Issues with the ArtFox logo
by Olivier Cabanes
Putting time and effort into a company’s corporate identity is very important, as it allows emotions between customers and the brand to emerge, and we thought we were off to a good start with ArtFox.
Yesterday, we learned that the logo David Pache created for ArtFox (one of our companies) is the subject of a dispute. A claim was made by another designer, Michael Erickson of Logo Motive Designs, that the concept had been plagiarized. continue reading…
22 comments February 3, 2009
20 Co-founders gathered at Bolidea to talk about their startup and to possibly find a partner…
by Martin-Luc Archambault
We’ve just hosted our first Co-Founder’s Monday this week, and I have to admit that I was really impressed by the genuine passion and motivation projected by people in the room.
Unfortunately I had to leave after welcoming the attendees, but from what I heard from the event organizer Felipe Coimbra and from Raphael Ettore, an entrepreneur in residence at Bolidea working on ArtFox , I think the event was an overall success. Many thanks to everyone that attended and especially to the organizer, Felipe.
continue reading…
5 comments January 22, 2009
Free Hackers: The January Edition
Participants settling in Bolidea's infamous " nipple lounge"
About 12 hacking aficionados met on Saturday the 10th of January for the second edition of the Free Hacker’s meet up: a monthly gathering for developers, programmers and technology hackers with the goal of facilitating experimentation, discussion and project exploration of new technologies and programming languages. continue reading…
1 comment January 19, 2009
Creating new hybrid events for a better Montreal Startup Community
Challenge Your World at Montreal NewTech
by Olivier Cabanes
Today, entrepreneurs – whether they have a business or technology background – who want to start a business have access to a lot of help and resources, such as events that promote sharing project ideas, interests and skills with peers. However, it seems like most of these gatherings are made for groups with similar backgrounds. As an example, Montreal NewTech mostly attracts business-oriented entrepreneurs or investors, while developers prefer to hang out in events such as Free Hackers. Bolidea decided to participate in the latter and is also willing to do the same for other crowd-specific events as we believe they bring tremendous value for entrepreneurs and their start-ups. It is through events like these that entrepreneurs can get specialized feedback, insight, support, and maybe funding! While we entirely encourage crowd-specific events, we think that there aren’t enough “hybrid” events – events that create synergies between different crowds.
Participants at the first edition of Free Hackers
Of course some “hybrid” events do exist, such as Co-Founders Monday, which we will be hosting for the first time next week, but for these types of events, it seems to be quite difficult to get the different crowds to show up with an equal amount of interest. Often, there will be more people from one crowd and the other crowd will end up feeling overwhelmed and out of place. That is the problem Bolidea would like to tackle in order to help our startup community thrive even more. We want to be able to successfully unite business-focused personalities with developers and investors in a way that will spark new ideas and relationships which we can then hopefully help grow into independent, successful companies.
We don’t have the winning solution yet, but we’re working on it. One thing we are doing is getting feedback from individuals that attended our events and also gathering suggestions from people in the startup scene for eventual events. We want to identify why crowds don’t necessarily want to mix and what would make them want to. Everyone involved in the tech community is welcome to let us know what they think the winning “hybrid” event would be; if you’re a business brain, a tech guru, a startup fan, a money man, what you’ve got to say is important to us. What do you think is the key to making a “hybrid” event successful – what type of “hybrid” event would YOU want to attend?
And of course, if you share our vision and you want to organize an event, give us a shout – maybe we can help!
2 comments January 15, 2009
Should you work for a startup?
by Magda Rocki
One of Bolidea’s main objectives is to attentively find and recruit capable people interested in working for the technology startups that we build. In order to do so successfully, we obviously need to be aware of the factors that make it interesting for someone to work in a startup environment.
So, we carried out a semi-scientific analysis by drawing on our communal knowledge of the corporate environment, our personal experiences, as well as feedback from other startup employees. That being done, we can now present a few of the many reasons why we believe you should consider working at a startup. continue reading…
2 comments January 12, 2009
FreeHackers Montreal at Bolidea
by Magda Rocki
Preparations for the event:
A few hours before the first FreeHackers meet was to be held in the offices of Bolidea, the team itself was efficiently scrabbling to provide a welcoming space fitting for big and small hackers alike. So late last night, while other worker bees were nectaring their stressful workweeks away with alcoholic pollen, the Bolidea team was fervently at work, prettifying our offices, and finally installing our company’s name plate.
As I arrived sleepy-eyed at the office on Saturday under the noon sun, I was greeted by the infectious grins of the newly arrived participants of the inaugural edition of the Free Hackers meeting. continue reading…
2 comments December 17, 2008
Our Offices
by Magali Janvier
Our first offices
Our first offices were located in the Old Port, a historical and pleasant Montreal neighborhood, exceedingly lively and happening in the summer, while more tranquil in the winter time. Not only was the neighborhood lovely, our office space felt really cozy and was fun to work in. The work spaces were divided in little rooms each of them with their different feel: the well organized marketing/design room, the paper and poster plastered Biz Dev spot and the coders’ area, likely dark and always overflowing with blue “bawls” bottles. Not only did all the staff love the office space, people arriving at the offices never missed a chance to compliment on how great it felt. There was a fireplace, big wooden ceiling structure beams and comfortable couches surrounding a long coffee table. That’s where we always sat at lunch time, eating our homemade or McDonald lunches – the McDonald’s was right around the corner – talking about the next release but more often about the latest party. Indeed the place was perfect for parties, the famous fireplace was always topped with multiple bottles of booze – too often left over booze such as absinthe – but renewed with the drinkable kind before any plan of festivity. Writing this brings back good memories. Overall it was great, but as everything, there were some downsides.
1 comment December 10, 2008
The Team Behind Bolidea
by Magda Rocki
The mastermind behind our enterprise, Martin-Luc Archambault (pic: bottom left), concocts and engineers seamless business strategies that cause our mouths to fall open – more often than not – during meetings. Having sharpened his visionary approaches on more than a few online businesses, he enthusiastically seeks and shapes everything into fast: turnovers, entrepreneurs, executions, and automobiles. Open and receptive to all things entrepreneurial, he is one of the investors behind Montreal Start Up and is always excited to brainstorm and talk about business with anyone. He attributes his farsighted intelligence to daily nibbles of dark chocolate. continue reading…
Add comment December 8, 2008
Got a Problem?
by Martin-Luc Archambault
We’ve always been coming up with cool ideas of products that we like to think people would really need. In the past, we’ve usually been too swamped working on other projects to develop even a fraction of these new ideas. The result is that we missed out on a few amazing business opportunities that others executed on and that became great successes.
It’s commonly said that for a startup to be successful, the stars need to be aligned. In theory, that means a lot of things, including a fantastic team with a great idea and a real market. We think the toughest thing to nail down is what makes an idea “great”. We don’t have the perfect answer to that, but after much reflection, we are now convinced that no idea can be great if it doesn’t really solve a market problem. continue reading…
Add comment December 4, 2008
Bolidea’s First Blog Post
by Martin-Luc Archambault
Hello there! I’m Martin-Luc Archambault and this is my first blog post – ever. I am an entrepreneur based out of Montreal and I’ve been developing and launching technology startups since I was in high school – 13 or so years ago. Obviously some of these companies were complete failures but I was fortunate enough to have a few pretty good successes!
In the past few months I’ve been working hard with my long time partners Olivier Cabanes & Magali Janvier on developing our dream which I am happy to present today!
Our new company is Bolidea. It’s an incubator with the mission of developing technology companies that strive to provide solutions to real market problems.
With this blog, we obviously want to highlight our solutions, products and companies. However, we promise that we’ll do so in a very candid manner because our most important goal is definitely to share and discuss our experiences (both good and bad) with the community.
We know that we can’t be good at everything and we think that the best way for us to get better is to engage and learn from each other’s mistakes and successes.
So we really hope you’ll talk to us either by commenting on this blog or by emailing or calling us. Better yet, if you are in Montreal and you are walking on St-Laurent Boulevard, don’t hesitate to drop by our office and we’ll be happy to take some time to show you around and chat about your projects and our companies. You’ll find our address and complete contact info on the About Us page.
Add comment December 1, 2008
