VeloCity Venture Fund – Apply Now!
If you read this blog, you will already know how much I LOVE the whole Velocity entrepeneur model up at the University of Waterloo.
So, I thought maybe that I should blog here today, that their current new round of funding window is closing this Friday…so you need to get on top of that right away!
Here’s the post from them on their own blog –
It’s the start of a new term here at VeloCity, and that means there’s a new round of funding available for uWaterloo student startups. Last term 18 fantastic teams competed in the VeloCity Venture Fund Competition for four chances at $25,000, mentorship, incorporation and office space. This term we’re upping the ante. Four funding opportunities, four incorporated companies, and space for four companies in our workspace at the VeloCity workspace in the Communitech Hub.
Before you apply, there are a few key things to consider:
- Only businesses with at least one founder a uWaterloo student (or less than 12 months since you graduated) can apply
- The current stage of your business is irrelevant. Applicants’ projects can range from idea to profitable business
- You do not have to be involved in tech to apply – any business idea is welcome
- This is not a loan – you will never have to pay us back! Just remember the little people when you’ve made it
- It’s not just about your idea/business. Team dynamics, personality, passion, and motivation all play a big part in scoring the $25,000 jackpot
- Current students, you must use the following term as an co-op term.
- Your applications must be in by September 16th at noon!
Bring you’re A-game uWaterloo, we’re only funding four companies if they prove themselves worthy!
And as usual, my final comments here are – are you listening McMaster??? – as this is a model that any university would be proud to follow, eh!
Online Marketing Program: 1.1.4 Images
Not all images are created equal.
The right image on a web page can capture attention, inform, and even persuade your site visitors to convert to become more than a lead….to become a client or customer.
The right image can communicate who you and your company are more quickly and powerfully than words alone can do.
The wrong image, however, can confuse, annoy, and even repel your visitors.
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Online Marketing Program: 1.1.3 Content
Web content is the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations. In Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville write, “We define content broadly as ‘the stuff in your Web site. This may include documents, data, applications, e-services, images, audio and video files, personal Web pages, archived e-mail messages, and more. And we include future stuff as well as present stuff.”
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Online Marketing Program: 1.1.2 Navigation
Continuing our new Online Marketing Strategy Program…so welcome and today we look at navigation — what is undoubtedly one of the most critical aspects of Web site design – and in my book, arguably the most important.
No matter how good a site looks, and no matter how much useful information it offers, if it doesn’t have a sensible navigation scheme, it will confuse visitors and chase them away.
Remember – users either think “easy” – or – they “vote with their feet and walk!”
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Friday SEO PotPourri: Weekly ReCap of Great Items!
Okay, I will admit this right up front…with alligators all around us here in the SEO swamp, we’re trying to finish off some great online marketing tactics for various clients by month’s end…and we’re behind – just a bit, mind you…but our time to broach content on all things SEO wise today is limited!
That said….we did notice the following great pieces by acknowledged SEO practitioners online this week or so…and wanted to share….there’s been some great new strategies and tactics opened up out there…and this is our top three!
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Online Marketing Program: Website Foundations ~ 1.1.1 – Usablity Testing
Okay, you’re working on your site design, and the navigation and how the user is expected to use the site looks pretty easy to use, right? Well, have you tested that user interaction?
Thought not….I’m always surprised at how many clients coming to us have not tested their own site at all. You or your web team developed the user interface, so you know how things work…so what’s the problem? Sigh…the problem is that you know the interface but your users don’t. And they’re the ones who NEED to know the navigation, the forms, the hierarchy….they need to intuitively grasp what needs to be understood to work their way through your site….to arrive at a buying decision…else the site – and all your hard work and effort and cash are lost!
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A Website Audit: The Beginnings of an SEO Campaign
Every SEO worth her salt will tell you that any successful SEO campaign is based on the cornerstone of onpage optimization. However, when it comes to what onpage SEO techniques really work, there are 8 opinions for every 5 experts. When your business is at stake, you can’t just do something to optimize your site and hope that it works. You need to be completely confident that everything you do will help your rankings. Moreover, you need to be dead-sure, that you’ve done every single thing on the SEO checklist and your website is optimized across the board.
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SEO Infographics: A Tuesday PotPourri!
Tuesday….ah, the second day of the week and the SEO fen is bogging me down…sigh!
That said, I thought that I’d recapture a couple of great infographics that appeared in the last couple of days that I think are pretty sppt-on when it comes to SEO and they are not only great looking but as usual, they impart knowledge that is easy to fall into….and learn quickly about the whole premise.
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Monday Morning SEO Potpourri!
It’s a Monday again and I’m up to my neck in ‘gators which is what life in the SEO swamp is like at times….but I love the first blog post of the week so here goes my thinking on various items that have entered our Canadian SEO world over the past few days, eh!
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Marketing from Google:ZMOT e-Book!
When it comes to marketing, you’d have to first realize that there has been a TON of material written on same about every conceivable strategy and tactical methodology over the past 100 years. Add in digital thinking too and that TON has grown considerably – and just last week, Google themselves published a great new e-Book on ZMOT or “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” and I thought it important enough to feature here today.
First, credit here is due to a Jim Lecinski, a Google Chief Evangelist for ZMOT, who is also their U. S. Managing Director, Sales & Service and that alone says much to me.
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SoftwareHamilton PubNite: A great turnout, eh!
While this is a quick post, I did want to congratulate Kevin Browne for the great first-ever SoftwareHamilton PubNite last nite!
I attended and had a wonderful time and there were at least 40 of us there overall….and we talked and chatted and had a great public meetup!
And thanks too, to the London TapHouse for the use of their rooftop patio!
Here’s how it was promo’d on the Software Hamilton website –
“You can bring whatever software you develop or work with on your laptop, tablet or smartphone to show off to others in the Hamilton software community! We’ll have some tables setup for people to put their laptops on, and everybody will be free to walk around checking out what kind of things other people are working on and getting to know one another. The London Taphouse has a beautiful rooftop patio that is perfect for a drink in the summertime – come out for a fun night!”
And it was a fun night too! Met some great folks, coders and entrepeneurs and investors too….and the city EcDev dept was well represented there too! Beer was cold and the highlight of the nite was when a big gust of wind picked up one of those nice lime green BudLite umbrellas and dropped it off the building! No one was hurt, and this was the last gust like that…<grin> but sure made us all laugh, eh!
Yes, Hamilton’s software/startup community is growing….and that is SO SO SO nice to see!
Social media in person….now there’s an idea, eh!
SEO Friday Potpourri: Outstanding Items, eh!
Friday, the sun is finally shining and I’m thinking that I’ve got more than enough on my “first of the year” long summer weekends….so here’s a roundup of the top outstanding items I’ve been looking at mentionning – and now am, eh!
First up today, is Experian, the folks who run hitwise.com, the site that provides insight and tracks how millions of users use their 1 million website network and then provide cool stats and research on same….and for today, you might want to take a look/see over at this canuck URL. What impresses me, as usual I might add as I take this click at least a couple of times a month, is that over the past few months the type and timbre of the most used search engine keywords and phrases once again mirrors our common culture!
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We're in a recent Canadian Dealer News Magazine!
