We all owe a lot to Ben Yoskovitz who started the monthly Tech Entrepreneur Breakfasts February last year. Thanks to meetups like this, plus other events such as BarCampMontreal, entrepreneurs could meet, discuss new technologies, and grab an opportunity to start together new ventures.

This was in November 2007

A tech breakfast in June 2007

I’ve just had a quick exchange with Ben on where the breakfasts are going. Since he’s busy as CEO/founder of Standoutjobs, he hasn’t been able to announce, let alone go the last 2 tech entrepreneur breakfasts (although there were still 10-15 people at the two latest meetups):

I’d like to resurrect them for August - but I’m swamped, which makes it hard to organize… So I don’t know how strong interest really is …

We then thought about asking directly to you guys what should be done with the tech breakfasts. Should we change the location? Should we change the style of the event? Should we expand or to the contrary re-focus the event? Should more event “features” be added? Is there anybody willing to help and swing in something?

Here are other similar events worth to look at:
- Open Coffee Club
- Boulder New Tech Meetup
- StartupDrinks (although relatively different format)
- php beer, which are quite geeky, with interesting discussions around beer.
- …

Thanks for the feedback!

StartupDrinks was awesome yesterday. It was easily the best event I’ve been to in Montreal lately.

Thousand thanks to QuebecValley, MontrealStartup, RedNod, NorthGeek, MontrealPython, Alexis Smirnov, VC-TV, Austin Hill who wrote and buzzed about the event.

The evening was great, with people coming up with great new exciting projects and startups.

We had the pleasure of having people from Montreal Girl Geeks, JLA VenturesBlackBerry fund, iNovia Capital, BDO, MontrealStartup, php Quebec, fellow pythonistas, javascripters, c++/assembler programmers, railers, 3D software engineers, Maxster from Proje(c)t Hackerspace, Morgan Tocker from MySQL/Sun, Praized, Flow Consulting, CoRadiant, CakeMail, future BarCampers, linkbaiters :-), hackers and “security experts” who came up for RECON ‘08, and a reporter from the Lien Multimedia. It was also great to see people coming up from Boston, Calgary and Toronto. I certainly miss people here (sorry couldn’t meet everyone)

Alok C. even planned for the event a modeling fashion show *cough* and fireworks **cough, cough**

Pictures at flickr

Again, thanks to everyone who came for StartupDrinks. See you all at the next one!

Update: A team also broadcasted live the event on Justin.tv

This is short-notice, but we’ve got 2 excellent meetups this week:

• We are holding a Montreal StartupDrinks wednesday 30th July from 6pm, at Café des Éclusiers again. The place is located at 400 rue de la Commune Ouest. It’s at the end of the old port near the St-Laurent.

  We had the last StartupsDrinks there last month, and it was a great event. About 25 people showed up, with a great mix of entrepreneurs, developers, business & technology consultants, CEOs and CTOs of software companies, also the team from montrealstartup.

  There have been comments last time by a few wondering if the place was really appropriate, but I found iit great, and so did most of the people who came. There is ample space; it’s easy to talk and meet people, and it’s also a great setting.

  Come have a drink with us, meet innovators & great people working in technology, come talk about your projects, share about your current startups!

• There is a meetup today for the Project Montreal HackersSpace, at Café Chaos, at 6.30pm.The instigator of the project explains:
  

  Hacker Spaces are popping up all over the map and Montreal will be no exception.

  Proje(c)t Hacker Space Montreal is the first phase of having a hacker space in Montreal. At the moment our main necessity is to find anyone who is interested in shaping and building this project.

  After attending The Last HOPE, which was a huge primer on hacker spaces, a few members of Geek Montreal found out that their excuses were invalid. So if you frequent Montreal and are interested in shaping, building and enjoying this hacker space, send an email to phsmtl (at) gmail (dot) com

Great events where you get to meet hackers & entrepreneurs don’t come often in Montreal. If you read MontrealTechWatch, you need to be there!

I am at the new Apple store on Ste-Catherine street and I can see 30 vendors in blue and orange T-Shirts, all cheering madly, and high-fiving people entering the store, giving T-Shirts away and making customers and Montrealers who waited for the store’s opening feel like they’ve just won the gold medal or finished a marathon.

I have even in front of me 4 Apple specialists singing on karaoke, following the music in the store.

The store in itself is all in glass, alumunium, with touches of wood. Apple computers and iPod touch are on the ground floor, while accessories, software and support (the Genius Bar) is on the second floor.

Unfortunately, they don’t sell iPhones, even if you can still try a couple of them; nor do they have any special discounts for the store’s opening. Still, it’s now without doubt the #1 destination for Apple fans and consumers in Montreal now.

Photos (sorry about the poor quality, it’s a camera phone):

The line ran around 2 blocks

The store is located on St-Catherines Street, surrounded by top retail shops.

Cheering and high-fiving

First floor

Going to the 2nd floor, it’s all glass and aluminium

The Genius Bar

Pictures on flickr

For those who are into Apple products, a brand-new Apple flagship store will open its doors this Friday, at 5pm, 1321 Rue Ste-Catherine Ouest.

Apple flagship stores are known for their superior customer service & experience, within a distinctive lush store, much alike the attention to detail found in their computer and electronic products. Another distinctive trademark of Apple stores is that you can take orders and check out anywhere, with Apple staff having their own payment systems, making it a great shopping experience compared to the one you can find at Best Buy or Future Shop.

In the U.S., these stores have on average $4,300 sales per square feet, per year, one of the highest ratio you can find in retail, and has helped Apple regain market shares since these were pushed by Steve Jobs.

Since other Apple resellers like CompuSmart closed shop lately, this is a more than welcomed new store.

Alok Chowdhury and I are launching a StartupDrinks next wednesday, from 5.30pm, at Café des éclusiers. The place is Café des Éclusiers, 400 rue de la Commune Ouest (map)

Here is a description of StartupDrinks:

A simple concept: startup culture in cities around the world gathers around a bar to have a pint and discuss what they are working on, what they need help with and what they can do for each other.

But really, this is open to all technology enthusiasts, and we hope to turn into a regular meetup for the local technology community. The first version (photos) gathered a crowd of 15-20 entrepreneurs, developers, investors, ISV owners. Now, we’re aiming to gather (much) more people and making sure you get to meet new & existing connections.

Now, for this upcoming meetup, we don’t have yet any fancy schedule — just come, have a drink and chat with people. We’ll be going along the crowd though and try to discuss if there is interest into getting with more features for the next StartupDrinks, for instance getting a company/startup to use the event as a launch party.

So that’s it folks! Come and bring friends! If you also know “wannapreneurs” or developers who haven’t yet come to local events, forward the event details to them!

There is a meeting open to all tomorrow regarding bill C-61. The bill is viewed by many as an abuse, which was solely submitted because of lobbying from the US music and cinema industry, as well as media groups in Canada; while the MPs who submitted it said that it’s a necessary upgrade to Canadian law.

The meeting takes place at Station C, 5369 bvd St-Laurent, suite 430, from 6.00pm; and aims at organizing citizen actions locally, campaigns and brainstorming next steps. The movement was started by Evan Prodromou (also well known for its various wiki projects and support of new and open practices such as Creative Commons), and we already had a first meetup last thursday, with 20+ people coming to discuss the Bill’s details.

I encourage anyone to come there and participate as Bill C-61 will have many consequences in the future, in the way you will enjoy music or any digital media. Personally, my opinion is that artists and authors should have the ultimate word and should be able, on an individual basis, to formulate what rights&obligations users have when they consume their work. If the artist state that nobody should be able to copy or reproduce his/her work, or if there’s no limitations when purchasing their work, then it’s ok with me — but in any case, I don’t think it’s the government’s role to decide on an universal basis what users can or cannot do with digital media. This might suprise you, but hey, it’s a personal opinion.

Kristina has an enthusiastic report of the last CVCA 2008 conference. I especially like the video; it gives you an idea of the conference if you couldn’t be there.

Featured on the video are CVCA officials (Rick Nathan), heads of PE firms (John McIntyre, Birch Hill Equity Partners), Jevon MacDonald, Andrew Waitman (Celtic House Venture Partners), and William Woods, from CNQ the new stock exchange for tech companies wanting to raise money, even if they’re at an early stage.

This is only part 1 of VC-TV’s coverage of the conference; and you might want to follow her blog to get the upcoming part 2 and 3

I am the Canadian Venture Capitalists and Private Equity Association 2008 conference, held here in Montreal at the Fairmount Queen Elizabeth.

The conference started yesterday with a golf event and a welcoming cocktail. As in most conferences, it’s easy to see that networking and discussions in hotel lobbies are a big part of the conference, with investors discussing tips and current deals, and partners wooing institutional investors. The sessions in themselves began this morning, with fund partners and industry experts exposing stats and figures on the state of the industry, revealing challenges and difficulties but also improvements.

Many of the conference attendees had a different perspective of the industry and their current trade, but I saw 2 main trends.

First, private equity firms are doing good business. They have focused on buyouts and have had good returns. As a matter of fact, they have published an extensive report stating their good performance, much higher than returns found on stock markets (e.g. TSX), and how buyouts have benefited the Canadian economy, by helping companies flourish.

However, the picture is less clear for Venture Capital firms. Industry experts stated that VC firms are in crisis and that a few of them are bound to withdraw. While they are now closer to U.S. figures, Canadian VC firms are reportedly still doing too many early stage investments with even smaller rounds. Dr. Gilles Duruflé, one of the industry expert, also revelead that 10 year returns was on average just 1.8% for Canadian VC funds, compared to 18% in the U.S., raising the question on why institutional investors would invest in VC firms in the first place. Another expert from McKinsey stated that since there are less early stage investments, the dealflow is broken, and we might have now a broken ecosystem. Andrew Waitman, managing partner form a Ottawa VC firm, also mentionned the problem of geographic proximity and also structural problems in Canada.

There are some good news though. Exit values for IPOs and M&As have surged, and many funds are now looking to work with foreign funds, be it in the US or in Israel.

I have been with Jevon MacDonald from startupnorth, who said Venture Capitalists need to mingle with entrepreneurs, at a grassroots level, and participate with the exisiting startup community, in the regions they are geographically active, or even nation-wide. I would like to see for instance more VCs presenting to entrepreneurs what kind of startups they are looking to invest in, and also have more entrepreneurs getting more feedback on the validity of their ideas, be it in an event like StartupCamps, or by going an online space. Rick Segal who’s got a great blog and who is meeting entrepreneurs all over the country, is a perfect example, and we could use more of his kind.

Of course, what we’d need is also more major successes, and highlight them. ClubPenguin, a BC-based startup which has built an online world for kids, was acquired for $700 million by Disney almost one year ago, and I am not sure this has been given enough press. We also need more entrepreneurs, more boldness, and reach a critical mass of startups in Québec and in Canada in order to get a healthy startup ecosystem, with its share of failures but also successes. Most agreed we haven’t yet reached yet this critical mass, and there are lots of work ahead, for VCs and entrepreneurs alike to reach that point.

Codefest, a weekend hackfest for developers supported by phpquebec, was this weekend, and it begun Friday at ETS’s Pub sans génie.

There is something hardcore about spending a whole weekend with other developers with the objective to code on projects. The majority of Montréalers would want to go outdoors, and do something at the opposite end of programming. Here, attendees gladly came for the event; and many were there to code … just for the pleasure of coding.

There was for instance a Msc. student from Université de Sherbrooke, who was doing a research on Québecers involved in open source projects; and I think he went around for 30 min, unsure on how to approach the group (!!), maybe thinking that we were from another world.

I also thought about the lifestyle a great deal of time when coming there. However, I just thought that I also spent a lot of time developing new tools and architecturing new ideas and applications, be it weekdays or weekends; so it might as well be in a hackfest event.

Like the other CodeFest, attendees were free to choose any project they want to work on. There was a couple of guys who worked on drupal, Jonathan Bond (!) from GoldenEye Solutions worked on openmv; other projects were about the MediaWiki engine, TikiWiki, java and unit tests, selenium, etc. There was an actionscript geek from tribalnova, Evan Prodromou was there working on a new secret project. We also had a girl from New Zealand who came over to participate.

There was also Philippe Gamache, who talked extensively about web application security. He is very knowledgeable, and I learned a lot — by overhearing the topics he was discussing with Marc Laporte and a sysadmin from iweb, such as xss, sql injecting, css, overflow, playing with character encoding, social engineering, playing with processes, firewalls, etc. I told him it’s a good thing he was on the “good side” since he was capable of wreaking havoc in any québec website; and he replied he used to be on the other side… I also discovered he co-authored a book on security. Anyway, I’ve since then shielded and upped the level of security on servers I am working on.

Philippe Gamache currently works at mobivox, although I am not sure why a voip startup would need his skills.

In retrospective, this was a great event, with great potential. I wished there were more people coming and/or maybe organize them in regular intervals, in a pre-defined place. Yes, I am thinking about MetaLab. Quote:

The Metalab is a hacker space in Vienna, Austria — an open center for people who do creative things with technology.

Wouldn’t that be great in Montréal?

More photos from the event.