Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1416

In the spirit of Startup Weekend , I thought it would be interesting to go back in time and pretend to pitch one of the most disruptive innovations of the 19th century: the automobile.

Typically pitches start by first outlining the problem. The idea is to make your audience aware of the pain point, so that they feel excited when you ultimately pitch your solution.

In the case of cars, the incumbent technology would have been horses. So I can imagine somebody standing up and talking about how horses are slow and how they drop stinky poo all over our city streets. And that the time has come for a revolution in personal mobility! Enough of this crap! :)

But while many of us probably can’t imagine a world without cars, try and put yourself in the shoes of somebody at the end of the 19th century who can’t imagine a world without horses. And then think about all the things we have subsequently done to make cars thrive:

• We paved roads and created networks of freeways.

• We invented rules of the road to ensure that people were operating these new devices properly.

• We created a licensing system to ensure that anybody who was operating a car was doing so relatively safely and following the rules that had been created.

• We created schools that taught people how to be better drivers.

• We started insuring cars for when accidents inevitably happened.

• We started having to accept fatal car accident and pedestrian deaths.

• We built networks of gas stations. As of 2004, there were 168,000 retail locations selling gas in the United States .

• We had to give over large land masses to parking. In fact, we reorganized entire cities so that the car could be better accommodated.

• And we setup government transportation divisions to make sure the needs of the car were always being met.

This is a long list of things we had to do to make cars possible and I’m sure there are many others that I have missed. Today, we all know how disruptive cars have been and we’re certainly questioning many of the things we have done. But we also accept this list as being largely normative.

However, before they were the norm, they were insurmountable challenges. How will we teach everyone how to drive these new cars? How will we minimize accidents? How will we make it easy for people to refuel their cars? Where will people store them when they’re not using them?

There were a lot of moving parts to figure out. 

Which is why people like Paul Graham have argued that the best ideas almost have to live in your unconscious mind . Because your conscious mind would simply reject them as viable options as soon as you started thinking about all the required moving parts. I guess that’s why they say there’s a very fine line between crazy and brilliant.

Image: Benz Velo

I usually write on Architect This City every day. But this past weekend I skipped both Saturday and Sunday, which is something I haven’t done in the 15 months that I’ve been writing this blog. I hate missing days. I really do. But I had no choice. I was at Startup Weekend here in Toronto.

For those of you unfamiliar with the global Startup Weekend initiative , let me tell you how it works.

Last Friday night, hundreds of people from Toronto’s startup community convened at the MakeWorks coworking space  in Toronto’s west end to pitch and hear new business ideas. The floor is always open to anyone who would like to pitch, but you only have 60 seconds (hard stop) to convince the crowd that your idea is worth pursuing. This past weekend there were about 40 pitches.

Following the pitches, the crowd then gets to vote on their favorite ideas. The top pitches – there were 13 selected this past weekend – get to move on and the people who delivered those pitches become team leaders. They are then asked to get up one more time to tell the crowd who they need to develop their idea over the weekend. Once that happens, everyone starts scrambling around to try and put together a team. It’s all about hustle.

Immediately after the teams are formed, the work starts.

By Sunday at 5pm, you’re expected to have validated your idea and problem in front of real people, executed on some sort of minimum viable product (the solution), and ideally brought in some of your initial customers. Because at the end of the weekend, all the teams get up and deliver a 5 minute pitch in front of a panel of judges who assess you on how well you did against those 3 objectives.

It’s a weekend of raw adrenaline. I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost about 5-10 pounds as a result of how little food I ate and how much coffee I consumed.

I pitched a real estate related idea – just like I did 2 years ago at the last Startup Weekend I attended – and I was fortunate enough to win the top pitch on Friday night. I think it may have been because I said fuck in my pitch. Although, a lot of people also remembered me from the previous Startup Weekend and started calling me “Mr. Real Estate.”

Pitch 11 - Brandon dropping F bombs. Let others tell you the value of your home. #SWTO

— Startup Weekend (@startupwkndTO)

November 22, 2014

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Our team ultimately didn’t place – which may have been because it was an Internet of Things  themed Startup Weekend and we weren’t that – but I think we developed a super solid business idea.

Either way, I had a blast. We knocked on people’s doors to validate our idea. We got a ton of positive feedback on what we were trying to do. And I was fortunate enough to meet a bunch of smart and ambitious people. I was so impressed by what our team accomplished.

But what I also love about events like Startup Weekend is that it shows you how vibrant the startup ecosystem really is in Toronto. There is no shortage of passionate entrepreneurs in this city fighting to change the world. And what’s great about this community is that they all know how hard it is to start something from nothing, and so they’re incredibly supportive. 

If you have any interest, I would encourage you to check out events like Startup Weekend. They’re a lot of fun and they all contribute to the greatness of this city.

Image: The Unlyst Team at Startup Weekend TO 2014 (Jerry, Louis, Landon, and me)

Last night was The Laneway Project’s inaugural summit  here in Toronto. And I think it was a huge success. This is what the crowd looked like (don’t forget to check the upstairs balcony area):

This is what over 350 people who #lovethelaneways of Toronto looks like! Amazing night. #athiscity pic.twitter.com/ywMOKX6bYD

— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)

November 21, 2014

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Over 350 people showed up to fill The Great Hall at Queen West and Dovercourt. It was absolutely incredible. To be honest, I initially thought that it would end up as a small group of city geeks. I mean, it was a summit to effectively talk about back alleys.

But it turns out that there are a ton of people in this city who are passionate about rethinking our urban fabric and finding new uses for these underutilized public spaces. And that’s both really encouraging and exciting. Many thanks to everyone who came out!

The Laneway Project team did an incredible job spreading awareness and, given the success of this initial summit, I can only imagine where this initiative will end up in the future. So a big congratulations to Mackenzie Keast , Ariana Cancelli , and Michelle Senayah for making this happen.

I’m not sure if the event was filmed or not, but hopefully it was and it’ll be made available online. But in the event that it wasn’t, I did want to share one question that the panel got during the Q&A session after our presentations.

The comment made was basically that Toronto will never be Sydney, Melbourne, or Seattle when it comes to our laneways. They have a temperate climate and we don’t. So while it’s nice to show great pictures of their laneways, it’s just not going to happen here.

And that really pissed me off.

So I responded by saying that I disagree. Saying that we’ll never be Sydney or Seattle is capitulating. There are many months of the year where it’s beautiful outside in Toronto, so just because we have a winter doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up in the air and give up.

I then went on to argue that the fact that we have a “shorter season” should be all the more reason that we need fantastic outdoor and public spaces. For the months of the year where it’s beautiful outside, we should be maximizing our enjoyment!

I hope many of you agree as well. Happy Friday all :)