Visits at GrowLab last week!

Last week was a busy one for the GrowLab cohort as things are now in full swing.

Contractually founder Martin Ertl

Martin Ertl (@martinertl), founder of Contractual.ly came by this past Tuesday and gave the GL cohorts a demo of the product he’s built. The platform makes contract negotiation easy and as a benefit to the cohorts each one of them received 6 free months of service. With funding rounds on the horizon this is a nice benefit for managing contract flow.

GL Mentor Reza Kazemmipour

Also Tuesday we had GrowLab Mentor Reza Kazemipour @rezakaz visit the office and spend a few hours with the Cohorts, talking customer ecosystems, pitching, fundraising, and a wide array of other topics.

Reza was Silicon Valley knowledge in a box. I was mostly impressed at the way he can see the overall vision. Sometimes with the day to day, us entrepreneurs can get into a tunnel vision, especially focusing on just the short term revenue goals. Reza gave us a great view of the customer ecosystem. - Kenny at BlueBat

 

Reza gave a candid view from the other side of the table on how to approach a VC. Find a bond and zero in on it. Make an impression in the first couple minutes or you don’t stand a chance. Talk about y

ourself first, it’s you they’ll invest in. – Matt at Wantering

 

DemoCamp 14

Of course later Tuesday night was the much anticipated and heavily attended Vancouver DemoCamp 14, which was hosted in the GrowLab space and a wonderful event. You can read coverage of the event over at PixelCrafters and Techvibes. Congrats to the night’s winners: BigMama, KarmaHire  and For Two Please!

Softlayer

Wednesday we kept the momentum up with Softlayer stopping by to share their motto of “innovation or die” in regards to online and dedicated server hosting. After digging into the needs of our the GrowLab Cohort, Softlayer hosted a happy hour open to the Vancouver tech community to come and talk about the type of server dramas that keep devs and IT professionals up at night. Huge thanks for the insight and support from the Softlayer team.

BDC

No rest for the weary! Thursday rolled around and the GL cohort had the much anticipated BDC convertible note info session. The session was aimed at making sense of convertible notes along with other types of investment structures, preparing founders for the conversations they’ll have with investors.

Thanks again to Mike Mahon and Dominique Belanger for stopping by!

Tynt founder Derek Ball

Later that day, the cohorts got more war stories from serial entrepreneur Derek Ball, the founder of Tynt (acquired by 33Across). His insights were powerful for the founders in the room, sharing ideas like, ”Don’t take on a partner just for the sake of taking on a partner” and “Sometimes firing a co-founder has to happen. It’s not great, but it has to happen.”

Onward for the Cohorts!

Excited for next week. Things never stop around here.