In partnership with Via Rail consider this your official invite to our Ontario Startup Train wine and cheese on May 29th at Union Station in Toronto. We hope to get all our train attendees, alumni from last year and anyone considering coming this year together to start connecting and meeting before we even board the train. If you haven’t bought your ticket, come out and meet us.

If you don’t have your train ticket yet, grab one now as we will sell out again this year. Our early ticket purchasers get dibs on spots for our on-train mentoring with the likes of Jim EstillZak HomuthBrian Kobus and many more.

You remember the roadtrips of your youth, some with your parents, some with just friends. For our greatest roadtrips, we remember the journey the rest of our lives but often pause and think “where were we headed?”

“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”, ZAMM, Robert Pirsig

Last year we organized a roadtrip for startup founders and funders. We reserved our own car on a Via train and packed it full of entrepreneurs. Our destination was The International Startup Festival in Montreal for three full days of meeting, conversing, learning and working with a truly international audience of startup people.

This July, we’re aiming to have three cars, two passenger cars along with a bar car that we’ll use for our on-train events.

Startup conferences are very different beasts compared to their corporate cousins. People aren’t attending “because my boss sent me”. Instead the majority have spent what little pocket change they have to get there. The result is a conference filled with hustlers motivated to get a ton of value out of being there. We hope to help.

Instead of wasting your travel time, join us on the Ontario Startup Train and let’s get organized before we’re even registered for the conference. Our hope is to get you thinking and sharing what you need to get out of attending this conference before hand. Sharing that with other people on the train means it won’t be just you hunting for an introduction to Dave McClure or speaking to that potential partner you want to invite into your new project.

brydon

I run the shared office space ThreeFortyNine in Guelph where we play with Startupify.Me, Ontario Startup Train and more. Hit up brydon.me for more...

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May 30, 2013 - GTA Tech Leaders Concert

 

Are you waiting impatiently for Dreamforce? Why Dreamforce? Where else could you have seen: Red Hot Chilli Peppers (2012), Metallica (2011), Stevie Wonder (2010), Black Crowes (2009), Foo Fighters (2008), Inxs (2007), Train (2006), etc. It’s an amazing list of bands but you have to head all the way to San Francisco to find out who’s headlining 2013. Why not try something a little more local and a little sooner.

Ok, it’s not Dreamforce, but the folks at KPMG have put together  the KPMG GTA Tech Leaders Concert Series – AmaTour (password: KPMG). The event is Thursday, May 30, 2013 at Sound Academy on Polson Pier. It features bands from Ceridian (formerly Dayforce), KPMG, Smithson Martin, Intelex and others. Rumor is there might be a big name or two that take the stage. Alan Smithson is MCing/DJing. If you aren’t familiar with Alan, his Emulator is used by Linkin Park and Infected Mushroom and others. It’s going to be fun.

The goal of the event is to raise money in support of the Ride to Conquer Cancer. Tickets are $40 each with 100% of the proceeds going to Ride to Conquer Cancer.

The Toronto startup community lost a good friend in Michael O’Connor Clarke to cancer on October 14, 2012. And we will not forget, and we continue to support fundraising efforts. This is a great opportunity to get out of the office for a social evening with some tunes and make some connections.

Join us Thursday, May 30 (password: KPMG) for a social event.

Disclosure: KPMG is a sponsor of StartupNorth.

David Crow

David Crow focused on product design, customer development and go-to-market implementation on $0. He is available as a consultant. He is a mentor at UW VeloCity, Jolt and FounderFuel. Follow him on Twitter @davidcrow or at DavidCrow.ca

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Wall art on the Build Ventures/Volta wall

Patrick Keefe is announcing his new fund today called Build Ventures, a $50m early and mid stage fund based in Halifax.

The guy is a Harvard MBA, an Oxford grad, former Atlas Ventures principal, Boston Consulting Group executive and he built over a dozen Starbucks coffee franchises which he then sold back to Starbucks corporate. When you meet Patrick and dig in to his background you start wonder where the hell this guy came from.

What’s even better is that Build is the in-house fund at Volta, a new startup crash pad in Halifax that currently houses 10 startups. The fund has taken up residence at Volta and has been a key part of getting it started.

The fund has just launched so it hasn’t announced any investments yet, but we are excited to see which deals they do first.

Volta and Build are two big leaps for the startup community in Atlantic Canada and when you consider it alongside what has been happening in New Brunswick with Launch36 and Startup Week, as well as a recent string of big exits, it seems like things are accelerating incredibly quickly.

The next major event is the Atlantic Venture Forum in June which is being keynoted by Paul Singh.


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