One of Rick Segal’s favourite examples about new business ideas is a Blackberry app that would know when you’re in a meeting and silence the alerts and such.  No wonder then that he’d be involved in a startup fund for new Blackberry software:
VentureBeat decided to jump the gun this weekend and post some news that has been floating around lately about a new Blackberry fund. They deleted the post from their blog, but it was still available in Google Reader and in other places and TechCrunch got to it late on Saturday. The new fund is being managed by RBC …read more

It’s a busy time here at b5media.  We’re growing, expanding, and gearing up for great stuff.  We got word internally last week that Rachel Segal is joining us at b5 media–word is as a marketing honcho–which is very, very cool.  I waited until Rachel had made this public before I blabbed–good thing I didn’t have to wait long:
b5media – a rapidly growing blog network that I’ve been familiar with for quite some time now. Just a thirty minute walk from my apartment and home to a fantastic crew I’m thrilled and honoured to start working with (notice the ‘u’ – …read more

This morning Rick Segal was here for the Victoria VC Roundtable .  One of the things that I really like about Rick is that he is passionate about the companies he invests in, but the thing I like most is that he is unabashedly pro-Canadian.  Rick, like me, is American–I took the leap and became a citizen, but his passion and belief in Canada is probably second to none.  So in honour of Rick, and thoroughly borrowing from him, here are the top ten reasons your tech startup should be in Canada:
 

Canadians are innovative. One word: RIM.
Canadians are well …read more

Good morning from Victoria…

Although Josh thought I had forgotten about DemoCampVictoria in my last post about Canadian tech events I hadn’t but since it’s next week, now is a good time for a little update.
Checking out the wiki I see the following folks are on the docket to present:
Why DemoCampVictoria was created (Mark Lise)
Fortuno (Jesse and Jason)
Genetify (Andrew)
BountyUp – Social Commerce (Joshua McKenty and Todd Khozein)
DailySplice (Rian)
Flock – the social web browser (Clayton Stark and other flockers)
Songbird (Steven Bengtson and Peter Van Hardenberg) Source: BarCamp wiki / DemoCampVictoria01

I hadn’t checked out Songbird in a long time, but maybe it’s time to finally give …read more

I’ve been a tele-worker for over eight years now.  Yeah, a long time.  Since I’ve started I’ve moved from working with one phone line and 33.6 dialup to digital phone and highspeed cable Internet access.  Through it all though, I’ve tried to keep with some basic “rules” like trying not to “work” all the time (I fail at that one often).
If you want some great advice, Rachel Segal has some great points in a recent post:
 

It’s *not* working from home.
Regular work hours are important.
Take a shower already.
You can curb feeling isolated.

Source: Debanter » Blog Archive » Telecommuting Misnomers

Her dad, …read more

Rick Segal of JLA Ventures (JLA Ventures is one of the founders of b5media) is starting his Canadian tour of VC Roundtables starting in Eastern Canada:
April 14th Morning – Halifax NS
April 14th Evening – Moncton NB
April 15th Evening – St John’s NF

Here are the ground rules/information for entrepreneurs who would like to present ideas:

About 2 1/2- 3 hours in length
Informal/Free (super important!)
Small Groups (super important!)
Information on VC/Angels and the process.
Sample Term sheets, documents, business plans, PowerPoints
Example Pitch or Pitches to show what’s interesting/good/bad
Open questions for a good chunk of time. Source: The Post Money Value: VC Roundtable – Block One

Can’t …read more

What’s hot in Canadian tech?  Yeah, a lot, but how can you learn about all the great stuff going on?  At the end of April I think you’ll have your chance to see what’s hot now and what will be hot soon at the Canadian Innovation Exchange in Toronto:
The inaugural Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) is on the calender for April 29 & 30th at the Carlu in Toronto and promises to focus on innovation. The two-day event will feature an innovation marketplace, flash-forward presentations on the state of technology, and facilitated networking opportunities. Key participants from the US and across …read more

You should know, of course, that JLA Ventures is one of b5media’s VC backers (the other is Brightspark).  Now I read Rick Segal not just cause he’s our VC, I was reading him long before that, I read him to get insight into venture capital and entrepreneurship.
This recent post, which I don’t think Rick’s mind is spooky at all–messy, well, who am I to talk, Rick outlines some insights that I think entrepreneurs who are looking for VC funding should read:
There are two ways to answer this. First, is the obvious answer: All things coming in the door are evaluated …read more