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Greg Smith, Espresso Capital

Journey Through the Startup Ecosystem

Greg is a Managing Partner at Espresso Capital. He's an entrepreneur first and a finance guy second who bootstrapped his first software company at the age of 24 and sold it, seven years later, in March 2000. After spending two years in a VP-Product Marketing role, he joined BDC Capital as part of their Technology Seed Investment group – a $100M early stage venture fund. At BDC, Greg led or co-led investments in numerous companies, each at varying stages of conception, from university spin-outs to pre-commercial early-revenue companies.

He was a Director on the boards of SiM Composites, Mobidia Technologies Inc, Adnavance Technologies and General Fusion. He is currently on the board of Tagga Media and acts as an advisor to numerous technology companies. Greg holds a Bachelor of Applied Science – Mechanical Engineering – from the University of British Columbia.

Agenda

6:30 Networking and Food
7:30 Fireside Chat
8:30 Networking

Hosted By Cheryl Mack, Vancouver Chapter Director

Cheryl Mack has been living the startup life since moving to Vancouver in 2008. She is an active member of the startup community, having worked with several startups, accelerators and investors. She is dedicated to building a thriving startup ecosystem in Vancouver and growing access to funding, developers, and other resources. UBC Sauder alumni, technology geek, and travel enthusiast.
Email: [masked] | Twitter: @cmack4life

Hosted By Cheryl Draper, Vancouver Chapter Director

Originally hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Cheryl Draper is a community builder, connector and entrepreneur who calls Vancouver, Canada home. In early 2008, after 15-years spent honing her sales, marketing, events and partnership activation skills, she co-founded her first technology company Boxseat Suite Management later going on to found StartupOttawa.ca and bring community building organizations Startup Drinks, Startup Weekend, StartupDigest, StartupGenome and Startup Grind to Ottawa.

By day, Cheryl is the Community Manager at Invoke Labs working alongside startups-in-residence to help them create and execute successful community management strategies. By night, Cheryl can be found facilitating startup weekend events around the world, mentoring up-and-coming companies or playing dinner host to visiting out-of-town founders. In her downtime, she likes to drink tea, travel, spend time with family and friends, and can often be found geeking out over craft beer.

Global Partners

Google is committed to empowering entrepreneurs around the world through programs, partnerships, and our products.

Local Partners

At Mobify, we make the web a fast and responsive experience on all mobile devices. Our goal is to help businesses delight their users across smartphones, tablets, TVs, fridges, cars, wearable computers and any other web-enabled devices. Together with our customers, we’re creating a better, more user-friendly web for the billions of people who access it on their mobile devices.

BizSpark is a free program for tech startups to access thousands of dollars worth of free Microsoft software. It also provides startups with $150/month for three years in Windows Azure credits. Need to scale? Connect to learn how to get nominated for $60,000 in Windows Azure hosting credits.

What is Startup Grind?

Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in more than 100 cities and 42 countries featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. Our monthly fireside chat interviews, startup mixers and annual conferences provide ample opportunities to connect with amazing startups and the people behind them, tap into a strong support network, form meaningful connections and gain inspiration for the startup journey ahead. For more information visit StartupGrind.com or follow us on twitter @StartupGrind.