Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1194

Snapchat just changed their company name to Snap Inc. and announced a new product called Spectacles . They are sunglasses with an integrated video camera that captures a 115 degree field of view. Compared to the camera on your phone, this is more similar to what our eyes see.

Here’s their announcement video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqkOFLBSJR8?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Some of you are probably thinking that Google already tried something like this and failed. But that doesn’t mean that Snap won’t be successful. I think Spectacles will be a huge success. 

Evan Spiegel is calling them a fun toy right now, but lots of meaningful products start out that way (including Snapchat itself). Regardless, it strikes me as absolutely the right move for a company like Snap.

What differentiates Snapchat is that, relative to other social platforms, the content that gets shared is far more natural and unfiltered. It empowers a different kind of conversation and a different kind of content creation.

Still, there is something about pulling out your phone that takes you out of the moment. And Snapchat is all about sharing that moment. That’s where Spectacles come on. They are further minimizing the barriers to sharing.

But here’s the other thing: Snap made them look cool. Google Glass looked positively dorky. I already want to take a pair of Spectacles snowboarding and on tours around different cities. I can think of so many interesting/entertaining use cases. If I were GoPro, I’d be anxious right now.

Snap, if you’d like to send me a pair to test out, please shoot me an email . Thanks :)

When I met with all of the lovely folks from Amsterdam last week, one of the things that I mentioned about intensification is that it is almost certainly a contributing factor towards innovation, agglomeration economies , and the overall startup ecosystem here Toronto. 

I don’t know to what extent, but I feel it happening. And there’s lots of research correlating urban density with innovation . 

The continued densification of Toronto means it is constantly becoming easier to schedule that morning coffee before going into the office or to pop into that meetup after work. And those sorts of things are hugely valuable in today’s economy.

I talked about a number of local startups in my presentation, including 500px, Wattpad and Wealthsimple. But I didn’t show any hard data. So I’d like to do that today. Below is a chart showing total venture funding (internet/software) and the number of deals (Seed to A/B/C/D) in Toronto since 2009:

It was taken from this Medium post . Supposedly this places us 12th in the world as far as startup cities go.

Again, who knows how much of this venture growth has been helped along by intensification. After all: “ Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl .” But I would bet money that it’s moving the needle in the right direction.

Here is another relevant post by venture capitalist Albert Wenger where he talks about the great startup ecosystem that Toronto is growing . He posted it earlier today.

All of this is important because some of these deals will spawn big companies. And those companies will the hire lots of people, as well as consume space. 

Real estate developers like to talk about how they create jobs. And we do. But we can’t have a city of people just building buildings. People and businesses need to fill that space and that hinges on entrepreneurs who are willing to go out there and forge something new for themselves. Fortunately, Toronto seems to have a growing number of those kinds of people.

I’m in Muskoka right now, with very little time to write. 

I had about an hour before dinner, but I decided that a far more responsible thing to do would be to jump in the lake for what will likely be the last lake swim of the year. It might be the end of September, but it still feels like summer.

Here’s what that looked like:

If you’re searching for something more city related, check out these high resolution maps of Canada according to our trails, roads, streets, and highways. My good friend Peter just sent them over to me. Thanks Peter.

Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.