Billions With Zero Knowledge

I’ve had a few conversations resulting in a few interviews that have appeared in the last couple of weeks. Here is a quick round up of the coverage.

Eric Jackson, who has a great blog on leadership, was one of the first people to ask me to answer some questions when he heard I had left Radialpoint. I recently took the time to answer his questions about working with family, Zero-Knowledge Systems early success with the media and starting companies in Montreal. You can read the interview here. Eric is also one of the bloggers helping us spread the word about Gifter.org and the Million Dollar Blog Post, check out his post about the project here. Thanks Eric.

Mark Evans who wrote about Gifter.org for his Maple Leaf 2.0 blog followed up with a few questions. You can read our follow up conversation where I answer questions about high tech innovation in Canada, Project Ojibwe, and the Gifter series of experiments (along with my typo’s - note to self: proofread) in this follow up post. Thanks Mark.

Cassandra Szklarski from Canadian Press read about David Crow’s sponsorship of the Gifter Project (thanks David) and contacted me to write an article. It appeared in the Globe and Mail on Boxing Day, as well as across Canada in other newspapers. Thanks Cassandra.

I also sat down a couple of weeks ago with Roberto Rocha who writes the Technology column for the Montreal Gazette. We spoke about a number of topics, and he included some of our discussion in this article about the health of Montreal technology community. The article mentions my friend and Barcamp organizer Fred Ngo who is working on a new startup that I’m involved with. (Who also has posted the funniest sponsorship of the Gifter.org wishes project so far - Thanks Fred.)

A couple quick clarfications to the article, where I’m quoted,

“The problem is that in Canada, the government is competing with VCs,” Hill said, citing the Business Development Bank of Canada, the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and Investissement Quebec.

This stems from a discussion we had regarding the need for a strong national strategy for early stage technology and venture capital industries. The mention of the BDC comes from our discussion of a great series of posts from Canadian VC Mark Skapinker where he does a great job making the case for a more focused Canadian strategy for supporting venture capital. Mark has done a series of posts on the differences between what he has experienced in Israel and Canada with regards to government support of venture programs. They are worth a read.

The Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and Investissement Quebec was mistakenly included in this reference. They shouldn’t have been since I believe they are doing a great job supporting early stage venture financing by acting as a fund of funds. The Caisse has invested in a number of the early stage venture capital firms in Canada. This is similar to the role that CALpers plays in Silicon Valley and the team at the Caisse deserves a lot of credit their support of early stage venture capital firms in Canada.

Also the following quote wasn’t clear in it’s meaning,

“This confuses the situation for entrepreneurs. Tech execs don’t go to angels here. Lawyers do.”

The point I was trying to make is that our technology executives aren’t becoming angels often enough. Too often I’ve seen lawyers, accountants and other high net worth individuals playing the role of angels for technology startups in Canada. I don’t see a comparable level of investment activity from technology entrepreneurs that I’ve seen in other areas such as Boston, or the Valley. Entrepreneurs should be able to easily network and reach technology executives who are experienced at early stage angel investing. This is slowly changing, but the early stage angel ecosystem and how it works with VCs and entrepreneurs is still broken in Canada.

My minor clarifications notwithstanding, the article makes a great point about the underlooked potential in the Montreal technology community. Roberto has written about some other Montreal technology community events and I think he’s doing a great thing by showcasing local stories instead of just reprinting what I can read on any newswire or technology industry blog. Thanks Roberto.

Mathew Ingram also posted something about Gifter.org. He mentions another cool project in social giving, which comes the team at Cambrian House, the Robin Hood Fund. I met the team from Cambrian House at Web 2.0 and they are a cool team, and the Robin Hood fund is a great community project.

There are lot’s of other people writing about Gifter, we are tracking some of their posts at the Gifter.org blog.

On Thu 28 Dec 2006.