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Material Insight evolution
    scratching the entrepreneurial itch 

After our last company was acquired by a financial software company, we found ourselves drinking good coffee at Café Beano and asking... what next? Was there any hope of giving up our tech startup addiction?  We sought a way to give back our knowledge and lessons learned in the tech startup community, but couldn't quite face the deep dive into another startup - yet.

We agreed, looking five years out, we'd like to be a material part of helping multiple tech startups grow.  So we came up with a plan to do that.

Material Insight 1.0 - Where you go to grow
An unconvential service team...

In 2003, we (originally brother and sister duo Shelley Kuipers and Todd Kuipers) founded Material Insight as an unconventional consulting company to make vital expertise available to entrepreneurs. We had sleeves rolled up ready to convert those averse to outsourcing, and to win one client at a time making our business financially sustainable from day one (no more tech boom business blindness).

What would it take for it to work? We committed above all to ...

Be practical.
Be affordable.
Be leading specialists at advising technology entrepreneurs.
Be a team and company with courage that empowered its members themselves to keep growing.

We identified three areas where startups routinely struggled and sometimes lost the will to go. We knew we could change their odds helping with:

  • Marketing & sales
  • Recruitment
  • Product commercialization (we called this product management)
  • Entrepreneur Counsel

Growth milestones that we helped clients tackle:

  • Positioning/repositioning/pricing and wisely building products for profitably - product delivery and enhancement
  • Making products matter to people – branding
  • Talent to deliver – recruiting
  • Experience sharing (scars and successes) and advice on building startups – entrepreneur counsel 
  • Getting entrepreneurs out of the gopher hole of their venture to connect with the right people – networking and events

For five action-packed years, Material Insight expanded our client base and ultimately helped to grow more than 50 startup ventures. Our team grew from two to seven with a network of more than 50 ace agents who would contribute expertly on projects.  We helped to hire hundreds of standout people, launched about a dozen ventures, and honed the performance of other startups either in their early days or as they matured and scaled. All the while, the passion, tenacity, accomplishments and ambition of the tech community fuelled our work - and led us to establish the New Leaf Awards.

Just one thing.. remember how we committed to "Be a team and company with courage that empowered its members themselves to keep growing." and that Beano conversation ending in - "... we couldn't quite face the deep dive into another startup - yet."... Well, after five years of being arms length advisors and consultants, the tyde turned again...

Material Insight 2.0 - Growth Agents for Tech Startups
Independent experts on startup missions...

The second incarnation of Material Insight freed Material Insight members to go in deep to startups. It's the predictable entrepreneur itch... You build something, take it to market, exit or enable succession somehow, then you regroup, rest and dream up the next one. It's an obsessive cycle that runs every three to five years for us addicts... and it's where the ideas and initiative for world-changing ventures comes from. So how could we stunt that?

Our hope was that not ALL Material Insight agents would get the itch together - that some partners could go on sabbatical to new startups and others would continue unconventionally consulting... Well. Entrepreneurs are unpredictable.

In February 2007, Shelley Kuipers took a sabattical to Cambrian House, which we thought could be a short-term gig. But she's good, and they needed her long-term and soon she became their President and vital to their leadership team and growth plans.

In December 2008, Claudia Moore was struck with the itch to focus and go deep as she learned about becoming a parent in fall 2009. She chose Tynt as her new "go deep" home, becoming their Brand Evangelista in July 2008.

Meanwhile, Material Insight's fluorishing recruiting business led by Jennifer Aubin and Courtney Sproule had grown into an enterprise worth of its own focus. So Jennifer started up Techbent - a rare minds recruitment firm to specialize wholly on matchmaking people uniquely suited to the tech startup world to ventures on the grow.

And Sharon McIntyre, formative MI agent, started up The Wired West, went deeper into teaching, with room for just a select few tech startup consulting gigs through her own independent business: Shelflife Communications and Design.

Material Insight lives on
Media source, networking and events supporter

The agents of Material Insight are engrossed in other startups now, but the commitment to strengthen Calgary as a tech hub and nurture The Wired West lives on among the team.

Agents remain available to the local tech community as:

  • Sources for media who seek information on the local tech scene
  • Event sponsors and supporters: STIRR Canada, BarCamp Calgary, TechRev
  • Panelists
  • Speakers
  • Advisors
  • Investors (many of us)

If you want to reach us - visit the agents profiles for individual details, or contact us.

 



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