When Derek called me up on Boxing Day to suggest that we add OFFICE HOURs to Startup Grind 2013, he gave me two criteria:

1. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time. Quality matters.

2. We are trying to start lasting friendships that are needed to survive the Startup Grind.

Our mutual disdain for live pitch competitions was established when we first met, so factoring that in was already part of the equation. Like Mark Suster, it’s not that we think Demo Days and Pitch Competitions are useless, we just believe that they could be re-imagined to serve everyone better.

Here is our first step in that direction:

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THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT! But one Founder can still earn a seat.

Nikhil Kalghatgi is surpassing my ideal as an NY venture capitalist.Softbank Capital’s portfolio includes Media (Huffington Post), Entertainment (Zynga), Commerce (Gilt Groupe) and advertising (Buddy Media). This Fireside Chat should attract a different slice of the Toronto startup set, less upstart and more offshoots - i.e. Founders who bring with them experiences from these established sectors in TO.

Get your tickets here.

Nikhil’s style is Gangnam.  Our first exchange on Twitter was about his Twitter bio, now updated from: “I’m a VC. And this is crazy. But here’s my term sheet. Call me maybe?” which was so last summer to: VC. Gangnam Style.

You can read his official bio here. This is going to be fun.

OFFICE HOURS @ GOWLINGS

Nikhil is also giving us an hour for one on one meetings with promising prospects that fit his investment profile, in an “Office Hours” format just like First Round Capital’s Howard Morgan and 500 Startups’ Paul Singh. Cdling Capital Services Inc. will work with MaRS Commons and the MaRS Mentor Network to incorporate traditional referrals from across the local ecosystem and the Cdling platform to deliver a report to Nikhil on October 21 and we will announce his selections on October 22. @cdlingHQ or email me at michael at cdling dot com with any questions or for more details.

We are grateful to our friends at Gowlings who are graciously hosting us for both OFFICE HOURS and the chat.

UPDATE Nov. 21

Riffing on the “Office Hours” added to Startup Grind events with First Round Capital’s Howard Morgan and 500Startups’ Paul Singh, back in early October Wasabi Ventures Managing Partner, Tom “TK” Kuegler decided to select 5 promising startups for 10 min, one on one sessions in an exclusive hour just prior to Startup Grind Baltimore’s October 30th fire side chat event.

That was before a lady named Sandy decided to put the plans of millions of people on hold. While the Startup Grind event has been successfully rescheduled to December 4 in Baltimore, unfortunately TK can not be on hand to meet face to face for the hour before hand.

Genacast Ventures Joins the Search!

The good news is that Gil Beyda from Genacast Ventures is joining the search for great startups in the Baltimore/D.C. region!

Genacast Ventures is a seed fund that invests up to $1 million in technology-centric Internet start-ups in the northeastern US.

A partnership between serial entrepreneur Gil Beyda and Comcast Ventures, Genacast brings the best of “been there, done that” start-up experience and seasoned venture investing.

OFFICE HOURS, Cdling Rated Referrals - UPDATE, Dec 3, 2012

Based upon the experience of our most recent OFFICE Hours pilot in NYC, we talked to Gil and TK today and we are changing our approach. To sum it up …

Get 10 credible opinions about your startup on Cdling and you can request a meeting with either TK or Gil or both.  Your request will trigger the creation of a Cdling report on your startup that will go TK and Gil. Once they receive the report, TK or Gil will make the decision on whether to schedule the meeting.

If your startup would like to meet with Gil or TK to make a pitch, ask for advice, seek an introduction here is how to advance your startup on Cdling.  There is no deadline. You don’t need to be a Baltimore based startup (but you will need to be a match for these investors if you expect to get a meeting). We will create these reports for the first 10 startups that qualify. If you have any questions contact Founder, Michael Cayley: michael at cdling dot com.

Attention mentors, subject matter experts and investors in the Baltimore/D.C. region.  You know these startups better than anyone. Genacast Ventures, Wasabi Ventures and Cdling look forward to your participation!

With a startup you are pushing out an idea.  You will typically go through several iterations, pushing out a new design, or a different marketing approach … each time pushing through a new cycle of activity. Then at a certain point, you will start to see signs of “the PULL”.

That is when your users start to pull things out of you.  They want you to fix something that doesn’t work or implement a new feature.  Ideally you are iterating every week or day or even more often to solve problems. Soon you are getting feedback faster than you can react.

That’s real traction.  It doesn’t have to be about huge user numbers (though that is always nice), but when users are starting to care enough about what you are doing to help you improve it, that is probably the time that you should consider going out to raise some outside capital to help you keep pace with the opportunity and figure out how to scale a real business.

Above, I am paraphrasing Paul Singh, Partner at 500Startups who joined us for a fireside chat in Toronto on September 10th. That is the kernel of wisdom that stuck with me as a unique insight from someone who needs to have his finger on the pulse of this kind of moment in a startup’s cycle in order to do his job with a fund that is probably the highest velocity seed stage investor in the world.

You can hear the full hour of audio at this link. There are a lot more nuggets to glean, it is worth the listen.

You can check out ITBusiness.ca’s full coverage here or if you are short for time, take four and half mins for their video recap above. Check out the photos here (including a great panorama of PlayThink’s live sketch).  Or click here for a short voice over of the amazing live sketching that Patricia Kambitsch at PlayThink did to capture the major themes and ideas.

Working with MaRS Commons and the MaRS Mentor Network, we submitted a list of startups who have been referred through the Cdling platform and other channels and Paul made the final selections below. 

We should point out to the rest of the community that Jolt withdrew the startups in their current crop from this selection process since Paul will be meeting exclusively with these Founding teams on September 11th.  Thank you again to the team at Jolt and MaRS Commons for working with us to make this open time available to any startup! 

There are still some spots available to join us for Paul’s pizza lunch “fire side chat”.  You can get your tickets here.

I also have a couple of spots for the closed investors only event with Paul that will be taking place on Monday afternoon at 3 pm.  If you are interested in one of those, please @cdlingHQ or email me at michael at cdling dot com.

If you are connected to any of the Founders from these startups, please send them a link to this post!  We are trying to contact them now to make sure that they are ready for Monday morning!

Thanks also to all of the startups who expressed interest in the opportunity to meet with Paul.  If you were not selected, don’t take it badly there were many inputs and not making this list is not necessarily a reflection on what you are doing.

Congrats to the companies that were selected!  

Paul will be getting started at 9:30 am Monday, September 10 in the MaRS Commons on the second floor at 101 College Street.

The format is 10 mins. Make a bond. Ask a question. Pitch. But you have 10 mins.

Here is the schedule and names of companies selected:

9:30 am
Penyo Pal
Penyo Pal builds fun, engaging experiences for kids and kids at heart to learn Mandarin. Users adopt and customize their own Penyo Pal and explore Penyo World playing mini-games and interacting with their Penyo Pal. Learning a new language opens doors, your eyes, and your mind… and with Penyo Pal you’ll be saying in no time!

9:40 am
NoteSolution
Notesolution is an educational network that delivers the best course resources to university students worldwide by crowdsourcing content.

9:50 am
Hovr
HOVR makes images on social networks clickable for product search. Through a 1-click update of your browser, the magic of HOVR is unlocked on any website. Easily go from the image of what you want, to window shopping comparables, to the best place to buy all within the HOVR Sidebar.

10:00 am - break

10:10 am
Kickvox
Kickvox is a search engine built uniquely for mobile. We do this by introducing a visual search process and deep integration with popular mobile apps giving users a truly mobile friendly experience.

10:20 am
Bunch
Bunch is a mobile platform to share and discuss your passions with like-minded people. The Bunch iPhone app is live in private beta and has had 1.1 million pre-signups via a Facebook marketing app. Bunch will test launch Sept 2012 in Canada, with a US launch to follow.

Special thanks to the nearly 100 new members who have joined Cdling recently. Our community now has 622 members and if you take a look at the cross section of experience, geography and talent sets, we could not be happier with the diversity of players that are coming together.

We asked three leaders in Canada’s startup and venture capital communities for their two cents on what to do with the $400 million. 

How do you solve Canada’s venture capital crisis?

That’s the half-billion dollar question Ottawa is posing to leaders of this country’s finance, startup and business communities. Federal finance minister Jim Flaherty announced$400 million in funding to jumpstart the nation’s sagging VC sector in his last budget. Now he’s asking for ideas on what to do with the money. 

A few things are crystal clear. One is that Canada’s VC sector is struggling. 

Read more by following this link: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=68451

Highlights by PlayThink in 6 mins.  First Round Capital’s Howard Morgan has been investing in startups for over 40 years.  He has over 150 startups in his portfolio.  5 of his startups have raised over $150-million in the last three weeks. He co-founded New York City Angels group.  Check out what advice he has for startups and investors and the comments he made on the emergence of NYC as a tech hub that surpasses Boston. Hint: ROI not government programs.

Thanks to Howard for a great evening tonight at Startup Grind Toronto, all of the startup enthusiasts who came out to get inspired, learn together and get connected.

Thanks also to all of the startups who expressed interest in the opportunity to meet with Howard tomorrow morning.  If you were not selected, don’t take it badly there were many inputs and not making this list is not necessarily a reflection on what you are doing.

Congrats to the companies that were selected!  

Howard will be getting started at 8:30 am tomorrow morning in the MaRS Commons on the second floor at 101 College Street.

The format is 10 mins. Make a bond. Ask a question. Pitch. But you have 10 mins.

Here is the schedule and names of companies selected:

Pinpoint Social - 8:30 am

Tunezy - 8:40 am

uknowa - 8:50 am

GestSure Technologies - 9 am

JobDeals - 9:10 am

Engrocer - 9:20 am

Break 10 mins

HitSend - 9:40 am

Squag - 9:50 am

Tout.it - 10 am

Venngage - 10:10 am

Break 10 mins

Greengage Mobile - 10:30 am

Notesolution - 10:40 am

XYZ Interactive - 10:50 am

Howard Morgan, ranked #12 in 2011’s Top 30 Most Respected Venture Capitalists, is coming to visit Startup Grind Toronto on July 25^th. Get your tickets here.

Should Ontario based startups be dancing like First Round Capital’s portfolio companies are in this famous Christmas video released by the firm?

If seeing VCs dance is not enough of a culture shock for Ontario, how about the title of Howard’s blog: WayTooEarly where he declares, “I work with companies at two stages, too early and way too early.” 

In our typical “fire-side chat” format, we will be asking Howard to share some inspiring stories from his more than 20 years as an Angel and venture capital investor, how his early academic career impacts him today and what his thoughts are about the shifting landscape of early stage investing.

Then on the morning of July 26, we are pleased to announce that Howard will be in residence at the MaRs Discovery District for First Round’s OFFICE HOURS.  For this opportunity, First Round will select 10 promising startups to meet with Howard for lightening fast 10 minute pitch and feedback sessions designed to showcase the opportunity to invest in Ontario based startups and provide an intimate setting for local Founders to make a connection with one of the best venture capitalists in the world. 

Cdling Capital Services, working with MaRs’ mentor network and across the startup community will be providing screening and selection reporting to First Round and all Founders, Advisors and investors are invited to get involved in the action.