NOTE: The following is cross-posted from www.stirr.ca, and is courtesy of STIRR Canada team member Sharon McIntyre. I was going to write a post summarizing the event, but Sharon has done a much better job than I ever would have . . .
On Thursday evening, Albertan tech startup founders, funders, and emerging young guns filled the main floor of Calgary's Bonterra Trattoria restaurant at STIRR Canada's kick-off Founders & Funders Dinner event. Five hours later, after some great networking and facilitated dinner table conversations, people were still buzzing.
A young startup founder remarked: "I can't believe the caliber of people I just got to talk with or the amount I learned before dessert came. This has been the most productive tech event I've been to in Calgary."
Participating companies included: Active Conversion, Broadramp, Calgary Scientific, Cambrian House, Cognera, CoolIT, Coril Holdings, Cornerstone Technologies, Datagardens, DirectVoxx, Dynastream, eSchedule, GamesCafe, iNovia Capital, Intervera, Loa Corporation, Mobovivo, Octane Venture Partners, Ph03nix New Media, Preo Software, Psyko Audio Labs ... ... Renoworks, Shopster, SpatialQ, StockVantage, StumbleUpon, Techvibes, Tynt, and Xtreme Technologies.
Calgary native, and StumbleUpon co-founder, Garrett Camp, talked about the ups and downs of his friends-and-family funded early startup days and how he ultimately moved to Silicon Valley to be closer to his advisors. He also revealed that his first investor was a StumbleUpon user from the Valley who simply contacted him by email.
A common theme revolved around how important "retaining the right people" is to creating success. Discussions included: giving up a substantial amount of equity to attract a co-founder, asking potential employees how much salary vs. stock they wanted to gauge their propensity for risk; and a founder's preference to hire equity-only team members (whether you can self-fund the startup or not).
Here are a few conversation snippets from the evening:
"How are we gonna reach the young guns, the 'Garrett Camps' in their dorm rooms right now?" Answer back: "Reach them at university. Do free beer and pizza events on campus and get them to connect to the people here tonight."
"Geography doesn't matter, it's wherever the best ideas are."
"This kind of event is exactly what we need. A way to connect under-the-radar startups with people who can help them. That's what's been missing."
"Tech isn't only about pure software development. We have to ensure we include tech-driven startup innovation, like some of the companies we see here at our table tonight."
A selection of images from the event:
(below) Garrett Camp is introduced by Pat Lor
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