I was honored to be up on stage with Jason Fried of 37signals fame. With our host Mark Evans, doing a great job of keeping the questions flying, we discussed VCs and Web 2.0 companies. Jason was every bit the gentlemen in person that I’ve known through email conversations. He made some great points about how he built his company, why he has chosen the path of bootstrapping and wisdom for those in the audience wanting to start companies.
The session didn’t slide into the mud with VC/Anti-VC rhetoric, which was refreshing. The folks in the audience were engaged and I hope folks who gave up their valuable time to hear what we had to say.
Some key take aways:
– 30 minute no harm/no foul meetings are still going on in my firm. I want to make sure that entrepreneurs who wants a shot to talk with a VC, gets a shot. I’m an email/phone call away.
– It is company changing to take institutional money of any kind. You have to be aligned with the growth/size/exit plans of your financial partner or be prepared to be very unhappy regardless of the deal you get.
– Canada has lots of great opportunities for developers (I’m hiring!), great opportunities for start ups (I’m funding!) all in a great country. As Jason said (and I agree) you don’t have to run to the valley in order to be successful.
It really was a true honor to be on the stage with Jason. He brought a wealth of knowledge to the room and freely shared with all. Buy his products.
And thanks to the MESH crew, outstanding job.
Thanks for a great session Rick. I thought you both brought up a lot of good points, I'm really excited about your "businesscamp" offer and it got me thinking on this supposed gap between traditional VC and certain 'web20' philosophies. more on that in my own blog here http://thomaspurves.com oh and a picture too.
Posted by: Thomas Purves | May 16, 2006 at 22:40
Thanks for the great session. The one question I had on leaving, were who where the 9 companies you were talking to? I'm especially interested in booking tee times online ;) Thanks again.
Posted by: Colin Smillie | May 17, 2006 at 18:08
The challenge has been to capture the energy and excitement that is often perceived to live exclusively in the valley.
Thomas' BusinessCamps are a great starting point for helping to infuse good business practices into the community. Boris Mann and I are feverishly working on setting up the Innovation Commons, to provide entrepreneurs, software designers, developers and technologists a way to find this community. The goal is to capture the spirit and energy to bring great people and great ideas together where they can collide (and hopefully do cool stuff). I've shared the inital seeds with Selim and Sean Wise (it was a while back and much less developed). Love to find time to share the idea with you.
Posted by: David Crow | May 18, 2006 at 07:08