Bootup Labs Blog

I know it’s only the first half of August, but the wall of events in September is already staring me in the face.

The week of September 14th is what is making me call it “Pitch-tember” – a ton of opportunities to pitch your company.

• Monday, Sept. 14th: California Market Access Bootcamp Vancouver – (apply to pitch)
• Tuesday, Sept. 15th: Vancouver Enterprise Forum featuring Kevin Ham – (buy a ticket)
• Wednesday, Sept. 16th: Launch Party Vancouver 8 – (apply to launch)
• Friday, Sept. 18th: IRAP Lion’s Den (talk to your IRAP rep)

Thursday looks empty, but I’ve heard that Ventures West is having their annual (private) mixer that evening – so the whole week is full!

To prep for all this pitching, we’ve asked Patrick Lor to fly in from Calgary, to spend some time giving feedback. We’ll be giving preference to the companies accepted to the Sept. 14th Bootcamp – sign up for the event on Upcoming for more information.

September is busy elsewhere as well – TechCrunch 50 is on the 14th and 15th in San Francisco, and the week after is DEMO in San Diego. I know of at least a couple of Canadian companies going down for TechCrunch.

So, even though it’s “only” halfway through August, I already feel the pressure building to work with companies to tune and prep their story. Especially after seeing the Techstars Demo Day, where the teams spend a gruelling 3 weeks straight getting ready for their pitch.

Launch Party Vancouver 7 (fittingly) features 7 demo companies, and as always you get to cast your vote for the Startup Most Likely to Succeed.

Voting is simple, and with just 7 companies, we encourage you to render judgment on each of them. Once your account is registered and verified, just rate each video between 1 and 5 stars. The overall winner will be awarded a prize.

A list of VIP judges will soon be announced, and they too will choose a winner with their votes. On the evening of the event, we’ll present prizes to the People’s Choice and the Judge’s Choice.

If you haven’t already, get on over to LPV7.Eventbrite.com and get your ticket for the event on June 2.

7 companies have been selected to demo at LPV7, a crop of promising startups that includes locals and a few “guest stars” as well.

Here is the crop of companies that you can check out at the event, and soon you’ll be able to cast your votes on (vote starts Saturday AM) the LPV7 Strutta-powered voting site. Here they are, in no particular order:

Foodista
Seattle-based Foodista was selected as one of the out-of-towners to join us for LPV7. Here’s the goods on Foodista, in their own words:

Foodista is a collaborative project to build the world’s largest, highest quality cooking encyclopedia. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people learn how to cook everything and anything.

LetsGoForDinner.com
Bootup Labs’ own LetsGoForDinner.com are ready to show you what they’re all about. Ask what they can do for you today, and be sure to ask them about their technology plans for the future as well.

LetsGoForDinner.com uses swipe card technology; a’ “Restaurant Loyalty Card” that you keep for all future certificate purchases. When you go to pay at the restaurant, present your card to the server.  The server will swipe the card to verify the amount and type (lunch or dinner) of your purchased certificate with our system. Then, the amount of the certificate is automatically deducted from your bill.

Muutu
Local newcomer Muutu will be on hand as well, fresh off the release of their private beta. They’re not showing too many of their cards just yet, so you’ll have to get the scoop directly from Ashish on the day. Their homepage gives plenty away about the idea with its tag line, though: “Local Classified Search.”

Wantsa
The team from Wantsa will be there to answer your questions about their new service. Here’s the Wantsa 101 in their own words:

Our purpose is to combine “online personal search” with “positive change” using our social media based platforms and applications, thereby redefining the future of online business and charitable giving.

Protagonize
Local story-building app Protagonize will be on hand. This bootstrapped heavyweight has been really popular with community members, so be sure to have a look!

Protagonize is an online community originally dedicated to the (nearly) lost art of the addventure (yes, that’s spelled right), a very specific type of collaborative fiction. Recently, the site has been expanded to support the creation of linear stories, as well. We hope this will allow the site to attract a broader community of authors looking to create collaborative, interactive fiction.

MakeGood
The folks from MakeGood want to show you a better way to track, monitor and display your contributions to the community:

MakeGood acts as the bridge between the customers and businesses, enabling companies to display the positive things they are doing while publicly stating their commitment to social responsibility. Which is great for customers, because they can see what each company cares about and supports.

Tynt
The Tynt team is visiting us from over the mountains in Calgary, and has in app in beta called “Tracer.” How does it work? Here it is in Tynt-speak:

Each time a user highlights or copies text or images from your site Tracer records the user action, and automatically adds a link back to the original content when it is pasted. Now, you can see what is being copied from your site and benefit from the additional traffic generated by each copy.

Certainly  great crop of talent in this group. It’s not too late to get a ticket (though it will be soon) so you can meet these founders in person to find out more. And don’t forget to cast your votes for your favorite starting Saturday morning!

*LPV6 image by John Biehler’s iPhone.

The in-crowd that follows the @launchpartyhq and @bootuplabs accounts snapped up the free early bird tickets.

But don’t worry, we’ll have various opportunities for some discounted tickets. First out of the gates will be our media sponsors, Techvibes. Have a fun idea to get people out to Launch Party and want to give out some free tickets? Want to sponsor the event? Get in touch!

We’ll be announcing the selected companies (this time with two out of towners) later this week, and voting for the LPV7 Startup most likely to succeed will open next Monday, May 18th.

Lastly, we’ll be sharing more details about the cofounder speed dating event that will happen right before Launch Party – follow the link to keep up to date.

We’re in the prepping stages for the next Launch Party on May 28th and a few other upcoming events and educational workshops. Anecdotal feedback has been really positive about our events, but as we’re gearing up to plan some more through out the year, we’d like to get some direct responses on what you like, what you don’t like, and anything else you’d like to tell us.

We’ve put together a survey to get your responses – the survey is embedded after the jump, or go fill it out directly.

Save the date for our next event, Beers and Boulder with Brad Feld, which will take place April 22nd. We’ll be opening tickets in the next day or so.

Read more »

Before the crowds arrived, while the demo companies were getting set up at the Landing Building in Gastown, Bruce Sharpe of Singular Software was on hand to ask a few questions of the Founders:

Big thanks to Bruce and his post production editor Matthew Deitcher.

Early heads up: LPV7 is already in the works. Visit the Upcoming event page for the planned May 28 date, the same day as the VC Forum event.

As always, you can stay abreast of planned events in Vancouver’s tech sector by subscribing to our event feed, available at Events.BootupLabs.com.

The judges have chosen, and six well-qualified Vancouver startups are set to demo their wares for you at Launch Party Vancouver 6.

Like with Launch Party 5, we’ll feature each of the companies in a 2 min video and give you the chance to vote on which is most likely to succeed. Voting will begin starting Monday, Feb 16.

Here’s a sneak-peak at the six companies chosen to demo their products at Launch Party Vancouver 6:

3rdWhale – In their own words: “We just launched 3rdWhale Mobile, an LBS-enabled iPhone application that lets individuals find sustainable businesses around them, everything from restaurants and grocery stores to yoga studios and ecou-tourism stores. With over 15,000+ green businesses in our DB, we’re live in Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose and are quickly adding more cities. Though the app is essentially in beta (”Lite” is Apple speak for beta), we aim to quickly add new functionality, including advanced social networking features, user feedback and Facebook Connect integration.”

HandiMobility – In their own words: “We’re launching a new tool called MobifyMe to let webmasters extend their current websites to mobile without developing separate mobile sites.”

Rilli – Rilli is a map-based online and mobile event creation tool for social people, doing real things, in the real world.

HearWhere – Find Live Music Anywhere – a worldwide discovery site for live music. Over 1 million show listings and growing, hearwhere plays samples from the artists, connects to blog reviews, tickets and music downloads and more.

TimeWindow – In their own words: TimeCam.TV is a service that creates an online time lapse from any Internet camera or webcam. It is the easiest way to create a time lapse online. You don’t need any additional hardware and there is no software to install. Just sign-up on TimeCam.TV and place a small piece of HTML on your website. That’s it.

Showbert – Showbert.com is where TV viewers come to review, rate, schedule, share, explore, and even watch their favorite TV shows. Using some Web 3.0 techniques we offer a unique, exciting and (most importantly) a useful site for tv enthusiasts.

You’ll be able to learn more about these compnaies and vote for your favorites soon, when the Strutta-powered contest site launches at LPV6.LaunchPartyHQ.com.

See you at the event!

I was trying to flip the switch on the new design before Launch Party last night, but called away to do ‘networking’: you know, the kind that has you lasso’ing ethernet cables over a bar’s rooftop We’ll see if the switch does in fact get thrown today — at left a fun image that is going to be on the new home page.

In any case, the clock has flipped over to September 19th, so we are officially in Talk Like a Pirate Day. And of course, our oh-so-staid parent site, ye old Bootup Labs, has gone piratized in celebration! The about page is a nice demo:

A Vancouver-based startup accelerator designed t’ help founders build tech startups an’ take them t’ their first round o’ fundin’ o’er th’ course o’ a nine month placement.

The nine months be split into three trimesters – because we all know that growin’ a startup is like raisin’ a child! Each three month period has different deliverables in th’ areas o’ business, marketin’, an’ product. Founders will come in with different strengths an’ weaknesses, bein’ matched with th’ right set o’ scallywags at Bootup Labs or external Advisors t’ reach each deliverable.

Oh, I really never get tired of that …

Thanks as always to Richard, the scallywag at Raincity Studios that created the pirate module for Drupal.

Launch Party Vancouver 5 is hosting a start-up contest sponsored by Bootup Labs and Fasken Martineau. The contest is open to LPV featured companies only and will go live the morning of September 18.

All it takes is an entrepreneur + Macbook/webcam, clearly communicating what their start-up does and how far they will go to make their company succeed in a 90 second or less video clip. The videos will be judged, not for their production value or the quality of their pitch but on whether or not the panel of experts believes the idea has the legs to go the long haul.\

Bootup Labs is putting up a $1000 lunch money (cash) as the grand prize, which will be awarded to the start-up deemed “Most Likely to Succeed” by our esteemed panel of judges including:

• Paul Kedrosky, Investor, Writer, and Entrepreneur
• Andrew Lugsdin, Director, Venture Capital, BDC
• Tanner Philp, CFO & Partner, Lions Capital Fund
• Boris Wertz, W Media Ventures
• Boris Mann, Managing Director, Bootup Labs
• Steve Hnatiuk, General Partner, Yaletown Venture Partners
• Rick Segal, Partner, JLA Ventures

And the People’s Choice, chosen by YOU, will win box seats to a Giants game courtesy of Fasken Martineau.

So, be sure to stop by lpv5.launchpartyhq.com to pick your favorite on the 18th and come by LPV5 at Unwine’d, 1180 Howe Street to meet the founders behind the ideas. The party starts @ 5:30pm.

Photo of Boris Mann by Duane Storey
Photo of Boris Wertz by KK+
Photo of Paul Kedrosky by dfarber
Photo of Andrew Lugsdin by damclean

We just set up a Bootup Labs YouTube account and a Bootup Flickr account on the shared iMac next to the kitchen and had a bit of fun today.

The Bootup offices are getting a wee bit fuller, and we’ll be talking more about that next week. And Launch Party on Thursday! Man, September is going to be busy….