When Mike Edwards returned to Vancouver in the fall of 2010, the first event he attended was Bootup Labs Demo Day. Summify, which creates a summary of your social news feeds and delivers it to you via a daily digest, was one of the companies pitching at the event that day. Impressed by founders Cristian Strat and Mircea Pasoi, who came all the way from Romania to build their startup, and their traction coming out of the Bootup Labs program, Mike decided to invest on the spot. It was the very first cheque Mike wrote for Initio and kicked off a year of massive action including over 40 investments in the fund.

Today, Summify announced they will be joining the flock at Twitter and we couldn’t be happier for the team. We think this is a great partnership that will help them achieve their long term vision.

Good luck boys!

Founded in the Spring of 2011, Console is a social music streaming service that uses its own algorithm to find and serve up cool tracks, which are displayed in various music channels such as Deep House, Chill Out or Dubstep. Console automatically organizes and plays music via Soundcloud. Think Pandora meets Turntable.fm, which are both restricted to service in the US due to licensing constraints.

Mike Edwards met the Console team last spring when they were going through Dave McClure’s 500 Startups accelerator program and decided to invest shortly after that.

I personally like Console’s Mashup Channel, which serves up a bunch of fun mixes like Moves Like a DeadMau, Where Dem Levels At, and Womanizer on Fire. If you are coding and prefer less dance and fewer lyrics, check out their Trance Channel. Then go #GSD!

If you would prefer to spend your Christmas Eve celebrating with friends and family rather than fighting the mall crowds, then you should seriously check out these wonderful gift ideas from some of our portfolio companies. These services will not only save you precious time this holiday season, but we think they will bring smiles the whole year through:

Hoseanna
Hoseanna delivers monthly “must haves” like deodorant, razors, legware and femcare products right to your door. And this holiday season, they have several great gift ideas for the time starved women in your life including gift cards, 15 % off legware (Use the Promo code: HIGHGEAR) and neat little Express Kits + Free shipping all month long.

If you are interested in getting down in the trenches and hearing an insider’s view on early stage investing, then you should check out the VEF’s Angel Investing event on November 22, 2011 at Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver).

Angel Investor of the Year, Boris Wertz from W Media Ventures will be moderating a panel with:

• Mike Edwards, Managing Director Initio Group
• Geoff Entress, Venture Partner Voyager Capital
• Jason Bailey, CEO Eastside Games and Co-Founder of GrowLabs
• Paul Antoniadis, Partner – Scenario Creation Ltd.

It’s sure to be a lively and information discussion with lots of opportunity for Q & A, followed by networking.

Bring your ideas, your enthusiasm and a #GSD attitude because this weekend is all about building stuff.  And you only have 54 hours to build a startup from scratch and hone your pitch before presenting to an experienced line-up of judges on Sunday night.

Judges
Our very own Mike Edwards will be one of the judges evaluating your startup on Sunday at Club 560, along with our friends:

• Boris Wertz, W Media Ventures
• Maria Pacella, GrowthWorks
• Brent Holliday, Capital West Partners
• Mike Satterfield, Yaletown Venture Partners

“We all know an idea falls flat if you do not have the right talent to execute,” said Edwards.  Beyond the market opportunity, I I take a good look at an entrepreneur’s ability to attract and retain talent and overcome obstacles from the onset.”

“It usually comes down to 3 things: teams with very strong engineering and design talent, large market opportunity and traction.”

You may be under a bit of pressure over the weekend to produce the kind of pitches Edwards, Holliday and Wertz are used to seeing but it sounds like if you have a solid idea, can identify and pull together a strong team from the SW attendees and get a bit of traction during that window (think feedback from customers using your product and people eager to sign up) – you may just win over Edwards, Holliday and Wertz.

Feel free to do some digging on Pacella and Satterfield over the weekend to see what kinds of companies they usually invest in and check out Startup Weekend Vancouver organizer and GrowLab’s Executive Director, Michael Tippett’s Get Ready to Pitch post to help you prepare for Sunday night.

Startup Tools to Consider

In addition, two startup tools that you may want to consider using this weekend that Initio likes are:

• Launch Rock - which enables you to set up a “coming soon” page in minutes and collect interest, share and build your audience
• Unbounce - Local startup Unbounce makes it easy for you to create, publish and optimize landing pages without I.T.

Bootup’s open space and collaborative environment was designed to inspire and support technology entrepreneurs in the earliest stages and connect founders with peers, investors and mentors, who could help them grow their business. One of the mentors whom Aslam met via the Garage program was Mike Edwards of Initio Group, who invested in Crowd Muscle last Spring.

With the recent release of Crowd Muscle’s Private Crowd, I was eager to catch up with Aslam to find out more about their new platform and how they have grown since receiving investment from Initio and moving out of the Garage.

Initio Group: What is Private Crowd? 

Aslam:  Private Crowd is a platform that allows companies to build and leverage a Crowd of their own existing customers. All you needed to get started is a list of existing customers, who can then be invited to join the company’s Crowd through a campaign-driven survey process. The result is a richly profiled, opted-in group, the Private Crowd.

The Crowd can be examined using a collection of rich analytic capabilities that provides a multi-dimensional understanding of a customer base. These can be used to drive tactical and strategic decisions, while also giving companies hard metrics that enable improvements in customer engagement and customer service.

IG: How much does it cost?

The pricing for Private Crowd is based on a company subscription, and takes into account the size of a customer base, the level of use within the organization, and the reach of the campaigns being run. This allows us to serve companies of varying sizes and needs in line with our mission to remain accessible and affordable.

Companies who are interested in building a Private Crowd should contact us at sales@crowdmuscle.com, and we’d be happy to tailor a plan to meet specific needs.

IG: How is Crowd Muscle different then market research firms like Vision Critical?

It’s shocking how many businesses conduct little or no market research when making significant strategic decisions. While Vision Critical is well reputed for the quality of their work, the business model used to engage clients is traditional and similar to large consulting firms. This drives up engagement costs, and typically results in a lengthy, point-in-time report.

Crowd Muscle serves progressive businesses that understand the value of quality market research, but want it on their own terms. That requires delivering intuitive, self-service products for the non-professional that can be integrated with common daily activities. The Crowd Loyalty Index, which was released as part of Private Crowd, is a great example of how we’ve made this a reality.

IG: Where did the inspiration for Private Crowd come from?

In a previous life, I worked in enterprise environments to improve collaboration among teams. What was often overlooked in these company-wide initiatives is how different the needs of marketing professionals are in comparison to most other functions. I believe this is driven by the fact that marketing as a discipline is outward-facing, where most other functions are contained within an organization.

I kept seeing the needs of marketers being dismissed as “special case” requests, leaving these folks with very limited enterprise-quality sources of information designed specifically for them. Easily consumable primary market intelligence was at the top of the “most desired” list, and that is where Private Crowd originated.

IG: How has the response been so far?

It’s still early days, but we’re seeing lots of interest across a wide variety of retailers across the country. Many are eager to leave email blasts and mass marketing techniques behind in favour of segment-driven activities. This is the type of feedback we expected.

What has come as a more pleasant surprise is how marketers we’ve walked through the product are coming up with all sorts of inventive ways to use the Crowd in their own organizations. Figuring out how to balance these requests as the product continues to evolve is going to keep us busy!

IG: What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received? 

That’s a tough one – I’ve been fortunate to receive so much great advice.

“One of the most important skills an entrepreneur can learn is the ability to receive and respond objectively to constructive criticism. Stand up for yourself on the merits of your argument if necessary, but never isolate yourself from a new or different perspective in fear of being proven wrong.”

About Aslam:
Aslam is an experienced collaboration consultant who has driven the success of numerous high profile engagements. When he is not working on Crowd Muscle, Aslam likes to hit the gym to decompress. His guilty pleasure is watching reality shows like Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, and picking apart company pitches.  Keep up to date with Private Crowd updates and news by following Aslam @ajsoundoff or @crowdmuscle on Twitter.

“The future of Food.ee will be anticipating the wants of hungry consumers and offering meaningful options at the right time.” – Founder, Jon Cartwright

We caught up with Jon to learn more about where the inspiration for Food.ee came from and his plans for the service in the months to come.

Initio: Where did the idea for Food.ee come from?

Jon: When we were hungry we never knew what dish to order, let alone what was open, convenient, and awesome. Having used other services, we saw an opportunity to do something different. Soon ideas became research, discussing next steps, and then just doing it.

Initio: Who are some of the restaurants you have on board in Vancouver?

We have about 35 restaurants onboard and are adding more all the time.  Most have a 5-10km delivery radius and variable delivery hours so having geographic coverage and variety is key. Office favourites include Mali Thai, Noodle Box, Rasoee, Nirvana and Nikkyu sushi. We were stoked to learn that Sankyo on commercial will deliver you 6 oysters and a beer for $10 !

Initio: What are some of your favorite restaurants in Vancouver?

If I’m with pals I eat out, I love the Alibi room, Grub and Niccli’s pizza. However, I love food and beer but just can’t be bothered to go out all time. Sometimes it takes too long to go through the process of sitting down, ordering and eating.

Initio: How does Food.ee work?

Today Food.ee is simple and gets’ easier the more you use it. Just go to food.ee, chose a restaurant and dish, and check out. Enter your delivery address and you’ll get a text confirming delivery or pick up time. Next time you visit you can log on, re-order or chose something new, and your locations are saved. We’ll be asking customers questions along the way to get to know their tastes.  Food.ee will be especially great for group ordering.

In the near future, Food.ee will offer customers a few suggestions right away; things they’ll like based on their location, order history, food preference, and what’s popular.

Initio: Is Food.ee your first startup?

Food.ee is my first start-up and the latest product from Invoke Media. Invoke is a hybrid digital agency focused on client work and product development, Hootsuite being their most successful product to date.

Initio: What are some of the challenges you have faced and lessons you have learned as an entrepreneur?  

So far we keep learning to challenge assumptions and ask more questions. This applies equally to restaurants and what users are telling us.  I’m thankful to be working with super bright people. Try and work with the smartest people you can!

To stay up to date on Food.ee as they grow, you can check out their blog for updates and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.  Oh and by the way, Food.ee is HIRING!

“We have been watching Compass Engine for a while now and worked in closely with the really great team they put together,” said Jason Bailey, CEO of East Side Games. “The development talent they’ve gathered and the IP they have developed is top tier. We are thrilled to bring them on board and get them working with our guys to continue to build the future of social and mobile games, both with Bounty Island and other mobile IP under development.”

East Side Games is the brain child of local entrepreneur, Jason Bailey and is well known for their Facebook game, Pot Farm. This will be the first acquisition for East Side Games.

A big congrats to the Compass Engine team. We think that East Side Games + Compass Engine is a great match.

Of course, that means they also got featured in Techcrunch which explained the company like this:

Basically, Rewardli features “always on” deals, where small business owners can visit the site’s marketplace buy what they need, when they need it, and receive cash back on all purchases. Over 70 vendors have signed up to offer cash back rewards, including Staples, FedEx Office, Expedia, GoDaddy, Skype, Travelocity and more.

Also on stage CEO George Favvas announced Rewardli had raised $500k to close their seed round.

We’ve been particularly impressed by all the major players Rewardli has partnered with. For a complete list you can see their site.

They have just completed raising a $500k round in conjunction with launching a major feature, their community pages. Community pages are similar to fan pages on Facebook, allowing interns to get a more in depth understanding of the companies looking for help.

Internmatch does exactly what the name suggests, connecting interns with top tier organizations like Wikimedia, Sequioa Capital, Yelp and Kiva.

Their big day was covered in a number of tech publications including Venture Beat, Geekwire and Techcrunch.

Congrats on the great work guys!