Awesome initiative by Raymond Luk and Robin Ahn, who are launching StartupDrinks.ca

I’m amazed on how this picked up and there are now 10 Canadians cities joining the “movement”. I haven’t been able to be as active as I was before (which is an understatement, *cough*); and I’m glad to see Flow Ventures taking the lead and gathering tech entrepreneurs, and everyone interested in startups.

The Montréal StartupDrinks are of course due Wed 25th November, from 5.30pm @ Brutopia.

1215 Crescent Street, on Ste-Catherines Street.

For those who haven’t been yet, it’s an informal gathering, an opportunity to share, meet the Montreal tech entrepreneur community, to celebrate the launch of StartupDrinks.ca … and of course take a drink. Everyone’s invited, if you have a startup or not, if you’re a veteran or just someone considering launching a tech venture.

It’s the end of the month, and the monthly meetup for Montreal tech entrepreneurs is planned tomorrow wed 28th October, as you might have read on the Flow Ventures blog.

The event gathers Montreal entrepreneurs, developers and any Montrealer interested in startups. It’s been running for more than a year, and gathers every last wednesday of the month from 40 to 70 entrepreneurs. It’s a great (free) way to mingle and get to know what others are working on.

Subscribe to the event on techentreprise

Venue: Brutopia, 1215 Crescent St, Sth of Ste-Catherine

When: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 from 5:30pm

Event organization driven by Flow Ventures

Note: I won’t be able to personally come to this event

As you might have seen on FlowVentures, Montreal StartupDrinks are on tomorrow!

Register here

As the name suggests, the event gathers technology entrepreneurs, startuppers, developers, investors, as well as experts helping startups. We’re expecting 60 and more people for the evening, with always new entrepreneurs coming in to join the community.

The event starts at 5.30pm till the end of the evening.

The other good news is that StartupDrinks are spreading in other cities, after Toronto and Ottawa, there’s an edition also scheduled in Waterloo.

If you know about co-workers, students, engineers, marketers looking to launch or working on a startup, don’t hesitate to forward them the event.

Register for the event

StartupDrinks @ Helm

StartupDrinks during the last summer

TechStars, the Boulder Colorado based startup program similar to Y-Combinator recently graduated another 10 companies. The event was attended by approximately 350 people, including tech bloggers such as Robert Scoble and investors from a number of “web 2.0” VC firms including First Round Capital, Foundry Group and Union Square Ventures (Fred Wilson) and our very own Montreal Start Up.

The team behind  one of these graduating companies is Vanilla. Vanilla provides open source forum software that is used to power hundreds of thousands of sites around the web. Vanilla already had 300,000+ Installations, 450+ Plugins and were doing 200+ downloads every day - all of this before even attending TechStars.

So why did they decide to join the TechStars program? Simply because they wanted to turn there product into a business !

The team behind Vanilla, are Canadian entrepreneurs Mark O’Sullivan and Todd Burry. The guys will be in Montreal this Thursday and they have agreed to tell us a little about their experience at TechStars: what they’ve learned about turning a product into a business, how to approach investors and some insight into the value of belonging to the TechStars alumni community.

We are going to take this opportunity to have a “Last drinks of Summer” for the Montreal tech community. The event is open to anyone and is going to be held this Thursday, September 3rd at Helm from 5pm-8pm.

Alongside main actors of the Montreal tech community such as MontrealStartup, the event is being organized in conjunction with Station-C, so it will be also be a great opportunity for anyone looking to meet up with freelance designers and developers.

Photo credit: Demo Day, techstars, by Andrew Hyde

Note: you can use techentreprise to see who is also coming up.

It’s already the end of August, with another new installement of StartupDrinks Montreal. If you read MontrealTechWatch, you are warmly invited for a drink and (re)connect with other fellow Montreal techies next wednesday 26th.

It’s a parallel event, with the Toronto edition held at the same time at C’est What. For Montreal, we’re doing it at Brutopia on Crescent Street. Brutopia is a winner thanks to its selection of beers and location.

Read last month’s report if you haven’t been lately to one, or if it’s the first time.

We’re especially calling students to come over for the drinks. If you know anyone in university who is interested into technology entrepreneurship, we’d appreciate if you can extend the invitation to them. It doesn’t matter at what stage one is, and I believe making diverse minds meet would make StartupDrinks even more interesting. So forward the link to friends & students, suggest the meetup, put it on Facebook or your other social networking website.

We ask everyone to register on TechEntreprise, in order to print name tags. ALL EVENT DETAILS also available there

Co-organized by FlowVentures

With the invaluable of our friends at StartupNorth for the Toronto event and @davidcrow’s magic touch

Foulab, Montreal’s own hacker space, is holding an Arduino Jam this upcoming Thursday evening, starting from 7.00pm. It’s an open event is targeted at those who wants to learn about Arduino, and try their hand on the open source microcontroller hardware.

I recommend the event for those who are interested in hardware hacking, for instance to mix real physical events. You can think for instance about innovative interfaces, such as this bakery in London which alerts customers on Twitter, about fresh bread, through a specially designed knob. It’s also easy to think about software services which would offer an Arduino-enabled physical interface.

Photo Credit: Arduino Synthetizer, by Collin Mel

Jasmine Antonick (@jasmineAntonick), a Canadian living in the valley, calls out for Canadian startups to present at Under the Radar Nov. 09.

I’m looking to find some killer Canadian mobile startups, as I want to showcase innovative companies from outside the borders of Silicon Valley ;) And, I’m a Canadian living in San Francisco… It’d be great if you could post a “Call for Companies” on Montreal Tech Watch.

Under the Radar will uncover the next wave of vetted, test-driven startups that have launched within the year, showcasing the newest companies created by founders with a quest for innovation and a plan for disruption. Under the Radar brings startups, industry leaders, press, and investors together with one ultimate goal: to get the deal done.

In the past three years 54% of presenters have gone on to raise funding and/or be acquired by Google, Microsoft, FOX Interactive, Salesforce, British Telecom, and others

Event page for more info

Raymond Luk (@rayluk) from FlowVentures planned to be in Toronto this week for DemoCamp Toronto ed. 21; thus was born the idea of having Toronto StartupDrinks, in the same evening as the one in Montreal.

It’s a great idea; we’ve been running StartupDrinks in Montreal for well over a year, with every time a large audience. Actually, having one just after a democamp makes even more sense. It’s awesome to have David Crow (@davidcrow) and everyone from the Toronto tech startup community get together for those informal, simple, but in a way, so crucial for the life of a community.

For the Montreal edition, I was surprised to see many new faces, many entrepreneurs, consultants, business and marketing folks, as well as a strong group of technology people. Lots of people talking, getting to know each other, and I’ve seen a few trying to recruit actively talent for new ventures.

Hats off to Robin Ahn (@RobinBirdSounds) who is doing a fabulous work

For those who were there, you can see again the list of attendees here, and (re)connect with them.

See pictures on Flickr

You might be like me, i.e. too busy on work & projets to even think of blogging. Or you might be contemplating technology entrepreneurship and startups, as told on high-profile media such as TC or HC

Either way, it’s end of July, which means it’s time for this month’s StartupDrinks. 

What is StartupDrinks?

StartupDrinks is an informal event where entrepreneurs busy in startups, developers, and everyone interested in technology entrepreneurship are invited, grab a drink, share what you’re doing, and get feedback from Montreal startupppers. It’s the ideal moment if you want to talk about a new marketing campaign you’re designing, or about a hard technological problem you are trying to solve. 

Who will be there?

The event gathers entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, students, and is co-organized with FlowVentures. We’ve hard a regular attendance of around 50-70, and we expected the same number (if not more) this time.

Interested?

The event is this Wednesday July 29th, from 5.30pm at Brutopia, 1215 Crescent Street in Montreal.

Subscribe here if you’re planning to go.

Since MTW and FlowVentures began Montreal startupdrinks last summer, we’ve had regularly an attendance of 60 to 90 people each time, went to two different places (Café des Éclusiers and now Brutopia on crescent), turning into what I call the de-facto meetup for the Montreal technology community.

It’s a great way for new tech entrepreneurs to meet other entrepreneurs, discuss about venturing into the technology space, along with tech-oriented programmers, speak about business with fellow startuppers, angel investors, or VCs, every last wednesday of the month.

For this month, we’re making exceptionnally 2 worlds meet, with a joint event with the Montreal Girl Geek Dinner. It’s a regular event instigated by Tanya McGinnity. Like StartupDrinks, it has now a regular and growing audience, filling rooms every time for their girl geek presentations.

I’m excited to see this happen, as we’ll get most probably 150+ people for the event, and a new talks + drinks formula. Of course, the most interesting thing is getting the 2 communities to mingle — who knows, you might meet a co-founder or get expert help for your startup, or get to know new ideas.

The schedule is as follows:

• Wed. June 17th, 5pm: A Talk by Christine Renaud from e-180 (@180) at Montreal Girl Geek dinner
• Wed. June 17th, 6pm: Montreal StartupDrinks, where it’s all about taking a drink and talk about tech startups and entrepreneurship.

The event will be hosted at Brutopia again, upstairs, on 1219 Crescent Street. Look for Tanya McGinnity, Robin Ahn, also Raymond Luk

If you are interested, DO register here. It takes 30 seconds and we need it to make name tags.

Once again, it’s a community event, and FREE. As such, we need your help as much as possible to get the word out. If you can put it on twitter, or facebook, forward the registration page to friends, then the better it will be.