Canada kicks Enterprise ass, eh?

The new model of selling software as a service is uniquely well suited to Canadians.

That’s a pretty bold statement coming from a country better known for meek apologies than declarations. Screw that. We’re throwing down the gauntlet: if you’re picturing Dudley Doright then you’re picturing the old Canada. Get with the times: Canadian startups are kicking ass at the new web.

Some might say we’re biased, but we’re pretty damn proud to be Canadians. That’s not a position you’ll hear a lot of our compatriots express — we’re a nation often defined but what we aren’t rather than what we are — but it’s the truth. We’ve always been known for things like human rights, peace keeping, and health care. Those are certainly feathers in the national cap and reasons in and of themselves to be proud, but they’re only one side of the story, especially for Canadian entrepreneurs.

Canadian companies have long sucked at sales and marketing. We have an extended history of building amazing technology companies that fail the test of building hype in markets. With a few notable exceptions (Cognos, Taleo, Workbrain, OpenText) – we have not built sales and marketing machines. The reasons are varied and very cultural. Founders don’t have deep personal networks in corporate America. We’re not naturally self-promotional; we cut down ‘tall-poppies”. We’re not aggressive enough and we’re too damn nice. We stink at, well, lying. All polite sizzle, no meaty steak (except, maybe, in Alberta). Those are fundamental truths and fundamental truths don’t change too easily. We might have been doomed to generations of technically strong startups finishing last in the business world, but luckily the rest of the world has caught up.

The web has changed how sales and marketing are done. Sales and marketing used to be about endless budgets, trade show booths the size of small mansions, whirlwind trips around the world, hunting elephantine clients, perks, tchotchkes, and boondoggles. It was top-down selling. You used to be able to get away with generous porcine lipstick application to cover up a crap product with brilliant marketing and sales. As long as your sales reps could dazzle a small group of buyers with flashy demos and dinners, you got the deals. Those days are gone.

Smart companies — including Rypple — are happily relocating their cosmetics, er, marketing budgets into product development. We would much rather build an honest, well loved, awesome app that we can be proud of, a position well supported by our customers. Some have even called this new model “Sexy Enterprise” software.  The time spent “marketing” is now time spent doing what Canadians do well.

It turns out that this new model of selling is particularly well suited to Canadians. Bottom up selling is organic, all about building wholesome relationships by being helpful and empathetic. It’s about making a great steak, and setting out samples for people to try and get value from. New marketing is about building trust because you’ve done something genuinely good and helpful for your buyers, not because you’ve sold them flashy vapour-wear.  Canadian web-marketers let their customers toot their horns and tell others how awesome they are via the social web. Bottom up selling is a collaborative model that means working closely with your end-users to design and build your software.

So, why is this new “selling” welll-suited to Canadians? Well, we’re natural collaborators and people who compromise to find win/win: a nation of peace keepers. We have extremely strong engineering schools, a very high broadband penetration rate, and are one of the most socially networked countries per capita. We know how to make friends over the web. It certainly doesn’t hurt that our cities are some of the most multicultural in the world. That cultural mix is awesome when you sell to the entire globe over the web. We’re also famously good at saying “sorry”, which is great customer service and an essential skill for all entrepreneurs. If you’re not breaking stuff, you’re not moving fast enough, so you better be prepared to break first, apologize later. Most importantly, our inability to bullshit people has turned into an asset. When people can try your software over the web and talk to their friends who have used it they don’t want to be fed bullshit anymore. They want people they trust. And Canadians, hell, we’re trustworthy!

The startup communities in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Waterloo, and Montreal are killing it and thriving in this new environment. We’re going to kick ass and build some outstanding companies over the next five years. There’s already a whole world of software companies who started up in the Great White North — bet you’re surprised by at least one of the entries on this very incomplete list (in no specific order):

• Freshbooks
• Flickr
• Plenty of Fish
• Shopify
• SWIX
• Flowtown (honorary mention: go Dan Martell!)
• Hootsuite
• Clio
• Sprouter
• iloverewards
• Firmex
• PeerFX
• Radian6
• Unbounce
• Protus
• Idée/TinEye
• Tungle
• Jostle
• Dayforce
• Well.ca
• Kontagent
• Oanda
• Status.net
• Stumbled Upon
• Bumptop
• Locationary
• Get Satisfaction (honorary mention: Lane is Canadian
• NowPublic.com
• Kinaxis (check out their awesome Suitemates series — now that’s marketing for the web)
• BlueCat Networks
• Contractual.ly
• Polar Mobile
• CommunityLend
• TribeHR
• PostRank
• Mozilla (honorary mention: Mozilla has a big office in Toronto! With lots of awesome people in it!)
• Brainpark
• Learnhub
• Asigra
• Graboid
• Primal
• SnapSort
• ProductWiki
• Desire2Learn
• Wishabi
• TinyHippos
• Techvibes.com
• TeamPages.com
• Weddingful.com
• Miovision
• Tucows

(Did we miss your awesome Canadian startup? It’s not personal, honest! Let us know in the comments.)

Check out StartupNorth, StartupIndex, NextMontreal.com, and DigitalPuck.ca for many more and the latest news about all of them. The recent GROW conference, held in Vancouver, was a great showcase for a number of our hottest Canadian CEOs and leaders.

Most of you will remember the recent Winter Olympics, also hosted in beautiful Vancouver and Whistler. They were the kind of massive, International event that we’re not using to hosting or even finding ourselves in the limelight of. They were not without their controversy, to be sure, but they marked a sort of turning point in our search for a Canadian identity. A strange, somewhat foreign emotion bubbled up while watching the closing ceremonies: national pride. And it felt pretty good. Soon, Canadian will feel proud of a slew of incredibly innovative, entrepreneurial companies who kick ass at selling and marketing over the web.

What’s your story? Tell us why you think Canadians are (or aren’t!) kicking ass in the comments.

Dudley Doright from Wikipedia. Poppies by Keven Law. Sorry by Florian Boyd. Olympics by s.yume. All licensed under CC.