gdp's Comments

asymco : What do you have to believe for an Android dominated future?

Thu, 4 Nov 2010 05:48:31 +0000

I don't think carriers are exclusively in the drivers seat here. Apple retail is selling phones. Microsoft is ramping up their retail efforts. In Europe, unlocked, full price phones are the norm, it is only in North America that we have 2/3 year contracts with subsidized hardware.

Bootup Labs Blog : Jobs: Web Developers and UX Designers Needed

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:05:49 +0000

iQmetrix is also hiring in our Vancouver office. We're looking for people in UX (designer, interaction architect) and QA (director, leads). Contact me for more info.

Feld Thoughts : An Alternative For The Mac Address Book App?

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:01:30 +0000

Couldn't you use Gist for this? I agree that AB isn't a great app. It's got APIs and some of the things mentioned below sit on top of it ... but actually try and do a bunch of other things as well. I don't really "use" Address Book -- it's just a local sync point to other sources of data. Most notably, Google Contacts, which syncs acroos to Batchbook (social CRM -- sort of like Gist, but more CRM focused than info focused). Talking about live connects and so on makes me think BB or Gist could make a desktop client and do really well on the Mac.

StartupCFO : Canada needs more Angels and more student entrepreneurs!

Fri, 4 Jun 2010 21:09:08 +0000

There is a lack of investors in Canada. I think that has lead, in part, to a lack of local entrepreneurs. We can debate which part of the chicken and the egg came first.

StartupCFO : Canada needs more Angels and more student entrepreneurs!

Fri, 4 Jun 2010 21:07:27 +0000

My Devil's Advocate is not so much that I'm against doing a startup ... but rather that I have seen little in Canada's current academic institutions that sets students up with the right background to tackle this. So ... why go to university? Our academic institutions need a refresh and a kick in the pants.

StartupCFO : Canada needs more Angels and more student entrepreneurs!

Fri, 4 Jun 2010 18:30:59 +0000

Devil's advocate: why do we need more student entrepreneurs? Don't we just need more entrepreneurs, period? If straight out of university is the best place to get more of them, then great, but I have yet to be convinced of that _in Canada_. The schools with co-op programs seem to do the best job of preparing students to be entrepreneurs (because they learn by doing directly in industry). I have yet to interact with students from any other program that seem to have the requisite skillset or fire in their belly to become an entrepreneur. And, even in the co-op program, the best students are heavily courted by the big companies, making it hard to say no to the man and go it alone. I say, go work for the man for a couple of years, fill up that bank account and your rolodex, and THEN do a startup. In Canada, doing it straight out of school with the current financing and mentorship climate, simply isn't a smart thing to do.

Bootup Labs Blog : Wertz joins board, first funding completed, portfolio reduced

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:27:05 +0000

Not sure. Might be Intense Debate cleaning up some of the spam trackbacks - looks like many of the TC, Gigaom,etc. stories get re-aggregated all over the place.

Bootup Labs Blog : Beer label design day with Dave Shea

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:41:04 +0000

Thanks all for the pointers to local brewing supplies. Maybe we'll go fancy and get casks...

Bootup Labs Blog : Startup Visa Canada

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:25:25 +0000

I just got back from a really quick trip to Miami. I connected with one of the companies that applied to our January intake, but didn't make the final selection. Meeting with him and with other people there, it's clear that the region suffers from some of the same issues that Vancouver / BC suffers from on an ecosystem basis. Yes, we are in global competition for entrepreneurs. I asked Stewart Butterfield why he was starting his new company here, and his answer was, in essence, "because I like living here". I am actually completely OK with that as a competitive advantage for our region! Can we agree that we want a more "knowledge based" economy in Vancouver / BC / Canada? If yes, then we need more startups starting in Canada. I'm happy to welcome startups with great teams and ideas wherever they're coming from.

Bootup Labs Blog : Bootup Labs Demo Days Plans

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:50:39 +0000

Actually, the companies have presented / demo'd locally at lots of events. If you missed them, feel free to come by the office and meet the teams. You and I have talked about more tech focused events - I'm trying to fit a DemoCamp in with heavy tech presentations. Want to help source some? I think Startup Drinks (Jan 2010) will be a good opportunity to meet the next group.

Bootup Labs Blog : Startup Visa Canada

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:27:38 +0000

To be fair, we have a few advantages over the US. We don't require visas for regular visits for many countries, and if you've got a degree, it's fairly easy to make it into Canada. In BC, we're even lucky enough that directors don't need to be residents. It's still going to take red tape, and we've got to find a way to make this easier.

Feld Thoughts : What I Read On My Q409 Vacation

Sat, 5 Dec 2009 20:46:38 +0000

Ruby is a full on programming language, and even with frameworks like Rails, you're sitting in a text editor before you get to anything. If you want to "play" in this space (and I am completely biased, of course), then Drupal plus a few modules like the Content Construction Kit, Views, etc. actually let you build data structures, forms, lists, etc. -- much like you can do in Access, except it's all through a Web UI. And I get called "King of the Dorks" on a regular basis. I browsed past that Stross book the other day and wasn't sure about it. Putting it on my "to read" list now.

Feld Thoughts : TechStars 2009 Demo Day in Seattle – 11/4/09

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:48:52 +0000

Hi Brad -- we're looking to come down and hang out. A bunch of our local community of companies are interested in maybe tagging along as well to the mixer. But it sounds like the rest of the day is "investor only". Guidance on this? Can entrepreneurs buy a ticket to go to the mixer only?

Dented Reality : GSoC Mentor Summit, 2009

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:01:26 +0000

Backporting needs to be done by people for whom an itch is being scratched. As a commercial entity in Drupal land, I've done this in the past once a feature is in a "newer" version -- backport it so it is available on an earlier version. It's been my observation that in WP land, there are limited core maintainers, so it would definitely be "expensive" (time/effort/etc.) for them to do this. It's also easier to support backports when the components are a bit more modular. Re: libraries. We've all been burned by insecure third party libraries, never mind licensing issues, hence the likely non cooperation. I agree there is a lot more here to be shared. Since PEAR seems all over the place in terms of quality, that might also be part of the distrust of common libraries in PHP. PEAR seems the likely place to do more work on this, though?

Feld Thoughts : Gist Is Now Available to All

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:42:40 +0000

I've seen this type of dashboard approach a number of times. Have you checked out Batchbook? It's CRM focused, but also lets you (much more manually) add various social media feeds to a contact. I still need to figure out how Gist will best work for me. I'm thinking that a "company" view will be most useful to me at the moment. My "people" tracking is well served by my current toolkit (yes, separate services, but I follow / read / whatever the people I am interested in). At the "company" level, I don't have anything like this, and I am going to attempt to tune the dashboard etc. so that it gives me this. And yes, I'll report back to T.A., who I already annoyed at Launch Party by asking for "magic" -- give me the important stuff that I need to know, but not too much of it.

Mark Evans : Wordpress Takes It On the Chin

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 16:17:33 +0000

"From the optics perspective, Wordpress dropped the ball by slightly scolding people for not upgrading. That may be the case but it was the wrong message at the wrong time." -- sorry, but no. Either a) run on a hosted service where you don't do upgrades or b) learn how to work the complex stack of machinery that makes up modern CMS / blog / hosting. It just SEEMS easy most of the time, and a lot of people have had to work very hard to make it seem that way. Any bitching about WP or any other CMS is FUD -- learn how to backup, learn how to upgrade, or pay someone to do it for you. EVERYONE that isn't technical enough to do this has been accumulating "technical debt" for a long time. Learn or pay. Also "WordPress's response". The company? The open source project? Various people that volunteer their time to work on it? It saddens me that people STILL don't understand that THEY are a part of this system, and this isn't just some corporation.

Feld Thoughts : An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:42:21 +0000

Sorry, don't agree. If you're truly looking to make an investment, I'm sure that many service providers (e.g. lawyers) would pay for all of the items you just mentioned. And if you're not making any money INVESTING your money, you think you should take it from the entrepreneurs instead?

Feld Thoughts : An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:20:04 +0000

Brad, we've seen a lot of this. Not quite so bad as to pay to present to an angel GROUP, but it seems to be the default way that various "pitch" forums operate. They charge something like $500, apparently in an effort to weed out less serious applicants. All I know is that better applicants simply don't pay, so the forums end up with lower quality startups, which is just bad for everyone.

Bootup Labs Entrepreneurial Society : WorkSpace closes, thoughts on co-working space in Vancouver

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:44:02 +0000

Fixed the trailing sentence - thanks Roland, I was hurrying to hit post.

Bootup Labs Entrepreneurial Society : WorkSpace closes, thoughts on co-working space in Vancouver

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:43:36 +0000

At some point, every individual member of the community needs to step up. I, personally, would pay $50. The "lecture hall" model is, uh, significantly higher -- like $100K per year or a $1M one time donation / sponsorship. From what many people have told me, rentable desk space / offices without long term commercial leases *is* a pain that needs solving.