StartupCampWaterloo6 will be… is … was. Yesterday in fact.

In presentation order:

  1. Ultrasaur RM kicked things off with a great 30-second pitch "Your sysadmin is hacking your server. How do you stop them?" ... they tried last time and were denied, so the moral is, try, try again. They were first pick this time.
  2. Thinkpanda with coolest logo and a demo you can't get into right now... an interesting tool for social bookmarking (my words, not theirs) which reminded me a bit of delicious and looked like it would be great as a part of groupware like Base Camp.
  3. Neverboard Studios... these guys had a pretty cool looking iPhone game and were like, how the hell do we get attention for this thing? They want to charge $$ for it but are worried that they'll never break through the attention barrier. We bounced that one around the room for a while... hopefully had some useful advice... Afterwards at the bar I suggested that they lace the sound effects of their game with profanity in the hopes that Apple will ban it, and ride on the publicity from that. And if they do let it through, people will want it-- for the same reason.
  4. Kaimera Media with a concept for a theme park ride video capture system -- like the thing that captures a photo of you on the roller coaster, but video. kiosk that burns a DVD for you on the spot. Definite win for simplest, best developed business plan of the evening.
  5. Primal Fusion, definitely known around the Waterloo startup community for being pretty well funded and definitely brainy. Demo, which I've tried the private beta on their first product, and while it's interesting, I think there's a lot of what they've done that's not exposed in this version that needs to be in the next before it's clear what they are achieving. By the way, I cheated on including Primal Fusion in the sequence because Mark missed the 30 second pitches. I've been power corrupted. But I suffered accordingly, as my discussion topic was pushed off the end of the agenda. I won't give up though... I'll have another one next time.
  6. Pager Duty was I think my favorite of the evening, although obviously they didn't do so well on the 30 second elevator pitch or they would have been farther up the presentation order. Very simple, to the point -- if you need to have people on call, they will make sure that people are effectively notified with a simple service-style web system.
  7. Giftah has what looks to me like a solid plan, allowing you to buy/sell excess gift cards and they take on the guarantees. Interesting discussion, including acknowledgement that they do have larger, better funded competitors in the USA like Plastic Jungle ... how to get traffic, etc.

I suspect you’ll be seeing some of these companies around in the future doing cool stuff.

Oh yeah – and if you were there remember to take advantage of the Communitech Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program definitely – just call them. Say I sent you :-)

Also, we REALLY need a single unified calendar of events and it looks like watcamp.com might provide.

Possible idea for next time: handing out red cards to anyone who says “Facebook”. Also, giving a prize for provoking the best discussion.

Thanks to the Accelerator Centre for providing space, and Tech Capital, Sun Microsystems, and Communitech for food & drinks. This is a totally non-profit venture and all labour is volunteer :-) My posse is Jesse and Mic.