Early bird pricing for StartupFest

TL;DR

Early bird pricing for tickets to International Startup Festival end on June 1, 2013.

CC-BY-SA-20  Some rights reserved by Michael Lewkowitz

We can all gripe about why founders and startups should not attend events, and they should get down to figuring out  if there is quantified market demand for their product.

But lets face it, summer feels like it is here in Toronto (it’s hot). And we all need to blow off some steam. So why not take some 2-3 days and connect in Montreal (or Vancouver more on that soon). Startup Festival early bird tickets sales end tomorrow (June 1, 2013). There is an amazing lineup full of local, national and international recognizable talent. Come to Montreal. Be prepared to listen to amazing stories from real founders and investors about how they figured out traction for their companies.

Folks I’m looking forward to hearing stories from:

Dulcie MaddenDulcie Madden

Co-founder of Rest Devices, Inc.

Joe_ChernovJoe Chernov

VP Marketing at Kinvey

Fred DestinFred Destin

Early Stage VC at Atlas Venture

Jen van der Meer picJen van der Meer

Advisor, Luminary Labs

Michael BaumMichael Baum

Founder of Splunk, Venture Partner at Rembrandt Venture Partners

The part that I look forward to the most, is the part where I hang out with folks from Toronto (and beyond) because we’re all too busy with companies, family and kids. So I get to hang out with my friends Zak Homuth , Mark MacLeod , April Dunford , Harley Finkelstein , Ben Yoskovitz, Roger Chabra , Andrew D’Souza , Brydon Gilliss
and Ken Seto .

I’m going for the opportunity to learn from other people’s experiences. I’m going to connect with folks I’d otherwise have to travel to multiple places to connect with. And probably most importantly, I’m looking forward to strengthening the connections I have with folks I already know.

Register Now

 

Image attribution: AttributionShare Alike Some rights reserved by Michael Lewkowitz

 

Ontario Startup Train Meetup – June 10, 2013

Update: The event date has changed to June 10, 2013.

In partnership with Via Rail consider this your official invite to our Ontario Startup Train wine and cheese on June 10th 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.

Crowdfunding for Notman House


We’re big fans of Montreal.

There is a lot of really exciting things going on in Montreal. Founder Fuel. Real Ventures. c2mtlRho Ventures. iNovia Capital. MtlNewTech. Next Montreal. Grand Prix du Canada.  And Notman.

Notman is conceived as a community space for the web community in Montreal. I remember John Stokes talking about his vision for this space in 2006. And how the efforts of Montreal Startup have demonstrated the value and benefits to the city when founders, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and others have something to rally around. Montreal doesn’t have a Communitech or a MaRS. This is the efforts by local entrepreneurs to bootstrap a central place. John, Alan, Mark, JS and Austin have led this vision for over 6 years. And it’s very close.

Over the last year the Notman House  has hosted over 125 events, including user group meet-ups, hackathons, and learning events, been home to over 50 Startups, and been visited by over 10,000 entrepreneurs, investors, students, and others involved in the growing Montreal tech scene. It’s an incredible place.

Our top priority is to connect the already existing community. Hundreds of groups, meetups and events are being created and take place every year in Montreal. They are loosely connected and aware of each other, but still essentially fragmented. The Notman House wants to bring them all together.

We want to bring startups, students, investors, developers and artists all together in the same spirit that characterized the Montreal of the past.

Notman and OSMO Foundation is looking to raise $100k in private funding. They need to raise this $100k to unlock the a combined $1.7M in grants from the municipal, provincial, and federal government. In addition a $4.3M loan has been committed by Investissement Quebec and the BDC. However, to access these grants we need to raise $1.1M in private contributions. $1M of this is being pledged by corporate entities such as Teralys Capital, Claridge, Telesystem, McCarthy Tetrault, and Fasken Martineau.  We are looking to the community to help close the $100K gap currently faced in the funding process.