A View on View :: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

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Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Mark Evans on Wed 19 Apr 2006 08:25 AM EDT | Permanent Link

You knew it had to be a matter of time before a major Canadian VC got jiggy about his new blogging thing-a-jig! BrightSpark, which does as much early-stage investing as any Canadian VC, has launched its own blog (hat tip to Alec Saunders). Among Mark Skapinker's first posts is one on why Canadian software developers are so great. Mark (and BrightSpark partner Tony Davis), if you really focus, you coujld become the North of the Border version of Fred Wilson or Brad Feld! In any event, welcome to the blogosphere. For any Canadian VC already blogging away, my apologies - please let me know where you can be found.
Update: My bad on not pointing out that Rick Segal, a principal with Toronto-based VC J.L. Albright, has been an active blogger. That said, Rick has his own blog as opposed to writing for a J.L. Albright blog.

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Comments

Re: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Chris Nolan.ca on Wed 19 Apr 2006 09:24 AM EDT | Permanent Link

What about Rick Segal's Post Money Value? Blogging since Feb 2005.

http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/

Re: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Chris Nolan.ca on Wed 19 Apr 2006 09:29 AM EDT | Permanent Link

As to were he can be found... how about on a panel @ Mesh... moderated by ah, well YOU.

Sorry, couldn't resist :-P

Re: Re: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Mark Evans on Wed 19 Apr 2006 09:38 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

yes, you're right. my bad. i don't think of rick blogging for j.l. albright; more rick blogging for rick.

cheers, mark

Re: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Jeremy on Wed 19 Apr 2006 09:43 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

There are some smaller VC's in Ottawa blogging. I can't remember names (about a year ago I cut back my VC blog reading), but I'm sure they're around.

For JLA or not

by Rick Segal on Wed 19 Apr 2006 11:20 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Hi Mark,

Hmm.. I don't really see the difference between blogging for JLA specifically on a specific JLA site vs. me doing it on a typepad account and pointing out I'm a VC.

And given I'm the newbie in all of this VC world, I'll let Mark and Tony take on Brad and Fred; seems like a fair fight, eh?

Re: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Anonymous on Wed 19 Apr 2006 12:12 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Brightspark still needs to work on their blog. I posted a comment to one of their entries and it has yet to appear (several hours later). I assume they did not like the content...which was not rude or inappropriate...just critical of their viewpoint / analysis. Maybe they have not yet reviewed the comment. Either way, this lack of transparency or half hearted effort to maintain the blog is a big problem if they wish to have any credibility.

Re: Re: Well, well....a Canadian VC has a Blog

by Anonymous on Thu 20 Apr 2006 10:10 AM EDT | Permanent Link

fyi, in relation to my above post, Brightspark published my comment...took almost a day to appear...

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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>