Venture CaféHi Café-goers! I hope you all are having a lovely Presidents’ Day weekend. Did you stop by our new event TechnoPolitic last week? Let us know what you think. The Capital Network‘s Upstart Roundtable is back in the Café this week with Derek Ohly Co-Founder and CEO of Zyrra. Also this week Angel Hack is in the Café to network and connect teams for their upcoming hackathon at the CIC and Raymond Luk from Canada’s Flow Ventures will discuss near shoring. Lastly, the EPA will have an info table on their new initiatives and Boston New Tech Meetup featuring 6 start ups at their event this month.
Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:00-8:00 PM: Venture Café in Session
3:00-5:30 PM TCN Upstart Roundtable
Come meet Derek Ohly (@derekohly) Co-Founder and CEO of 
Zyrra who will share his stories with early stage entrepreneurs, answering questions and mingling about ‘the thing that is keeping them up at night’. Ben Littauer from LaunchPad Venture Group will be moderating. Sign up for this month’s Roundtable here.
3:00-8:00 PM AngelHack Networking, Pitch & Working Sessions
The AngelHack national hackathon is hosting a networking event where people can pitch ideas, talk startups and meet co-founders. The night includes networking from 3-6 PM, Idea Pitch Session in Havana Room (5th fl) between 6-7 PM and Working Sessions in Aizawl & Lhasa (near Cafe) between 7-8 PM.
At Thursday’s event, find new team mates and then compete in AngelHack’s national hackathon, where you can win over $75,000 in prizes and meet Dave McClure, Naval Ravikant, and others. It all happens March 3-4th at the CIC. Signup here. CIC members: use the code ‘CIC’ to get free tickets to the March event.
4:00-7:30 PM Near Shoring Info Table & Roundtable Discussion
Meet with Raymond Luk (@rayluk) – founder of Flow Ventures (a Canadian tech consultancy), Year One Labs (an accelerator based in Montreal), and an Angel investor (former Board member of Quebec Angels, the largest Angel group in Canada). There will be an info table in the cafe from 4-6pm, followed by a roundtable discussion starting at 6pm.
Raymond will talk about 3 advantages of near shoring to Montreal: 1) availability of talent, 2) lower salaries, 3) government subsidies that can exceed 50% of annual R&D salaries. Together with Raymond we will look at nearshoring success stories and talk about exactly how everything works. The group wants to hear from Boston entrepreneurs and investors about their challenges scaling up development teams. This event is perfect for startup founders, growing technology firms, Angels and VCs. Register Here for this event.
5:00-7:00 PM Environmental Protection Agency Info Table
The EPA will be sending five employees who cover some of the innovative work at the agency – energy, waste management and others to set up small tables with information on what they do and how they can work with local start-up companies. EPA reps will be ready to discuss regulatory implications of start-up companies as well as innovative projects they have been partnering with municipalities and businesses in the environmental/energy/clean-tech realm. They will be providing materials that will hopefully forge a dialogue between EPA and the start up community in Cambridge and Boston.
6:30-8:30 PM Boston New Technology Meet Up
Connect with the local Tech Meetup crowd for a reception in the Café before heading to a meeting space for six demos and presentations! 6 presenters will each give a tech demo and take audience questions. The group likes to reach out to young and new groups as presenters, aiming to give them exposure and traction to a tech-savvy public, potential clients, employees, or even investors. Register Here. Networking reception in the cafe from 6:30-7:30, presentations in Havana start at 7:30.
Presenters: Amrith Kumar / ParElastic / @ParElastic
Olajide Ogundipe Jr / Zapslide / @Zapslide
Morgan Donahue / Via Resume / @Via_Resume
Jim Foster / PointKnown / @PointKnown
Tim Callaghan / Tokutek / @tokutek
Martin Jaspan / LumArray
We hope you stop by, grab a drink and connect!
See you in the Café,
Pardis
