I'd recommend Slicehost. Cheap, reliable and slick.
the setup is usually easy, plenty of resources online to get you going and if you don't want to play the command-line game to get certain things on there you can usually pay the hosting company themselves to 'consult' for your vps.
I'd also put my hat in for slicehost. the support is great, imo.
also: buy a vps with the most memory you can afford, you can run a bunch of sites on a 256 slice, but a few rails apps can really chew that up. (don't know if you do rails or not)
edit: apparently there is https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/new?referrer=14676099...
And Dreamhost is the king of shared hosting. Fast, cheat, great customer service, employee-owned.
I live in the Vancouver area as well, what is the url to your site? what does your startup do?
the company i work for isn't a startup. we do client work and we needed a reliable hosting recommendation for them.
on the side i run a small online magazine for arts and entertainment in vancouver. not exactly a startup, but we got high hopes.
no it doesn't look like your email allows for msg.
i am curious about your magazine.
post a link if you can