Cool Canadian Start-Up (CCS) Alert: ConceptShare

[jhaidar]

Great start-ups have come out of Canada ever since the Web got its 2.0, and there's a flood more on the way. The lack of appetite for early-stage investment or established innovation structure (like in Silicon Valley or springing from Cambridge) hasn't stopped a thriving community of great people making things happen and bringing great ideas to life.

So, I'm going to do my best to alert the StartUp Canada community of some of the cool Canadian start-ups (CCS) I come across when out and about getting my network on :)

Nothing is better for a young company than getting the word out about what they're doing and so I'm doing my part. First up is ConceptShare.

ConceptShare is one of the coolest and most useful apps I've come across in a year where there's more new start-ups than Paris Hilton news. True to their name the guys have created the best way to share, communcate, and collaborate on design concepts and ideas. It's a slick Flash app where you can import videos, images, etc. consituting your design or concepts, and invite others (your team and/or clients) to view and provide comments directly on the design. Comment threads and actions are captured for all to see making it a great collaborative design environment.

Anyone that has tried to share visual ideas such as web or marketing designs with a group has suffered from the frustration of having to send emails, IMs, phone calls, etc. to try to form some kind of consensus on a design. At the end of it all there's always the 'oh, I didn't know if was going to look like that!'. ConceptShare solves the problem and does it in a cool, clean, fun, and useful way.

I met co-founder Scott Brooks briefly recently and told him (and a few others that had gathered around) how impressed I was. It's pretty rare that I get excited over a web app these days and I hope I didn't steal any thunder from Will Pate of Flock and commandN fame who's recently been brought on to use his mastery to evangelize ConceptShare to the masses.

Lastly, the company is based in Sudbury. Yep Sudbury, showing that if you have a great idea that solves a real problem don't let location (or anything else) stop you.

ConceptShare is poised for great things. Check them out, and their great demo, at http://www.conceptshare.com.