A few days ago I SHARED the story of Vancouver-born tech startup accelerator, GrowLab, as well as the Grow 2011 conference focusing on entrepreneurship and technology which took place at the convention centre last week.
Debbie Landa and her crew from Dealmaker Media set the stage for THIS incredible lineup of speakers as part of the 3-day conference. Registered participants were entrepreneurs, other folks working in startups and in the tech sector, Silicon Valley angel investors and venture capitalists as well as a smattering of journalists. 675 people (mostly Canadians and some Americans) spent Thursday mostly seated in those somehow-bouncy-backed chairs that the new convention centre boasts and judging by the response I got from talking to other attendees and watching the buzz on Twitter and other blogs, combined with my own fantastic experience there, I would say that Grow 2011 was an overwhelming success.
The host was Howard Lindzon who is the co-founder and CEO of StockTwits, a social network for traders and investors to share real-time ideas and information. With that description you might expect a bit of a snoozer but I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud during his introductory speech and then almost every time he got up on stage to do segues and make introductions. A more entertaining host at a conference I have never seen, he's actually kindof ruined these things for me now as he's set the bar a little too high.
Howard Lindzon of StockTwits warms the crowd up
I attended as media so I could write this story but, as I let slip in my lead up POST, we're in the very first stages of planning on bringing Canada Is Awesome national, based on the success of Vancouver Is Awesome and what we've done here. We're essentially starting up a tech startup! I let the organizers know that I'd be covering the conference but I'd also be attending as an entrepreneur, which they agreed was a unique angle. We're so early stages with the idea that I don't yet have a "deck", there is no business plan and we've got a ways to go before we'll have any sort of presentation for investors. So Grow 2011 was pretty much the perfect place for me to gain some inspiration and glean some important perspectives on starting up a startup (and what to do once we've started 'er up). I walked away with so much from this experience, as I'm sure most others in attendance did.
Like any great conference, one of the highlights was the networking and connections made in the halls between speakers. I got to chat with the founder, Debbie Landa, about how we had crossed paths in 1997 while I was working on a dot com (which I then sold... I'll tell you more about that at a later date, maybe after I've finished our deck). I met with Melissa Kwan who founded a new Vancouver company called Flat World Applications and is launching a really cool Vancouver-centric mobile app soon. I had to fan the flames of my fandom while introducing myself to Boris Wertz of GrowLab. I finally spent some time talking with Paul Burger, co-founder of Cargoh, and he then introduced me to Robert Lewis who is the president and editor-in-chief of Techvibes who are, in my eyes, the Canadian authority on the tech sector online. Lastly, I lurked while Ryan Holmes, one of the founders of Invoke and Hootsuite, was interviewed by Techvibes TV, then I chatted with him about a few things, one being the fact that we both were carrying the same Herschel laptop bag.
Ryan Holmes of Invoke being interviewed for Techvibes TV
Highlights from the speakers and panels for me included:
- As previously mentioned, Howard Lindzon and his borderline hilarity he delivered as the host. I think a large part of the success is that he knew a lot of the panelists and could give them a good ribbing. And those he didn't know, he wasn't scared to mess with them either.
- Hundreds of hands raising in the air when the question was asked "How many of you here started or work at a startup?".
- Cameron Herold, author of the book Double Double and formerly of 1-800-Got-Junk, encouraging entrepreneurs to embrace the ups and downs, and sharing thoughts on the stages of managing a brand. From the beginning where "Uninformed Optimism" leads you, and ending with "Informed Optimism" and how each of the stages inbetween are equally important.
- Entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, Mark Suster, encouraging 50 coffee meetings, "The entrepreneur’s equivalent of 10,000 hours".
- Lastly, one of the most awesome moments of the conference came late in the day during the panel on "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Acquired". Amin Zoufonoun from Facebook and Neeraj Arora from Google were so put off by what practically amounted to a verbal assault from steaming-mad-at-investors Jason Bailey of Super Rewards that they shook hands and had a bit of a truce right there on stage. Social network competitors hugging it out after being called out at Grow 2011!
In conclusion, this conference was a must-attend and I can't wait until it returns next year! If you couldn't make it and want a super detailed account of what the speakers presented then you should head over to TechVibes and check out their 4000 word PLAY BY PLAY. Also, Gillian Shaw of the Vancouver Sun wrote up bit more boiled down 10 LESSONS LEARNED from Grow 2011.
See you at Grow 2012!
