Last week, the annual mesh conference took over the Allstream Centre. The two-day web-focused conference hosted an array of panels on the future business, technology, marketing, and public relations. Below are some of the more interesting panels and startups I saw this past week. 

What’s Up with Startup Venture Capital in Canada?

One of the most crowded presentations during mesh was a talk curated by mesh co-founder Mark Evans. The presentation, which included thoughts from venture capitalists Matt Golden, David Nault, and Michelle McBane, was ostensibly supposed to delve into the difficultly Canadian startups have with raising capital. Instead, the three panelists focused on a variety of other topics relating to the startup ecosystem. From a personal perspective, the most interesting part of the presentation were the comments the panel made in relation to a recent article the Financial Post published on startup accelerators in Canada that received a lot of criticism from the startup community.

For those that have not read the piece, Post writer Matthew Braga used the article as an opportunity to question the value startup accelerators bring (or lack thereof) to Canada’s startup ecosystem. The piece seemed to draw the ire of the panel, as Golden jokingly said that, with the exception of Evans, most of the Canadian press is overly focused on putting a negative spin on their startup coverage (Matt, you should check out Toronto Standard‘s startup coverage). McBane and Nault were much more diplomatic in their responses, saying that we should look at accelerators as a kind of college for entrepreneurs, as they help teach them skills that one doesn’t pick up in business school. Moreover, all three panelists went on to say that it might be to soon to judge accelerators on purely results-based metrics. 

For the majority of the entrepreneurs there, however, the panel discussion presented an opportunity to pick the brains of three of Canada’s leading VCs.    

Tales from Inside the YCombinator Incubator

One of the final presentations from mesh was also one of the most sparsely attended, which was a shame because it turned out to be my personal favourite from the two-day event. Tales from Inside the Y Combinator Incubator was hosted by The Working Group’s Chris Eben, and featured a panel consisting of Michael McCauley, Michael Litt and Wojciech Gryc–the co-founders of BufferBox, Vidyard, and Canopy Labs, respectively. As the title suggests, much of what McCauley, Litt, and Gryc had to share were anecdotes from their time at Y Combinator. Most of their stories ended up centring around Y Combinator’s co-founder, Paul Graham, whom the panel affectionately referred to as PG.  

Graham has a reputation in the tech community for being an idiosyncratic individual; judging from the stories the panel told, it would appear that reputation is well-deserved. McCauley had one of the more humorous anecdotes about the English entrepreneur and programmer. Partway through their three-month term at Y Combinator, the BufferBox team installed one of their signature storage lockers outside the incubator’s main building. McCauley sent Graham an email, asking him whether he saw the BufferBox. In response, Graham said the unit needed to be levelled, which, given how the company installs its units, made the task of reinstalling it difficult. Still, McCauley managed to get the storage unit properly levelled, and he sent Graham an email that simply included a picture of the locker with a level on top of it. Graham’s response this time was to say that properly levelling the unit showed an attention to detail that would take both McCauley and the rest of BufferBox far.     

Unlike the rest of mesh, the Y Combinator talk wasn’t particularly educational, but it didn’t need to be; after two full days of learning about the future of business, marketing, and the Internet, it was fun to relax and take in some interesting stories.     

Flee

As I mentioned in my preview of mesh, this year’s conference brought with it a demo alley where attendees could check out the work of several startups. One of the more interesting startups I saw was a travel service called Flee.  

Flee was co-founded by Byron Hawes and Zeïna Belouizdad. That startup is currently based out of the Jolt accelerator. Hawes, a former writer for Monocle, Vice, and several other publications, specialized in travel writing before co-founding Flee with Belouizdad, and it’s his experience in writing that seems to infuse Flee with a kind of  uniqueness not present in other travel services.

Visiting the website prompts users to select the city they wish to flee from–unfortunately, the selection of escapable cities is currently limited to twelve: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Austin, Boston, Chicago, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Miami–the day they wish to leave on and when they want to come back. After inputing the required information, the website then highlights travel destinations that traditional travel services have undervalued in the past. So, instead of suggesting places like New York and Las Vegas for your next trip, Flee will recommend destinations like Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah  Georgia; and Marfa, Texas. Each potential destination is accompanied by suggestions for places to stay, dine, and visit. Moreover, users can book flights and accommodations directly through the company’s website. Best of all, the entire service is wrapped in a functional and beautiful design, and each recommendation has a clever write up associated with it. 

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Igor Bonifacic is a writer working for the Toronto Standard. You can follow him on twitter @igorbonifacic. 

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