Vancouver Pixel Crafters

Developers Wanted for a Startup

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:02:49 -0700

Looking for mobile developer(s) (preferably a team of 4-5 developers) to work with university researcher(s) to start a new company to develop, market, and launch a mobile app that builds on visualization technology. The application will merge a variety of data sets to assess aircraft wake disturbances and to output a risk assessment/map/indicator/alarm for pilots. The initiative will take the form of a sweat equity venture with the developer(s) providing the programming/engineering support and the researcher(s) providing the backbone visualization and design technology. The production timeline is three months and the sweat equity investment will be recouped from the commercial app and future business development with a target client.

The intent is to produce a market-ready application for broad distribution via mobile/tablet devices - iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry; the mobile app would utilize the mobile device’s GPS/accelerometer and other features; the visualization technology will combine, merge and synthesize the selected inputs — weather conditions, wind speed and direction, flight path information, aircraft elevation, natural/geographic features, aircraft type, aircraft size, aircraft speed, correlation between aircraft types/models, distance viz. a viz. approaching or departing aircraft and produce in a graphical and audio form a risk assessment for pilot response. The output would be viewed on the mobile device.

The market target users are commercial and private pilots and regional air traffic authorities.

Executive and managerial support, guidance and mentoring will be provided. If you have skills in developing high quality apps and competencies for the platforms identified above and would be interested in becoming part of this startup or know of potential thrid-party candidates please contact the undersigned. Candidates must be self-disciplined, committed and startup ready.

Mark Salopek, Ph.D.

Manager, Technology Transfer and Commercialization

GRAND NCE

Network Centre of Excellence

Graphics, Animation and New Digital Media

Centre for Digital Media

University of British Columbia - MAGIC

Forestry Sciences Centre Building

3642 -2424 Main Mall,

Vancouver, BC

V6T 1Z4

Tel. 604-827-3137
Email: mark_salopek@gnwc.ca
Web: www.grand-nce.ca

Get Started on a Side-Project or Company with FounderDating

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:01:24 -0700

I know a lot of you are starting or are thinking about starting something. Now you can connect with others who do as well so you can start with the right team on FounderDating. FD (no, it’s not romantic) is an invite-only, online network for entrepreneurs to start side projects & connect with cofounders. I see a bunch of you already on there already. They network is/has: 1) High caliber people - everyone is referenced/screened 2) 50% engineers 3) Reach - the network spans N.America

Deadline soon for N.America. Apply now (you don’t need an idea) http://bit.ly/ZDOUCJ

Welcome Wagon: Claude Schneider

claudes — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:01:19 -0700

Claude Schneider

(BM: Welcome Claude! This is a self-submitted “welcome wagon” post. Add your own welcome wagon by reading here »)

Website / Blog: http://about.me/claudeschneider (I have too many sites, all listed there!)

Twitter handle: @claudeschneider
Instagram: @claudeschneider

What do you do?
Web app development, UX, product management, dance/model photography

Where did you go to school?
University of Cambridge

What’s the next event that you’ll be attending if people want to meet you in person?
Vancouver Startup Weekend

Looking or Hiring?
Looking for co-founders for my web startup (especially UI designer and PHP/JS developer).

Also looking for full-time employment to make my move to Vancouver permanent.

Beer or Wine?
Vodka cocktails

Where are you from?
The UK. I grew up in London, then stayed in Cambridge for 10 years after my degree there.

How did you come to Vancouver?
Cambridge was an incredible place because of the interesting and intelligent people related to the university, but it was time to move on, and the geography of Vancouver appealed much more than London.

Interesting Vancouver restaurant?
Yaletown Keg roof terrace at sunset

What did you do previously?
Various developer / consultant / product manager roles in Cambridge startups.

For the last 5 years I’ve worked for myself, primarily doing long-term contracts for 2 clients, which included massive re-architecturing of their websites; and also creating a complex web-app that is now the management tool that is embedded in their market leading KVM product.

Favourite Vancouver Activity
Walking around the sea wall

Why are you here?
To live life fully, enjoy the outdoors, and meet great people.

(This is a self-submitted “welcome wagon” post. Add your own welcome wagon by reading here »)

Ruby on Rails "Deep Dive" Workshop - June 2013

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:43:46 -0700

Discover why so many top companies are using Ruby on Rails to create the most powerful web applications on the market today.

It’s time now to improve your application and skills by learning a set of widely used gems, tools and techniques that will make your developer more solid, better-tested and easily extendable Rails application. You can bring your current app or start new one from scratch to apply the skills you will learn with the assistance of course instructor.

Early bird registration until May 18th. Being held evenings at The Network Hub. More info / registration »

Pub Summit Nanaimo: An exciting peak into what's happening in Vancouver Island's tech startup scene

hanspetermeyer — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:25:09 -0700

Pub Summit Nanaimo: An exciting peak into what's happening in Vancouver Island's tech startup scene:

This is a short, visual post about the May 10th Pub Summit hosted by Innovation Island in Nanaimo’s Fibber Maggee’s pub. One of several #PubSummits happening around the globe (and the only one in Canada!), this was a chance for West Coast startups to pitch to potential investors and to a team of judges. At the end of the evening, one of the startups would be going to Dublin for the world final Web Summit in October. I was on the scene because a very tech and startup savvy friend invited me. I took the opportunity to do what I do well: live foto-posting and tweeting about the event. Here are some visual highlights, including a SayZu visualization of the tweets leading up, during, and following the event.

hpm

Startup Digest + VanCal

terakristen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:01:36 -0700

I was recently made aware how much of a pain in the ass it is to submit events for the Vancouver Startup Digest email newsletter using the long and arduous Wufoo form.

To make everyone’s life easier we will now use VanCal for submitting events for Startup Digest consideration.

The required information for an event is:

Name
Date & Time
Location Name & Address
Link to information or tickets
2-3 sentence description
Price, if applicable
Promo code, if applicable

Make sure to add the tag “StartupDigest” if you would really like to catch my attention.

An added benefit of using VanCal will be that any events that don’t make it into Startup Digest for the week can still be listed in VanCal for everyone to see. There will be a greater chance of the event being distributed in some other way.

If you have any additional feedback about Startup Digest or VanCal please let me know - terakristen@gmail.com.

(BM: read the intro to VanCal for more ideas on the goals there)

PolyglotConf 2013 - May 24th to 26th

kaler — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:06:17 -0700

PolyglotConf was a huge success last year, the organizers are very happy to announce the return of the second annual PolyglotConf.

PolyglotConf is the “non-denominational” software development un-conference event that encourages software developers from different stacks, background and with different opinions to come together for one day of spontaneous sharing, teaching and learning.

It takes place May 24th to 26th at SFU Harbour Center in Vancouver.

One of the best parts of the conference are the tutorials that precede the full-day conference:

AngularJS
Introduction to Erlang
An Introduction to distributed databases
Advanced UI Development on iOS
Concurrency on iOS with Grand Central Dispatch
Practical Software Architecture Advice for Avoiding the Nightmare of Legacy Code
Puppet for Beginners

Earlybird tickets are still available.

Event: Cap Tables and Valuations

kaler — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:51:00 -0700

Mark Longo is a Partner at Labarge Weinstein. Labarge Weinstein is the preeminent technology law firm in Canada. Recent dealflow includes Shopify, Rypple, Playerize, and Kik.

Mark will be leading a discussion focused on how startup founders and operators can manage the process around fund raising. The talk will centre around how cap tables and valuations are managed throughout the lifetime of a company. It will also touch on founder agreements.

Boris Mann will be contributed to the discussion regarding valuations, managing dilution, and executing on fundraising strategy.

This will be a curated session scheduled for Friday, April 26th.

FILL OUT THIS FORM and we will be selecting a small group of a dozen or so people to run a curated session. We may run this session multiple times depending on the interest.

McElroy Flavelle: Free Interns

borismann — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 15:20:08 -0700

McElroy Flavelle: Free Interns:

mcelroy:

But I think I was wrong. In multiple blasts of 140 characters, a number of people made great points. The summary is really that at scale this practice obliterates minimum wage. Raw supply/demand capitalism takes over, which as a culture we’ve decided to limit in the entry level job market.

Slides from "SR&ED for Startups" Talk Available

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:08:33 -0700

Several people asked me to post the slides from my talk at Launch Academy, SR&ED for Startups. The slides are on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/EdLevinson1/sred-for-agile

hi. how do i receive your event emails? thanks

borismann — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:16:32 -0700

You can join the Meetup group at meetups.pixelcrafters.ca or sign up to the mailing list.

The Meetup group sends out announcements automatically, and we reserve the mailing list for “larger” events.

Processing 101

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:51:48 -0700

I am putting together a Processing workshop at the Hive this coming Thursday (April 4th). The workshop will run from 6pm to 10pm.

The focus is to introduce designers, artists and people who are not super technical to the Processing framework. We have a nice group put together so far - a lot of different creative professionals with a few programmers to help out.

There is approximately 10 seats left. The workshop is by donation to help cover the cost of the space (suggested $20) - if you are broke I would rather you come than give me any money. Any money past the cost of the space will go towards beer and/or pizza.

I will talk and do some demos for about an hour and then we will all build stuff. You will need a laptop to attend.

I think that is it… get at me if you want to come. I can be reached at christopher.luft@gmail.com

Lessons Learned with Steve Cadigan Wrap Up

borismann — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:21:52 -0700

Lessons Learned with Steve Cadigan Wrap Up:

We’ve created a collection of many of the tweets, images, and other comments on the event with Steve Cadigan last night.

Please check out Storify and add your own comments and thoughts on the event, rate the Meetup, or leave a comment below to give us feedback.

Thanks to everyone for coming out to make the event a success, and most especially to Steve who gave such an amazing talk.

Softletter's SaaS University Comes to Seattle, May 21st - 23rd. SaaS/Mobile/Wearables/M2M

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:26:36 -0700

The leading event dedicated to enabling companies to succeed in SaaS and Cloud applications. Five keynotes, five tracks, 26 sessions, four workshops. Tracks include “Integrating Analytics and Community into Your Services;” “SaaS Finances and Operatons” (including M&A and key metrics), “Marketing and Selling SaaS and new track, Wearables/M2M and Cloud Applications. Main sessions on key SaaS business benchmarks, pricing and discounting, sales force compensation, selling Cloud professional services, SaaS and the integration of wearable technology and much more.

Complete agenda at: http://www.softletter.com/pages/market_and_selling_saas_agenda.shtml

Special Bonus — Every attendees will receive a free copy of Rick Chapman’s latest book, “SaaS Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Succeeding in Your Cloud Application Business.” A $49.99 value. Read excerpts at http://www.saasentrepreneur.com

Audio: How To Talk To Your Lawyer

kaler — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:30:50 -0800

Earlier last month, an event called How To Talk To Your Lawyer was host by Martin Ertl of Contractually.

Audio of the event has been uploaded to SoundCloud.

Roland Tanglao was also kind enough to create notes of the event:

Martin Ertl, recovered lawyer, founder at: Contractually and Navarik - SAAS for the oil industry
Talking to lawyers for entrepreneurs can be scary
Dispelling fear and confusion
How do you find the right lawyer?
How do you figure out how much it’s going to cost?
Disclaimer: Talk to your own lawyer, don’t rely on this talk!
Lawyers can help you and add important value to your business
Context:startups, consulting businesses, growing your technology company
How do you find a lawyer?
- Ask people you trust for recommendations.
- Make sure you find a lawyer who has experience and expertise that you need
- Going to lawyer who doesn’t know about startups to ask for startup advice is wrong
When do I need a lawyer?
- When you are at the point of taking investment
- When you have other co-founders and want to nail down business deal with co-founders. When giving out equity, when quitting your job to work on the startup. When hiring employees etc.
Startup special situations
- you want to go to the few lawyers who specialize in startups; who understands the issues, how to setup properly
- not general purpose business lawyers (Martin can give you a list)
- this will save you money
- good sign: lawyer has an AngelList account (good sign that this person is a good lawyer)
Meet with at least two lawyers
- just like hiring
- look for personal chemistry
- is there good communication happening
- meet with them at an office or coffee
- half an hour to an hour is a good time frame
  - specific advice is not important but fit is important
  - ask specific questions you’d ask key employee or key service provider (how did they get into startups, why are they a lawyer)
Emerging trend in places like San Francisco to have a standard legal package for startups (in Vancouver $5-6K)
A good lawyer like a good doctor will refer you sombody else if you need help beyond their expertise
How is a law firm structured?
- typically partners who are owners/shareholders in the business
- partners share in profits and decision making
- most partners are responsible for bringing in their own clients
- firms especially larger farms have a pool of associates who are full fledged partners typically earlier in their career who don’t get profit share
- rates vary depending on associates, $200+ for associates, $400 for partners (Vancouver costs, NYC and SF, etc are more expensive)
- track time by 6 minute increments (cost = hourly rate * cost)
- expenses incurred on your behalf are passed on (e.g. incorporation)
- do you want to meet associates you are working with? yes absolutely, don’t neccesarilly know those associates ahead of time; you should meet and/or chat with associates
structure of your company
- Again, fixed fee packages are coming in (e.g. $5K for incorporation, NDAs & other initial employee docs, initial shares, stuff you need up to first financing)
- better to keep your company following a standard structure (e.g. simple vanilla structure so that acquisition is easier)
- e.g. multiple classes of shares probably means you are doing it wrong for a tech startup i.e. you want a simple vanilla corporate structure
- special cases like family trusts result in significantly higher legal costs
- i.e. off the shelf legal stuff is probably better
How to talk about fees
- if your lawyer won’t discuss this openly, red flag!
- Always get an estimate just like engaging any other service provider
- Have certainy and clarity around budgeting legal costs like any costs
- Some lawyers are more inclined to give and be held to estimates
- Some feel that you can’t nail down fees because you don’t know what you don’t know
- You should however be able to get estimates based on current understandings and assumptions or a certain phase of a legal project and be able to get updated estimates as situation develops
How do we give good requirements to lawyers?
- you should be clear in your mind about your goals, what you want to achieve
- if it’s a business deal, know the business, time committment, equity split, vesting, whether you will raise financing or not, etc - the more you thought through what you need the better
- write down the key points of the business deal you are thinking of do in plain english for the utmost clarity, potential legal issues, key questions, risks that should be addressed, etc.
- look up key terms like reverse vesting, i.e. do your own research especially talking to other entrepreneurs
- lawyer’s job is not to hand hold you
- if your business depends on which side of a legal framework you fall on, get that clarified
- it’s your business, it’s up to you to make decisions (but of course understand nature of risk; how likely, consequence of risk, etc)
- lawyers can explain issues and point out risks but they don’t tell you what to do
Lawyer’s duties
- loyalty to you
- confidentiality so generally don’t need to sign an NDA
- competency
Retainer Agreement
- generally a retainer not asked for from startups (but common in other areas of law)
- formal acknowledgement that they are working for you (but not needed)
- a retainer of $1500 is not unreasonable
- complicated litigation: not unreasonable to ask for $3000 or $5K
Managing your lawyer
- clear communication
- followup
- make sure you are not the blocker so keep things moving, good organization, communication, responsiveness and followup save money
- be professional and pleasant of course!
- use Basecamp? use some other tools? A: manage it like any other project; you might only want to consider lawyers who are willing to consider online tools.
- don’t be afraid to get on the phone to resolve small things quickly that can cascade out of control
- project management for lawyers is no different than other areas of your business
Lawyers in Vancouver or elsewhere?
- might make sense for certain domains or industries e.g. film industry might want laywer in LA or NYC to plug into their knowledge, connections and network
- if you are actually setting up an office some place else, you will have to deal with issues like employment issues and local legal entity in that juristiction, again get recos for lawyers from other entrepreneurs and places like AngeList
ASAP in the life of your company, you need to align vision, compensation expectations,etc with co-founders and early employees; legal paper work can’t help this!
Reverse Vesting & Vesting = vesting to founder or early employee takes effect over a time period - intended to deal with people who leave early; those terms vary e.g. 4 year vest with a 1 year cliff means shares vest over years but if you leave in 1st year you get nothing, after 1st year you get 25% or you can get full deal but stuff is clawed back if you leave early
If you don’t intend to raise money, then vesting, cap tables, etc. aren’t as important
Need a lawyer to make agreements enforceable and somebody i.e. a lawyer who says the company is defendable
If you have IP, you need a lawyer (no reason not to do this economically combined with standard agreements)
As a single individual, you don’t need to incorporate but once you involve other people you need to get shares and incorporation right
Mr Burns vs. Ralph Wiggums (Simpsons reference!)
- Who are you agreeing with? Dealing with large enterprise in a large deal is different than a small deal with a small business; you may be able to negotiate small deals your self (may be able to negotiate and get lawyer to document up agreements after you have prepared bullet points of the deal i.e. term sheets). Ralph Wiggums
- If you are dealing with Mr. Burns with army of lawyers you need resources including legal ones to negotiate deal - not concerned with final paperwork but know that on the way you have the legal and other expertise to negotiate that complex deal; i.e. at outset and throughout negotiation not after
NDAs
- can deal with use including non compete and non solicit and who owns info and what use can be made of it
- in web software world, not much proprietary
- but in other areas e.g. hardware or life services, NDAs can have serious consequences; not trivial!
- maybe you should get others to sign up your NDA first :-) !
Standardize and automate legal documents as you grow your business
- develop checklists for dealing with legal documents and issues so you know when to consult with lawyers e.g. bullet points to review when looking at an NDA
- just like you want to automate other parts of your business like engineering side
Keep entities with multiple people as simple as possible
- it gets complicated if you want to do personal consulting on the side
If you are already a company without a lawyer how do you transition?
- Fund a lawyer to do exploratory / discovery (put together a due diligence package for your lawyer and tell them what to focus on )
Conflicts
- lawyers will want a list of people involved in company so they can do a “conflicts check” i.e. in some cases the lawyer might not be able to act for you, gets complicated with large companies because lawyers may have acted for an entity of a big company you are in conflict with before your company
- your interests are not the same as co-founders so even though lawyer may have drawn up agreements for all founders as part of drawing up stuff for the company, if there’s a dispute, your lawyer may ask you to get independent advice
Competition
- depends on nature of competitor
- in Canada, conflicts check doesn’t flag competitors

Startup Grind / Startup Weekend / LadyCoders / SportsHackDay / Arduino Hacking @ VHS

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:01:58 -0800

Hi All,

There are four upcoming tech events that need some community support to get off the ground. If any of these are appealing to you, please get in touch with the organizer directly.

Startup Grind The team from Startup Grind just completed a successful run in the Valley (http://startupgrind.com/) and are looking to replicate the magic in Vancouver. They had some heavy hitting speakers in SFO including: Clayton Christensen and Steve Blank. If you are interested in joining this project fire Cheryl an email at: me@cherylm.ca
Startup Weekend Vancouver The next edition of Startup Weekend is coming up in May and the Lead Organizer, Yaniv Talmor will need hands on deck to make it awesome. This is a great opportunity to tap into the investment and established startup side of the community by working with and reaching out to the tech community. More info on Startup Weekend: http://startupweekend.org If you are interested get in touch with Yaniv at: yanivt@gmail.com
(Also rumours that there is another Startup Weekend happening at the end of March… details when they come in)
LadyCoders The crew from http://ladycoders.com/ is looking to come up from the States to do an event here in Vancouver. In their words, LadyCoders “In these seminars, we give attendees the tools they need to find, get into, and be happy in tech careers.” If you are interested in helping out with this, please get in touch with Kelly at: kellymiller@hotmail.com
Sports Hack Day I just got back from Sports Hack Day (http://sportshackday.com/) Seattle during the Superbowl and had an amazing time hacking on APIs from ESPN and others building sports related apps and visualizations. Would love to bring the event up to Vancouver in May or June, probably around the hockey playoffs. If you are interested in helping out email: jesse@id8.ca
Talk soon

Jesse

ps. The folks at the Vancouver Hack Space (http://hackspace.ca) are putting on an Arduino and Pi workshop Thursday Feb 21st at 7:30pm (because there isn’t enough already going on that night!). If you are interested in checking out some hardware hacks, you should check this out: https://vancouver.hackspace.ca/wp/2013/02/04/raspberry-pi-python-webide-gpio-pins-blink-sketch-tuesday-feb-5th/

Connect w/ Amazing People in Vancouver to Start Companies & Side-Projects

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 17:39:08 -0800

Hey fellow entrepreneurs,

Some of you may have already heard about FounderDating (no, it’s not romantic), but for those of you who haven’t I wanted to let you know about it. FounderDating (FD) is an invite-only, online network for entrepreneurs to connect with cofounders in Vancouver and elsewhere. Why FD?

High Quality - members are carefully screened for quality and readiness (no recruiters, etc.) Applications and members’ identities are confidential, but a few of the folks who are part of the network are former founders or early employees from: stackmob, Salesforce, Zynga, Loggly and Gilt just to name a few.
Balanced - 50% engineering & 50% non-engineering

Reach- FD’s online network allows you to connect with people in your city and beyond to share ideas and begin building something you’re passionate about.

No Idea Necessary - FD is about the people, so you don’t need to have an idea, just be ready to work on a serious side project

The deadline is Feb 27th, so apply now. http://members.founderdating.com/application

Cheers and feel free to reach out to me off-list with questions.

Thanks again to those of you who joined to help get Vancouver on the map!
Abby

Connect w/ Amazing People to Start Side-Projects & Companies

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:52:47 -0800

Hey guys,

If anyone is interested in working on some serious side projects or collaborating with other entrepreneurs, there’s an online curated network called FounderDating that’s accepting applications by February 27th for Vancouver.

Here’s a link with more information: http://bit.ly/WjXq5K

Cheers,

Benji

Startup Grind in YVR opportunity

andreipop — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:02:22 -0800

Hey guys - Derek (the founder of Startup Grind) is looking for someone to possibly start a chapter in Vancouver. It’s a pretty cool and growing community (their SFO event last week has Clayton Christensen, Steve Blank, and a few other big wigs), if anyone is interested, or know someone who is, shoot me an email andreimpop(at)gmail and I’ll connect you directly.

Twilio Meetup Vancouver | Feb 13, 2013

borismann — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:18:26 -0800

Twilio Meetup Vancouver | Feb 13, 2013:

First Vancouver Twilio meetup (and new Meetup group), at Raised Eyebrow Web Studio.