HelloStaff, building a pool of talents for Montreal events

Going on an entrepreneurial journey

Starting from scratch and jumping in the unknown… does that ring a bell? It is a prerequisite for becoming an entrepreneur. It is not for everyone and you definitely have to like taking risks and being interested in out-of-the box perspectives, just like Thomas and Michael. 

They had different backgrounds, Thomas had a degree in Management and Michael had started his career as an actor. And yet, they were both working in the events industry, through temporary contracts as brand specialists. Discussing their mutual experience of seeking jobs led them to think of a way to innovate the job seeking experience. HelloStaff was on its way.

Looking for talents 

A lot of entrepreneurs in the tech sector are developers themselves or have an experience in that field but it was not the case for Thomas or Michael. Finding the right person was their first priority.

We wasted 6 months not finding the right person to develop our platform. We understood that we needed to structure everything, working with contracts and officialising. Look for a talent that would also be interested in being a shareholder. This is how we found David.

Thomas Lussiez

With a team of three, fully invested in their project, and a developer with an already established technical expertise and entrepreneurial experience, HelloStaff worked hard on developing their MVP.

When your product is built around a technological solution, you do not have the right to make any mistake; the slightest tech glitch will not be forgiven.

Learning all the way

The startup ecosystem played a major role in our progress: we found mentoring opportunities, professional advice, and funds. Earning our first grant gave us more credibility.

From Montréal inc. to Réseau M, entreprism and Entreprendre ici, an initiative of the Government of Quebec (Ministère de l’Économie, et de l’Innovation), HelloStaff knocked at as many doors as possible to develop their legitimacy. 

Every step of the journey, building a company, I discovered a new field of work and I wanted to get my hands dirty to better understand in order to recruit the right talent.

Check out HelloStaff.ca: If you are self-employed or studying and looking for a short-term mission in relation to events, you can create a profile to get customized offers. If you are a company in the events industry, you could get access to a great pool of talents.

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Introducing the new innovation in craft beer tasting, made in Quebec

Create a local emulation

The original idea for Passeport en fût was discussed in August 2015, between Catherine and her co-founder Geneviève. Catherine worked with the Quartier Latin SDC (Société de développement commercial), an organization that helps retailers promote their activities in their local environment. In a neighborhood like Quartier Latin, where there are many breweries, bars and restaurant, she wanted to offer innovative ways to create a bond between SDC and the general public.

With the rise of craft beers in consumption patterns, focusing on microbreweries was the most natural move. Especially as there were no efficient models to help retailers promote their products: there are big events organized every year to promote the craft brewery industry (cf. Mondial de la Bière) but there is no real product or service to encourage people to discover breweries by themselves, throughout the year.

“Microbreweries are real partners, they do not participate to our project, they are fully part of it”

From vouchers to a mobile application

A new startup was born. The original project was as simple as revolutionary: a booklet of vouchers – 12 vouchers for 12 beers (or non-alcoholic drinks) in 12 Montreal microbreweries, at a very attractive price, for a limited period. The vouchers were mailed directly to buyers. This model really put forwards breweries through a B2C approach.

For the two first editions, in 2016 and 2017, this paper version of the passport proved to be very popular but Catherine received a growing demand for innovating her product: turning the passport into a mobile application was an attractive idea, but it needed capital and expertise to succeed.

In 2017, Catherine met with the founders of a web agency, Okam and got a “professional” crush with its co-founders, Samuel and David.

With this new partner, she could develop the app and bring her entrepreneurship adventure to the next level: through technology, she could extend the service to the rest of Quebec and serve a wider audience.

In October 2017, the new version of Passeport Local and the app were launched, with the opportunity to discover 12 locations out of 70 microbreweries throughout Quebec.

A new technology startup to promote local entrepreneurship

The success of Passeport en fût crossed both the provincial and national borders and Catherine is currently working on possible projects in the rest of Canada and the US.

To implement these new developments, she has created another startup, PSSPRT, that specializes in developing technology products dedicated to discovering local companies and their products. Along with her partners from Okam, they are working on bringing personnalisation and customization to a whole new level, to help local companies expand their visibility with mobile tools.

“We are looking at opportunities to expand our technology beyond Quebec by selling usage rights to our app.”

We can’t wait to discover these new innovative products, but until then, a little bird told us that 15 additional microbreweries will join the Passeport en fût this Spring. To discover it all, you can download the app here.

How to raise a child in a mobile world?

There are so many articles lately about the risks of leaving your kids with your smartphone or in front of screens but what do tech companies do about it? Discover one innovative tool launched by two friends from New Brunswick, Itavio.

The story of two “veteran” game developers

Melani and Matt have worked in the gaming company for several years. They met while working at Gogii Games, a gaming company based in New Brunswick, dedicated to the development and distribution of games.

In 2015, they decided to go on the exciting adventure of starting their own business. Melani is the marketing guru and Matt is the ideation pilot. They decided to launch an innovative tool that gaming companies could offer to parents for a more responsible usage of their products. Indeed, mobile usage and mobile gaming have evolved tremendously over the years. Gamers used to be a specific community with specific tools. Today, everyone can be a gamer, including children.

An ethical dimension

Itavio stands for “It takes a village” to raise a child in a mobile world. So it has to do with education, and helping both parents and game companies provide a more responsible product.

In-app advertising (via https://pencilcase.io/blog/mobile-advertising)

Itavio offers a plugin that game developers can add to help parents limit the in-app purchases on free-to-play games. Here is a concrete example: remember that old addictive Candy Crush Saga? There are several in-app purchases available: extra lives, golden bars, extra moves, color bombs… During its peak of popularity, in 2014, Candy Crush players spent approximately $1.33 billion on in-app purchases. These purchases can be intentional but sometimes, they result from kids clicking carelessly on their parents’ smartphone or tablet.

Adapting to changing consumption patterns

Itavio wants to create a regulated environment where parents, children and gaming companies can peacefully interact and coexist. This would avoid parents an extra anxiety related to overspending and also empower children to manage their time and money. Indeed, children have become complex customers: they not only want to buy a real candy bar, but also a virtual candy.

A venture that attracts media companies

Today, Itavio has already signed with prestigious partners including Hearst. Even better, they are members of the Heart Lab, a selective community of early stage women-led startups that innovate the media or information industry. This greenhouse for new ventures invests cash and assists them in building teams and refining products.

Discover all about their pricing here.

Hardbacon, making finance accessible through innovations

From business journalist to entrepreneur

(c) MTL in Tech

On Monday, during Queen City Fintech Demo Day, Julien must have had thousands of ideas coming to his mind: what an incredible journey, from writing articles on latest finance news at Les Affaires, Quebec top business newspaper, to raising more than 6 times the expected amount on Ulule, and being part of the prestigious accelerator by Bank of American and Wells Fargo in North Carolina.

Indeed, this is a promising success story that emerged from a desire to serve young generations’ financial aspirations and improve online brokerages and robo-advisors, Julien found out that it clearly needed improvements.

He therefore started by offering “Not Another Boring Course About Investment” through the crowdfunding campaign on Ulule: 4 hours of video content with a retail value of $100, offered at $50. Thanks to an efficient network of ambassador and really speaking to Millennials, it was a real success.

The online course was only the first step to a wider project: creating a platform that provides financial information to everyone and that allows to invest on the stock market.

Innovating brokerage  

With a dream team of 2 backend developers, 2 iPhone developers, one designer and one financial analyst, and this initial bundle of money, Hardbacon started working on creating a stock brokerage comparison tool and a mobile app.

“We want to do what Bloomberg did for financial institutions but for random people. Make investment accessible to everyone.”

Targeting the right public

The Ulule campaign made them realize that contributors were actually around 35-36 years old. Millennials are not yet considering investment as a priority as an initial capital of $5000 is usually needed to invest on the stock market. Instead, contributors and target customers are thinking about ways to better handle their money, thinking about wealth and pension management.

Differentiating

Since the Canadian financial market is highly concentrated, Hardbacon is not considered as a threat by brokers, banks and other financial actors. In fact, Hardbacon is earning money by selling robot-advisors services but it is also providing a unique portfolio analysis to clients.

“We want our clients to manage their portfolio by themselves, thanks to Hardbacon advice”

It’s time to disrupt the US market

As entrepreneurship is about always targeting new challenges, Julien is now ready to conquer the US market. Because it has similar stock market structures but with different brokers. And because it allows to offer more services to clients than Canada: in the US, Hardbacon can add a financial recommendation dimension by registering to the Security Exchange Commission.

“We want to analyse the market and provide recommendations to our clients. Ideally, the US version of the website will include a chatbot.”

You can know download Hardbcon on Apple’s AppStore.

Engineers are innovating the wine experience in Montreal

More and more studies of drinking patterns in Canada show that consumers are moving toward premium beverages and especially towards wine. Following this trend, two young engineers have decided to create the first mobile application that makes wine more accessible to the general public.

Techies that love wine

The seed was planted back in 2011 when a trip to Napa Valley sparked Terence Kao’s passion for wine. Upon his return, he found conventional channels of wine education, such as internet, books and tasting classes, too costly, time consuming and hard to understand. To combine his passion for wine and expertise in mobile, Terence enrolled into an entrepreneurship program at ÉTS, where he met his associate, Jérôme Combet-Blanc. Both came from engineering backgrounds and had a common objective: to democratize access to wine.

This is where Jessica Harnois comes in the story – indeed, to become a reality, the project required a wine expert and Jessica, a renown sommelier, was looking for a technical partner to develop her idea of a wine tasting game. Chance allowed them to meet and the team was born.

With a starting grant from the BDC in 2016 and support from organizations such as Centech, SAJE and Fondation Montréal inc., the Vegas Tasting mobile application was born.

A blind tasting game and much more!

Launched in December 2016, Vegas Tasting is the first mobile application focused on making wine tasting more accessible to the public through a game. The app is divided into two parts.  In the first part, the user learns to taste like a pro in 3 simple steps while blind tasting a wine: 1) visual analysis 2) olfactory analysis 3) gustatory analysis.  In the second part, the user starts with 50 tokens and is invited to bet on the characteristics of the wine, such as the grape variety, country and vintage.  This interactive game is the funnier part of the app. To complement this app, Jessica made instructive videos to help players improve their tasting techniques.

A marketplace for tasting products

Wineout is relying on a very smart and innovative business model by offering Vegas Tasting as a tool for wine and beer companies to promote their products and educate their customers.  Considering the very restrictive and regulatory environment that governs the sale of alcoholic beverages, it is indeed an innovative way to disrupt the industry.

Growing the business

Wineout has started to think of ways to expand and added a beer tasting game to the app, which received much positive feedback at Mondial de la bière 2017. They are also exploring partnering opportunities to add other beverages such as coffee, spirits, and tea.

In addition, Wineout is also collaborating with Professor Jeremy Cooperstock from McGill University to create an artificial intelligence to provide users with personalized recommendations based on their taste preferences.

Stay tuned for their next monthly event on 1^st November 2017 at Wework. They will be presenting Vegas Tasting for an exciting wine and beer tasting event.

Uber brings innovation to entrepreneurship in Canada

In Canada, like in several places around the world, Uber is raising polemic conversations around its paid collaborative services. Today, it had the brilliant idea of turning attention towards what it does best: innovation.

#UBERpitch your idea!

From 11am to 3pm, on April 7, Uber gave Montrealers the opportunity to pitch their ideas to renowned investors during a short drive. Similar operations were held simultaneously in Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary.

“UberPITCH is a collaborative project that facilitates innovation within local startup communities. We are pumped to help connect local entrepreneurs with the resources they need to accelerate the growth of their ventures,” you can read on Uber’s website.

Among the eight investors participating to the initiative, François Lambert, MP of Impulse Capital and Dany Vachon, Founder of Winner4Life both investors in the very popular Radio-Canada’s Dans l’oeil du dragon, or Edouard Gaussen, analyst at White Star and a leading figure of Tinder’s expansion.

A thriving demand from Montreal entrepreneur wannabes

In theory, if you were in downtown Montreal, Plateau Mont-Royal, Mile-End, Old-Montreal and Griffintown, you could enter a specific promotion code when requesting a car and if connected, the car would arrive to your location with one of the investors on the backseat and you would have 15 minutes to give the best pitch of your life to your investor. All this was obviously free and you are driven back to the pickup location. In practice, Uber received more than 3,000 requests in 30 minutes.

3000 requests in 30 minutes – unbelievable success for #UberPITCH. Thank you @Uber_QC for the initiative! pic.twitter.com/vp8L3Pya1N

— Ed Gaussen (@edgaussen) 7 avril 2016

Demand was exploding and it was hard for thriving entrepreneurs to get a vehicle available. Some of them did not get the chance to present their exciting project, like John Robin, serial entrepreneur, who has already launched a few innovative projects including Rentork, a mobile app to rent your profile and get paid for all your visits and actions on the web.

C'mon, c'mon 🙂 #UberPITCH #pitchYVR pic.twitter.com/teGYCgbovG

— Diana Proca (@dianaproca) April 7, 2016

A few lucky ones got the opportunity to get top advice from angel investors: Frederic Moreau was one of them. He already has a very specific idea to address the problem nomadic workspace – GAB. This virtual franchise would be offered to Montreal coffee shop owners to bring co-working space to nomadic workers, charging by the hour/minute, using a mobile app.

“Grabing an UberPitch was quite challenging due to a huge demand in Montreal. Got the opportunity to pitch my idea to Francois Lambert. He told me it was a fantastic one, he could see the need and the value. Then he gave me a few specific advice as how, as an investor, he would tweak part of the business plan.”

Tkx to #UberPITCH Montreal. Great feedback and awesome advice from @frank_sbr. Go #GAB café go

— Frederic Moreau (@frederic_moreau) 7 avril 2016