Posts Tagged ‘startup’

Everyone knows that in a startup there are no excuses to be made. When something needs to be done, someone needs to do it, and it needs to be done ASAP. Saying things like, “I’ve never done it before.” and “can I work on something else?” don’t cut it. Inevitably, you’ll be faced with a task that you won’t love doing. When that time comes, rather than asking yourself “why do I have to do this?”, try asking yourself “how can I do this most efficiently and enjoy the process?”. That’s a much better question and it’ll get you a much better answer.

These days web startups don’t need too many resources to get started. An internet connection, a place to work, some basic capital, and a motivated team may be the beginning. I am writing this post from the University of Ottawa where I’m sitting amongst 2 other groups who are working on their own startups.

The University of Ottawa happens to keep alumni credentials (i.e. usernames/passwords) active and this is why a lot of already-graduated students come back to where they spent 4(+) years of their lives studying. I’m sitting amongst 2 groups right now but happen to know of another 3 that work out of this University. I’m sure that the situation is similar in Carleton, Algonquin, and other colleges and Universities.

These are groups that you won’t typically meet at a BarCamp/DemoCamp. These are the groups that prefer to stay stealth for a long time. I typically argue with them that there is a lot of benefit that they can seek from the community, yet, it’s difficult to get the message to sink in.

As far as I’m concerned, Ottawa is a startup town. We have a huge student population (probably close to 70,000) and a lot of very experienced senior executives. If we could connect these disparate groups, I think we’d have amazing results.

Aydin.