Category Archives: Startups

Duncan McDowell Joins Decision.io Full Time!

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An image of Duncan McDowell, co-founder of Decision.io

Image is from the original article written by Trish Crompton at the Communitech Hub.

At Decision.io, we do things differently than most startups.

We didn’t go for funding right off the bat. The team worked full-time at incubators and accelerators and came aboard full time as needed. We bootstrapped. It’s not the way you’re necessarily advised to do things in a startup world where a sizable round of VC funding is the holy grail.

Fortunately, we don’t really care. The way we’re doing things has led to the best in class team decision-making platform, and customer service that would blow you away. Oh yeah, people have been more than happy to pay for Decision.io since the beginning of our beta. Unconventional is just fine when it’s working.

The last to make the leap to joining full time is Duncan McDowell, manager of the startup services group at the Communitech Hub in Kitchener-Waterloo. Check out this great Q & A featuring Duncan McDowell, where he dishes out some priceless startup advice and speaks about his ambition to build Decision.io into a billion-dollar company.

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4 Pieces of Unconventional Business Advice

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Unconventional advice has a special place in my heart. It seems more genuine. I feel like unconventional advice is born out of experience — often difficult experiences. Conventional advice on the other hand is easily echoed. Too often conventional advice isn’t well thought out but rather repeated because many other smart people have shared this advice in the past.

So with that I give you four pieces of unconventional business advice. Words from some of the brightest minds of the past and present.

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5 Ways B2B Software Is Bringing The Sexy Back

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A recent Inc. article titled, Why B2B Startups Are Suddenly So Sexy, declared that B2B software companies are finally being seen as sexy by some investors. That’s all well and good. However, the biggest issue has never been investors failing to perceive the allure of a meaty B2B solution. Afterall, great B2B companies tend to generate revenue before a major round of funding anyway!

The real problem is that people looking to start a B2B company and people who have already started one don’t think they themselves are sexy. They look longingly at their B2C comrades. Their Twitter followings are in the thousands. They are getting covered on all of the major tech sites. Their blogs are littered with comments. Every slight tweak to the app is met with praise from the young and hip around the world.

B2B software companies would probably describe their company as producing something useful, practical, and better than what is currently being used. But definitely not sexy.

Well fellow B2B software companies and those aspiring to join the ranks, I am going to help you hold your head up a little higher around those boastful B2C’s!

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