It’s a rare day that I find the opportunity to write about entrepreneurism and Canada in a single post. It’s rarer still that I’m able to do it twice in one day. But apparently today is that day. Earlier today I wrote about changes to Canadian tax law that makes outside investments to Canadian startups less onerous. And now I have the honor of introducing you to The C100, a new Silicon Valley based mentoring and networking organization for Canadian entrepreneurs.
The C100 is the brainchild of Anthony Lee (Altos Ventures) and Chris Albinson (Panorama Capital). There are 250,000 Canadians living in Northern California, Albinson told me earlier today, many of whom are in tech (he and Lee are among them). And they need an organization like TiE, which was originally founded for south Asians, to help them help each other.
The organization will also help Canadian startups and entrepreneurs get a foot in the door in Silicon Valley. Canadian incubators Bootup Labs, FounderFuel and Xtreme Labs are all sponsors of The C100 and will bring Canadians down to Silicon Valley for various networking events.
The C100 has successful charter members who pay $800 to be part of the organization. But general members who are the type of people who will want to get to know the charter members, can join for free, here.
Happy to hear this, is there already canadians who went successfull in S.V.?
I think flickr.com is the most prominent example of Canadians making it big in California. Both founders Stewart and Caterina were originally from Vancouver.
Its nice to see Canada get some coverage here on Techcrunch. I am surprised you guys haven’t looked much at what is happening in Waterloo Ontario with the University of Waterloo’s Accelerator Centre. This is the same University that supplies a good portion of RIM’s workforce (their office is plunked right on campus). They’ve got some good stuff coming out as the early batches mature and start to need VC funding.
Completely agree. The Velocity residence on the University of Waterloo campus is also an awesome startup incubator (http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/). 70 entrepreneurial students together in one residence are bound to start pumping out ideas and startups soon – especially when they’re provided with resources + connections and pushed to produce something by the end of the 4-month term.
Agree! Here is another awesome startup in Kitchener-Waterloo area. Our name is very canadain-IGLOO Software(www.igloosoftware.com).
The Canadian Consulate in the Silicon Valley has had a program for a couple of years where they bring Canadian Startups for 3 months to the Bay Area. They rent spaces @ Plug and Play Sunnyvale.
Wait, I thought the guys that run Bootup Labs hated Silicon Valley and the thought of Canadian companies having to come to Silicon Valley made them cringe. It is a good thing they were able to let go of their arrogance and pride and face reality.
Amazing what a year or two can do to ones humility.
huhh? What ever gave you that idea? Obviously you haven’t spent much time with us, or you’d know that wasn’t true at all. We love the valley, always have.
Thanks Mike for plug – C100 has its launch dinner tomorrow in San Francisco. Thanks to all that got C100 up and running. Looking forward to helping out the next Club Penguin, AbeBooks, PlentyofFish, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Tynt, and Radian6!
Don’t forget istockphoto.com and I’m sure many others.
Go Canada Go!!!
They need to reach out to Digital Moose too.
>And they need an organization like TiE, which was originally founded for south Asians, to help them help each other.
Right. There are about 400,000 Arizonians in California; should they organize under the umbrella Arizonian-Californians? If you come from a culture with values and customs so different from the US, there is a point to organize – TIE facillitates a form of business assimilation. With Canada- whats the difference- you spend the wekeend getting drunk on a case of Labatt’s instead of Bud? What is this organization rallying around except the famed Canadian insecurity complex, knowing in the back of their mind that Canada was the back up choice of immigrants who didn’t have the qualifications to emigrate to the US, and by default ended up in Canada. Thats what Canada is: Plan B. They need an organization to represent Canadian-Californians as much as people from Vermont in California need their own business group. Give me a break.
Sounds like you need a support group for asshole-californians.
I think this excellent as such organizations have shown a tremendous capability to inspire, inform and infect aspiring entrepreneurs. TiE has been phenomenally successful. But it should be noted that TiE is not just for South Asians. TiE now stands for The International Entrepreneur. In many of it’s chapters around the world, Indians and South Asians are not the overwhelming majority of participants.
And TiE loves Canadians too!
Go Canada Startups!