Bootup Labs Blog

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.

Active customer service discussions in Bootup Labs about Starting Something Conference

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Get Satisfaction support network

Well, it seems like September is going to be a busy one. It’s back to school and back to work. I’ve got a bunch of links and meetings cluttering up my bookmarks and my brain, so here’s a big post to clear the decks.

Calling Advisors

We’ve got several companies we’ve talked to at very early stages that are looking for advisors. The majority are web-based in some way, although with very different target markets (you can browse some of the public ones in our company directory).

Code Factory – coworking in Ottawa

I picked up the phone and talked to Ian Graham of Code Factory today – we talked about it when he launched back in March. Ian is adding about a member per day, has seen consistent increases in the DemoCamp Ottawa events he organizes, and in general is pretty jazzed about how things are moving in Ottawa. I spent 4 years there and am glad to see things taking off, especially around a commercial coworking space similar to Vancouver’s WorkSpace (which, according to a brief chat with the owner yesterday, is bursting at the seams and looking for more space).

LaunchParty Vancouver version 5 is up. Eventbrite is being used for registration, you need to signup here.

BarCamp Vancouver has venues locked down for the party (evening of September 26th at WorkSpace) and for the day of (September 27th, several locations around Granville Island). I’m looking forward to this first time semi-distributed version of BarCamp, wandering around Granville Island, heading to JJ Bean for coffee and maybe nipping in to the local sake brewery for a tasting.

The VEF Momentum guys don’t have their website up yet, but they’re putting together an event for September 30th.

I posted this to Twitter some time ago, but we ripped out our event listings (blanket statement: your website and the world likely don’t need yet-another-event-listings page) and changed it to be a pointer to places to look for events in Vancouver. The Techvibes Vancouver event listings are very solid, but we’ll also be pointing to Upcoming and Facebook. We’ve made a group on Upcoming and are fleshing out an event resources page plus a guide to the recurring events in Vancouver.

Entrepreneurs Everywhere

We’ve been hosting interns for the Impact Entrepreneuership Group in our office all of August. As it turns out, Impact is also the national host for Global Entrepreneurship Week for Canada, taking place in the third week of November (Bootup Labs is a partner, and we’ll be doing a startup / founder focused conference – more details to follow).

I’ve spoken with people at both SFU and UBC about various entrepreneur programs that are underway. SFU’s Surrey campus (which I have yet to go out and visit, but I will do and take some pictures) is expanding its Entrepreneurship program with a side of Innovation. The first classes don’t kick off until January, but by all accounts it looks very interesting. Continuing with SFU, I’ve also got my eye on COSTAR, who are going to be focusing on open source. I’ve long wanted more university-level involvement in open source.

I also sat down with Mark Mawhinney to talk about the expanded UBC New Ventures Program which is in the process of being defined. I really hope that this is something not restricted to the Point Grey campus — downtown is where business happens in Vancouver. In general, we should encourage more cross pollination of all the campus’ and the downtown action.

Finally, had a great lunch today with Basil Peters of Angelblog.net. We had a lively discussion about all things startup related in Vancouver, from funding to education to what needs to go in a term sheet. You definitely need to be subscribed to his blog, and we hope to see Basil sharing his knowledge at some upcoming startup / founder workshops.

Today we’ve got 5 students from the Shad Valley program joining us at Bootup. What valuable life skills will they be learning about startup life? Putting together their own IKEA desks, of course!

Alex Shipillo showing off his IMPACT interns

Joking aside, we’re happy to have the students join us in the office: they’re an example of the sort of working environment that we’re trying to foster. The students aren’t interning with Bootup, just borrowing some office space while they work with IMPACT, another great organization encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit in young people.

With the VEF Momentum crew starting out soon as well, there look to be a lot of opportunities for young people interested in this space over the coming months. Stay tuned, we’ve got something to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week (mid November) in the works.