Archive for the 'Starting Something' Category

Introducing Starting Something, a conference to get your start up, started

Today we’re announcing our first conference targeted at founders and “idea stage” startups. One of the missions we feel we need to complete is to “raise the entreprenial IQ” here in Vancouver. Down in Silicon Valley, your downstairs neighbour probably has a drawer full of term sheets, we simply need more exposure to some of these concepts. We want to give a wide range of people some clear “next steps” they can do to keep working on their startup or startup concepts.

The workshop style conference is called Starting Something, and we’ve scheduled it for a full day on November 20th, 2008 (event on Upcoming). There will be a Launch Party that evening that you’ll also be invited to. All this to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week. Our August office mates, Impact, are the national Canadian host for this event - find out more at Eweek Canada.

We have 10 session slots across 2 tracks throughout the day (find a cofounder, one of you can be in each track). We have some ideas on session leaders and topics, but we’d like to hear from you! We’re kicking things off by asking you to fill out this survey to help us design the sessions and topics that you want to learn about. Thanks to Basil Peters, James from AdHack, and Trevor from Layerboom for early feedback on the session ideas.

We’re working with Kerry and Na’im from VEF Momentum to organize the conference. We will be putting a call out for speakers and sponsors in the next couple of weeks — if you’re interested in being either already, please contact us. We’re nailing down the venue as we speak and we expect tickets to be in the $50 - $75 range including breakfast, lunch, caffeine, and various “take home” templates and worksheets.

Ideally, you and your startup will be well positioned for the 2009 year to enter the New Ventures BC competition and present at Vantec, Angel Forum, Canadian Financing Forum, etc. etc. etc. What are you waiting for? Let’s get Starting Something!

Any other comments or ideas, please visit our Get Satisfaction section for Starting Something or use the widget below to give us feedback.



Welcome to VEF Momentum, first event September 30th

Congrats to Na’im and Kerry and the rest of the crew at VEF Momentum for launching their website and announcing their first event on September 30th. Good to see the VEF funding such an “early stage” of young entrepreneurs. Here’s VEF Momentum in their own words:

We’ve been talking to the Momentum guys throughout the summer — it’s great to see them launched and off to the races. They stopped by the office today because we’re putting the finishing touches on the Starting Something conference that we’re jointly organizing for Global Entrepreneurship Week. The full details aren’t up yet (we’ll be doing a true announcement post tomorrow), but you can already put the event on your calendar.