Bootup Labs is done
blog.bootuplabs.com
blog.bootuplabs.com
The comments in that thread are any indication, they're reputation was badly damaged.
They're a crown corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_corporations_of_Canada)
From their site: "BCIC develops entrepreneurial talent and commercializes technology through startup companies and partnerships between industry and academia. BCIC focuses on competitively positioning British Columbia in today's global knowledge economy in order to provide significant employment opportunities and a high standard of living for British Columbians."
In fact, I still find it really frustrating right now.
Any specific company taking the reigns on the startup community? (like Sprouter in Toronto)
I am asking as I am planning on moving to Vancouver and want to see how the ecosystems is out there.
Bootup Entrepreneurial Society still runs events. Subscribe to startupdigest.com's Vancouver edition to get a finger on the pulse.
Email me if you want to learn more about living here and working on startups (url in profile, email at that url).
Crystal/BOBJ/SAP has acted as an academy company for enterprise BI software in the same way that EA has for gaming. There are a few BI companies started by ex-Crystal people and rumour has it that some companies have opened sites here to soak up some of the post-SAP diaspora (Qliktech for example.)
Don't expect those kind of businesses to get much love here on HN, but there is still plenty of tech employment in this town and I'd say the prospects were getting better not worse.
(FWIW I am a former Crystal/BOBJ/SAP employee and now work at Indicee, a SaaS BI startup.)
apike, one of the commenter in this thread, used to work for Apple, he might be able to give more info (and the location of this secret building).
Vision Critical looks promising since they seem to be growing quite rapidly. Another company in the same level with Vision Critical is Elastic Path.
90Degree Software used to provide BI solution as well and has a few ex-BO people (seems most of them came from Sales though). They got bought by MS either last year or this year.
One thing that strikes fear for me is the stability of these local companies. I saw somewhere that Vision Critical did a round of lay-off before. A friend of mine was going to replace my co-op position with 90Degree software couple years ago was met by a "Sorry, we made a mistake in filling our government paperwork thus unable to give any co-op opportunities for this intake". After that, I haven't heard any hiring/co-op placement anymore from 90Degree Software.
I also heard that once BOBJ was acquired by SAP, the culture seem to take a hit. Some people seem unhappy with the new overlord's action (cutting costs across the board). I suppose that's quite normal post-acquisition?
Indicee seems like a promising company a'la Web 2.0 for BI (saw the website, saw your CEO demo-ing the product in front of vicious audiences). When I browsed LinkedIN last time about Indicee, I saw many short-term employees, say 8months to 1.5 years kind of employees plus a view contractors. Care to share stories about that?
90Degrees was founded by a former colleague of mine, and they definitely hired a lot more than just sales from BOBJ, actually I'd have said it was the opposite - they took a lot of tech guys from my old team at a time when morale got pretty low a year or so after BOBJ took over. Most of those guys relocated to Redmond after MS took over, a few are back at SAP.
Being acquired by a larger company will affect the culture. Most people who date from the days of Crystal look back fondly on that time. Things definitely took a hit after BOBJ took over but if you look back the site thrived under BOBJ. It may have helped that BOBJ was really only 50% bigger than Crystal at the time. SAP is a different story, they were about 10x the size of BOBJ. I left, which tells you something about my morale there.
There has been a bit of turnover at Indicee - there was a period (prior to my arrival) when they were using more contractors etc - but we have a pretty solid full-time team now. We just pushed out a 2.0 of the product which is a substantial reworking.
I personally would put Indicee at the level of Vision Critical and Elastic Path in terms of the technical, the business, and the market. I hope you guys would do well.
I never understand what Bootup Labs startups do to be honest. I also don't understand what these "Social Media" startups are trying to build. Maybe I'm too young to understand the business models.
I'd prefer to see more startups that deal with serious businesses. But that's just me.
Let's recap:
- EA Burnaby/Vancouver laid off twice in 2 years
- Disney Propaganda laid off 100-200 people recently
- Nexon (or something) close the door in 2009, 90 ppl gone.
- Radical, 2008, laid-off 100 people, 2010, laid-off 90+.
- Nokia, mid-2009, closed its vancouver game studio, 100 ppl.
That's a lot of "technical" workers for such a small city like Vancouver.
Life is about series of choices:
- Work hard vs enjoy life
- Spend time writing unit-tests vs hack and go home by 5 PM
- Come in early 8.30 and build relationship/culture vs come in at 10 and make yourself a cup of coffee.
- Today is snowing, take a day off and go to Whistler vs stuck at the office along with colleagues and have a great time not just working, but share stories (again, build culture).
- Discipline vs "It's 4PM on Friday afternoon, let it go"
However, if your goal is to get rich by betting VCs' money, Vancouver isn't a good place to be. If you want to hire great people and bootstrap a company though, it's great.