Problem

We’ve been having some telephone growing pains here at Bootup Labs.  I am not a big fan of phone systems in general. They fall in the same category as fax machines and printers.  Old school, heavy tech, that requires skilled IT people to install, operate, and support.  Everything at Bootup Labs is done in the cloud, except the phones and printers.  Luckily, i’ve been able to get away with faxing with MyFax, and scanning and emailing most of the time.  I realize that we could have used a cloud based PBX system, like Primus, but I wasn’t prepared to sign a long term contract with a bigger player, or trust a smaller player.  As much as I try to encourage the use of corporate cell phones instead of desk phones, I had to succumb to the basic requirement for a corporate phone number.  People that call a company, expect the professionalism and security you feel when you’re greeted by an automated attendant saying “Thank you for calling NewCo. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now, otherwise press 4 for the directory”  Argg.  If someone actually answered the phone, the reaction should be “wow, you have great service” but it’s more often met with the feeling of, “wow, if you can afford to have people answer the phone directly, you’re probably too small to work with us.”

Solution

We have purchased a Sutus Business Central 200 box for each portfolio company.  When the company leaves Bootup, they take their phone system with them.  All they have to do is plug it in at their new office and they’re ready to go.  It’s already configured with their babytel VoIP line, so no need to call any phone companies.  Obviously, they need to have a good internet connection, but they’ll need that anyway.  ahh, sweet simplicity.

Unboxing pics

You can read the whole article on the Techvibes site.

This is pretty much word for word and slide for slide the talk Eric Ries gave at the Vancouver Agile meetup group. It was really outstanding and I recommend everyone working on a startup watch it.

We’d love to have Eric Ries in town again. We’re going to try and get him up under the BES International Mentor Program.

We’ve got an iMac setup in our entry hallway and make sure to grab a photo of everyone passing through the office. Come by and visit any time to get in the next version.

We looked at three spaces: the Flack Block, the Sun Tower, and 122 W Hastings.

The Flack Block

This building is pretty much complete (other than the ground floor retail space) and is the most “deluxe” that we looked at. The space we’re considering is the 5th floor penthouse. Even saying “penthouse” makes my cheap & cheerful startup background cringe a little bit, but the pricing is actually very good.

There is lots of background to the Flack Block on The Salient Group website. The team at Renewal Partners manage the space, and we really resonate with their mission:

Renewal is a collection of organizations using the powerful tools of business and philanthropy in support of long-term societal solutions. Renewal funds change through investments, grants and collaborations

Sun Tower

At one time, this was the “tallest building in the British Empire”. Then, a couple of years later, someone in Toronto built a larger one (lots more at the Sun Tower Wikipedia entry). It’s got great history, but there is basically nothing there now but the bones of a once great building.

This suits us fine, since we can potentially mix and match a  couple of floors, and there is ground floor available to do some interesting shared use things. Being next to Tinseltown, Wild Rice, and Medina / Chambar doesn’t hurt either

122 W Hastings

There isn’t much there other than a building face wrapped in plastic sheeting and workmen going in and out at the moment. It’s right across from the Woodwards development, is across and down the street from the Flack Block, and is sort of ground zero for where a lot of change is happening.

This space would let us start from scratch and pretty much do whatever we like. At the same time, it would also take until at least January until we could move in.

But wait… why are we looking for a big chunk of physical space? And why do we keep talking about ground floor retail?

Some of the thinking about this goes back all the way pre-WorkSpace. In fact, I just dug up the old posts from my personal blog on the Innovation Commons concept - September 2005, for those playing along at home. Now that we have the non-profit entrepreneurial society, we have an entity that can take the lead on this.

Once we decided that we should get more space, we’ve been exploring different concepts around this. In particular, we went over to Mallen Architecture and started talking to them about helping translate some of the ideas we had in our brain into something visual we could share with people.

The result is codenames “Bootup Cafe”. Here’s a teaser of one of the visuals:

Bootup Cafe Visualization by Mallen Architecture, Inc.

Stay tuned for more thoughts from Danny on this, and a full set of visualizations. We hope that you’ll agree with our thinking, and that everyone will want to get involved to make this a reality.

Sure, if you follow the @bootuplabs account on Twitter, come down to the office on a Friday for a couchbeers session, or talk to Danny or myself directly, you get a sense that “stuff is happening”, but we hadn’t come out and spread the news a bit more publicly and widely.

So head on over to Techvibes to read the full interview. A few things here in point form:

• We brought in three new companies in May - Over Interactive Media, LayerBoom, and 8.5×14 Media
• See our January companies kick ass - AdHack is signing some big deals, Let’s Go For Dinner has a new website and is going to be at the EAT Vancouver show this weekend
• Subscribe to our revamped main website, especially the Founder News - currently ugly design, but it’s good stuff from all our companies plus some friends of Bootup and shared items. The feed is here
• Sonia Ryan started working at BLES as a coordinator

In short, there’s good energy in the office, and we’re excited by the opportunities. As always, an open invitation to come by and visit.

Now, it’s relatively easy for a budding entrepreneur in this circumstance to find and hire a contractor to do the work for him. This may seem attractive because it allows the entrepreneur to maintain control of development and complete ownership of the company, but the problem is this: when the contract is done, the entrepreneur may have legal ownership of the idea, but the contractor walks out the door with all the expertise and know how. What the entrepreneur really needs is a technical co-founder, who is as heavily invested in the idea and the enterprise as he is. Such people are much harder to find, but we believe that in this situation, finding a co-founder is critical to the success of the business. Calling all Cofounders

I feel like Steve Balmer sometimes - “cofounders! cofounders! cofounders!” - many of the super smart entrepreneurs that come into our offices really need a partner to make things happen. (Ashish from @muutu linked to this post on what to look for in a cofounder)

Brad Feld talked about three kinds of people at a startup at the Beers with Brad event (I’m paraphrasing):

1. co founder: true partner, big equity stake in the company; has a complimentary skill set
2. lead employee: one of the first people in the door - they take a reduced salary and drive major production of the business
3. employee: they’re happy to be there, but they expect full market wages. A stock option plan is a nice bonus to keep them motivated.

This event is for startup people #1 and #2 - either you want to make the jump and be a cofounder, or you’re someone looking for a job (especially a technical one) and feel you want to try being a lead employee.

I want to stress that last part: if you want to work at a startup, come to this event. It’s a good starting point to figure out whether startups are for you, and it gives you a chance to be heavily involved in the growth and success of a company.

Speaking of lead employees, our friends at Over Interactive Media are looking for a “PHP Ronin” for their DimeRocker gaming portal. So far, they’ve been getting programmers who show up in suits (?!?!) in response to this Craigslist ad. In the words of J. Joly, VP of Awesome at OMI, “no punters or wankers, they must be able to fight”. PHP + community + gaming - check it out, and meet them in person at the cofounder speed dating event or book an interview ahead of time.

In any case, what are you waiting for? Sign up for Launch Party and then follow the steps to fill out your profile. See you June 2nd, 4pm, at the SteamWorks UberLounge.

IPO exits are dead, but acquisitions are still happening:

I watch the Crunchbase Acquisitions page and see there are still a lot of companies being sold.

Voting is simple, and with just 7 companies, we encourage you to render judgment on each of them. Once your account is registered and verified, just rate each video between 1 and 5 stars. The overall winner will be awarded a prize.

A list of VIP judges will soon be announced, and they too will choose a winner with their votes. On the evening of the event, we’ll present prizes to the People’s Choice and the Judge’s Choice.

If you haven’t already, get on over to LPV7.Eventbrite.com and get your ticket for the event on June 2.

First seen on VEFMomentum’s twitter stream.