dannyrobinson

Startup Weekend Vancouver is coordinated by Shauna, Melody, Lyndi from Seattle. They contacted us looking for space, and we said no problem. They're volunteering to make something cool happen, and how could that not be great. Actually, we're seeing more of that kind of thing happening in Vancouver, including the Hackathon.

I wont be able to make it due to family commitments for Thanksgiving, but there will be a bunch of people there and I hear they're making a turkey! If you're in the same boat as me, let us know, and maybe we'll coordinate another weekend where more of us can be available. - I've been hackin Ruby on Heroku, and would like to show it off, so I'm in for sure.

Of course, there are advantages to working together, but it's not necessary. The more of these events that happen the better and stronger our community is.

Some stuff happening. (by no means is this everything)

Mozzilla Thunderbird is developed in Vancouver Stewart Butterfield's TinySpeck is half here and half in SFO. Facebook has a bunch of employees here Apple has a bunch employees here. Microsoft Entertainment SuperRewards, sold to AdKnowledge LayerBoom, sold to Joyent DabbleDB/Trendly - now Twitter NowPublic, sold to Clarity Digital Matt from Flippa, 99designs PlentyOfFish Elastic Path Vision Critical Indicee Club Penguin (not Vancouver, but still notable) Metro lyrics Hootsuite CouterPath - makers of the famous X-Lite Voip client. Strutta Unbounce Mobify Deqq Mingleverse Jostle Fundrazr Rouxbe theKiwiCollection Sitemasher Bookriff CityMax Grooster Fotki Nitobi Sosido Networks GeoToko IQ Metrics Thinking Ape Carrotlines Contractually (Bootup) AdHack (Bootup) DimeRocker (Bootup) Summify (Bootup) Compass engine (Bootup) FoodTree (Bootup)

Completely agree that Vancouver could use more technical founders, but we do have plenty of "technical people", and you're right, lots are in the gaming industry. (the compass engine and dimerocker founders came from there)

It's hard to find "technical people" who are in a position to take the financial risk of starting a company. We're working hard (and I mean hard) to fix that by making more money available to them. Bootup's minimum criteria is, and has been for some time, that at least one co-founder has to be highly technical, but preferably both. But ideally, balanced in that the other would be heavy on design and user experience, HTML5/CSS.

You're right! I will continue to work with everyone involved. Another accelerator was interested in possibly taking Status.ly in for their summer program, and I let Jamie know.

Other accelerators get the same fee as well. There are expenses to operate the accelerator plus an investment in the startup, which is exchanged for % in the startup. Often 5%-6%. If you add this up, effectively, the companies are getting $60k of real money spent on them for 6% of the company. That's a $1M post money value. (note: YC is probably an exception to this math since it has no physical space) But, that's how it works for most accelerators. In Bootup's case, we simply funnel the operating costs through the company in order to maximize canadian R&D credits which can amount to 50%+ of development costs. It's just a smart way to leverage more money into the startup, but in the end, the math works out to be the same and those fees are paid to operate the accelerator.

As a manager of Bootup, I can assure you that we haven't been personally paid anything. The $50k is funnelled through the company to maximize canadian tax credits, which can amount to a meaningful amount of money. And it's used to pay for rent, legal, accounting, and other services that are for the benefit of the startup.

Please help us tell the Canadian Government to let founders start up here without the red-tape.