Wow, that was a fun post title to write
The Leila in question is Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idée, is an amazing Toronto-based entrepreneur. She’s bringing Lunch 2.0, kickstarted down in Silicon Valley, to Canada: http://www.lunch20.ca.

The first one will be at the Idée offices on February 22nd (RSVP, please). Which just so happens to be 1) my birthday! and 2) the first day of Northern Voice 2008. Darn! No excuse to fly to Toronto for lunch.

In any case, it’s called Lunch 2.0 Canada. So, the challenge is on: which Canadian company will host the second Lunch 2.0 outside of Toronto? Bryght / Raincity Studios have been doing Thursday BBQs for a year or so, but this newfangled 2.0 thing sounds much cooler
And yes, as David points out, it’s one more idiom to throw into the bag of Demos, Camps, Bars, etc. No worries – meeting people and making connections is always a good thing.

It’s been weeks since I got back from attending the Founders and Funders event in Toronto, and things have finally slowed down from lightspeed enough to put a quick post up here.

David’s wrap up post reiterates the goal:

The goal of Founders & Funders is to create a social environment where the people who fund companies and the people who start companies can begin conversations outside of the pitch.

I decided to go at the last minute, and to leave some time the next day for any meetings that might come up. It was great to see fellow Vancouver-ites David Gratton, Ian Bell, and new-to-me Tom Williams representing there as well. I’ve been maintaining that cross-pollination in Canada is important, and so that was one of the reasons I decided to make the trip.

As it turns out, I made lots of great connections and the trip was certainly well worth it. One of them is an in progress effort to highlight information relevant to Canadian startups, which certainly fits nicely with the goals of Bootup Labs. More on this when it’s real
I have to applaud Microsoft for their support of this initiative. In working with DemoCampVancouver and LaunchParty, we’ve found that what is “small dollars” for firms like Microsoft or Sun can have big effects at the local level. Of course David Crow’s role within the organization makes it easy to directly point to the benefits, but I think we are seeing a bit of a shift in general.

What’s next? Well, I would certainly recommend any future F&F event to funders AND founders. I feel that these events are, like investments themselves, some what local in nature, and as such can and should be held in different areas across the country. I’ve heard rumours of an event in Montreal, and I certainly intend to help put together such an event somewhere west of Winnipeg (likely Calgary or Vancouver). I don’t even have a concrete date in mind yet, but please do leave a comment if you would be interested in such an event.

Finally, kudos to David and Jevon for putting this together in record time. Hope to see you out west sometime soon (hint, hint).