Jon Gelsey will be coming up to Vancouver from Redmond to help us learn how to get to know Microsoft. Jon is Director of Corporate Development at Microsoft where he handles acquisition and investment opportunities for Microsoft’s operating systems, search, content and advertising business groups.

Another great event by the Bootup Enreprenuerial Society

Since 2005, Microsoft has acquired an average of 10 companies per year and purchased stakes in several companies valued at over $1 Billion dollars.
Jon Gelsey, who is the Director of Corporate Development at Microsoft, will join us on August 12 to connect with you and discuss:

• What does MSFT look for in a potential partner or acquisition target?
• What kind of innovation or problems can startups address?
• How does MSFT decide to acquire vs. build?
• How does the acquisition process work?

We’re pleased to announce that Joyent has acquired Layerboom Systems for an undisclosed sum. Layerboom was founded in May 2009 by Trevor and Howie, and is the first Bootup Labs company to be acquired.

Layerboom will join Joyent’s CTO Mark Mayo and his engineering team here in Vancouver. Joyent appears to be assembling the world’s top engineers in the cloud computing space and the Layerboom team are among the leading cloud computing thinkers, doers and developers. The technology that they developed is a critical part of Joyent’s future plans. What’s cool is that they’re moving to Bootup’s original address at 375 Water St. So in a way, Howie, Trevor, Josh and Kevin are moving back to where it all started.

Most people will congratulate Layerboom for building a company that was so highly coveted that they received more than one offer to be acquired in such a short period of time. But there are some who will criticize the decision to exit early. Did Vancouver miss another opportunity to build the next RIM or EA? Those who knew Layerboom closely felt they had a real shot at giving VMWare a run for their money. At Bootup, we spend a great deal of time pairing the founders with mentors and advisors who have been through acquisitions like this before. We want founders to hear opinions from varying backgrounds so they can understand that there is more than one way to do it. Believe me, a lot of thought went into their decision, but in the end, we always encourage founders to do what’s right for them personally, and that’s exactly what they did.

From everyone here at Bootup Labs, we would like to congratulate the Layerboom team for a job well done, and wish them the best of luck at Joyent. Hopefully you’ll be seeing Howie and Trevor on our mentor page soon.

UPDATE: GigaOM post here, Layerboom post here, Techvibes post here

UPDATE2: Official Press Release

Can you feel it!?  There is definitely a buzz in the air around GrowConf that’s coming to Vancouver Aug 19, 20th, and 21st.  I mean why wouldn’t there be; If you work on the Internet, then this event is NOT to be missed.  Even the Mayor tweeted it out.

(Side note: I noticed that the mayor of San Francisco has 1,345,888 followers, and Gregor, Mayor of Vancouver, only has 6,440).  Let’s all follow him and show him that we want to hear more from him via social media.

Inspired by Le Web, Debbie at DealMaker Media and I threw around the idea around of creating a new style tech event hosted in Vancouver, we instantly knew it would be huge – if we could pull it off that is.  As Debbie says:

“Canada is coming out of Stealth mode”

Some of you may remember Debbie from LPV8, dubbed Under the Launch Party, named after DealMaker’s Under the Radar events that Debbie has been organizing in San Francisco for ever. Through those, and the other events that Dealmaker organizes, Debbie has become so well respected in Silicon Valley, that we knew should could pack the house with a some of the greatest minds on the Internet. Did she come through or what!  Check out these speakers:

• Chris Albinson, Managing Director - Panorama Capital
• Jason Bailey, GM of Virtual Currencies - Adknowledge
• Lane Becker, Co-Founder & VP, Strategy - Get Satisfaction
• Paul Bernard, Head of Business Development, Business Services - Nokia
• Leonard Brody, President - Clarity Digital
• Michael Buhr, CEO of Travelport and former CEO of StumbleUpon - Travelport
• Wesley Chan, Investment Partner - Google Ventures
• Don Harrison, Deputy General Counsel - Google
• Rob Chaplinsky, Managing Director - Bridgescale Partners
• Jeff Clavier, Managing Director - SoftTech VC
• Tom Conrad, CTO - Pandora
• Robert Goldberg, SVP of Corporate Development - Zynga
• Rob Hayes, Managing Partner - First Round Capital
• Tony Hsieh, Author of Delivering Happiness and CEO - Zappos
• Debbie Landa, CEO and Founder - Dealmaker Media
• Stew Langille, VP Marketing - Mint
• Ellen Levy, Vice President Strategic Alliances - Linkedin
• Dan Martell, Co-Founder - Flowtown
• Andrew Mason, Founder and CEO - Groupon
• Dave McClure - 500 Hats LLC
• Mike Parker, President, Tribal DDB US - Tribal DDB
• Ariel Poler, CEO of TextMarks Inc. and Angel Investor - TextMarks
• Danny Robinson, Managing Director - Bootup Labs
• Rick Segal, Co-Founder - Fixmo
• Aydin Senkut, Founder and President - Felicis Ventures
• Dana Settle, Partner - Greycroft Partners
• Bill Tai, General Partner - Charles River Ventures
• Jeremy Toeman, Founder - Stage Two
• Steven Woods, Site Director, Waterloo - Google

And there are even more that we haven’t announced yet!

When I was starting my first internet company, I remember attending every conference I could. And I still do that today. Many people ask me, “how do you know so many people?”  It’s because I get out there, and talk to people, who in-turn introduce me to other people. Entrepreneurs should never under estimate the importance of building your personal networks. If you attended the panel at VEF on investment trends, one of the questions asked of the panel was “Where do they source their deals from?” The unanimous answer was “Through introductions from people they know and trust”  The same goes for doing bizDev.  Don’t expect to walk in the front door and get a deal done.  You have to get out there and build your network one person at a time.  Build trust enough to be introduced and endorsed by a common connection.

Come to GrowConf.  If you know me, ask me to introduce you to someone.  If you don’t know me, introduce yourself to me, and let’s set up a time to grab a coffee.

–> REGISTER HERE  <–

Launch Party Vancouver 9 will kick off tomorrow night, June 17th at 6pm. 9 companies will be demoing their latest and greatest digital media and internet creations to 500 of our closest friends.  We’re proud to say that two of these companies, 8.5×14 Media Inc’s Contractually and OverInteractive’s DimeRocker, have completed the Bootup Labs program and we wish them luck in the competition portion of the event.

There are a lot of great technologies being developed in Vancouver that we’re proud of, and personally I think we could do a better job telling our story. For example, not many people know of these three world class organizations being developed right in our city, and Bootup Labs is lucky enough to be call them “Roomies”… at least for a little while.

Stewart Butterfield‘s TinySpeck has temporarily set up shop in the old DimeRocker office while they wait for their new office to be renovated.  Stewart is best known for creating Flickr here in Vancouver, and now splits his time between here and San Francisco.  TinySpeck’s first project is called Glitch.  It’s pretty amazing to watch Stewart and his rock-star team of artists and developers create something from thin air at break neck speed.

Mozilla Messaging’s Thunderbird 3 email client, developed by David Ascher and his team. David was formerly with ActiveState, which is another Vancouver success story. Everyone is familiar with the FireFox web browser developed and maintained by Mozilla. The same organization develops Thunderbird.  I’ve been using the beta version for the past few weeks and I have to tell you, these guys know what they’re doing.  David and his team will be here for the indefinite future, and look forward to lots of go-cart battles between team Thunderbird and team Bootup.

Joyent’s cutting edge cloud computing technology lead by VP of Engineering, Mark Mayo right here in Vancouver.  Joyent is also waiting for their new office to be built and we were more than honoured to put them up at Bootup until then. Joyent makes the bold statement: “Putting the same old OS “in the cloud” isn’t cloud computing. It’s dumb computing.”  I believe there will be a day when all web applications can scale linearly regardless of hardware or special coding.  Joyent is the leader among the best of the best in the world trying to make that a reality.

We look forward working with these with each of these local tech anchors to help tell the story of the quality of company we build here in Vancouver.  And hope to see you at LPV9 on June 17th and GrowConf Aug 19th-21st.

• Post: Tweet for the week of 2010-05-24 http://goo.gl/fb/dhI3C #
• Post: Draft Panel Questions: “Digital Media Investment Trends” What do you want to hear? http://goo.gl/fb/QA1ow #
• RT @dannyrobinson: Looking forward to Startup Drinks tomorrow http://www.startupdrinks.ca/index.php/vancouver/ #
• Great synopsis of our Digital Media Investment Trends panel last night by @geoffdevereux on @techvibes http://bit.ly/dAgfbr #
• Vancouver Startup Meetup by @jason RT 101 Meetups! get in there! i'm giving an ipad to someone http://www.meetup.com/Startups/ #twist #
• RT @sonsryan: Looking for a Co-Founder? Come by Co-Founder speed dating pre #lpv9 Sign up here. http://silkstart.com/landing/bootup #
• @innovation_camp Watching you guys innovate is all the thanks we need. in reply to innovation_camp #
• Only a handful of spots left for @danmartell's talk on Lean Product Development. http://leanproduct.eventbrite.com/ #
• RT @foodtree: Looking for help on a list of Vancouver farmers market food vendors; if you're frequently, help out? http://fdtr.me/vanmkt #
• RT @bmann: The folks at Demonware (Activision / Blizzard) are looking for sysadmin types http://www.demonware.net/ #job #

• RT @AnnaleaKrebs: TheChange launches! Check out 35 local organizations & engage them in their sustainability journey. http://ow.ly/1M6lg #
• RT @dannyrobinson: Lean Product Development with @danmartell on June 17th. http://leanproduct.eventbrite.com/ #
• @krrish cool! RedRovr looks interesting. Maybe should power http://wantit.bootup.ca in reply to krrish #
• RT @techstars: "it is venture capital and not venture charity" -@arinewman #
• RT @techvibes: Launch Party Vancouver returns with a vengeance and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington http://su.pr/1YsjPK #
• Pretty cool action south of the boarder at the Seattle 2.0 Awards last night http://bit.ly/9N6Nh2 #
• RT @techvibes: Launch Party Vancouver 9 picks startups to Demo http://su.pr/6icbYF #
• RT @dannyrobinson: List of web designers in Vancouver http://sortfolio.com/vancouver-canada #
• Post: Draft Panel Questions: “Digital Media Investment Trends” http://goo.gl/fb/QA1ow #
• @bpopov Very good question. I just ran across it while looking at 37signals.com. I don't know how they sourced it. in reply to bpopov #

I’m moderating the panel at the VEF next Tuesday entitled “Digital Media Investment Trends” Here is the list of questions that I’m proposing to ask, but would really like to hear from you.

• Setup
  1. Introduce the panel topic “Digital Media Investment Trends”
  2. What is Digital Media? – “Any service or site that can be delievered digitally”
  3. Explain the agenda.
  4. Introduce myself
  5. Have panel introduce themselves

• Opening Questions
  1. Starting from right to left, tell us what deal you’ve done recently, how you initially learned about it, and what was is that compelled you to write a cheque?
  2. VCs to blame? – With a drought of capital for Digital Media in Vancouver, many founders have taken shots at you guys for not placing more bets. What’s holding you back?
  3. Keeping sights short term, what does 2010 bring?

• Individual questions:
  • Steve, What’s new at Yaletown?
  • Bill, Tell us how Bonanzle deal came to you.
  • Shawn, Tell us about why you did Tynt.
  • Kushal, more often corporations are buying companies earlier. What kind of companies are big clients looking for these days?

• Trends
  • Trend #1. Deal Flow – It used to be that deal flow was 100% referrals. Seed Accelerators like YCombinator and TechStars have Demo Days are new sources. Where do you get your Deal Flow from?  Is it changing?
  • Trend #2. Alpha Dogs – Kleiner, Sequoia are the big dogs, but they are having a hard time investing in digital media due to the low capital requirements. Sequoia has responded by adding a Seed Fund, Kliener has doubled down on their iFund. But these days, Digital Media companies being funded by Union Square or First Round Capital carries almost the same cache. Do you agree and why do you think that is?
  • Trend #3. Bootstrapping – Vancouver has done a great job bootstrapping it’s Digital Media sector. Club Penguin, SuperRewards, Flickr, PlentyOfFish, MetroLyrics, have built their companines on credit cards. Eric Reis and Jason Fried have some pretty strong thoughts on lean startups. Will bootstrapping become the standard way of building digital media companies?
  • Trend #4. Geography – New York, LA, Boulder, Isreal, and Vancouver (of course), are producing great Digital Media startups. When it comes to Digital Media, is Silicon Valley losing it’s grip on being the centre of the tech universe?
    • Followup – Have you invested in a Vancouver company? Which stars would have to align to get you to invest in a Vancouver company? Do you insist on syndication with local investors? Is there a higher bar because of distance?
  • Trend #5. Early M&A – Often, digital Media companies are sold quickly and for less money than it’s tech sector siblings. According to Crunchbase (which is far from scientific and just one data point) there have been 363+ acquisitions since Jan 1st. Kushal, I assume that most of these don’t even hit your radar screen because they’re too small. How can investors make money on these investments, or can they?
  • Trend #6. Alternative Sources – Other Investment sources? – Crowdsource, Micro, Kickstarter where Diaspora raised about $185k last week. Thoughts?

• Open the floor to questions. I’ll repeat them before they’re answered.

Boris Mann and I registering the Bootup Domain January 10, 2008

In late 2007, Boris Mann and I both had the same idea on how to build a world class seed acceleration model built by founders for founders.  In January 2008, we officially founded Bootup Labs together.

We then spent the following 6 months working to transition ourselves out of our current projects, so that we could dedicate all of our time to constructing the ultimate program to build and grow web startups.  I know I can speak for Boris when I say that we are very proud of what we have accomplished together over the past 2 years.

After 2 years of this crazy roller coaster ride, Boris Mann has decided to move on to pursue other opportunities.  But he isn’t going very far.  We will still see him around the office on Wednesdays, and he is dedicated to continue to work with our portfolio.

Yesterday we tried to throw him a surprise party, but who were we kidding? There’s no way to surprise him with anything.  So we just got everyone together to share some stories and celebrate his time here.

Oh, and to share two of his favourite things: beer and meat.   Everyone who wants to stay up to date with Boris’ future plans can subscribe to his blog, or follow him @bmann.

Boris, from me to you: Thank you, and good luck!

Leonard Brody. Image by: Robert Kenney

Unrelated, Leonard Brody has been a long time friend and believer in Bootup Labs. He is already an investor, and today he will be stepping up his involvement by working with the Bootup Labs Board of Directors and portfoilo companies on a regular basis. Leonard brings extensive operating experience coupled with the ability to make taking startups from concept to acquisition look easy. You can read more about Leonard in this month’s issue of BC Business Magazine.

NOTE: For those who don’t know us very well, yes it’s true, we do work with two Boris’es.  Together, we call them “The Bori”  As a reminder: Mann is a co-founder, and Wertz was recently appointed to the Board.

Bootup is hosting the startup lessons learned Simulcast in Vancouver. We have a bunch of great entrepreneurs here, but in case you didn’t make it, Eric opened it up to everyone.

Watch live video from Startup Lessons Learned on Justin.tv