The one-day event that I spoke at (it was a week-long program which included workshops and lectures from professorial staff, as well as presentations by VCs and entrepreneurs) was terrific.
I met Roger from Google. Roger's company had been recently acquired by Google. He came and spoke at the University of Toronto, complementing my story and anecdotes.
Roger's company, ReqWireless, was founded in August 2001 (same time as my first startup – A4 Networks). One dimension of what I found interesting about Roger's company was the style – very directive, frugal, overhead-less, and totally focused on the user experience. They decided on several fundamentals:
- frequent product updates
- opensource wherever possible
- excellent user experience
From these principles, they built and deployed browsers for mobile phones that were tiny footprints and they had servers that transformed real-world content for the tiny screens of mobile devices. Profitable and exited.
