Make your own luck at CIX

 CC-BY-NC-SA-20 Some rights reserved by nhr
AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by nhr

Next week is the Canadian Innovation Exchange. I sit on the Advisory Board and StartupNorth is an Association Partner. We are big fans of the event  and have watched over the past few years as CIX has gone through changes and growth. It continues to evolve both the CIX Top 20 as well as the event. The focus in 2012 is about providing meaningful content and experiences for entrepreneurs. This is a change from the past  where you might argue that the focus was on the investors attending. There is a strong focus on building an amazing event will attract amazing entrepreneurs, which in turn will attract amazing investors. And it the 2012 event looks to be very entrepreneur focused.

Entrepreneur Pricing

One of the bitches about this event used to be the pricing. There is a $199 entrepreneur ticket. Seriously, if you can’t justify the cost versus the opportunity to either see an amazing program or for the chance for random collisions with some of the best investors in the game actively deploying capital in the Canadian ecosystem.

This is your chance to hustle (see my comments about hustling at CVCA). Make your own luck. There will be people that buy products and the people that invest in companies at this event. Make something happen.

I love seeing Switch Video, an audience of VCs and companies that need video to grow their business. Bingo. Good hustle.

Buy a $199 ticket and figure out how to make serendity happen!

Entrepreneur Content

Where to start? Entrepreneur One-on-One with Jevon MacDonald . Sure he sold his company to Salesforce, but you know he started a blog, this blog. Jevon is a great guy. He has helped me with my thinking about startups in Canada, the role of venture capital, and with corporate development. GoInstant was around for a little less than 24 months, but I know that Jevon will be talking about the >5 years of hustle at Firestoker and Dachis Group before GoInstant. It should be a great conversation for founders looking for an understanding of how an amazing overnight deal.

The trade off is that if you go see Jevon, you’ll have to skip How Emerging Companies Can Think, Appear and Act Like they are Bigger then They Are which features Daniel Debow , Michael Hyatt , Yona Shtern and Razor Suleman . This is about how to strategically build a reality distortion field. Should be fun to learn the secrets of these 4 crazy entrepreneurs.

We spend a lot of time focusing on Lean and pre-product/market fit companies. But there are equally difficult questions about culture and growth at scale. There is a panel hosted by Howard Gwin and Derek Smyth with Dan Shimmerman of Varicent and Michael Harris of BlueCat Networks. This should be a good mix for companies that are in the scaling cycle. Given that apparently everything that Howard and Derek touch turns to gold: Varicent, Dayforce, Rypple and they have their hands in others Desire2Learn, Hootsuite, Vision Critical and others.

And there are US VCs. There is Mike Katz from Battery Ventures and Devdutt Yellurkar of Charles River Ventures (who invested in Influitive and Wave Accounting locally) and Alexander Kolicich of Mithril Capital Managment (and I don’t know the intricacies but Mithril is associated with Peter Thiel is associated with  Valar Ventures who invested in ShopLocket).

If you can’t find content that can help you, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s not about the content

Seriously, it’s not about about content. It’s about the hallway conversations. The random collisions. But you need to be there and you need to participate to have the chance for those things to happen. There will be a lot fo interesting folks in Toronto early next week, you should figure out how to have a collision. And make your own luck!

Register to attend CIX 2012

 

OMERS Ventures ramps up with Howard Gwin & Derek Smyth

CC-BY-SA Some rights reserved by Stuck in Customs
AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by Stuck in Customs

It’s has been a long time since Canadians have seen the creation of a new 200MM+ venture capital fund. It was back in June 2010 that OMERS announced the creation of the INKEF fund. OMERS and ABP have since gone their separate ways with ABP running INKEF Capital focusing on high tech startups in the Netherlands. And OMERS creating OMERS Ventures focused on “investments in the Technology, Media, Telecommunications, Clean Technology and Life Sciences sectors in Canada and the US”.

A little more than a week ago, OMERS announced that they had hired Howard Gwin (LinkedIn, @howardgwin). Who I’ve been quoted as saying “he really is the best VC in Canada”, mind you Howard was buying the drinks at the time…

And it looks like they have added fellow Edgestone alumni Derek Smyth (LinkedIn, @derekjsmyth). I’ve heard the announcement is due later today, but OMERS Ventures announced Derek Smyth as part of the team today, Derek’s profile is already part fo the team at OMERS Ventures. Derek is another rockstar going to OMERS. Prior to joining OMERS Ventures, Derek co-managed two VC funds at Edgestone Capital Partners. He also has operational experience that includes his former roles as President and CEO of solutions provider Bridgewater Systems, and as COO of California-based Ironside Technologies Inc.

Derek and Howard were instrumental at Bridgescale in running the Digital Puck and Mentor Monday events that helped connect Canadian entrepreneurs. I’m hoping that these guys continue to invest in connecting, engaging and supporting all entrepreneurs (along with their portfolio). The ongoing support of the C100 and AccelerateTO already show that OMERS has a larger operational budget that allows them to support and sponsor community activities.

The future looks bright for OMERS Ventures.