Clarity Accounting is the Winner of…
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008Clarity Accounting is the winner of the startup most likely to succeed contest sponsored by Bootup Labs and Fasken Martineau for the grand price of $1000!!
Other contestants in the “startup most likely to succeed” contest included:
Peerfx: a platform that supports peer to peer currency exchange to reduce costs.
Zinepal: aggregates great content from the web into your own printable magazine.
MakeFive: allows users to generate top 5 lists of anything
Urbantastic: an online event listing website that allows users to search for events based on interest and location.
The contestants were asked to make a short video addressing the following questions:
- What is my name?
- What is my company’s name?
- Company Website URL
- What do we do?
- Name 3 things that someone would always see on my desk
- How far I will go to make my company succeed?
Here is our video for Clarity Accounting:
There were two contests going on, one is for the start up that is most likely to succeed, and the other one is the for the startup with the best video. The startup most likely to succeed was chosen by 7 judges with a grand prize of $1000 (sponsored by Bootup Labs); while the best video was voted by people attending the Launch Party as well as online at the Launch Party website for the prize of 2 box seats at the Vancouver Giants hockey game in November (sponsored by Fasken Martineau).
Some things I found to be interesting were:
Three days before I went to the Launch Party I was working on setting up a free demo account on our online accounting software that showed off the multi-currency capabilities as well as the ability to generate PDF invoices. I was in the process of entering some sample data when I decided to enter an invoice billed to “Launch Party” with an amount of $1000 due in 7 days. Seven days later, Jordan Behan from Strutta (organizers of Launch Party 5) contacted me to inform me that Clarity Accounting has won the $1000 prize for the startup most likely to succeed. I can just hear the music from twilight zone playing in my ear as I am writing this. Very cool…
I also learned that the guys from Urbantastic has a very similar startup / development model as the team at Clarity Accounting (I am going to reveal a big secret here):
They live and work with their business partners.
The team consists of one person interested in computers and one person interested in people.
I sincerely think with startups that want to get their product out quickly and efficiently, being in VERY CLOSE proximity with your business partner(s) really helps. The success of the startup often depend on the communication between the people on the team and the speed in which things can get done. The longer something takes, the more it is likely to cost. Many people are surprised to find that Clarity Accounting only took 1 year to create. While software development is a never-ending process and we are continuously working on making our online accounting software better and easier to use every day, the core part of the application from nothing to Beta took only 1 year with one programmer (a very talented one I must say).
Launch Party 5 was a fun event and I am really glad we were invited to be one of the featured companies. I feel very lucky and blessed 
