BC Business
GrowLab Demo Day | BCBusiness
When it comes to starting your own business, there are far more stories of failure than successes. But on Wednesday night, a local startup accelerator announced four new success stories to the tech world. Vancouver-based GrowLab graduated its latest cohort of tech startups this week, sending these new companies out into the world to expand their businesses. After three months of intensive mentoring and scaling their companies from idea to action, these four fledgling companies will leave the nest and attempt to get funding for their startups. Such an intensive experience obviously offers a number of lessons for other companies. Here are a few takeaways from by Paul Singh, partner at 500Startups: Startup costs are lower than ever. Singh says the cloud, online distribution and low overheads are allowing startups to function on less capital. However, the costs to grow a business are rising. The web gets bigger, world gets smaller. Pretty self explanatory, but basically startups are no longer constricted by geography. Traction is the new intellectual property. Just because you’re the first to build a shiny new widget or technology isn’t enough in today’s startup environment. How many customers do you have? What’s your adoption rate? Traction is what matters, not differentiation. These four graduated startups, dubbed “hustlers” by GrowLab, have learned these tough lessons and still survived. In the words of Singh: “That’s what startups are. They’re these cockroaches who survive.” Here are the four that survived the latest round of GrowLabs training: ePact: Takes the emergency contact paperwork online. It’s an online emergency network that connects families and organizations and provides web access to emergency contact information in case of a crisis. SpaceList: Described as the Multiple Listing Service for commercial real estate. Allows businesses looking for office space to check out listings to easily view their options. Procurify: Helps businesses manage their spending. Procurify is an online tool that’s easy and more cost effective than traditional cost management solutions. KarmaHire: A recruitment advertising tool for fast-growing companies. Businesses can create recruiting pages quickly and easily to attract better candidates.