I use this (and the services of the Crow's Nest as mentioned). It's a neat little app, built to be mobile-friendly. They're probably charging too little for it. (paging patio11...)
You can ping me even if you're not in Ontario; I just happen to live in Toronto. We're globe spanning. :) We're doing events in Seattle (next week), Atlanta, Raleigh, Berlin, and Boston in the next few months.
Curious to see this. At my "just failed" startup, our first product was a booking app targeted at tattoo studios. It was a hard niche to crack for a variety of reasons, and in retrospect we've moved on a little too soon without spending enough time exploring alternative applications.
In the UK the main difference to me between a barbershop and a salon is for the former you don't need to book.
Personally I despise making appointments. I'd much rather think at lunch 'oh my hairs getting a bit long', head to the babershop, wait 10 minutes and get it done.
It is interesting to see how a community hardly using computers for reservations uses an app. I wonder if convincing barber shops or other similar businesses to use the app is difficult.
Even with that on the home page, not clear how much they are really targeting those businesses. Could be a way to gauge interest in other verticals. The pages are all the same and the testimonials from barbers.
There's a ton of established (and YC) startups in the city: Shopify, Upverter, 500px, Chango, Wattpad, XMG, Uken Games, and PagerDuty are all based here or have offices here, just to name a few.
I wonder why it isn't. I'm in Montreal, and startups are definitely in the air. The advantages Montreal has I can think of are:
* It's very cheap; good for getting started
* A VERY high number of students per capita. At least five major universities, plus many CEGEPs
* It's not near Waterloo. I imagine much Toronto talents gets sucked down to Kitchner-Waterloo.
* It's the center for French talent. English talent in Toronto has other places to go, if it wants.
> I imagine much Toronto talents gets sucked down to Kitchener-Waterloo.
I'm not sure about the actual numbers, I don't think movement is in any one direction where a reliable conclusion like that can be made. While a lot of talent is attracted and bred there, I'm not sure about the actual retention of talent. A bunch stay, but a lot leave for the US and there's an interesting dynamic between Waterloo and Toronto given that they're so close to each other.
There are some investment "bridges", usually ran by Canadians who made money in the States and are now helping out. I'm not well versed enough in the legality of US-entities investing in Canada, but in principle yes, the opportunity is there.
