Creation Step

Are we still alive?

Mark — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:31:19 +0000

Things have been quiet on the Creationstep blog over the last season. We have had several large clients keeping the team busy and as Brainpark continued to grow both Bobby and I threw ourselves in with both feet to give it everything we’ve got. BandofCoders still continues to get stronger and one of these days they will probably update their site to show everyone on the team (nudge nudge). QA Room is still evolving slowly. It has a great offering but needs a steady sales focus to grow. Service Cloud is in the right space at the right time with great potential to solve the emerging problems created by new innovations on the web.
We parked Empty Tray and Glassrocket which had been growing but were demanding too much of our time. The margins were slim and to make them successful was going to necessitate Bobby or I giving them our focus which we weren’t prepared to do. Maybe someday they will surface again when someone with the passion and skill to lead them emerges.

Last year we seed invested into several start-ups including:
Stand Out Jobs

All of the companies above have been successful in closing additional rounds of finance and seem to be developing well in a tough economy. We are excited to be connected with each and be part of their wider community. I would encourage more people to seed invest in companies like these as the learning and community that comes with it is as valuable as the potential ROI. We also invested in half a dozen ventures that totally failed. It comes with the territory. We had our fair share of pain with some leaders who blamed us for their own incompetency. It is amazing how short-sighted some people can be. There are some things that we will never do again…

We are not planning on making any new investments in 2009 as we have more than enough on our plate to manage and want to remain of value to those around us. No doubt this means we will miss many opportunities but we are confident there will be plenty when we surface again. We will probably update the site here from time to time but don’t anticipate much action. You can follow me on Twitter if you want to stay up to date on what I am up to. Bobby doesn’t do the social media thing much as he does real work; so you will probably just have to suffice yourself with my ramblings.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

mark — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:58:09 +0000

In tune of the last post, Austin just posted a great article about angel investing in Canada.

Start-up Camps

mark — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:39:22 +0000

I am excited to be driving over to Waterloo for Start-up Camp. Momentum for new business and ideas seems to keep growing all over Ontario/Quebec. I remember after leaving the first Mesh thinking that something significant is happening among us geeks. Mesh 3 is coming up soon and I have as much anticipation for it this year as last year. Between events like these, unconferences like barcamp and democamp, and many of us choosing to cowork during the week, the community is becoming strong.

One dream would be that we eventually come together in some form like a Y-Combinator or Techstars group to be able to make more happen. Many of us have been talking about this as angel investors and entrepreneurs but have not landed on the right thing yet. Maybe it is just because we are all up to our eyes in our own start-ups…but I will keep dreaming.

Code for Good

Bobby — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:29:19 +0000

We’ve spoken with many charities and not for profits that are struggling to establish an effective internet presence. Every attempt they make results in something less than stellar. The sad reality is that most these organizations are probably still living off a website that someone’s 15 year-old nephew made in his parents’ basement.

It’s been well over ten years since the first pages were posted to the World Wide Web and yet the art/science of combining visual aesthetics with effective back-end engineering remains a significant challenge, particularly for those that cannot afford or identify a seasoned team.

What if a group of professionals came together, in one location, for 24 hrs, to build something that most charities could only dream of? Introducing, Code for Good, an innovative approach to give worthy charitable organizations the internet presence they deserve. The first event is in Toronto, followed by Atlanta.

Interested in leading the effort to bring Code for Good to your city? Contact info@codeforgood.com

This post was written by Bobby John

Organizational Empowerment and Systems Psychodynamics

Mark — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:23:45 +0000

A historical review with relevance to organizations in a postmodern era.

No Room for Error

Bobby — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:38:54 +0000

I have been building software development companies for over a decade and can remember a time when at least some classes of software were not considered mission critical. Much has obviously changed over that period time. The internet’s standardized communication protocols coupled with simple markup and scripting languages now makes it possible to develop software that can be used by millions. The flip side of this is that the internet also makes 24/7/365 availability of online software a requirement. Today even the smallest of companies are building and using web-based applications as the back bone of their business. It’s hard to find a project that does not need to meet very high quality and availability standards.

If you’re the person who is going to get the call when the web application suddenly stops working and business grinds to a halt, I feel your pain, the companies success may rest on your back. Trade Settlement,Inc., a client of Band of Coders, is a fully electronic syndicated loan settlement company. This company has a transaction-based revenue model, so if the technology is down, no transactions = no revenue. On top of lost revenue, a technology outage means a breach of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and a black eye in the market. With many large bank clients and billions of dollars being settled on the system, being down is not an option - so quality assurance is top priority.

When people think availability, they turn to the infrastructure team to make sure they have clustered web servers, failover db servers, power generators, tape backups etc. Only those of us with lots of experience and the scars to prove it understand the availability risk that can show up in the code.

For example, I once came across a defect that showed up after 100,000 transactions. This is something you would never see in your unit tests, manual or automated QA runs. This bug would only appear in a long running performance/stress test. It took 48 hours to track down and fix the problem; all the infrastructure redundancy in the world wouldn’t make a difference in this situation.

Clearly, a deep level of testing and an excellent understanding of code are required to keep today’s applications running smoothly. The clear business need for superior testing of applications is one of the main reasons Creation Step is supporting QA Room. QA Room is a group of professionals who understand their role in ensuring software quality and availability. The combination of manual testing, automated testing and performance/stress testing along with understanding how to effectively work with developers and business folks sets them apart. Contact them so you can stop losing sleep wondering if tomorrow will be the day your application fails.

This post was written by Bobby John

The Silver Lining on Indoor Playground

mark — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:21:37 +0000

The past 7 days has been eventful when it comes to Indoor Playground. As many of you have been tracking with, we got covered in Business Week, ABC Global News, and One Degree here in Toronto. In addition I had an interview with the National Post yesterday which I believe will be in print on Monday. It has been a wild journey trying to experiment and discover our way since we opened just over a month ago. It cost quite a lot in the renovations even though we bootstrapped as much as possible to keep the prices affordable to the community.

We have been hoping for a few people to partner with us and share this risk. Today that hope became a reality as Carissa Reiniger from Silver Lining signed up as our first strategic partner who will share the cost and risk of making this venture successful. I met Carissa several months ago and have been inspired by her vision and commitment to making the new entrepreneur and small business successful. I have to admit that she has about twice as much energy as I do and seems to channel it in the right direction. She has one of the best lead generating business development solutions for the small business that I have seen and is proving it to be working with their rapid expansion throughout N.America. We believe our partnership with SilverLining will prove beneficial as it will not only bring in new energy, insight, and expertise, but will take us beyond having a predominantly male influence and membership.

Silver Lining is not exclusively woman led (kudos to joshua and the lads) but will definitely help balance out the hormones and bring an important influence within what we do. All said and done it feels great to have someone who is willing to stand beside us that will take a financial risk to benefit the entrepreneurial community within Toronto.

We are still scheming and instigating with a few other key players who have some clever ideas about how we can give more to the community here in Toronto. This is turning into a lot of fun

This post was written by Mark Dowds

Glassrocket

Adam — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:18:45 +0000

Coming soon.

QA Room

Adam — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:18:34 +0000

Coming soon.

Service Cloud

Adam — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:18:24 +0000

Coming soon.