
Bootup Labs is done - kareemm
http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2010/11/22/bootup-labs-complete-next-stop-bcic/
======
dmix
You may remember BootUp Labs made the top of HN earlier this year after they
refused to provide funding to a startup AFTER the startup moved to British
Columbia. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266723>

The comments in that thread are any indication, they're reputation was badly
damaged.

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fuzzylizard
If you are going to name your company a bunch of letters, shouldn't you put
somewhere on your site what those letters stand for? So what the hell does
BCIC mean?

~~~
AndyIngram
It means "British Columbia Innovation Council" here is a link to the site.
<http://www.bcic.ca>

~~~
fuzzylizard
As others have said, I checked the site and couldn't find the meaning anywhere
I looked. Granted, I did not check the entire site word for word, but you
would think they would make it obviously clear somewhere what the letters
stood for.

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mdda
BC = British Columbia. It's pretty remarkable that abbreviation isn't spelled
out on the front page of Bootup labs, nor BCIC. Maybe I'm on the wrong coast
to understand it intuitively.

~~~
jamesteow
Maybe. Most people I know here in SF know that BC stands for British Columbia.

~~~
barmstrong
I live in SF. Could just have easily been Boston College.

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togasystems
What's left in Vancouver?

~~~
allertonm
SAP have a big site downtown (formerly Crystal/Business Objects.) Microsoft
have a site downtown (in Crystal's old space, ironically enough.) Apple has a
secret site (via their 2005 acquisition of Schemasoft.) Vision Critical has
approx 160 people in the old Pivotal building.

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.)

~~~
yesno
Microsoft here is just a temporary buffer for those who can't get H1-B visas.
Once they're approved, MS will ship them to HQ, Redmond.

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?

~~~
allertonm
Not sure your comment about Microsoft is entirely correct - I know that was
the stated intention when MS started the site but I see some evidence that
they are hiring locally.

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.

~~~
hello_moto
Microsoft hires locally for MGS BigPark (their game studio). The rest are
still waiting for their H1-B. It's not in MS DNA to operate like the way
Google does. Microsoft prefers their employees for a product/group to be
within the same building. (Knew this cause I used to work there).

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.

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venturebros
I have been looking at relocating to Vancouver in the future. It seems like a
nice place to live but has a horrible tech/startup community. I don't get why
that is.

~~~
yesno
It's a nice place to live. Period. Can't go further than that.

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"

~~~
kareemm
Generally this is true. That said, there are founders who've chosen the "work
hard" over "enjoy life" choices here. It's just a question of getting
connected into that community.

