We just released the mesh conference schedule. Mathew, Stuart, Rob Mark and I are really really excited about it and we hope you will be too. Great local talent mixed with many of the web’s foremost thought leaders on Media, Society and Politics, Marketing and Business will be on hand to engage and converse with. Jim Buckmaster CEO of Craig’s list, Garth Turner of the Liberal Party of Canada, Nora Young from CBC’s Defintely Not the Opera and Rachel Sklar of the Huffington Post give you an indication of the breadth and depth of the minds who will be on hand.

Also, yesterday mesh began to solicit invitations to internet start-ups to participate in 15 minutes of fame. Basically we will be turning the stage over to handful of promising start-ups so they can tell us what’s next online. If you are running a company, or know someone who is, please be sure to get your submission in before the middle of May. You can find more details here.

Finally, if you have not already, get your ticket…they’re going very quickly now and we don’t expect to make it to the end of the month before they sell out. You can register for mesh 2007 here.

As posted on the FreshBooks blog:

Something I have taken an interest in over the last couple of years is product reinvention. I’ve been thinking about this lately because of something Triscuits has done. I grew up in a Triscuits household. Two things we ALWAYS had in stock when I was growing up were granola and Triscuits. Don’t ask…my friends used to tease me about this because it was something that never failed. Anyway…take a look at Triscuits. All they have done over the last ten years is change the amount of salt and sodium in their product – that’s incredible boring if you ask me. But look at Triscuits now…

Just recently I have come across two new ingenious variations of their crackers: Rosemary and Olive Oil (which is awesome), and Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil (which is even better…I can’t believe how good these taste).

These new offerings have totally reinvigorated how Triscuits are positioned in my mind. Sadly I went to their website to learn more and find links to point to in this post and was utterly disappointed by the uselessness of their marketing collateral…no dedicated pages for each new product, links that are confusing, hard to find and, in some cases, barely work. Classic flash driven advertising agency approach to usability…no wonder ad agencies are in trouble these days. And to top it off, Nabisco has not domain-proofed their brand by buying Triscuits.com. But I digress…

Despite all that, if you are a Triscuits fan, it’s time to go shopping. And may I recommend some Brie cheese with the Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil for your delight? Happy snacking.

As posted on the FreshBooks blog: 

Here’s some more food for thought from “Founders at Work” for those of you who are tracking Web 2.0. While it’s a little out of context because Joe Kraus - founder of Excite and Jotspot (a wiki service recently sold to Google) - was answering the question, “What important lessons did you learn at Excite that you carried over to Jotspot?”, I think it’s also a good indication of how much different this boom is than the first internet bubble:

“Get the legs of the business underneath it before you run terribly fast. We were always playing catch-up at Excite and I never liked the feeling.”

He also said:

“The hardest part in a start-up is you wake up one morning and you feel great about the day, and you think, “We’re kicking ass.” And then you wake up the next morning , and you think, “We’re dead.” And literally nothing has changed.

If you’ve ever been there you know that’s funny because it’s true.

Posts have been few and far between these past few weeks…things are very busy at FreshBooks and I’ve been away for three of the last four weeks then down with the flu.  Anyway, I wanted to let you know that we’re doing another mesh meet-up geared at the politics stream of mesh content.  Here’s what Rob had to say on the mesh blog:

Come out with the mesh guys and get your political blog on, Toronto!

We had a great time at the first mesh meetup, but there are still a few weeks left to mesh ‘07 and we’d like to get together again. And this time, it’s political.

Blogger and National Post columnist Andrew Coyne, blogging M.P. Garth Turner, former Paul Martin speechwriter (and of late writer, humourist and blogger) Scott Feschuk and Phil de Vellis, the creator of the “Vote Different” Hillary ‘08 YouTube sensation, will be doing a panel at mesh ‘07 on what’s happening now with Politics and the Web, but let’s get the conversation started early!

Whether you’re a political blogger, party stalwart, consultant or media observer, or like us just plain fascinated by the impact that the Web is having on the way we discuss, organize and create political change, come on out and join us and folks from the Toronto Web 2.0 community on May 9 for snacks and libations at The Charlotte Room - details and signup at the Upcoming site, and please help to get the word out by forwarding this post to someone you can beat at eight-ball. Worst case, you can settle your political differences the way we were meant to - over libations and pool tables.

I love the fact that mesh brings such a well rounded ecosystem of participants together…people interested in the impact the web is having on media, politics and society, marketing and business.  The mix of people is one of the truly special aspects of the event.  So come on out and join us for drinks on May the 9th and get a taste of how things will be at mesh this May 30/31.

Sign of some bubbley froth?  Fred is as credible a source as any for this kind of fear mongering:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/AVc/~3/101873961/dumb_money.html

From the FreshBooks Blog:

In our Barenaked Apps Panel at SXSW, Ryan Carson advised anyone starting a web app to plan for 3 potential outcomes: success, limited success and failure. He’s right - you need to think those outcomes through and determine how you will respond to each scenario. I’d like to add something to this though. There are many people out there with big dreams that are building web apps in their spare time these days - it’s exciting. Unfortunately I think a lot of them are building with false expectations (a post on false expectations to follow soon). They think if their app does not take right off, they should pack it in. My thinking is - don’t.

If you have a measure of success when you launch, I bet you’ve got something. What’s the measure of success? It could be almost anything, like how many visitors from to your site or how many people trial your service. How about getting someone you don’t know to pay for your service? If a person you don’t know signs up and pays out of no where - even one person - then there is a good chance you are on to something.

If you’re on to something it’s time to hunker down and get to work. Launching does not mean you’ve arrived at easy street and you can sit back and relax - it’s your introduction to the grind. The beauty is that web businesses are a ton of fun to run, so the grind can be really enjoyable.

Not buying any of this? Maybe you will find this inspiring. When FreshBooks launched, we were called 2ndSite (we’ve since rebranded) and we did not have our first paying user until month two, but we believed in what we were doing - that fuelled us - and saw trials everyday which was exciting. So we hunkered down and that graph at the top of this post is what our growth has looked like over the past 30 months (we’ve been at it for 33, but I could not get info for the first three months).

Work hard, take care of your customers, innovate and the rest will take care of itself.

This is the second in a series of posts (here is the first) I’ll be doing over the next few days about starting a web business. If you liked this one, subscribe to our feed and stick around.

I’m just back from SXSW (great conference) and I see this is my third post in a row about mesh…I will get off the mesh train shortly with some great posts. While still on the mesh train however, I wanted you to know we are having another mesh meet up/mixer Thursday March 28 at the Charlotte Room (King & Spadina).  *Everyone* is welcome to join us.  We had over 100 people attend the last one at the Irish Embassy and we are hoping this event will be even better attended.  You can find out some more info on the mesh blog.  Mark your calendars.

Like least year, we are offering “a limited number of post-secondary Student mesh tickets at the uber-low price of $25 plus GST” (Stuarts words…I like them).  Those tickets almost gone.

If you are a student and what to go do mesh for $25, run - don’t walk - and get your ticket now…they are sure to be gone before the weekend is over.

It is with great pleasure that Mathew, Stuart, Mark, Rob and I announce that the mesh conference 2007 is now open for business.

What’s mesh? It’s a two-day conference in Toronto that endeavors to answer the question “What’s next online?” This is our second year and we sold out last year to a crowd of 400.

We try to answer that question by talking about how the internet is disrupting four streams: media, society, marketing and business. Our way will be illuminated by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Robert Edelman of Edelman Public Relations, Jim Buckmaster of Craig’s List, Tom Williams of GiveMeaning and Austin Hill of Gifter, all of whom will be joining us for keynote conversations. We’ll be releasing more about our other speakers and the topics and panels over the coming weeks.

A number of people have asked me to fill them in when event goes live…so I’m telling you now. I’ll add this too, we want you to be there and given the interest we have received prior to today, I’m guessing we will sell out well before the event. So please buy your tickets now if you want to come.

So, there it is. Please visit the site and come join the conversation.

On a side note, I don’t think I could have possibly imagined how much I could learn or how much fun I could have by being a part of this group. Mathew, Rob, Stuart and Mark – thank you very much. I would also like to thank our sponsors who make it possible to bring in such wonderful speakers. I can’t wait for May 30/31.

As posted on the FreshBooks Blog (there are some comments there too):

Sometimes I see things I just don’t believe in. Here’s an example.

A recent Fortune Magazine article describes how Dov Charney, the founder and CEO of American Apparel, raised money through a SPAC. SPACs are shell companies that raise hundreds of millions in equity and go public. Once public they wait for an opportunity and once they find one, they put their equity to work. Since going public is such a painful process with Sarbanes Oxley and all the other red tape, SPACs are attractive to entrepreneurs as a quick way to raise big capital.

Here’s my thing: I just don’t believe in SPACs. Time may prove me wrong, and if that’s the case, so be it.

American Apparel is an interesting company who has grown very quickly. They do untraditional things like manufacture all their garments in the US, which in these times of outsourcing, I applaud them for. That said, SPACs seem like soulless entities to me. What are the odds they share the business values of the people at American Apparel? Slim to none I’d say. What if the dark clouds come when you have an investor like that? Wouldn’t be pretty I suspect.

Time will tell. Let’s give it 5-10 years. Standing here today, American Apparel’s decision to take investment from a SPAC seems like folly to me.

SPACs remind me of something we recently went through up here in Canada - income trusts. Income trusts were all the rage in Canada in recent years, and with all due respect to those who believed that simply by converting to an income trust corporations could simply side-step income taxes, you were fools.

Things that sound too good to be true, usually are too good to be true. Other things like SPACs, they fall into the category of things I just don’t believe in.