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…
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.
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.
Jon cornered me after the Paul Kedrosky mixer and did a quick interview with me.
Thanks, Jon — the full transcript is particularly good.
My favourite spontaneous quote is “If you can’t even talk about what you’re passionate about and share it on the internet , how do you think you’re going to deal with the internet business?”
Of course, *talking* about ideas is always trumped by just going out and *building* them.
We’re coming down to Seattle tomorrow, and we’d like to see you!
In particular, we’ll be at the Spitfire Grill from around 12noon to 2pm, having some lunch after the drive down from Vancouver. We’d love it if startups and entrepreneurs from Seattle dropped by and said “hi”. Did we mention that the application for our January 2010 program is open and you can apply here?
We’re actually coming down to hang out with our friends from TechStars, who are having demo days and a mini reunion. I’m also hoping to connect with the Founder’s Co-op team.
There’s an event on Upcoming if you like that sort of thing, and you can reach Boris on his Google Voice number at (916) 341-9528 if you want to get in touch. Come meet us at the Spitfire, tell us about what you’re doing, let us tell you more about Bootup, and let’s connect in the Pac Northwest, as the kids might say.
Thanks to Bryan Zug of Lilipip and Lee Lefever of Common Craft for venue suggestions, and Boo! to Chris Pirillo for having fun in Hawaii so we don’t get to see him.
Yes, we know things have been quiet here at Bootup HQ (besides Danny’s great posts and our always active Twitter account). This year has been a busy one, working with our portfolio companies that are part of our beta fund.
Now we’re ready to go into full operation. And that means we want YOU! (insert picture of Uncle Sam pointing at entrepreneurs in the audience).
Our January 2010 cohort application is now open »
What are we looking for? Well, our four “big bucket” categories are consumer Internet, mobile, gaming, and enterprise Internet. We want to work with digital media startup teams that want to hunker down and spend 8 months growing their business, either getting ready for further investment or growing their “cash engine” to a profitable state.
Yes, this is similar to Y Combinator or TechStars. The TechStars model is the one we’re most inspired by, although we’ve put our own unique twist on it. We believe, like they do, in a mentor model, and that being in the same physical space is important.
Oh, and in case I’m not being clear, you absolutely should apply to any other accelerator programs you can get your hands on. I actually think that for first time entrepreneurs, the question is no longer whether or not to take part in a startup accelerator, but rather, which one to join.
We’ve already gotten a handful of applications from across Canada and around the world. In the US, it’s a little bit harder to get into the country as an entrepreneur (see Startup Visa for what some people are trying to do to fix that), but we’d love to hear from teams wherever you’re based.
Head on over to the application page to get started. The relevant dates for the January intake are as follows:
Our about page has the extended remix version of our program details, we’ll keep updating the FAQ based on questions we get, and our contact page is open if you need anything else.
A while back, I tweeted on the @bootuplabs account that “Craigslist now sucks for finding good web / startup people. Use http://www.joblink.tw/ which @ericries made. Let us know, we’ll RT for you”.
More recently, we’ve had a chance to try this out. One of our portfolio companies, Dimerocker, is looking for a PHP ninja with front end skills. Their job description is at http://www.joblink.tw/PmfC, and a simple “Tweet this” makes it easy for the @bootuplabs or any other account to “RT” and pass the job along.
But Joblink is not just for job postings. If you’re looking for a cofounder, or you yourself are looking for a cool new position, you can anonymously fill out a listing and have friends with good networks pass the link along.
I think that my comment on Craigslist was perhaps a bit over the top. But, it definitely is the case that you have to sift through a lot more chaff from Craigslist resumes than you used to. I think that if I were hiring for web startups, I’d want anyone there to be familiar with Twitter, or at least have friends that can pass the links along from it.
If you have a startup related job, are looking for a cofounder or some related job offering, let us know the Joblink, and we’ll happily pass it along with our accounts.
Posting tweet...
