East meets West BBQ at Redwerks

Sunir from Fresh Books emailed me a couple of weeks ago to let me know that he was coming out West in order to help break the continental divide. How? With a traditional Canadian summer time BBQ!

Sunir, Colleen, and Redwerks are hosting a roof top BBQ this evening starting at 5:30pm, and they’re going to kick everyone out at 10:30pm to find another watering hole. Let them know you’re coming via the Upcoming entry.

It’s great when we have more people traveling physically between different high tech centers in Canada. I already feel bad enough that I don’t make it to Victoria or Calgary often enough, and that the most often connection between the Canadian Internet Mafia tends to happen at conferences…in the US So thanks to Sunir for taking the initiative and to Colleen and Redwerks for hosting.

And yes, a thousand apologies for the extremely last minute notice – I had originally planned to be down in San Francisco at the Structure 08 conference, along with Trevor O and Layerboom (his virtualization / cloud computing startup that we’re working with here at Bootup). C’est la vie! Now I get to enjoy charred meat in Canada, instead!

Founders and Funders Vancouver Postponed

Unfortunately, we’ve had to postpone the Founders and Funders event that was to be held tomorrow, June 17th. We’ll be updating this post with details on the new date once it is finalized.

Where are all the Angels?

Everyone knows about Bob’s angel forum, and Mike’s angel network, and don’t forget about Dave’s Canadian Financing Forum, but those all attract a certain type of angel.  Someone who is already interested in investing in tech companies, AND who is already being courted by 10 other companies.  

You can also check out Basil Peter’s Angel Blog for some really good hints.

Many people ask me, where you find Angel investors?  If you’re really enterprising, and want to think outside the box, look no further.  My friend, and Angel investor, Alison Lawton, is helping to organize Unite with Art Gala for Unicef.
 

Hello friends!
Surprise, it’s another event invitation! Fortunately, my work with UNICEF has given me the opportunity to bridge my love for the Arts with my passion for social change. Please join me as we showcase pieces from internationally renowned artists (such as Bill Reid, Gabryel Harrison, Tiko Kerr, Fred Herzog and Robert Davidson) while raising funds for the fight against HIV/AIDS at this unique, worthwhile event. Entertainment, great food and wine are all included for your enjoyment. I really hope to see you there!
In appreciation of your support,
Alison

Hope to see you hanging out with all the other Angels that should be there.  And who knows, maybe you’ll pick up some art that suits you.

Save the date for Founders & Funders Vancouver June 17th

I am pleased to announce the first West Coast Founders & Funders event. I attended the first iteration that took place in January in Toronto, and immediately started scheming with David Crow on how and when to expand it. I just spoke with David, and he’ll be flying out to join us for the event. The next Toronto event is June 4th, and there may be a few slots still available. I missed the Montreal event on May 14th, but I do intend to continue cross pollination with other cities and I hope that other Vancouverites will continue to come along.

After the success and excitement of the visiting VCs at VC Forum last week, I expect several visitors from the US to be in attendance, as well as an excellent selection of local founders and funders.

What:	Founders & Funders Vancouver June 17th Founders & Funders is a private, invite only social event. Founders and Funders is dedicated: to helping Canadian entrepreneurs to meet each other; meet potential funders: angel, VC or other money sources; to have fun; and see how we can help each other create the NEXT BIG successful company.
When:	Wednesday, June 17, 2008 5:30 PM to 10:00 PM

We are limited to 100 seats. The fee for the dinner is $100 which will include drinks and dinner. This is a private networking event and we are selecting the audience to ensure a quality group of attendees. And to provide the best chance to network together.

How do I get an Invite?

If you would like to attend the dinner, please fill out the following form and let us know who you are.

We will be contacting those invited with details on the registration and attendance details for the dinner in the next week.

In addition to Bootup Labs, we are looking for sponsors, so please contact us if you are interested.

Headed to Under the Radar

I’m off to Under the Radar Monday. Looks like Colleen, CEO of hot, recently funded, Vancouver startup Movieset will be presenting, or should I say representing. And also I’m looking forward to hearing Lowell talk about Loud3r. He’s good friends with my brother and has been keeping me up to date as he progressed with his company — very cool concept. Other companies that will be there are:

PRESENTING COMPANIES:

• 33Across - Identifies influential online users
• Animoto – Create personalized, professional-quality videos from images and music, offering a new alternative to traditional online photo slideshows
• AudioMicro – Stock music and sound effects licensing platform
• Aviary -Suite of web-based applications for people who create and a marketplace to sell that content
• BigStage – Animate yourself with cutting-edge virtualization technology
• Comedy.com – aggregated comedy entertainment site
• CrowdSPRING – crowdsourcing of creative talent.
• Curse – MMO gamer community.
• Dizzywood – A virtual world that allows kids to dress up 3D avatars, play games, explore worlds and meet new friends in a safe environment
• ffwd - Organized, multi-platform, video content delivered via a browser, with social network awareness, and predictive recommendations.
• GumGum - A licensing and distribution platform for online content
• Hollywood Interactive Group – A mass casual mmo based on reality TV concepts and Hollywood stardom.
• Jacked – Browser-based “second screen” for TV viewers, which provides synchronized content and a real-time interactive experience that complements what they’re watching on TV
• Jygy – Mobile social networking with SMS
• Keibi – Moderation and classification of user generated content (UGC)
• Kosmix – Categorization engine that crawls billions of Web pages in a unique manner to create algo-generated home pages
• Lil’Grams – Tracking your babies memories in real time.
• Loomia – Social recommendations bridging established social networking sites with media websites
• Loud3r – Aggregating and publishing semantically searched content
• MediaForge – We’ve got widgets comin’ out our ads
• Mochi Media – Provides independent game developers with analytics, distribution, tools and monetization while providing advertisers with turnkey opportunities to reach the one in three Internet users who play online games.
• MovieSet - Platform that brings behind-the-scenes filmmaking online, giving fans authentic access through its proprietary toolkit for Producers.
• Mytopia -Social gaming community for Web, Mobile, Smartphone and TV
• Nesting – Organizing family activities; scheduling, networking and more
• Overlay.tv - video commerce platform that overlays contextual information directly onto online video content
• Pikum! – A new kind of betting game
• PluggedIn – Enjoy stunning, broadcast-quality music videos from your browser
• PutPlace – Media storage all the way from Ireland
• Shift Control Media – Shift Control Media is a branded entertainment company, specializing in the creation of original Brandworthy Games, as well as the development of game and emerging media strategy
• SocialMedia Networks – enables developers of social media applications to monetize their traffic
• Sometrics – Social Analytics and Social Ad Platform
• Verismo Networks – High quality video over broadband without a pc.
• Vivaty – Brings together your friends, photos and videos into a personal virtual scene, in your browser
• Vusion – HD Quality Video over the internet
• Wetpaint – Wiki powered websites
• Xumii – Take all your contacts from your social networks with you — on your phone!

VC Forum #5 in Vancouver is a wrap

We just wrapped an invite only VC Forum event (Danny talked about it a month ago). I ended up Twittering a few comments during the day.

I think the general consensus from both pitching companies and attending funding sources (a mix of mainly VCs, banks, and some government options like the NRC) was that it was a good event. We’re continuing to show that interesting things are happening here in VC, and there are lots of good potential early stage or Series A companies making things happen.

As always, I would love more transparency, but some of that will only happen over time. I think it was rough on pitching companies that they didn’t know much about who they were pitching to, but this is something you have to get used to. Be ready with your story, believe in it, and be willing to say you don’t know, or it’s something you haven’t encountered yet. One thread that was common was companies stating clearly either how much they were looking for today, or outright saying they *weren’t* looking for funding until some time in the future. Definitely appreciated, and a good way to set the stage for keeping in touch with potential investors.

Thanks to Blakes for hosting the event at their firm, and to Gordon Smythe from Propel and other participants for pulling this together.

Lastly, aside from pitch events, it sounds like lots of companies are interested in weekly working lunches, such as the one that Igor from Handi Mobility suggested for tomorrow. Interested in weekly meetups with your startup peers? Leave a comment and we’ll see about setting this up on a regular basis.

P.S. Yes, Launch Party 4 last night was excellent. This is a super busy week (check out the vidfest buzz on Twitter!) so we’ll be doing wrap up posts as time permits. It’s almost time to ready up for both DemoCamp and Founders & Funders… 

Don’t miss VIDFEST May 21st-May 24th

Quick post to remind everyone to check out Vidfest and The Vancouver International Game Summit.   Looks like it’s going to be a great event this year.  I’ll be there on Saturday to pitch Strutta at the Pitch ‘n’ Play part of the event.

A note to the organizers: We accidentally scheduled Launch Party on the same night as the Opening Reception.  I apologized to Adam, and explained that the reason we chose May 21st to host Launch Party was because of the VCs that would be in town for the VC Road Trip. Maura, Dimitri and I promised to pay more attention in the future….. Hey maybe we should have a unified calendar… err techvibes does I guess, but VIDFEST is not on there.  Besides, I told Boris Wertz that I wont use it until they break up with their 1999 web design?  That said, their blog is a great resource for the city and should be read daily if you want to know anything about the tech scene in Vancouver.

Launch Party Vancouver 4 – May 21st

As some of you may know, I co-host Launch Party Vancouver with Maura Rodgers and Dimitri Sirota. Well, the truth is, that Maura does most of the work, all while holding down a day job at Strutta and being the best mother I know. We don’t do it to make money; We do it because we love to bring the Vancouver tech community closer together to exchange ideas and build great stuff. I have no doubt that Vancouver can be a hotbed for tech startups, and Launch Party is just one of the ways that will help get us there.

I’ve asked Gordon to get as many VCs from the VC Road Trip to attend the event as he can, and a few have already confirmed.

For startups who are looking for people, or people who are interested in joining a startup, drop by the Career Fair.

Date: May 21st, 2008
Career Fair: 3pm
VC Preview: 4:15pm
Demos: 5:30-9pm
Party on: 9pm-late
Location: The Republic, 958 Granville Street Vancouver, BC

RSVP on Facebook or on the Launch Party blog

for fun: Previous Launch Party pics on Flickr

See you there!

Embarassing Story About Strutta’s Pu’bic Launch

Dick Hardt asked me to speak at last night’s Vancouver Enterprise Forum on a new segment they just started called Lightning Talks. They’re trying out a new format where the presentations and speakers go first, and then you move on to the networking with dinner and drinks afterwards. Despite the size of the instant line for food that suddenly appears, I prefer the new format. Maybe that’s because Heather (from Growthworks) let me cut in with her.

Anyway, this is how the Lightning Talks part works: Up to 4 entrepreneurs have 100 seconds to pitch their idea. After the 100 seconds are up, Dick flicks a switch and your screen is off and the next presentation starts. So, It was Jonathan Bixby of Strangeloop Networks and Nikki Layton of Volo Innovations and I was pitching Strutta.

My second slide in my presentations was announcing that we just launched our public beta launch on April 15th. Problem was that “Public” was spelled “Pubic” Needless to say, the place erupted in laughter. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was happening and by the time I was able to get started again, my 100 seconds was pretty much over. The moral of this story, Proof your slides!

Adding salt to my wounds, both Nikki and Jonathan effortlessly nailed their presentations.

Contact Dick info [at] vef.org if you want to pitch your company at the next VEF. I’d love to have a redo, but I don’t think I’d be accepted.

5th Vancouver VC Road Trip on May 22nd

Gordon Smythe of Propel Partners is working with VC Forum to bring a bunch of VCs to Vancouver to see what all the hype is about.  Bootup Labs will be Sponsoring the upcoming VC Road Trip. David Thomas, of Rocket Builders and the Canadian Financing Forum, and I have been asked to help find the top 6-10 startups in Vancouver to present to about 16 VCs representing up to 14 firms. It’s a VC only event, so there will be no press or spys from your competition allowed in. Most of them are from the Valley. If you’re fundable, or soon will be, please let me know. danny [at] bootuplabs.com

(note to self: definition of “fundable” needs it’s own post on this blog)