on the wrong day. Kept calling the investor daddy-o. Wasn’t wearing any shoes… the kind of performance that wouldn’t just deny you seed capital, but that could get you arrested in 16 states.

If you are a VC or angel, and have a weak heart, do not watch this video! However, if you are fresh out of school, and looking to launch a startup… proceed with caution.

Coming out of school is a perfect time to get a start up going

When your young, you have an inevitable feeling of immortality. From the first time you ride a wheelie on your bicycle, to jumping off the jungle gym, you inherently know that everything is going to be okay. It’s only natural for the thickness of this bubble of invulnerability to wane over time, until it is finally gone and you become scared of even the minor risks.

“Being Young is a Fault That Improves Daily.” - Swedish Proverb

In the world of entrepreneurship, one of the greatest time spans you will have to take a risk is during your youth. Your adult enough to make your own choices, yet young enough to have little to lose. Your smart enough to understand that great risk can lead to great reward, and stupid enough to push in all your chips instead of folding.

Most young entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking it’s an old professionals game. While this is true it some circles (especially investments and funding), for the most part you will never be more hard working or enthusiastic about your venture than at this stage in your life. Professionals can see this in you, and it is the best quality that you will never be able to put on a resume.

Simply put, being young and driven is better than being old and experienced. There are perks to being an expert as well. You may get better financing choices, and you certainly have more contacts, but being an entrepreneur is tough work that sometimes requires tough choices.

Show investors a great idea, enthusiasm, and Ramen Noodle receipts for the last four years - and they will see someone that can get an idea off the ground and knows how to live frugally.

Young entrepreneurs also are more likely to burn the midnight oil, travel relentlessly, and entertain prospective clients - then get up and do it again. Entrepreneurs don’t give up easily. When they are successful it’s called perseverance. Before they succeed, or if they fail, it’s called stubborn, bullheaded, arrogant, or foolish. Take advantage of this concept while your young. Arrogance is similar to confidence in your youth, but old stubborn people are a dime a dozen.

If you launch a successful startup, years from now the odds are you’ll look back on it and note how it wasn’t what made you money. Your pursuit of the original idea will likely either reveal a flaw, or expose you to a more compelling idea which is profitable.

Investors know this. Which makes direct communication between investor and entrepreneur essential. They are investing in you as much as they are any idea or technology.

All of a sudden, as soon as you talk to an investor, there’s this massive disconnect. That massive disconnect is why its so hard. Its not really about being smart at finance. And they’re not really trying to be smart about technology. Everyone’s just trying to get comfortable to make the investment. -MJ

As much as a potential investor cares about the technology you’re pursuing, they want to know they can work together with you when unforeseen circumstances arise. Your business may unexpectedly change, but you won’t.

There are certain things out there… on the internet. Things you do not want to see… ever.

And any one of them could be waiting for you at the other end of a hyperlink! Its a wonder people still have the guts to click any more… but a solution has been proposed by Interviewables!

We have Digg, we have Reddit, we have Stumbleupon, etc. All of these sites and extensions were created to bring the good and relevant sites to the top. But what is also needed is a way to tag the bad sites and bury (or Berry) them.

Create an extension for Firefox and IE that will allow a user to tag a site or page as bad. They would be voting to have the site buried (or Berried). Of course it would be up to the site owner to remove it or not.

Interviewables imagines groups of like-minded people tagging objectionable sites. By installing the toolbar, and trusting such a group, a user can be alerted visually when any link on their page leads to objectionable content.

Google wants relevant data that people actually want to see. That’s why pages from Digg and Stumbleupon rank so well. Our data will offer the same only in reverse. Between Digg, Stumble, and Berryit, the web might actually begin to resemble something worthwhile.

BerryIt is imminently do-able (compared to telco infrastructure plays and Ann Coulter). Open source libraries already exist for constructing browser plug-ins, and sites such as del.icio.us have already collected reams of tagging data. This means the browser plug-in can rely on Del.icio.us tagging data for now (via their API). A functional prototype could be constructed by focusing on the browser the plug-in.

Yay for immediate gratification of front-end user-experience coding!

If you’d like to work with Interviewables on this project, join his team or drop him a line.

Favorite Ideas - IScenic.tv and something by threeg5

• IScenic.tv by Vancouverbluz
  

  take life casting and to turn it into scenic explorer tv. A crew will go hiking into the Grand Canyons many trails while putting everything on video.

  Blue thinks there might be some compelling opportunities for interactivity in the final product, depending on the technology used to perform the video capture. I believe there’s no barrier to entry when shooting travel footage, so consider videotaping your next trek.

• TV Game Show Type Reality by threeg5
  

  You are hunted by “X” number of people. A helper has the “eyes” of the hunters (because they have cameras on them) and can aid you in navigation. There are boundaries and a big prize at the end. If people want to see the hunted they watch on TV and if they want to see each individual hunter/helpers view they can do so via the web.

  Blue never got to speak as once I started talking about it I just wouldn’t shut up. She might have liked it too, who can tell?

These ideas and more are discussed, while to struggle to be…

Keeping it Real

Just ask Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Todd Courtnage or Brad Pitt: It’s not easy keeping your ego in check when you’re idolized by millions!

Recently I got a chance to ask Sarah Blue how, despite all her fans and wealth, she manages to stay so grounded. Her response?

“No autographs.”

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to participate in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

In February 2008, a challenge was issued by Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF), “Shoot and edit a short sci-fi movie, in 48 hours.”

“No problem!” responded Cambrian House staff, knowing we’d wrap in a couple hours, and spend the rest of the weekend frolicking in the snow.

We had all seen Michael Bay movies… how hard could it be?

Desired Effects:

Achieved Effects:

Is it the cinematic masterpiece we were hoping for? Well we did manage one significant accomplishment… Countdown to Destruction is 172 minutes shorter than Pearl Harbor!

Who is responsible for this movie, you wonder? Well that depends on whether you liked it or not.

SC Entertainment’s Blaise Kolodychuk first assisted, then cajoled and finally grabbed the camera and directed our staff through various abuses of Cambrian House property. (Thanks Blaise!)

Countdown to Destruction Credits
Todd Courtnage as “Todd”
Bob Clark as “Bob”
Cameron Falkenhagen as “Captain”
Gordon McDowell as “Keyboard Operator Alpha”
Blaise Kolodychuk as “Engineer Kolodychuk”
Sarah Blue as “Doctor Blue”
Romulax Admiral Kathyxon Bletarrax Marf as himself
Sound and music by Cameron Falkenhagen
Written by Blaise Kolodychuk and Gordon McDowell

Countdown to Destruction is released under a Creative Commons Attirbution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.

Mathew Ingram has been covering business and technology for The Globe and Mail since CERN spawned the World Wide Web. Some Cambrian House community members have been asking about funding outside of Silicon Valley and he was nice enough to share his thoughts.

Mathew Ingram person,

Beyond Silicon Valley, the American startup hub shortlist starts with New York, Boston and Seattle. What would a Canadian list look like?

From what I can tell — and I can’t claim to have done an exhaustive survey by any means — Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal have fairly active startup communities, judging by the number of DemoCamps and StartupCamps and so on.

Obviously the West has some activity as well, as StumbleUpon and others (including Cambrian House of course) prove, but I think it’s more fragmented in places like Calgary and Edmonton and Regina and so on. And one of the benefits of Web-based businesses is that they can pop up just about anywhere, with teams of people who may not even live in the same physical area working on them.

Thank you for listing Regina after Calgary! So how can someone launch outside of a startup hub?

Although it’s true that Web businesses can start and effectively be run from just about anywhere, it’s also true that people are people, and they need human contact — and startups in particular thrive on the energy of other entrepreneurs, people who are also struggling with launching a company, or have done so in the past; that’s why
StartupCamp and DemoCamp and other social events are so powerful, and I think that’s one of the main benefits of something like mesh or meshU — just the chance to bump into or hear from smart people who are trying to save some of the same problems that you are.

The American recession (officially described by the White House as “tough times”) is looking rather ominous. Do you have any survival tips?

I think the best advice is just to be as lean as possible. Focus on the things that matter, not the Aeron chairs and foosball tables and so on, and if you don’t have to get financing then don’t — the best way to get financing is to not need it. And I think it is true that the economy has had less impact on startup activity in this cycle than the last, if only because companies can do so much more with so much less now, thanks to Web services such as Amazon’s S3 and EC2 and Simple DB and so on.

Sounds like someone isn’t very good at Foosball.

Mathew Ingram will be attending the MeshU startup workshop on May 20th in Toronto. Ontarian members of Cambrian House community check it out!

Hot on the heels of Cambrian House community member EpiPenner’s “BeeGone” (the beehive mismanagement software suite) comes Scoobie’s proposal for yet another beekeeping app. But the goal of this software is to keep the bees healthy.

Crazy?
 
I thought so too, until I discovered a whole subculture of “beekeepers”. Instead of screaming and running at the sight of a honeybee, these fools actually allow bees to form “colonies” in hives. Why? Well it is their belief that under the proper conditions, bees will produce the golden substance which we all know as honey.

Well you and I both know honey comes from a supermarket, not a magical “beehive”. But before you completely shut the door on this madness, consider these facts:

• Hobbyist beekeeping is becoming more and more popular. By the year 2037, it is predicted to have more practicing members than Scientology!
   
• Beekeepers must keep their hive healthy, or the hive will attack in anger! In the worst case, the queen itself will emerge from the hive and battle the beekeeper to the death.
   
• The cost of supporting software sold to a stung-to-death beekeeper is zero dollars.

Scoobie says the existing beekeeping software doesn’t meet his expectations. Existing software is either too expensive, out of date, or no longer supported. This is an opportunity created by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a recent phenomenon where bee colonies suddenly disappear.

Unpollenated crops and unmet demand for honey are the immediate impact of CCD. Because beehives (on average) operate less efficiently due to CCD, there is a need for more hives and so more beekeepers.

Tom Cruise, take note!

If you’re interested in helping identify or prioritize features, assist writing a design document or get your hands dirty doing good old software development, then offer to join Scoobie’s Beekeeping Software project!

Scoobie Skypes In

Scoobie was extremely helpful in the creation of this week’s IdeaWarz video, going so far as to shoot footage of his hives!

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to participate in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

“Why are you holding my hand?”

    “Where’s your other hand?”

“Between your term sheets.”

    “Those aren’t term sheets!”

When it comes to venture capital, how close is too close?

On one hand, VCs can offer invaluable support to your startup. Beyond financial, they’re trying to leverage their experience so you don’t repeat the same mistakes they’ve either made themselves or bore witness to.

But on the other hand, do you really want someone nosing about your business while you’re trying to get some real work done?

< awkward pause />

Yes you do. There are only upsides to tight investor proximity. If the thought of your potential VC popping by unexpectedly to see how things are going gives you pause, then either you should find another investor, or share that concern with them to make sure you’re both on the same page.

Proximity is less important as your business becomes self sustainable, but while nascent the (often quoted) rule of thumb is still one hour’s walking distance.

“In the beginning of your firm, it’s all risk. It’s this baby in the emergency room. You don’t want your doctor talking through a screen, asking people what is going on.” - MJ

So unless you live in a town filled with venture capital, what are your options? Look for angel funding, move, or bootstrap it yourself. If you’re bootstrapping, look to leverage modern trends like crowdsourcing, open source software and public APIs to keep your costs down.

“Silicon Valley dominates, then Boston, then Seattle, Austin, Denver, and New York. After that there’s not much. Even in New York the number of startups per capita is probably a 20th of what it is in Silicon Valley. In towns like Houston and Chicago and Detroit it’s too small to measure.” -Paul Graham

Did you know paper receipts are responsible for more rain forest destruction and CO2 emissions than the entire coffee and mining industries combined? It is truly staggering!

“I had no idea!” you say.

“That’s a lot of destruction…” you ponder.

“Is that even true?” you ask.

No, it isn’t true. But it sounds plausible. Especially if you read it really quickly and move on.

Beyond that, paper receipts are filling our nations wallets with space that could be occupied by cold, hard, cash! And then… when you finally need to expense those receipts you’ve been carrying around… they’re vanished! The Receipt Fairy’s expense account knows no bounds.

Rather than hunting down and exterminating The Receipt Fairy, Interviewables proposes bypassing paper receipts entirely. A central database would be populated via updates from enhanced POS terminals. Certainly once the receipt line items were centralized, all manner of mutually beneficial services could be provided to both customers and marketers.

Inverviewables sees creation of the receipt line item tracking service as the first step towards adoption.

A merchant isn’t going to want this on his own. There will need to be a need from the consumer to push this.

Identifying the chicken-and-egg challenges, and mapping out incentives for each party will be key to upgrading such a significant chunk of infrastructure. Certainly if there is a compelling reason for customers, merchants and POS vendors to participate before the system is widely adopted, eventually the system will be widely adopted.

To help Interviewables build the tracking service, implement a 3rd party POS module, or even help map out how each party in a sales transaction can be encouraged to participate, head on over to No More Paper Receipts and chime in!

Blue and Gord Like Stuff

Rock Band, front row seats, cute little kittens… and good ideas! (Also, Blue likes cheese. But for the purpose of this blog entry, we’ll focus on ideas.)

• Caraoke by dotcomcowboy
  

  An easy to install, aftermarket car audio system that includes either an integrated LCD or AV Outputs that would allow you to connect it to an in-vehicle LCD display.

  Blue believes this is intended for car passengers, as it would be unsafe to drive while reading lyrics. Gord believes so long as an air-guitar is not incorporated into game play, the game would have acceptable survival rates.

• Crowd Sourced Magazine by zer0
  

  With all the bloggers, photographers and design artists available on the web something truly amazing could be created, something to rival traditional magazines. A real paper magazine. Something I could show to people and say I had a part in this, instead of some cryptic web address they probably wont ever visit.

  While reading up on this, Gord compared it to Checoslovaco’s idea Wiki Word Networks which is a plan to pull together infrastructure to enable endeavors such as Crowd Sourced Magazine possible.

Lockdown, Construction and Tow Trucks

Think only homeless people and prostitutes stand around on sidewalks? Not true! Video bloggers are often known to “hang out” on sidewalks when a conference call occupies their orange couch.

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to participate in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

Is stalking Angel Investors wrong?

There’s no easy way to answer this question. Some say stalking should only be used for celebrities. Others say it is only unspoiled virgin brides who ought to be stalked.

The truth is, stalking is the least effective use of your time. Any indication of disinterest means the conversation from that point forward will be strictly educational in nature…

Unless your idea is crap, or you stop looking for money, you will eventually find someone who will consider investing. And its extremely important that you look fundable at that moment. While you might consider yourself a person pitching a piece of technology or concept (and ultimately it is you who is being invested in), it is your company which serves as the interface for the investment.

You’re not going to have an investor wait while you customize a private equity investment template are you? That would be a pretty poor interface.