Techvibes Blog on BC TIA

Vancouver-born Peerflix acquired by Live Universe

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:18:11 +0000

Danny Robinson of Bootup Labs & Strutta blogged yesterday about the acquisition of Peerflix by Live Universe - a company started by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan.

Peerflix is a company I founded back in 2004 with Billy McNair. I’m happy to announce that LiveUniverse, started by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan, has acquired Peerflix.com. Terms of the deal will not be disclosed.

Peerflix started as a peer-to-peer version of Netflix where users traded the DVDs they own with each other for $0.99 each. Later Peerflix morphed into a much more lucrative business called the Peerflix Media Ad Network. Kind of an ad network in the movie industry vertical. In the process, Peerflix acquired TheMovieBlog which helped to achieve critical mass.

Most people don't know that Peerflix was actually founded a year earlier by Robinson and Tim Stewart (currently CTO of GiveMeaning.com). After a mention in the New York Times and a resulting flurry of interest from VCs in the U.S. in early 2004, Robinson recruited Bily McNair and opened an office in Palo Alto. In March 2007, Robinson consolidated Peerflix in California, appointed McNair as CEO, and left to work on Strutta locally.

The International Language of Hockey: Stats

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:07:09 +0000

Vancouver's Pointstreak.com announced yesterday the release of its multi-language application within Pointstreak's real-time scoring and official statistics system. Stats. Pointstreak's latest innovation will allow visitors to Pointstreak generated web pages the ability to toggle between various languages, such as English, German and Russian.

As Pointstreak continues to expand into the elite hockey leagues of Europe, most recently the German Ice Hockey Federation, the Norwegian Ice Hockey Federation, the Belarus Ice Hockey Association and the Estonian Ice Hockey Association, the need for multi-language capability was essential. The multi-language ability is currently supported in the international version of "Pointstreak PRO", the sub-category of Pointstreak Stats that is geared towards the needs of professional, collegiate, and junior leagues.

"With global competition increasing for the attention of the sports fan, Pointstreak's multi-language application gives our customers the edge" said Gregg Sayer, Pointstreak's VP of Communications, "Now our clients utilizing 'Pointstreak PRO' can deliver real-time scores and stats not only in English but in other languages of their choice. This new application provides our clients with access to a much larger fan base without borders."

Smart move considering the renewed interest in professional hockey in Russia. The controversial Kontinential Hockey League (KHL) kicked off it's inaugural season this week with Jaromir Jagr, Ray Emery, and Axelander Radulov suiting up. The KHL is shaking up the market for professional hockey players by offering the only alternative league since the WHA.

VEF Momentum Launches

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:44:46 +0000

The young turks behind VEF's Momentum haven't wasted any time getting things rolling. Since we last mentioned them, they've launched their web site, and have announced their first event:

The night will begin with icebreakers and introductions, followed by an invigorating presentation by Geordie Rose, the founder and Chief Technology Officer of D-Wave Systems. Geordie founded D-Wave out of UBC in 1999 and has been instrumental in building D-Wave into a successful Quantum Computing company. He will be offering his experience in starting his business, getting financing and navigating his way through Vancouver's entrepreneurship scene. He'll close with his insights on how Vancouver has transitioned over the last several years into a technology entrepreneurship hub. The night will conclude with a question-answer period followed by networking and drinks. Refreshments will be served.

Date: Tuesday September 30th
Time: 6:30-10pm
Location: Newly established “Tunnel Multi Lounge”
Address: 622 W.Pender St., Vancouver: www.entertunnel.com
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Geordie Rose, Founder, CTO D-Wave Systems
Theme: “Building momentum in Vancouver: Lessons for a young entrepreneur.”

Light dinner will be served & registration will be capped at 150 due to occupancy restrictions. You can register for the event here, and tickets are free for early birds until September 23rd ($5 thereafter). See you there!

How about we just stop calling it the technology community?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:32:09 +0000

A lot of people were upset by the mysterious Kevin Curry's post on Techvibes, seeing it as sort of an ad hominem attack on the Vancouver technology community, not to mention a personal jab at some of its better known entrepreneurs. Mostly it reminded me of a joke a former colleague used to make in meetings when poking fun at how big Telco companies operated. He'd say "I'm not here to solve problems; I'm hear to point fingers and assign blame."

But I've been thinking about the issues raised in the article and the ensuing comments and I wonder if we're making this debate far too complicated. Perhaps the answer is more fundamentally to do with the thorny issue of actually defining the technology community and technology companies.

Here's an idea... How about we stop talking about the technology community altogether. In fact, let's even stop talking about technology companies and focus instead on the heart of the matter: the natural evolution of every business from idea, to start-up, to break-even, to glorious profitability. These are the different phases in a company's life in which it needs radically different kinds of support, leadership and, yes, community. The similarities between technology and non-technology businesses in their different life stages far outweigh their differences, but for some reason we've cordoned off tech businesses in the belief that they live and die by their own special set of rules.

Virtually every great company has achieved its success by creating an innovative product, but also by thoroughly understanding and executing on sales and distribution. Innovation can be as simple as making something more cheaply than anyone else, or as complex as creating an entirely new channel for sales. These are very difficult things to do, and historically the tech. community has neglected helping entrepreneurs garner a better understanding of how they're done.

Now you might say that it makes more sense to invest all of your resources in engineering and building a first-rate product than in what comes next. After all, isn't the job of the start-up first and foremost to make something great? Yes it is, but it's misleading to think of the product as being distinct from how it will get to market, and this false distinction contributes to what so many start-ups find themselves doing: running extremely fast only to arrive very quickly at the brick wall that is a product with no distribution. And worse still, no meaningful plan for distribution.

Investors and the technology community as a whole are often equally guilty of encouraging start-ups to defer or ignore anything other than the product, which creates a vicious circle of building things simply for the sake of building them. Which in turn produces a lot of companies and products that probably no-one really wants, needs or cares about. Which in turn provides lots of ammunition to those who like to sit on the sidelines and throw mud.

So perhaps the broken nature of early stage funding for Vancouver technology companies can best be addressed by not thinking of them as "technology companies" with their own special set of rules. Instead they are simply early stage companies that, like every other early stage company that's gone before, need guidance in understanding the different stages they'll have to go through to get from initial concept to commercial success.

Don't get me wrong, I like DemoCamp and Launch Party as much as the next person, and in the past I've even been foolishly critical of DemoCamp for opening the doors to non-tech businesses. But I'd like to see a more inclusive community, which accepts that, first and foremost, we're all in the early stages of building businesses, and our challenges are more to do with the early stage bit than the industries in which we operate.

It seems to me that this approach would do two things: open the doors for a whole heap of support and guidance from outside our own little circle; and silence the critics who see our insular nature as an opportunity to attack.

OneMove Wants to Run Complete Real Estate Transaction Process

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:13:16 +0000

OneMove Technologies took the first spot on Business in Vancouver's Fastest Growing Companies list. Over 1,000 lawyers use their web based software, e-conveyance, to process ~6,000 real estate transactions per month. Now they're looking to expand their context:

“We have the banks, we have the title insurance companies. Now we’re bringing the realtors on [board],” said Martin Johnson, OneMove’s president and CEO.

The Vancouver company’s primary revenue sources are lawyers and notaries, but in July it launched e-conveyance 8.0. The latest upgraded version of its software includes a new user interface for real estate agents.

Realtors can now begin a real estate transaction through the online platform and then invite lawyers and notaries to access the paperless files.

OneMove’s goal is to electronically link together all the participants in the property transfer process.

OneMove's market has been limited to BC, Ontario, and the UK because jurisdictions must first allow the submission of such documents with digital signatures. In BC, electronic filing of land titles is set to become mandatory by 2011, which will be a boon to OneMove's business.

CounterPath Achieves ~40,000% Growth in Four Years

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:58:48 +0000

CounterPath was recently profiled in Business in Vancouver as one of their top five fastest growing companies in BC. While originally offering only software for end users to make calls from their computer, CounterPath has grown to 145 employees and provides complete VoIP solutions to an impressive list of big clients including Cisco, AT&T, BT, and Nortel.

The combination of a growing market for Internet telephone technology, quality products, a trio of acquisitions and a multinational clientele has added up to a 39,483% growth rate between 2003 and 2007 for CounterPath Corp.

That’s good enough to put the Vancouver telephony software maker in the No. 2 spot on Business in Vancouver’s list of the fastest growing companies in B.C.

CounterPath was a fledgling startup back in 2003 when it generated a mere $14,500 in revenue. That revenue total hit more than $5.7 million in 2007, and the company’s growth curve has continued upward since then. CounterPath reported almost $9.1 million in revenue in its 2008 fiscal year.

They have made two acquisitions in the last year: Kanata-based FirstHand Technologies and Chicago-based BridgePort Networks. CounterPath CEO Donovan Jones expects that the company will become profitable "within a 12-month time frame. Maybe 18 months".

Group Texting with Tatango.com

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:19:33 +0000

Seattle-based startup Tatango.com launched out of private beta today with their mobile group communication platform. Tatango has over 500,000 users nationwide and has sent over 25 million text messages since their private launch in October 2007. Tatango aims to revolutionize group text messaging, allowing any group the ability to send and receive group text messages for free from the web or their own mobile phone.

“SMS has become the most popular form of communication, yet there has been no website that has made this technology easily accessible to groups. We’ve developed Tatango exclusively, to fill this demand.” Said Derek Johnson, CEO and founder of Tatango. “Our mission at Tatango has always been to improve group communication through the use of mobile phones, with Tatango, we have achieved this.

Tatango, unlike its competitors, provides a group text messaging platform that caters to a wide variety of groups, ranging from small recreational athletic teams to large organizations and businesses. Tatango offers a completely intuitive feature set that allows any group to easily connect their circle of contacts, regardless of mobile device or carrier.

Tatango is funded by the Bellingham Angel Group and currently only available in the United States.

Globalive Pledges to Launch Canadian Cellular Service in Mid-2009

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:30:48 +0000

The CBC ran a headline that's sure to please many Canadians - "New cellphone carrier launching in 2nd half of 2009". That new carrier is Globalive, who bought $442 millon of the Canadian wireless spectrum in the recent auction, covering every province except Québec. They aim to start next year in five cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa.

Of course, building out a national cellular network requires lots of money and IT World Canada reports that they are on the hunt for investment. $1.9 billion over a decade is the estimate of Globalive CEO Anthony Lacavera. A large chuck of the investment may come from Egyptian based telco Orascom, pending a lift of foreign ownership restrictions. For better or worse, it seems that foreign ownership is necessary at this time for mobile competition in Canada to get off the ground.

Globalive has jumped into the social media foray, launching Wireless Soapbox, a site where people can make suggestions on what they would like to see in a cellular service and vote on others suggestions. From there, they also link out to a Twitter account and Facebook page. This is a great start in customer relations, where the bar to beat the incumbants is low enough to trip over.