Even though he co-founded Startup Kitchen to discuss technology, Suhaim Abdussamad’s favourite podcast is the interview with the operator of a gourmet food truck.
On New Year’s Day, the Fredericton-based video-blogging site broadcast an interview with Jamie Lynch, who had just launched a mobile gourmet business called Fresh Mobile Bistro. Seated before a PC, Lynch described the process of starting his business with $45,000 from BDC and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, and told why his business is different from other food trucks. It was a bit of a departure for a website devoted to tech entrepreneurship in Atlantic Canada.
Abdussamad and Robert Foley – who met when they both worked at mobile software startup Chalk Media -- launched Startup Kitchen in October because they wanted to share their excitement about the tech and entrepreneurship scenes in New Brunswick and around the region. They began to post interviews with experts in the field, like Dan Martell, the New Brunswick native who recently exited Flowtown in Silicon Valley, and Trevor MacAusland, Executive Director of propelICT.
They named their project Startup Kitchen because they wanted it to resemble a great Atlantic Canadian Institution - the kitchen party. They even have a jaunty little jingle playing as their introduction to accentuate the ambience they’re trying to create.
They now post interviews bi-weekly, fitting their work at Startup Kitchen around their day jobs – Foley just took a post at Q1 Labs and Abdussamad works at Research in Motion. So far, the interviews have focused on New Brunswick, but the pair is starting to move into Nova Scotia and P.E.I.
“It’s been evolving,’’ said Foley. ``Right now it’s just interviews, but we’re thinking about adding new features, possibly demos.’’
Abdussamad and Foley also took the step recently of converting their online vision of a kitchen party into the real thing. In March, they hosted a kitchen party of sorts (it took place in a wine bar) for people involved in the tech community. They had the usual suspects, such as the support organizations and advice-giving experienced entrepreneurs.
What they did a fantastic job of was bringing out new entrepreneurs and getting them to discuss their projects. The list included: Dylan Mitchell's Haddit, a platform for people with learning disabilities; Rick McCaskill’s reprap, a 3D printer; and Michael Waugh’s Introhive, which uses an individual’s network of collaborators to mine new business contacts.
Another entrepreneur in attendance was Jamie Lynch, whose Fresh Mobile Bistro catered the event. He was able to tell the kitchen party about his business as they munched on his food. It was all kind of fitting.
