Does this mean I'm now a cover model?

Backbone Magazine has just published a great overview of the cleantech sector in Canada that contains quotes from a number of notable people in the space including Kirk Washington (Yaletown Venture Partners), Victoria Smith (BC Hydro), Rick Whittaker (Sustainable Development Technology Canada), Raul Pacheco-Vega (UBC), Helen Goodland (Lighthouse Sustainable Building Centre) and me. Thanks to the Globe team and Lisa Manfield the author for a great article. You can either jump to the article, to the table of contents of this issue, or to a list of all of the issues.

I’m super excited to be part of the crew (along with Bootup Entrepreneurial Society) bringing the Startup Lessons Learned conference to town via simulcast this Friday April 23rd. For those of you who don’t know, the Lean Startup movement (a derivative of lean manufacturing) was kicked off by Eric Ries, formerly of Imvu. It has blossomed in a very short time into a global movement of entrepreneurs interested in how to build fast-cycle, highly iterative startups that learn fast and minimize wasted effort.

More information on the event is below.

• REGISTRATION: http://sllyvrsimulcast.eventbrite.com/
• PRICE: $25 (regular on-site SF price = $695USD so that’s a 96.5% discount not counting the savings in travel costs.)
• SIMULCAST LOCATION: Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, 3rd floor, 163 W. Hastings St., Suite 200.

Startup Lessons Learned, San Francisco (via simulcast to Vancouver)

Startup Lessons Learned is the first event designed to unite those interested in what it takes to succeed in building a lean startup. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful lean startups.

Confirmed Speakers and Participating Mentors:

• Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (@ericries)
• Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute (@kentbeck)
• Steve Blank (@sgblank)
• Randy Komisar, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Andrew Chen, Futuristic Play (@andrew_chen)
• David Weekly, PB Works (@dweekly)
• Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics (@hnshah)
• Cindy Alvarez, KISSmetrics (@cindyalvarez)
• Ethan Bloch, Flowtown (@ebloch)
• Timothy Fitz, IMVU (@TimohtyFitz)
• Drew Houston, Dropbox (@drewhouston)
• Ash Maurya, WiredReach (@ashmaurya)
• Dave McClure (@davemcclure)
• Sean Ellis (@seanellis)
• Laura Klein (@lauraklein)
• Damon Horowitz, Aardvark / Google (@iamnottweeting)
• Max Ventilla, Aardvark / Google (@ventilla)
• Brant Cooper (@brantcooper)
• Clara Shih, Hearsay Labs (@clarashih)
• Manuel Rosso (@manuelrosso)
• Rashmi Sinha (@rashmi)
• Dan Martell, Flowtown (@danmartell)
• Brett Durrett, IMVU
• James Birchler, IMVU
• Andres Glusman, Meetup (@glusman)

Agenda

• 8 AM – 9:00 Registration
• 9:00 – 9:30 AM Welcome
  *Eric Ries, Host, Startup Lessons Learned
• 9:30 AM – 10:20 AM Build Keynote: “To Agility, and Beyond”
  * Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute
• 10:20 AM – 10:40 AM Continuous Deployment Case Study: WiredReach
  *Ash Maurya, WiredReach
• 10:40 AM – 11:00 AM Agile Development Case Study: Grockit
  *Farb Nivi, Grockit
• 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM Case Study: “But Does it Scale?”
  * Tim Fitz, James Birchler, and Brett Durrett, IMVU
• 11:30 PM – 12:15 PM But What about Design? Minimum Desirable Product
  *Andrew Chen (Futuristic Play), Laura Klein, Dave McClure, Rashmi Sinha
• 12:15 AM – 1:15 PM Lunch
• 1:15 – 2:00 PM Conversation: Getting to Plan B
  * Randy Komisar, KPCB
• 2:00 PM – 2:20 PM Minimum Viable Product Case Study: Aardvark
  *Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz, Google (Aardvark)
• 2:20 PM – 2:40 PM Pivot Case Study: Flowtown
  *Dan Martell and Ethan Bloch, Flowtown
• 2:40 PM – 3:00 PM Pivot Case Study: KISSmetrics
  *Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics
• 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM Afternoon Break
• 3:30 PM – 4:15 PM Customer Development 2.0
  *Steve Blank
• 4:15 PM – 4:35 PM Is Customer Development Marketing? Food on the Table Case Study
  *Manuel Rosso, Food on the Table
• 4:35 PM – 4:55 PM Customer Development Case Study: Dropbox
  *Drew Houston, Dropbox
• 4:55 PM – 5:15 PM Customer Development Case Study: PB Works
  *David Weekly, PBworks
• 5:15 PM – 6:00 PM Customer Development Panel
  *Cindy Alvarez, Brant Cooper, Sean Ellis, Matt Johnson

This event is intended for people on the front line of delivering products. If you are a start-up founder, an employee engaged in customer or product development role at a company of any stage, or someone at a large company looking to bring the lean startup methodology to your company, we encourage you to attend the event.

Local Simulcasts

For those outside of the Bay Area, we will be offering simulcasts of the event. Official simulcast hosts can be found below – make sure to sign up using one of the links below:

Africa

• Cape Town, South Africa http://sllconf-capetown.eventbrite.com

Asia

• Tokyo, Japan http://startuplessonslearnedtokyosimulcast.eventbrite.com

Europe

• Barcelona, Spain http://www.eventbrite.com/event/638921030
• Birmingham, UK http://sll-birmingham-uk.eventbrite.com/
• Bucharest, Romania http://sllconf-bucharest.eventbrite.com/
• Budapest, Hungary http://sllbudapest.eventbrite.com
• Cambridge, UK http://startuplessonslearnedcam.eventbrite.com/
• Copenhagen, Denmark http://sllconf2010copenhagen.eventbrite.com/
• Delft, Netherlands http://sllconf-delft.eventbrite.com/
• Edinburgh, Scotland http://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=652392323
• Gothenburg, Sweden http://gotsllconf.eventbrite.com/
• London, UK http://www.meetup.com/agile-entrepreneurship/calendar/12944310/
• Madrid, Spain http://www.eventbrite.com/event/640820712
• Munich, Germany http://www.eventbrite.com/event/650629049
• Timisoara, Romania http://www.meetup.com/The-Timisoara-Agile-Software-Meetup-Group/
• Vienna, Austria http://at.amiando.com/sllconfstream.html

North America

• Atlanta, GA http://atlantasll.eventbrite.com/
• Austin, TX http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13090413/
• Boise, Idaho http://sllconf-boise.eventbrite.com/
• Boston, MA http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Circle-Boston/calendar/13093640/
• Boston/Cambridge, MA http://dplc-lessons.eventbrite.com
• Boulder, CO http://sllconf-boulder.eventbrite.com/
• Chicago, IL http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13056515/
• Cleveland, OH http://startuplessonslearneduniversitycircle.eventbrite.com/
• Cleveland, OH http://sllsimulcastcleveland.eventbrite.com
• Grand Rapids, MI http://startupgr.eventbrite.com
• Los Angeles, CA http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13082783/
• Monterrey, NL México http://www.eventbrite.com/event/654293008
• Montreal, QC Canada Chttp://leanstartupmontreal.eventbrite.com
• New York, NY http://dplny-lessons.eventbrite.com/
• New York, NY http://www.meetup.com/lean-startup/calendar/13102326/
• New York, NY http://sllnyc.eventbrite.com
• Omaha, NE http://sllconf-omaha.eventbrite.com/
• Providence, RI http://sllconfprovidence.eventbrite.com
• Provo, UT http://wsg-lsc.eventbrite.com/
• Raleigh, NC http://www.meetup.com/lsc-rtp/calendar/13161035/
• Redmond, WA http://www.eventbrite.com/event/648075411
• San Juan, Puerto Rico http://startups.eventbrite.com/
• Toronto, CA http://startuplessons-toronto.eventbrite.com
• Twin Cities, MN http://www.meetup.com/Twin-Cities-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/12849312/
• Vancouver, BC Canada http://sllyvrsimulcast.eventbrite.com/
• Washington DC http://www.meetup.com/DC-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13068744/

Oceania

• Syndey, Australia https://s.eventarc.com/event/view/597/entry/startup-lessons-learned-simulcast-conference
• Wellington, New Zealand http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Wellington/calendar/12624714/

South America

• Belo Horizonte, Brazil http://sllconf-bhz.eventbrite.com/
• Buenos Aires, Argentina http://buenosairessll.eventbrite.com/
• Florianópolis, SC, Brazil http://www.meetup.com/Floripa-Startups/calendar/13090194/
• Santiago, Chile http://sllsantiago.eventbrite.com

• April 23: next screening session.
• April 30: early registration deadline (save $100)
• May 18: Angel Forum event.

See Bob’s information below:

Looking for Investors?   April 30 deadline for 27th Angel Forum on May 18.

30 Companies are invited to present and exhibit to pre-screened 60+ private equity investors at the 27th Angel Forum on May 18 in Vancouver. Nearly 90 investors came to the last Angel Forum, despite the economic crisis.

5 companies already selected with 13 companies in screening. April 23 – next screening session.

“The Angel Forum is about the best organized event I have attended (ranging from across Canada and the Pacific NW). And having the drumbeat going before and after is a real difference from most other events.” Christopher Procyshyn, CEO Of VanRX Pharmasystems.

Post Presentation: To drive investor investment in your company, our Investors-Only discussion right after your presentation, invites investors to join or start a term sheet/due diligence team specific to your company. We link you (via deal management software) with investors who tell us of their interest in your company.

Avoid the last day rush: Earlier applicants have a better chance of being selected as 2x as many companies usually apply than space available and selection closes when we reach maximum capacity. Review our home page and selection criteria before submitting your Company Profile here

April 23 – next screening session. Save $100 by registering before April 30 deadline.  Apply / Register here

Sponsors:  Business Development Bank – Venture Capital      Fasken Martineau        PricewaterhouseCoopers    TSX – Venture Exchange

Questions? Reach Bob Chaworth-Musters, Angel Forum-Vancouver at mailto: bob@ANGELforum.org

I’m quite excited about the work that Boyd Cohen and his wife Elizabeth Obendiente and the team are doing and happy to see that they’re getting the coverage they deserve. They have a great article written about them on Care2.com’s site. You can read the article here. In it you can learn all about how they are helping Latin Americans build cleaner community-centered kilns that help clean up the air, prevent health issues, and also return funds to the village from the sale of the carbon credits. It’s slow but necessary work.

Speakers include: Eric Ries (founder of the lean startup movement), Dave McClure (the foul-mouthed, opinionated, and obnoxiously right-most-of-the-time angel), the KISS metrics team, Randy Komisar (VC/angel with Kleiner Perkins and author of my favourite book on venture capital – The Monk and the Riddle), Steve Blank (who recently wrote a fantastic blog post called “No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers” and many others. This is a top-tier collection of speakers.

This is going to be a kick-in-the-ass day that is going to make any startup entrepreneur rethink their entire business approach.So if you’re sick of limping along building your business 10 users at a time or “working to get the app just right before we launch”, get yourself and your team down to this event.

Sign up HERE. This event is $700USD in person. We’re providing the simulcast here for $50 FREE. Do it. You won’t regret it. And you’ll get to hang out and meet a bunch of other startup entrepreneurs who are all building their ventures. Great place to connect with like-minded folks.

This is truly awesome and inspiring as a creative work.

(click to go to the page with the animation, then hit PLAY)

]]> http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/04/07/walmarts-40-year-growth-curve-fantastic-animation-looks-like-viral-infection-writ-large/feed/ 0 http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/04/07/im-in-this-weeks-business-in-vancouver-talking-about-cloud-computing/ http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/04/07/im-in-this-weeks-business-in-vancouver-talking-about-cloud-computing/#comments Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:17:23 +0000 Troy Angrignon http://www.troyangrignon.com/?p=1038 I’m quoted in this week’s Business in Vancouver, discussing cloud computing, along with my industry colleague Sarah Morton from Backbone Systems (a recent sponsor of the Vancouver Cloud Camp.)

Apr 6-12, 2010 edition

I’m glad Curt got my favourite line in there, courtesy of Vancouver’s world-famous sci-fi author, William Gibson: “the future is already here, it just isn’t widely distributed yet.” True in many domains, including cloud computing.

Not the best article I’ve had, not the worst. More accurately, when I worked at Business Objects, I worked on collaborative software, web 2.0 strategy, and also SUPPORTED the Saas business unit by providing additional market research capacity.

As usual, this article doesn’t clearly articulate the overlaps between Saas and cloud but I’m not surprised. That’s hard to do at the best of times. My version of that has always been that cloud is now being broadly defined in three columns and three layers so the whole grid is “cloud”, column 1 is “true public cloud” and the box in the upper left corner is “true Saas”.

In Curt’s defense, it was the middle of the Olympics and he was surrounded by much more interesting work.

Since Business in Vancouver doesn’t offer permalinks to their articles (see above line!), I’ve copied the whole article here below:

Cloud control growing for more businesses

Companies that service and use the shared computing model are growing in step with the technology

Curt Cherewayko

It’s probably been four years since Troy Angrignon last had a conversation about building a desktop-based application, let alone built one.

At that time, he was an emerging technology strategist with Business Objects, where he helped build the company’s first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) unit and do market analysis for the unit’s first product.

That Angrignon’s title included the word “emerging” reflects that SaaS and “cloud computing” are relatively new concepts.

But while SaaS and cloud computing aren’t ubiquitous in business yet and while there’s still confusion about what the cloud is, Angrignon and other IT professionals agree that the cloud is growing.

“The future is here,” said Angrignon. “It just isn’t widely distributed yet. All software should be built as SaaS. There’s no reason to do it otherwise.”

Angrignon, who co-chaired a day-long cloud computing conference in Vancouver last month, is now an independent IT consultant.

In its simplest form, the cloud is a mish-mash of remote applications, platforms and infrastructure connected to their users by an Internet connection.

Whereas enterprise or desktop-based software is housed in its user’s local hardware and servers, cloud computing applications are typically based in data centres that can be hundreds of miles away from the user.

And the businesses that manage and maintain cloud software can be hundreds of miles away from the data centre and their clients.

Businesses on either side of the cloud computing model – the providers and their customers – are growing in step with the cloud, as providers advance cloud technologies and more businesses adopt such technologies.

Sarah Morton, president of Backbone Systems, likens cloud computing to a co-op program in which member benefits increase as the co-op grows.

While many of Backbone’s clients are small and medium-sized businesses, they’re part of a cloud computing co-op that’s powered by thousands of other organizations.

Backbone clients use the same programs and computing power as some of the largest international corporations.

Morton added that “business are sharing a large enterprise infrastructure and paying a smaller price for it.”

And as they scale up, businesses can access more services and computing strength in the cloud as needed.

Discovery Parks retired its desktop software and internal network and moved to a SaaS model largely because it didn’t want to have to hire a dedicated IT professional to manage its IT as its real estate portfolio grew.

Mark Betteridge, Discovery’s executive director and CEO, estimated that such a professional would command an annual salary of roughly $50,000.

Instead of updating and maintaining its software, licences and firewalls itself, Discovery pays a monthly fee to Backbone to manage those tasks.

Previously, if Discovery had network or software complications, it would have to hire an outside IT troubleshooter and suffer through what could be days of downtime.

“With Backbone, they can diagnose it almost immediately and fix it almost immediately,” said Betteridge.

Backbone houses its customers’ servers and networks in a Vancouver-based data centre.

The company, which bundles and manages products for clients, launched its first product, a remote e-mail and business application offered by Microsoft Corp., in 2006.

With 10 employees, Backbone now manages software and applications for more than 1,000 employees in numerous organizations.

In 2008, Mono County, California, and the Town of Mammoth, which is in the county, were using enterprise systems to manage land development and sustainable growth.

The two governments’ small and aging in-house systems had become increasingly dysfunctional as the resort community’s population grew.

“We were faced with significant growing pains,” said Nate Greenberg, GIS co-ordinator for the town and county.

Last year, the two governments switched to web-based permitting platforms managed by BasicGov Systems Inc. after being referred to the Vancouver company by another government.

Greenberg said BasicGov’s platform has reduced government infrastructure and the number of staff hires needed to handle increased pressure on their permitting systems.

He added that staff can access the web-based platform from any location that has an Internet application.

As well, the single systems replaced a patchwork of in-house systems that often couldn’t communicate well with each other.

“That allows for really smart decision-making ability because people in one department can see what people in another department are doing,” said Greenberg.

Like Morton, Greenberg pointed to the strength-in-numbers benefits of cloud computing.

“With the power of all those people buying into it, we can leverage much larger functionality than we could have locally.” •

cgc@biv.com

This article from Business in Vancouver April 6-12, 2010; issue 1067

Business in Vancouver (www.biv.com) has been publishing in-depth local business news, analysis and commentary since 1989. The newspaper also produces a weekly ranked list of the biggest companies and players in a wide range of B.C. industries and commercial sectors, monthly features and industry-focused sections that arm its subscribers with a complete package of local business intelligence each week.

With that as a backdrop, it’s interesting to see CIBC announce this week that they have built a new cleantech specific team that will be offering a range of services to the cleantech sector. Related to this I saw this morning that RBC Capital has just funded the Greenscape Capital team (sponsors of Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room exercise here in Vancouver back in March). This will let the Greenscape team execute on their plan to build the world’s “greenest parking facility.”

Congrats to CIBC for finally doing what the European banks have been doing for years and to RBC/Greenscape for continuing to move things forward on large scale efficient buildings.

Dear (Friend):

You asked about my view on the cleantech sector after I took some time to survey it. Let me answer by starting with the big picture and the thing that prompted me to look at cleantech in the first place. Then I will be better able to answer your question at the bottom.

First, the global view.

Globally, we are standing at the confluence of two exponentially increasing tides. The power of one may help us address the risks of the other, but only if we engage them both head-on. One is the curve of resource usage, the other is the curve of technological change.

Curve 1: Overshoot and collapse and “peak everything”

We have used up half of our forests and half our our fish stocks on the planet to-date and given our “peak everything” 3.5%/yr compounding resource usage curve, we will use the same amount of resources in the next 20 years as we used in the last 260 years. It is widely understood that we have already exceeded the capacity of this planet to support our continued growth as a species by between 20-30% and are already going to have to plan for a “controlled crash.”

Curve 2: Double exponential technological advances

Simultaneously, technology is developing at a double exponential rate such that we can not even comprehend what our world may look like by 2050 from a technology perspective. A brief reminder: 30 steps taken 1 foot a a time moves you forward 30 feet. 30 steps taken exponentially moves you forward 1.07 billion feet. It’s hard for our brains to grasp. The next 10 years will be like our last 100 in terms of new technology and that is accelerating.  If predictions by people such as Ray Kurzweil come true, we could have nano solar devices providing 100% of humanity’s power requirements by 2030,  the wealthy and maybe even middle class will be iiving long healthy lives free of disease and many of them will be integrated into computers and robots. If we choose our technologies wisely, even the poorest will have the benefit of low-cost desalination and solar power.

In terms of scenarios, it will already probably be either a huge cliff, a controlled step-down crash, or in a miracle of miracles, a bounce off the bottom and a move to a regenerative world. Hopefully we still have those options.

Actions we need to take:

We need to understand and act on the knowledge that comes from both of these curves.

Regarding the first curve, we need to stop the denial, anticipate the issues, structure responses that address both the rational and irrational causes of inaction, address our flawed, emotional, homeostatic tendencies, and work towards creating a regenerative world, rather than the destructive negative overuse cycle we are in.  We know a lot about why we do not act. We don’t need “more information”, we need to build plans that take into account our very human responses to things. Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter‘s work is key here.

Regarding the second curve, we need to stop sticking our head in the sand about technology and embrace and channel technological development. Relinquishment of technologies won’t work. That would be like standing idly by saying “I will have no part in that river coming dangerously close to the village” when that river is doubling in volume and power every year. We can’t stop it, but we can channel it. We need to slay our sacred cows by revisiting nuclear power (which is emissions free) and genetically modified foods.  We need to use every advantage we have to both increase resource generation and regeneration and also to decrease resource usage per person. This will require structuring government incentives for radical expansion of green technologies.  The Sustainable Development Technology Canada program is a great start. We need more. We need to think like Vinod Khosla who says “if we do not address maintech (building materials, concrete, water, chemicals, coal, oil, efficiency) and solve them at low-cost, that can get to market unsubsidized in China and India and scale to the whole planet, then we won’t solve our problems”. Since we don’t know where the innovations will occur, we need to structure capital to create massive “optionality” and R&D across the board, focusing on those areas that are most ripe for change / disruption / innovation and that are causing the biggest problems. Sadly, I think we should also continue to support companies and organizations like Space X and the LifeBoat foundation, both of which are trying to get off the planet in case we really make a mess and can’t live here any more.

We need to work the top line by increasing resources

We need to Increase outputs and resources and regeneration through restoration of forests, soils, forests, fisheries. We need to boost agricultural outputs (again) by raising land and water productivity and studying ways of producing protein more efficiently that with the standard corn-fed cattle approach. This includes continued research into genetically modified foods.

We need to work the bottom line by decreasing our resource usage per person

We need to also lower our resource use/person by restructuring economically through things like cap and trade, removal of subsidies on things like oil (we spend $700B annually across the globe subsidizing the exact wrong behaviours), restructure the energy landscape by decommissioning coal, shifting to renewables, pushing for all of the efficiency we can get now and every year going forward. We need to get MUCH better at urban design since in 30 more years, 80% of the planet will live in 3% of the surface area in cities and that means urban transportation, bikes, water use, city farming, squatter gentrification. We need to implement “third world” solutions in our own backyard – micro finance, entrepreneurial education, population stabilization (which happens automatically as people move to the city).

National leaders…aren’t leading

Global progress on our bigger issues is stalled. Copenhagen was widely regarded as a failure. Nations are too slow to act. China and the US refused to take material action at Copenhagen and that means that no other nations will follow. The US is frustrating cap and trade. Canada is also lagging. Within our borders, our provinces and territories are too heterogeneous and their populace has too many diverging interests.

We have structural capital issues that are impeding our ability to bring investment into Canada that will continue to haunt all forms of technology development, including cleantech, and they need to be addressed. The Section 116 problem has never been resolved and makes it difficult for investors to invest in Canada without great hassles. We need to fix this as it continues to scare US venture capital away and is causing a hollowing out of Canadian companies as US investors must move our companies south in order to invest in them. It’s easier for a US company to buy out and move a Canadian company than to simply invest in it.

This revolution will happen provincially, regionally and municipally:

BC is already the 10th largest “cleantech market” in North America.  We have top-notch universities that pump out research, we have core resource and mining people, law, and organizations in place that can be repurposed for cleantech company creation, financing, and implementation of things like carbon projects. We already have an excellent industry association leadership in the BCTIA, the Premier’s Technology Council is already very supportive of cleantech, and we have programs such as the newly launched CleanWorks BC marketing campaign intended to attract foreign investment to BC. We also have a large number of excellent cleantech companies here and we have strong core competencies in hydro electric power, power transmission, storage and battery technology, wastewater management, and bioenergy.

The Lower Mainland as a region and all of the cities inside it will be key. You can make a difference at the regional level. Cities are massive producers of the problem and they’re also massively incentivized to solve the issues for themselves – they are almost self-contained zones.

In Vancouver, we have a mayor who sees the benefit of working on all three pillars of sustainability: “people, planet and profit” as it is often referred to. He is building ties with Governor Schwarzenegger from California and Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room Initiative , among many other things. In short, he is trying to put Vancouver on the global map as a “Green Capital” in the world.

So what do we need to do next?

We need capital fixes. There are many others who know much more about this but I know that we have capital gaps. The exits are long and difficult for investors (10 years) for many of these green technologies and so many companies suffer or fail as do their investors.

We need to continue to back primary research at the universities that feeds into our technology landscape.

We need to build more funds that create small companies that can fail faster – allowing us to create promote “optionality” or the creation of as many options as possible.

We need to build a more unified province wide Cleantech BC association that unifies traditional energy, renewables, materials, efficiency, and water all into one cohesive strategic plan.

We need to survey our assets in the universities and our companies, scan the market for current and latent need and then really support those clusters where we can excel and build networks of inter-related and successful companies.

As a province, we need to realize we are competing globally, not within Canada.

As a province, we need to redefine “cleantech” to include all of our “maintech” – the stuff that will move the needle. That will require vision expansion and coaching. This means expanding our idea of “cleantech” from renewables to greening of the entire supply chain and all materials and energy usage.

We need to continue to push these changes bottom up because waiting for national governments (Canada, US, or otherwise) will take too long and be too ineffective. The only exception to that is major cap and trade policy and other regulation which mostly needs to happen federally. But even without it, cities and regions can adopt their own and enforce them locally as they’re doing now. It’s less effective but it’s a step until the national dithering is resolved.

The province must address issues of forest, agricultural land, fisheries and water restructuring in order to once again focus on maximizing sustainable, regenerative yields. One area I’m significantly concerned about here is water rights. It appears that we are selling off our water rights to foreign interests and that needs to be reversed. Peak water is right behind peak oil as a critical issue.

My final summary?

We have a lack of national leadership on the major environmental challenges ahead of us as evidenced by Canada’s embarrassing performance at Copenhagen, but that is countered by highly motivated provincial, regional, and municipal leaders. And we have a province filled with excellent cleantech companies, entrepreneurs, and teams that are highly capital efficient.

So, while my survey of the sector has tempered me with its long, difficult, unpredictable company builds and exits, the people working on those companies have excited me with their passion, vitality and energy for finding and creating solutions to our big challenges. That passion and energy is one of the key reasons I have decided not to return to the US and to instead, stay here and work to build BC’s local technology sector. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get to it.

Kevin Kelly tells the epic story of technology from the birth of the universe until now.

Then Bill Gates asks for his one big wish for humanity’s technological development: an energy miracle to help the poorest 2 billion people on the planet thrive.

Thomas L. Friedman wrote an excellent post over here at the NY Times pleading with the climate folks to go on offense with a simple 50 page grade six english report on the state of the world. It’s awesome. Read it. I agree with all of it and particularly getting rid of the phrase “global warming” because idiots then say “well it was warm today here in Arizona so Al Gore is OBVIOUSLY a lying idiot.”(sigh)

Key quotes are below:

What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense. The physicist Joseph Romm, a leading climate writer, is posting on his Web site, climateprogress.org, his own listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now.

Here are the points I like to stress:

1) Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

2) Historically, we know that the climate has warmed and cooled slowly, going from Ice Ages to warming periods, driven, in part, by changes in the earth’s orbit and hence the amount of sunlight different parts of the earth get. What the current debate is about is whether humans — by emitting so much carbon and thickening the greenhouse-gas blanket around the earth so that it traps more heat — are now rapidly exacerbating nature’s natural warming cycles to a degree that could lead to dangerous disruptions.

3) Those who favor taking action are saying: “Because the warming that humans are doing is irreversible and potentially catastrophic, let’s buy some insurance — by investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit — because this insurance will also actually make us richer and more secure.” We will import less oil, invent and export more clean-tech products, send fewer dollars overseas to buy oil and, most importantly, diminish the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.

4) Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar. It is obviously going to be the next great global industry.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Global Weirding Is Here – NYTimes.com.

It allows all of the stakeholders to have a dashboard that lets them input their goals, and then track their progress towards those goals.

Congrats VS team and City of Berkeley on the launch!

]]> http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/02/17/city-of-berkeley-launches-their-climate-action-plan-using-vancouver-based-visible-strategies-see-it-wow/feed/ 0 http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/02/17/how-to-optimize-your-saas-revenue-streams-rackspace-saas-cloud-2010/ http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/02/17/how-to-optimize-your-saas-revenue-streams-rackspace-saas-cloud-2010/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:18:40 +0000 Troy Angrignon http://www.troyangrignon.com/?p=970 I found an awesome PPT deck today called How to Optimize Your SaaS Revenue Streams – Rackspace SaaS & Cloud 2010.

Its authors Lincoln Murphy and Justin Pirie do a great job of articulating the high level difficulty of building a Saas play and explain it in simple terms. Great 100,000 foot view.

It really is THIS hard.

I disagree however on the terms. I think that startup founders should be able to get visas without having to secure VC funding. VC funding is not always appropriate for all ventures. I think that another filter could be applied, something along the lines of “it must employ __ Canadians within ___ period of time” or risk revocation. Otherwise, this just becomes another point of leverage between the funder and the entrepreneur.

Having been in need of this visa myself in the States, I definitely see the value in creating this.

Please head on over to Bootup Labs petition site here to sign it.

Startup Visa Canada | Bootup Labs Blog.

I thought it seemed appropriate to write Jeffrey a good-bye note here. I couldn’t write it yesterday as I had too many things going on in my head so here it is:

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Dear Jeffrey:

Well, that damned cancer finally caught you. That’s rotten. I knew something was up when I saw MCB’s facebook posting a couple of days ago and then Jeff Clavier’s comment yesterday. Of course that led me to the lovely “Goodbye Jeffrey” post that your family posted on your blog which was really just perfect. I’ve never met Jessy, Brittany, or Mac but since they were your family, they must be cool. I’m sending them my hugs from afar.

Reading the comments over on that blog post made me think back to when I met you and the various interactions I have had with you over the past few years. I’m not sure if you remember but you and I first met in January 2007. I had just posted a blog post about wikis and you had responded, thoughtfully and with gratefulness for the positive comments and for the criticisms that would make your company better. I remember meeting you shortly thereafter at some industry event and as we both skimmed each other’s name tags and recognition registered on both of our faces, we both lit up as we remembered our recent exchange. I remember that moment so clearly. I remember thinking as we spoke, “this one is different.” You spoke passionately about Atlassian but also about music and blogging and building businesses and connecting people. I wasn’t meeting The President of Atlassian, I was meeting Jeffrey Walker, renaissance man, who played music, blogged, hacked, and was also the leader of a great little startup company.

I regret that we never got to spend a lot of time along the way although we would cross paths at the various enterprise 2.0 conferences and I would always feel like I was catching up with the old friend I never really made, if that makes any sense. I was always happy to see you anywhere we met up because you were just so darned friendly and authentic in the way you communicated and connected. I got to know you through your writing more than time spent together and then our paths diverged for a long while. When they reconnected, I learned about all of your trials with cancer and the impact that your writing had had on so many others. That prompted our final brief email discussion about this last round and how you were heading into it the same way you had the others, head held high, nice clothes on, new sunglasses on the head, and guitar in hand. And yes, that picture of you in the hospital in your cool new shirt and sunglasses does make you look bad-ass. I love it.

Then in a blink you were gone and we’re all now trying to figure out what that means and what to do with the hole you have left in so many different communities: your family, your Atlassian family, the greater Atlassian community, the Enterprise 2.0 community, the blogging community, the music community, and the entrepreneurial community. I know you will be missed in all of them.

Well, I for one am done with mourning and am moving on to celebrating and acting. You’ll be with me when I’m attending a conference and talking to my 200th (or 500th!) person and I remember that the most important thing I can do is be authentic and interested in them and in the world around us. I’ll also think of you when I continue to work on things I love with people whose company I enjoy,  and I will think of you when I put that work down for the day to go spend time doing other things I love to do like my sports and playing outside, remembering that work and family and creativity and friends all need to be blended together, just like your life and your blog.

Jeffrey, we didn’t spend enough time together but I want you to know that you had an impact from afar and that I’ll miss you and not forget you. I expect that where ever you are, you’re getting to play on an even larger stage, hack the universe and not just computers, and continue to build community. With any luck you’re up on some stage, jamming with the greats.

Rock on brother.

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Part 2

I have been thinking about this a lot as I’m currently living in Canada, but working with two clients in the U.S. For the most part, because so many teams are distributed, including their client’s teams, there is no “there” to go to, even if I did want to fly somewhere. The only way to have a “there” is if we all meet in the middle somewhere. So I might as well live in the country side surrounded by fresh air, mountains, stream, squirrels, and birds or go live in Costa Rica for a month as be in an office park in Silicon Valley. I have to say…I’m all for this.