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June Startup Drinks + Montreal Girl Geeks

Startup Drinks has joined forces with Montreal’s Girl Geeks to bring you the networking juggernaut of the summer!

On location will be another fine installment in the Montreal Girl Geek speaker series featuring local tech entrepreneur Christine Renaud (E-180).  Christine will talk about her travels in social entrepreneurship in her talk entitled “The Good, The Lucrative and the Web Friendly”.

Here’s the deal:

The Date:

• Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Times:

• 5pm: Montreal Girl Geeks, featuring Christine Renaud.  Check out their blog for more details! You MUST register to reserve your berth as space is limited.
• 6pm: Startup Drinks madness will kick off at 6pm until whenever with beer, networking and snacks.  Registration is recommended at techentreprise!

The Place:

• UPSTAIRS (as in, not downstairs) at Brutopia,  1219 Crescent St (south of St-Catherine), Metro Guy-Concordia

The Cost:

• Nothing, nada, zip.  Both events are free and you can come to one or other or both. As always, everyone is welcome!

Thanks to Tanya McGinnity for her collaboration on what promises to be a great night!

See you there!

Robin

Startup Drinks - May 27, 2009

It’s great to see so many startup enthusiasts out in force and we’re set to do it all again, as we do on the last Wednesday of every month. You are most welcome to bring friends and colleagues. We’ve been seeing 60+ people through the doors and I would love to keep the pace!

Let the drinks and networking begin at Brutopia this Wednesday, 27 May from 5:30pm until whenever.

You can register soon at techentreprise! Techentreprise helps you to connect with the people you meet and even post your own items.  But wait, there’s more! You also get a gorgeous name tag on the night and satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping us to plan the best event possible.

Reminder: Startup Drinks al fresco, Wednesday, April 29

Come on out this Wednesday, April 29 from 5:30pm to Brutopia (Crescent St, just south of Ste-Catherine) for beers and startup mayhem.  The terrasse will be in full effect!

All are welcome!

Registration is now open at TechEntreprise!

Reminder: Startup Drinks this Wednesday!

Mark it in your calendar folks:  Startup Drinks month at Brutopia (Crescent St, just south of Ste-Catherine), on March 25 from 5:30pm.  Look forward to seeing you there!

Register now at TechEntreprise!

March Startup Drinks - Spring Into Action!

Startup Drinks is back this month at Brutopia (Crescent St, just south of Ste-Catherine), on March 25 from 5:30pm.  Happy hour prices will be in effect and maybe - just maybe - we can get a taste of their terasse.

There are no presentations to distract people from making their own fun.   If you think you’ve got a good idea, this is the place to find a sounding board.  If you want to get a taste of the tech community generally and the startup community specifically, this is your spot.  Everyone is welcome!

Registrations are open soon at TechEntreprise!

Hope to see you there,

Robin

Winners of StartupEmpire Contest Announced

Thank you to everyone who submitted entries to the StartupEmpire giveaway. The quality of the writing and thinking was excellent and it was inspirational hearing so many people wanting to further their entrepreneurial careers. Our hats off to all of you.

We only had 10 tickets to giveaway unfortunately so Austin and I had to make some tough choices. The good news for anyone who wasn’t selected is that there have never been more entrepreneurial events happening across Canada. I hope to meet all of the companies at one of these events at some point in the future.

So here is the list of winners (in alphabetical order):

• Chris Advansun (DramaVida)
• Bryan Bogensberger (Reasonably Smart)
• Leonardo Borda
• Felipe Coimbra (YOWTrip)
• Dan MacGrady (IntegrateSales)
• Paolo Mazza (Alexandria High)
• Chris Pyper (MyWebVine)
• Christine Renaud (E180)
• Raul Rupsingh (Softshell Computers)
• Reynold Xin

Congratulations everyone. We’ll see you all at the conference in a few days.

Contest - 10 Free Tickets to StartupEmpire Available

Flow Ventures, Austin Hill and AngelSoft are co-sponsoring a contest to help 10 entrepreneurs attend next week’s StartupEmpire for free. This is going to be a great event to focus on building new companies in lean times but we realized that, for some, the cost of admission and travel might be a problem. Winners of the contest will receive:

• Free admission to the conference
• A $100 subsidy for travel (which we’re asking GTA-area people to donate to those traveling from farther away)
• Two great business books: Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki, and Randy Komisar’s The Monk and the Riddle
• Some discounted and some free passes to post your funding pitch on AngelSoft’s OpenDeals program which will be seen by Angels and VCs across North America

Here are the questions we’d like you to answer as part of the contest:

1. If you are a startup tell us about your company, size, market, product and what stage you are at in your growth. (If you are not part of a formed startup but) If you are an entrepreneur, programmer or aspiring entrepreneur tell us about your background, your plans as an entrepreneur. Tell us what you’ve done to advance your entrepreneurial aspirations.
2. Why do you want to attend Startup Empire - what do you want to accomplish there?
3. What are the 3 questions that you would want answered by any of the speakers @ StartupEmpire?

Send your answers to startupempire [@] brudderventures.com by Saturday November 8th and we’ll announce the winners ASAP.

Free MS Software for Startups

Microsoft has just launched a new startup initiative called BizSpark which provides free Microsoft software to startups. What software?

• MS Visual Studio Pro
• SQL Server
• Windows Vista, XP, Server etc.
• Office & Project
• Sharepoint
• And premium MSDN subscriptions for all

These are not only development licenses but production/hosting licenses as well so this is a good deal. To qualify you have to be a private company in software with less than $1 million in revenue. The program is free but there is a $100 charge when you leave the program. Also, after 3 years you’ll have to revert to a normal paying customer (but then again, you’ll be making more than $1 million already, right?).

You also have to be sponsored by a partner but you can do so through Flow (just shoot us an email).

You don’t have to be building your application on .NET so I’m pretty sure there’s something for almost everyone, even people building Web 2.0 apps on LAMP. I know one of the people behind Microsoft’s emerging business group, Yi-Jian Ngo. He has a great blog about core infrastructure issues and he’s a real believer in startups.

This is a new program so we’ll have to check back when people sign up and can provide feedback. But I’d say getting free software is a great way to build lean startups.