After a whirlwind tour of the valley for our first Bootup Demo Days, I’m back in Vancouver and got some great news. I left behind a lot of “homework” for our new Jan 2010 cohort, and Zedmo managed to score an “investment 
Read on for the full press release and details.
P.S. Thank you to all the people that we connected with on the trip down to the valley. It was a great visit, more coverage to follow.
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Dave Shea is about to flee the city for the duration of the Olympics, and had some free time on his hands. We arranged to bring him in and work with the Jan 2010 cohort on designing some custom beer labels.
Why beer labels? Well, Dave himself is well known in the international web design community, and he’s also known locally for enjoying a beer or two, especially at the Alibi Room.
Also, the new Flack Block offices that Bootup Labs has several full size old bank vaults. While thinking about what do with it, we came up with the concept of everyone pitching in to brew beer, and storing it in the vaults. Couch Beers are about to get a lot more interesting in the coming weeks!
Check back throughout the day as we start posting the beer label designs.
Dave started with the colour palettes of all the companies, and then figured out two complimentary palettes, so each company started out with either the red or blue base. Each company has a style of beer, the Bootup “power button” icon has been incorporated around the neck of the bottle, and the border around the label recognizes the archway of the Flack Block building that all our offices are in.
These are awesome beers, and now the next challenge will be sourcing how we brew them. I know foodtree is busy sourcing green apples already…
Last Friday I found out just how small the world is. While at the TechCrunch offices in Palo Alto, I met Reshma Sohoni, CEO of Seedcamp for the first time. Similar to YCombinator, TechStars of the US and Bootup Labs in Canada, Seedcamp has to be one of the most powerful entrepreneurial drivers Europe has going for it. They run a startup competition where winners are given some seed capital and then exposed to an impressive list of over 400 mentors.
What was remarkable to me is that Reshma worked with SoftBank Venture Capital in Mountain View back in 1999/2000 to get their incubator started. My first startup, Spinway, was funded by SoftBank at the same time. I would often visit the incubator and work with some of the founders there. I dug around and found this picture of it. If you look closely, you can see a much younger version of me talking to the then DoDots founders, George and John Kembel, while Willie Quinn looks over Michael Perone’s shoulder as he shows him something on that huge CRT monitor.
Another twist is that TechStars co-founder Brad Feld was a Venture Partner at SoftBank at the same time as well. There must have been something in the water at the Softbank offices, or maybe it was the vodka ice louge… but that’s a different story (and different pictures)
I’m really excited to be on a panel at the Future of Funding event in San Mateo on Feb 18th. I’ll be joined by Adeo Ressi, CEO of the Founder Institute (and TheFunded.com), David Cohen, CEO, Techstars and Reshma Sohoni, CEO, Seedcamp, and It’ll be moderated by, Matt Marshall, CEO and Editor, VentureBeat.
Incubators and Accelerators
Time: February 18, 2010, 2:30-3:30pm
Description: There is an increasing number of incubators and accelerators appearing around the country. What has been their effect? What models are working? How are they succeeding, and what challenges are they facing? This panel will examine the growing role of incubators.
If have any intrest in learning more about how the funding world is changing, and how fast, I encourage you to attend. Here’s a 50% off link.
Lyle Stafford for National Post Traditional venture-capital funding is often more than new Web players need, says Danny Robinson, Managing Director of Bootup Labs in Vancouver.
Jacques Simoneau, executive vice-president for investments at the Business Development Bank of Canada, says the economic slowdown has also had an impact. “The main way we exit from our investments is the merger and acquisition market,” he says. “All those VC funds haven’t been able to exit from their investments. So those companies are still part of the VC’s portfolio.” The investment pipe is clogged.
Some startups and investors argue the VC model is inherently broken. Most VC firms have a 2% management fee, encouraging them to raise more capital for their funds, argues Danny Robinson, managing director of Bootup Labs, a Vancouver-based incubator specializing in seed funding for software-based startups.
“If they spent all their time looking for $100,000 investments, they’d never make it through their $50-million in funds,” he says, explaining why the average deal size in the Canadian VC market still rests at $2-million. But savvy software companies want far less funding than that, making VC funds inappropriately large for them. “The Web world doesn’t need that much capital anymore,” Mr. Robinson says.
Danny was interviewed in the old, chalkboard-decorated Strutta office. TrevorO from Layerboom gets a ton of quotes on page 2 as well.
The folks from all of the companies at Bootup Labs and the rockstars of Strutta get together for another great holiday video. Includes “Last Christmas” by Wham.
Jordan did a great job of pulling together the holiday lip dub again this year.
It’s been a long year of ramping up and working with our 5 “Beta Fund” companies. Our first full blown Demo Days are coming up in January/February, we’re finalizing the details to lease a new space, and in general 2009 is aiming to end with a bang.
Today, we’re happy to announce the companies that will be joining us as the January 2010 Cohort:
Full details, logos, links to Twitter accounts, and all that good stuff are available on the portfolio page.
Want to get involved? Well, our May 2010 application process will open up in the new year, so register to get notified when applications open. Also, BES is still looking for companies to join us for Demo Days.
We were also covered on ReadWriteWeb as part of The Advantages of Launching Outside the Valley. Hat tip to Techvibes for catching Foodtree and Zedmo before they were officially officially announced 
2010 is going to be an exciting year, and I’m looking forward to kick things into high gear and working with such a great crew of people to build their businesses.
Bootup Labs will inevitably choose companies from outside the country to invest in. These companies would work for a minimum of 8 months with us in Canada. In the case of our January cohort, potentially 3 of the 6 founding teams are moving here from outside the country, and all 3 companies have proactively indicated that they have no intention of leaving Vancouver after they have completed their time at Bootup Labs.
Bootup Labs has neither the time nor resources to work through the immigration red-tape every time. I have to believe that reversing the brain-drain has to be a priority for the government. So, I am asking for your help. Let’s make Vancouver (and Canada) an easy place for entrepreneurs to set up shop!
The startup community in the US is rallying behind a way to streamline the immigration of foreign startup founders. I say, let’s take advantage of Canada’s nimbleness (relatively speaking of course) and beat the Americans to their Startup Visa concept. This is how is could work for us:
more links:
Bootup Labs Demo Days
Today we announced our plans for our first Demo Days for Bootup Labs’ first crop of companies. The event will be broken up into two events
Vancouver on January 28th, 2010
Hyatt Regency Vancouver
655 Burrard Street,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6C 2R7
Silicon Valley on February 3rd, 2010.
Plug And Play Tech Centre
440 North Wolfe Road
Sunnyvale, CA 94085-3869
Bootup Entrepreneurial Society
The Bootup Entrepreneurial Society (BES) is an independent non-profit group founded to support founders starting digital media companies in Vancouver. BES is organizing the Bootup Demo Days event. In addition to the 5 Bootup Labs companies, BES is inviting 5 additional BC companies to join us, free of charge, travel expenses paid. Interested companies should apply to be a part of this first-of-it’s kind event. You can read more about it from their blog post.
Why yes, we have been quiet over here for a while!
2009 was our beta year, and we can’t be happier with the 5 portfolio companies that we worked with throughout the course of the year. We’re going to be making some announcements later in the day about our first official Demo Days, happening first here in Vancouver in January and then down in Silicon Valley in early February.
What’s been keeping us busy (and quiet) is the process of selecting the companies that will be joining us for our January 2010 cohort. I can say that we’ve issued term sheets to 5 companies, and are working through additional interviews with a handful of waitlisted companies.
We had applications from literally all over the world, and I’m hoping to welcome at least one international team.
Our next intake is in May, and if you want to be notified when the application goes live, sign up on the apply page.
Lastly, some people noted from my Linked In edits that I am no longer a director of the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society – not to worry, that’s a great sign: the society is growing a larger board filled with great people, so I stepped down to make room. Maura is doing a great job as Executive Director, BCIC has come on board as a partner, and you’ll see many more great things coming from them.
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