Startup Life
Technology. Startups. Venture Capital. My Life.
Josh Sookman
Josh is an analyst with the BlackBerry Partners Fund and with RBC Venture Partners, the Venture Capital arm of the Royal Bank of Canada. Prior to joining RBC, Josh worked at BDC Venture Capital where he performed due diligence on companies and markets in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical devices sectors. He also worked at GlaxoSmithKline's International Clinical Operations division on an internal strategic project encompassing close to 300 people in 29 countries. He previously founded and operated an angel-backed online venture, CampusTutors Corporation, and he has a broad base of knowledge in mobile and web applications and services. Josh has a Master of Biotechnology degree from the University of Toronto and a Bachelors of Science degree, with an Honors in Genetics, from the University of Western Ontario. He has also earned the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) designation.
Homepage: http://www.startuplifeblog.com
Posts by Josh Sookman
TEDxToronto 2010 Coming Soon
July 8, 2010 - 11:22 am
Tags: 2010, A Call to Action, community, Design, education, future, ideas, independent, sponsors, sponsorship, technologies, TED talks, TEDx, TEDxToronto, toronto
Posted in Innovation | View Comments
This year I got involved with TEDxToronto2010, an independently organized TED event held in the great city of Toronto. If you’ve never seen a TED event, go watch a few talks online. You’ll be inspired.
The theme for Toronto’s 2nd annual TEDx conference is “A Call to Action”. We, the organizers, want to see real change [...]
The Five Whys and Three-Minute Rule for Startups
June 15, 2010 - 10:38 am
Tags: CEO, customer development, customers, product manager, Startups, The Five Whys, Three-Minute Rule
Posted in Startups | View Comments
Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve come across some great “rules” and “methodologies” for customer development and understanding your customers.
The Five Whys
The Five Whys, which has its origins in the Toyota Production System, believes that the root of every problem (including technical problems) is actually a human problem. As demonstrated by [...]
Explaining the ‘lack of’ Venture Capital in Toronto
April 30, 2010 - 8:30 am
Tags: Canada, capital, community, companies, entrepreneurs, founders, Quora, Startups, toronto, VC, Venture Capital
Posted in Startups, Venture Capital | View Comments
I figured it would be appropriate to write about the lack of a growing and robust venture capital community in Toronto since it cropped up in three places over the last 2 days – once with several folks at Startup Drinks last night, today over coffee with Jeremy Laurin of OCE’s Investment Accelerator Fund and [...]
Choosing Product Features
April 29, 2010 - 5:17 pm
Tags: business value, customers, development time, feature set, product, product development, product features, product management, ROI, SCRUM, users, vision
Posted in Innovation | View Comments
Today I came across the question of how to best choose product features throughout the course of development of a product.
Of course, there are several approaches that you can take to figure this out. In fact, I’d love to hear feedback from others below. At the onset of determining your feature set, it helps to [...]