What does a Venture Partner do?

Most people know me as an early-stage investor in now over 30 internet companies through w media ventures and more recently, as a co-founder of the Vancouver-based start-up accelerator GrowLab. Lesser known is the fact that I also work as a venture partner for Munich-based Acton Capital. So what does a venture partner actually do? […]

Demo Day

Today is GrowLab‘s first demo day with the 5 companies from the first cohort showing to over 50 investors what they have worked on since mid August. I am incredibly proud of all of the teams – they worked very, very hard for this moment and I have no doubt that all of them will […]

What the BC technology industry really needs

Gary Mason had a great article in the Globe and Mail yesterday analyzing the performance of some of the BC government organizations charged to drive forward the tech sector in this province. And this paragraph probably sums it up best: There are many well-meaning and hard-working people at both the innovation council and Premier’s technology […]

Announcing GrowLab, a new start-up accelerator for Vancouver

With the growing success of YCombinator and Techstars in the past couple of years, accelerators have become a crucial piece of developing a vibrant start-up ecosystem – a crucial piece that was unfortunately missing in Vancouver after Bootup Labs stopped taking in new companies in fall last year. So I am extremely excited that we […]

Amazon’s new Vancouver office is great news

Yesterday’s news that Amazon is opening an engineering office in Vancouver is a really good one for the city. While development offices can never replace having “real” anchor companies in a community, they can help attract and train talented developers that at some stage leave the company and start new companies. It is this typical […]