The Startup Community
About a year or so ago, I didn’t really know anyone in the startup community. I’d been searching for a Co-Founder for several years and finally found the perfect match. When it came time for us to launch our first venture together, we really had no clue that a great community already existed.
We talked about starting a meetup or a tech club of some kind to stir things up and wondered why Toronto didn’t have a cool nickname like Silicon Alley in New York or Silicon Roundabout in London, we are cool too. After further research, we found many great things in Startup North like DemoCamp, Sprout Up and Startup Drinks to name a few.
Once we started attending these events and meeting cool people, that were doing cool shit, we quickly realized that we were now part of an amazing startup community. We continued down this path and have attended some great conferences and continue to connect with many great people and programs.
Being connected is one thing but actually getting out to these events and just talking to people about what your up to and what they’re up to is priceless. You can learn so much about yourself, your business and others just by talking to similar people in the space.
Now the bigger conferences are a whole other kettle of fish. We attended TechCrunch Disrupt last September and pitched our idea in the Startup Alley for a day, it was awesome! It cost us quite a bit of money to do this but we came back smarter.
What it comes down to is simple, get out there. Share your business with others and you will be rewarded. You’ll learn things that will help you be a better business person or developer etc. and you’ll likely make some amazing contacts for life. We’ve since met some amazing early stage VCs and lawyers that changed our lives in an amazing way. Bottom line, get connected and be respected.
