By 
David Crow on June 14th, 2012
What’s interesting about the Round13 Capital announcement today isn’t the size of the fund – they are targeting $100MM. It isn’t the people who are involved – they are amazing. It isn’t the LPs – they are different. The team, Bruce Croxon, John Eckert and Scott Pelton, are bringing together a group of entrepreneurs to serve as mentors. This is not uncommon in the US with a number of funds like SoftTech VC, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund and similar to Founder Collective (if you are interested read the Kauffman Foundation’s Do Entrepreneurs Make Good VCs? [PDF]).
“Venture capital firms with a greater fraction of entrepreneur VCs have better firm performance. The positive relation between entrepreneur VCs and performance is stronger for venture capital firms specializing in high-tech industries and in early-stage investment.”
— Do Entrepreneurs Make Good VCs – Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation Conference – The Kauffman Foundation
The Round13 Capital team has done an amazing job of bring together founders with exits as both LPs in the fund, and more importantly as mentors for their portfolio companies. This is a critical differentiator for Canadian entrepreneurs. Hopefully the Round13 fund will close and they can start funding Canadian entrepreneurs soon.
Round13 Investors/Founders
- Mike Alkier (LinkedIn), cofounder OmniLogic
- Christopher Barnard (LinkedIn), cofounder Points.com
- Dave Charmandy (LinkedIn, @dmc1962), founder Darwin Dimensions & cofounder Lavalife
- Paul Chen (LinkedIn), founder FlowNetwork and founder Fortiva
- Randall Howard (LinkedIn, @randallh), cofounder MKS
- Nick Koudas (LinkedIn, @koudas) and Nilesh Bansal (LinkedIn), cofounders Sysomos
- Daniel Langlois, founder Softimage
- Haroon Mirza (LinkedIn, @haroonfmirza), Shahzad Malik (LinkedIn), and Faizal Javer (LinkedIn), cofounders CognoVision
- Ray Reddy (LinkedIn), founder PushLife
- MIke Serbinis (LinkedIn, @mserbinis), cofounder DocSpace and cofounder Kobo
- Michel Vulpe (LinkedIn), founder i4i
This is great new for Canadian entrepreneurs!
By David Crow on June 14th, 2012
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Extreme Startups has announced the Demo Day for the first cohort of companies. We’ve written about Extreme Startups in the past, we’ve covered some of the cohort including Shoplocket, and we think a number of cohort qualifies as Hot Sh!t (Jeff Lawrence (LinkedIn, @datajeff) of Granify; Michael Curry (LinkedIn, @mikecurry) of Verelo and Andrew Louis (LinkedIn, @hyfen) of ShopLocket).
Companies presenting at Demo Day are:
Get a ticket or an invite
There are no shortage of events for startups in Toronto, ranging from the originator but currently offline DemoCamp to the reinvigorated SproutUpTO. But DemoDay is shaping up to be an exciting event, with a full house, I heard that there were over 400 confirmed attendees with a large number coming in from Montreal, New York, Boston and the Bay area.
The demos are happening on June 19, 2012 from 1-4pm. There is a post demo social happening starting at 8pm. StartupNorth is proud to be supporting both the demo event and the evening social.
By David Crow on May 3rd, 2012
Chris Arsenault (LinkedIn, AngelList, @chrisarsenault) sent me a message yesterday about writing about the CVCA conference. And I was looking at the conference trying to figure out why as an entrepreneur that I might want to attend this event. It is “the premiere networking and professional development event for Canada’s venture capital and private equity industry”. Well I don’t work in venture capital or the private equity industry, and the professional development I can get that at Ladies Learning Code or Udemy or O’Reilly. So why should I care? Maybe a “free Blackberry Playbook” would get me to pay for the registration. Disclosure: RIM is a sponsor of StartupNorth, though we don’t have any free Playbooks.
Then it struck me.
- FounderFuel DemoDay
- AccelerateMTL
- CVCA
My goodness, this is an incredible opportunity for Canadian entrepreneurs. If you plan this correctly, you can connect with investors, other founders, folks form NYC, Boston, the Bay area. While the specific sessions at CVCA aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, you could sit in the lobby at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth and meet every investor in one shot.
CVCA attendees will have a “free Blackberry Playbook” . Just like LinkedIn, I’d be building an HTML5 optimized version of my application and making sure as hell it works like gold on a Playbook (which has a great implementation of WebKit browser). You could call the Fairmont and set up an espresso stand and give away coffee to everyone that demos your application. Hell if nothing else a big sign with “Free Latte” for all of the hung over CVCA attendees and have a student running to a local coffee shop for fulfillment. Great opportunity to get out and hustle.
On top of all of this you get to see some brilliant demos at Founder Fuel. This is going to be a killer event, and you could make it a very interesting opportunity to get in front of potential investors, partners and folks from outside Canada for relatively little cost.
