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I have seen my fair share of entrepreneurs that were “all in” – mortgaged their house to the max to get their start-up going, using their credit card limits to make the next payroll, close to personal bankruptcy at any moment. There are probably tens of thousands of cases where this strategy was successful: the new funding came in just before the lights finally went out, the closing of a big sale brought in new revenues, a line of credit was extended. These are the stories we mostly hear about. But there are millions of situations where this “all in” strategy did not work out and the entrepreneur was left with nothing at all, having lost their company, their house and sometimes even their family (that didn’t want to share that type of life anymore).

It is really great to see how Vancouver’s tech community has developed over the past couple of years – events like GROW or Launch Party, organizations like the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, BCIC or the VEF and media outlets like Techvibes played a key role in bringing everybody together. Now Vancouver also has a video to take the message to the world that Vancouver is a perfect place to build tech companies – I had goose bumps the first time I watched “Wonders start here” and I hope that this video will make all Vancouverians feel proud about their city and attract many new talented people to live and work here. Thanks to Ian Bell for producing the video and to Microsoft for supporting it – this is how communities are built!

By now, everybody should have heard about Angelgate, from Arrington’s initial walk into the secret meeting of Silicon Valley super-angels to Dave McClure’s blog post as a response to Ron Conway’s email distancing himself from whatever was going on. A lot of drama during these past 3 days, too much drama in my opinion. And drama that had been building up over the past months with the ongoing discussion around super-angels versus VC’s. So after this crescendo, it might be a good time to take a step back and go back to the basics. And if you strip off all of the noise, a few simple truths emerge:

Everybody talks about the emergence of super-angels and micro VC’s and how they fill an important role in a startup world that has smaller and smaller funding requirements. So when I check Angellist, the most important directory of angels in North-America and Europe, I only find 3 Canadian angels (of a total of 350 registered on the site), two in Vancouver (Danny Robinson and myself) and one in Edmonton (Kevin Swan). So where are all of the other Canadian (super-)angels? Would love to get a complete list together so please leave their names and some of the investments they did down in the comment section. I will then make sure to pull together and publish the complete list and point the AngelList guys to this as well so we get a better representation on the Canada side.

This week just flew by and it felt like an endless series of emails, meetings, calls and travel without me having spent a minute working on some of the larger and more strategic topics that I have defined for myself and W Media Ventures. Getting drowned by day-to-day stuff is a trap that one can fall in very easily. But if you really want to make progress in your business (as entrepreneur or investor), you need to reserve enough time to work on strategic items ("work on the business, not in it") - here are some things that worked for me and that I have been recommending to my entrepreneurs: <ul> <li>Know your vision: it all starts with knowing where you actually want to head to - writing it down and reminding yourself of it on a daily / weekly basis helps!</li> <li>Focus on the most important levers: there are many ways to achieve your vision and even more items you could spend your time working on but there are probably only 2-3 really important levers at each moment. You need to identify them and work relentlessly on them. Try to cut out the rest as much as possible.</li> <li>Small changes in your work routine can improve your <a href="http://www.suite101.com/content/working-from-home-and-productivity-a109865">productivity</a> in a big way: try to keep meetings to max. 30 minutes; do email in batches; avoid too much context-switching</li> <li>Aggressively outsource and delegate: everybody has things on his plate that he actually doesn't need to do himself so be consequent in identifying these responsibilities and delegate / outsource them. Delegating / outsourcing is a bit of a larger one-time effort (as you need to train others to take over your job) but will pay off very quickly once it is set up.</li> <li>Review your progress every week: was I again drowned in operational stuff or did I actually spend time working on my strategic initiatives?</li> </ul> Looking forward to being less "day-to-day driven" next week - hope you will be, too!

This week just flew by and it felt like an endless series of emails, meetings, calls and travel without me having spent a minute working on some of the larger and more strategic topics that I have defined for myself and W Media Ventures. Getting drowned by day-to-day stuff is a trap that one can fall in very easily. But if you really want to make progress in your business (as entrepreneur or investor), you need to reserve enough time to work on strategic items (“work on the business, not in it”) – here are some things that worked for me and that I have been recommending to my entrepreneurs:

Angel investors are crucial for every start-up ecosystem and Canada certainly needs more of them (especially of the super-angel kind!). But angel investing is not only good for the start-ups that benefit from early and risk-taking investors, it can also generate great returns for the investors. At least if they follow a few key rules. Mark Suster from GRP Partners published an excellent series of posts on angel investing in the past couple of weeks and I could not agree more with the 5 skills successful angel investors need to have: deal flow, domain knowledge, relationships with VC’s, deep pockets and access to buyers. From my own personal experience there are a few additional points to consider before launching yourself into angel investing:

Chris Fralic‘s tweet about a board meeting best practice this morning got me thinking that this was something I wanted to write about for some time. I currently sit on 12 boards and have therefore seen my fair share of board meetings – most of them were really productive, some of them highly unproductive. Here are some best practices to make sure that your board meeting delivers the best results:

Techvibes did a range of interviews at the GROW conference, among others with Andrew Mason (Groupon), Zynga‘s Robert Mason and Suite101‘s Peter Berger. I got the chance to get interviewed as well and chatted with Michelle Sklar a bit about W Media Ventures but more importantly about the Vancouver tech community and the C100. Enjoy!

August seems to be “funding announcement month” so after Empire Avenue and Barcode Hero, here comes a 3rd new investment: Summify is a social news reader that addresses the information overflow we all are experiencing with the explosion of social media. What that exactly means is best described by the Summify team on their blog:

Fred Wilson’s blog post on Dave McClure’s investment thesis a few weeks ago reminded me that I needed to do a better job on spelling out my own. I had done some preliminary work when I started W Media Ventures almost 3 years ago but it was very high-level only addressing the sector (consumer Internet), the investment size ($50K-$250K) and the geography (Pacific Northwest / Western Canada). As I have learned a thing or two since then, I now have a much better understanding what kind of entrepreneurs and ideas I want to invest into. So here is what I am looking for:

Paul Geyer – one of the most successful and respected Vancouver-based angels – won the AngelForum “BC Angel Investor of the Year” award yesterday and sent a very simple message in his acceptance speech: “This is a fantastic time to be an angel investor”. Paul (who focuses most of his investments in the medical device area) cited the currently low valuations at the tail end of the recession at the major reason. While low valuations are not really the case anymore in Consumer Internet (some might even see early signs of a bubble again), there are more fundamental changes going on in this sector that makes it a great time to be an angel investor:

The GROW conference has brought dozens of high-profile VC’s and super-angels to Vancouver which presents a wonderful opportunity for many local start-ups to get exposure to out-of-town investors. So today is “pitching day” jointly organized by W Media Ventures and Bootup Labs. 7 companies will take the stage: CompassEngine (location-based gaming platform), EmpireAvenue (influence stock market), Fitbrains (casual brain fitness games), Indochino (tailor-made suits over the Internet), Rival Apps (fantasy sports games), Summify (social news reader) and Weddingful (lead-gen for wedding vertical).

After the investment in Empire Avenue last week I am very excited to announce another investment today: Barcode Hero‘s mission is to help shoppers in physical stores, through breakthrough mobile technology. Simply put, it is like a “Foursquare for shopping”: Barcode Hero users scan products at home or in a store, build their collection, and share recommendations with friends. Users can follow others to get their recommendations and compete for fun titles based on the products they interact with.

With the explosion of social media in the past few years, we now have millions of people broadcasting and curating information on a daily basis, making personal recommendations and endorsements to their friends and followers and creating personal brands on the Internet. But with that explosion of small “media outlets” it is getting harder and harder to identify what the really important people are that one should listen to. At the same time, those influential people want to know what their personal brand is worth.

For the next 3 days the Valley descends on Vancouver for the GROW conference and you can feel a real excitement in the local tech community about hosting entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh (Zappos) or Andrew Mason (Groupon) as well as investors like Rob Hayes (First Round Capital), Dave McClure (500 Startups), Jeff Clavier (Softtech) or Chris Albinson (Panorama Capital) here in town. Building a company outside of the hot spots of the Valley or NYC is sometimes a tough undertaking despite many success stories – entrepreneurs don’t have the same easy access to experienced talent, mentors or investors and have fewer opportunities to learn from peers. So having close to a hundred top notch tech entrepreneurs and investors coming into town gives the Vancouver tech community a real boost and will provide some fantastic learning and networking opportunities for entrepreneurs from here and the rest of Canada.

With Demand Media filing for their long-expected IPO last week, the discussion around scalable content generation platforms (or “content farms” as critics of those models prefer to call them) is back in full swing. As an investor in Suite101 (the third-largest platform behind Demand Media and Yahoo‘s Associated Content), I have been watching the space evolve over time and getting to understand and appreciate the business model behind these platforms. Since the Wired article on Demand Media last year a lot of the discussion in blogs has however solely focused on the algorithms versus humans topic with some people even calling for the “death of hand-crafted content“. What was discussed much less is the fact that these new content generation models provide crucial solutions for media companies in an Internet age characterized by fragmentation of audiences, high demand for long-tail content and increased performance-based monetization. There are 5 key differences that make platforms like Demand Media, Associated Content or Suite101 superior to traditional media platforms for generating high-quality content in a scalable way:

Some exciting job opportunities that came up in our portfolio companies in recent weeks - please consider applying (and spread the word to your friends) <strong>SEO expert</strong> This position leads <a href="http://www.suite101.com">Suite101</a>'s initiatives to generate traffic and improve monetization for online content: <a href="http://www.techvibes.com/job/head-of-seo-and-keyword-research">http://www.techvibes.com/job/head-of-seo-and-keyword-research</a> <strong>Online Marketing whiz kids</strong> Smart, analytical, numbers-driven? <a href="http://www.indochino.com">Indochino</a> <a href="http://www.indochino.com">(</a><a href="http://www.techvibes.com/job/pay-per-click-and-search-manager-at-vancouvers-hottest-startup">http://www.techvibes.com/job/pay-per-click-and-search-manager-at-vancouvers-hottest-startup)</a> and <a href="http://www.weddingful.com">Weddingful</a> (<a href="http://www.techvibes.com/job/online-marketing-specialist-for-web-20-start-up-in-vancouver">http://www.techvibes.com/job/online-marketing-specialist-for-web-20-start-up-in-vancouver</a>) are both looking for Online Marketing whiz kids <strong>Teach leads</strong> Looking to lead product development in a start-up environment? Scrappy and entrepreneurial? Tech leads needed for Indochino (<a href="http://www.techvibes.com/job/technical-development-lead-at-vancouvers-hottest-startup">http://www.techvibes.com/job/technical-development-lead-at-vancouvers-hottest-startup</a>) and Weddingful (<a href="http://www.techvibes.com/job/technical-development-lead-for-web-20-start-up-in-vancouver">http://www.techvibes.com/job/technical-development-lead-for-web-20-start-up-in-vancouver</a>) All positions are based in beautiful Vancouver.

Some exciting job opportunities that came up in our portfolio companies in recent weeks – please consider applying (and spread the word to your friends)

I finally got around reading Dave McClure’s investment thesis and agree with almost all he says. There is one especially interesting paragraph when Dave talks about the “market stage” which caught my attention as it has been the topic of discussion with a few of my portfolio companies as of late: