If you're a tech entrepreneur in Alberta, you have to be here. 

AccelerateAB is the largest startup technology event in Alberta. The best part? It’s dominated by a majority of attendees being actual, warm-blooded entrepreneurs. 

AccelerateAB is put on by The C100 and The A100, two groups dedicated to actively promoting entrepreneurship in Canada and Alberta. This event brings together seasoned veterans, young punks, quality mentors, whip-smart investors and keener students.

With speakers and mentors jetting in from across the Silicon Valley and all across Canada, this isn’t just a great tech event for Alberta, it’s a great tech event.

The Details

• Edmonton, AB 
• May 31^st, 2012 
• Hall D at Shaw Conference Centre, 9797 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton 
• $30 registration fee (no joke) 
• Free access to after party with event ticket

What should I expect?

After the unexpected sell-out and long waiting list in 2011, we knew AccelerateAB had to ramp up. For 2012, there are four main events to suit whatever stage you or your company is at.

• Startup University Day: If you’re a young entrepreneur, student or just looking at launching a startup, this event is  for you. Think of this as “Startup 101” without the homework. A free pre-event to the first 150 registered. Register early. 

• Entrepreneur Roundtables: If you’re working full time on a startup and want mentorship from some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet. Apply for one of the limited spots via http://bit.ly/acceleratert 

• The Show: AccelerateAB runs from 12:30 P.M to 6:30 P.M. on Thursday, May 31^st.  Keynotes, panels and speakers all tackling our program focus of “Redefining thinking big”. Ample time to hang out and chat with other entrepreneurs. Check out the full roster of speakers below.

• The Venture Alberta After Party: No good tech event would be complete without a bumpin’ after-party. It's time to let loose. 

Startup University Day

(150 Students, Young Entrepreneurs and side project folks)

10:30 am-11:00 pm: Make Money in Tech – A Bootstrappers Guide: Gregg Oldring

From humble beginnings in his parents’ basement in 1995, Gregg’s business literally took off, taking him to exotic destinations and logging him over 200,000 kilometers in the air in one year. Gregg attributes his achievements to one basic concept: earning profit by creating value. Bucking the trend of startups looking to make a quick buck, Gregg proves that honest effort and an earnest desire to fulfill the needs of others has a sustainable and lucrative niche in the marketplace. In addition, Gregg has built his businesses working alongside some of his closest friends, including his mom.

11:00 am-11:15 am: Stretch your legs

11:15 am-11:30 pm: Selling as a Nobody: Alice Reimer, CEO Evoco

Alice brings extensive software solutions industry expertise and enthusiasm to her leadership role as the CEO at Evoco. Alice has spent over a decade as a trusted advisor to many international retail brands. Before co-founding Evoco, Alice held various positions in the finance and investment industries. Her passion for innovation leads Evoco into new and exciting markets and inspires our whole team to pursue greatness. She makes an impact at all levels of an organization — her get it done attitude is contagious

11:30 am-12:00 pm: Forming and Building a Team: “Dups” Duleepa Wijayawardhana 

Duleepa (better known as “Dups”) is CEO of Empire Avenue, the world’s first social media exchange. Dups has been working with Internet-related stuff since 1993, and has experienced the joy and frustrations of leading and developing large-scale databases and applications accessed by millions of users, including game-related properties at BioWare Corp. (now a division of Electronic Arts).

12:00 pm-1:30 pm: Explore Edmonton Lunch

1:30 pm-2:00 pm: Building Great Software: Andrew Vilcsak, Lead Mobile Developer, AirBNB

After growing up in Edmonton, Andrew jetted down to the Valley to pursue the startup life. After receiving multiple offers to work at some of the Valley’s coolest startups, Andrew joined as one of the first employees of AirBnB, one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, to lead the development of their entire mobile platform. 

2:00 pm-2:30 pm: Building Great Hardware: Chris Lumb, CEO TEC Edmonton

Chris currently the CEO of TEC Edmonton, a technology and business accelerator, and a joint venture between the University of Alberta and Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. Previously he was the CEO of Micralyne from 1994 to 2009, a micro-electro-mechanical systems developer and manufacturer.  

3:00 pm-3:30 pm: Marketing and Branding Your Startup: Ric Williams, COO Empire Avenue

Ric is Empire Avenue's Chief Operating Officer. He has had a globetrotting working life of over 15 years in international marketing. Having worked in Australia, England, Canada and the US, he has marketing and commercial experience in the consumer goods (Cream Junkie, Yoplait and Baby Gourmet), Mobile technology (Motorola), and video games (Eidos, BioWare, EA). With a passion for driving engagement in brands online he loves to help brands get the most out of their online presence

3:30 pm-4:00 pm: Meet some strangers break

4:00 pm-4:30 pm: Design or Die – Why Great Design is a Must: Owen Brierly, Executive Director, Guru Digital Media Arts

Owen Brierly is the Executive Director of Guru Digital Media Arts College in Edmonton. Owen has been a full-time Digital Media Producer based in Alberta for the past 15 years. Owen's recent experience includes: co-creating Keys2Drive as part of GystWorks and co-creating an Alternative Reality Game for the tween audience called the Central Institute for Exploration with Hotrocket Studios.

4:30 pm-5:00 pm: Funding 101: Kevin Swan, Principal iNovia Capital and Randy Thompson, CEO Venture Alberta

Kevin is a Principal with iNovia Capital who is passionate about building technology companies and working with the entrepreneurs behind them. Kevin's beginnings in the technology industry were with Nexopia.com, Canada’s largest youth social network. On the other side of the table, Kevin founded Cardinal Venture Partners out of graduate school at Stanford in 2007 and began learning about investing in early-stage technology companies and working with entrepreneurs the way an entrepreneur should – by jumping in and doing it.

R Stewart (Randy) Thompson has been working in the start up venture space since 1992 when he started the first ISP in Alberta. In 1999 he started working on developing Angel Groups in Alberta, starting with an organization that matched deals for Western Canada investors on the Internet. Since that time, he led a team that started Deal Generator, an Edmonton based Angel group, and in 2003 Randy started Keiretsu Forum Calgary, an internationally affiliated angel group with over 400 accredited investors

5:00 pm-5:30 pm: Accelerators 101: Boris Wertz, CEO W Media Ventures and Jason Bailey, CEO Eastside Games

Dr. Boris Wertz is one of the leading tech angel investors in North-America and the founder and CEO of W Media ventures. His portfolio encompasses over 30 early-stage consumer internet, SaaS and mobile companies, including Chloe & Isabel, Edmodo, Flurry, GoInstant, Indochino, Suite101, Sparkbuy (acquired by Google), Summify (acquired by Twitter), Wattpad and Yapta. He is also one of the founders of GrowLab, a Vancouver-based start-up accelerator. Previously, Boris was the Chief Operating Officer of AbeBooks, the world’s largest marketplace for books which sold to Amazon in 2008. 

Jason Bailey has built a handful of successful Internet businesses over the past 15 years. As the founder of KITN Media, he bootstrapped Super Rewards from zero revenue to a 100mm run rate in just over 12 months. In July 2009, he successfully sold the company to Adknowledge, one of the largest online advertising marketplaces. Jason has invested in and is mentoring many local companies including DES Games, Compass Engine, PayPhone App, CrowdFanatic, and OverInteractive Media. He is also an LP in Real Ventures and Bootup Labs.

5:30 pm-6:30 pm: Commit to Something Anti-Tradeshow:

Ok so you’re excited after an awesome day, now what? The Commit to Something Anti-Tradeshow is where all of the community support groups come out of the woodwork. Live in Calgary? Interested in Gaming? Want to incorporate? No matter what you’ve committed to at the Startup University Day, we’ll have people and resources there to help you on your awesome journey

8:00 pm-11:00 pm: KPMG Kick-Off Pre-Conference Reception 

Location TBD

AccelerateAB

(400 Entrepreneurs, Mentors, Investors, Students and Industry)

 Thursday May 31st, 2012

8:30 am-12:00 pm: Entrepreneur Roundtables: Apply for your spot in this high-end mentoring session at bit.ly/acceleratert 

If you’re a full time tech CEO and want to take your company to a whole new level, you need to apply. Our mentors have “been there and done that” some with 9-figure exits under their belts and decades of industry experience all around.

12:30 pm-1:00 pm: Swinging Big: Evan Chrapko, CEO Himark Biogas

Evan V Chrapko, CA, JD and his brother Shane Chrapko, P.Ag., co-founded DocSpace.  A short 30 months later they orchestrated the sale of the company for $811 Million.  Evan was the CEO and Chairman of the Board. They built the company without any venture capital or institutional funding, living in a low-income housing project....which also burst at the seams with all the staff -- it doubled as the company HQ.

Mr. Chrapko is currently a full-time co-CEO with Shane for www.GrowingPower.com and also for www.HimarkBioGas.com.  They are in the business of converting tens of thousands of tons of bioWaste every year into clean, green energy. Growing Power is a $100-million dollar waste to energy plant in Alberta.  Himark is an engineering and R&D company that owns all the patented technology related to the field.  After 12 years of hard-core research, Himark is now aggressively commercializing its IP, licensing its expertise and its IMUS technology all over the globe, primarily in the burgeoning Third World market. Himark has just opened offices in Shanghai and in the Middle East, and recently celebrated landing a deal to design and build the largest bioGas plant in the Americas.

1:00 pm-1:30 pm: Dancing with the Giants: Mark Relph, Global Director of Startups & VC, Microsoft

As Senior Director of Platform Evangelism Partnerships, Mark provides his senior leadership to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 evangelism work. This includes building in partnership with our Windows Phone Division the technology & developer evangelism strategy across the company and working directly with our key partner Nokia. Mark also orchestrates key strategic platform partnering opportunities.

Previous to this role, Mark led the Windows Ecosystem & Developer Team whose mission was to build a rich ecosystem of hardware and software partners for Windows. This includes supporting world class compatibility and demonstrating that hardware and software innovation is a differentiating asset of the Windows franchise. Mark was also focused on ensuring developers embrace Windows as a long term bet for their business.

Before moving to the US, Mark was Vice President of the Developer & Platform Group for Microsoft Canada. In this role Mark was focused on enhancing Canada’s technology economy & ecosystem.

1:30 pm- 2:00pm: Alberta’s A100 Trailblazers: Randy Marsden, Victoria Brillz and Shawn Abbott

Randy  Marsden is a serial entrepreneur who is the co-founder of Swype Inc., Madentec, and Cleankeys Inc.  He obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta in 1989 and has been actively pursuing technology in Alberta ever since.  He is the recipient of many awards, including most recently the Manning Innovation Award and the Social Merit ASTech award. He is an A100 member and active on several Boards, including serving on the executive committee of the Alberta ICT Industry Association.   He resides in Edmonton, has 5 kids, enjoys sports (watching and playing) and enjoys playing trumpet, guitar and piano.  Randy also speaks Japanese fluently. 

A partner with iNovia Capital, Shawn Abbott has a passion for building communications and Internet start-up companies. Shawn is presently an investor and board member at Tynt, CoolIT Systems, SiXtron, Peraso and Reflex Photonics. He has played entrepreneur, investor, technical and general management roles across fifteen technology start-ups in three continents over 20 years. His work pioneering internet security as CTO, then President, at Rainbow Technologies (NASDAQ:RNBO) saw the company grow ten-fold in profitability before being sold to SafeNet (NASDAQ:SFNT) for nearly a half billion dollars. In the late 1980s, he established and built the AND Group, which pioneered the CD-ROM locking used on several million discs. 
 

Victoria has been involved in the high tech market for over 30 years. As co-founder of Dynastream Innovations Inc., a high tech sports monitoring initiative acquired by Garmin in 2006, she headed up the commercial initiatives that created two new categories in sport: Speed and Distance Monitoring (introduced by Nike in 2000) and the ANT+ wireless interoperability platform that today is found in over 80% of the biking monitoring market and has brought interoperable solutions between sport brands such as Timex, Adidas and Garmin.  She is currently Director of Marketing at their next initiative, 4iiii Innovations Inc., which once again is introducing a new category into the sports arena. This time it’s an innovation in intuitive heads up, hands free monitoring. 

2:00 pm-2:30 pm: Meet a Stranger Break and Snacks

2:30 pm-3:00 pm: Swinging Big and Missing – Lessons Learned: Danny Robinson

As an accomplished entrepreneur, Danny works to make Vancouver the tech center he believes it can be by connecting local entrepreneurs to influential partners and VC’s in around North America. He is co-founder of the popular tech mixer Launch Party, and speaks at local and international tech events. Danny is CEO of Redhand & OpsKwan, Managing Director at Bootup Labs, Chairman of Strutta, Board Observer at BCIC, and a member of the board of directors for Suite 101.

3:00 pm-3:30 pm: Monetizing the Web: Tom Hendrickson, Cory Janssen, Mark MacLeod. Moderated by Kevin Swan

Cory Janssen is President of Galt Capital, a private investment firm, and co-founder of Janalta Interactive, an online media startup that is the publisher of Techopedia.com, among other sites. He formerly co-founded Investopedia.com, a financial education site that was sold to Forbes Media in 2007. 

Tom Hendrickson is Founder of Suffirm Media Corp., an institutionally funded online media start-up focused on the finance vertical. Suffirm has operations in Edmonton, Chicago and New York and owns and operates properties such as etfdb.com amongst others. Prior to founding Suffirm, Tom managed a capital markets portfolio focused on special situations, options and undervalued securities in his role as President of Sunsetter Capital. Tom founded Sunsetter Capital after exiting his role as EVP of Investopedia.com, an Edmonton based online financial media company he joined in its early days and subsequently become a partner. Investopedia was sold to Forbes Media in 2007. Tom is a proud graduate of the University of Alberta's Finance program.

Mark MacLeod is a General Partner at Real Ventures, a Montreal-based seed VC fund where he focuses on SaaS, Freemium and e-commerce seed investments. He is also an advisor to some great SaaS startups. He is a proud Canadian and Scotsman (having moved to Canada when he was a wee laddie). He loves his family, entrepreneurs, yoga, healthy living, DJing, house music, Formula 1 and reading – more or less in that order. 

3:30 pm-4:00 pm: The Future of the Social Graph: Martin Green, President, Meebo

Martin Green is Meebo’s President and has been with Meebo since March 2007 when they company had about 10 employees.

Previously, Martin spent 10 years at CNET Networks and was an SVP and member of the company’s executive committee. Before CNET, Martin was with Morgan Stanley’s investment banking group, both in New York and Menlo Park.

Martin grew up in England and Canada and lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

4:00 pm-4:30 pm: Break 

4:30 pm-5:00 pm: Don’t Make Excuses: Shaherose Charania, Founder of Women 2.0 

Not a day goes by when someone isn’t asking “where are the women in tech?,” but Shaherose Charania (named one of the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company in 2010) is trying to change that. As the co-founder of Women 2.0, an emerging media company aimed at increasing the number of female founders launching scalable technology ventures, she helps entrepreneurs find a network, resources, and knowledge to take their companies from from idea to launch.

Charania is also currently leading Founder Labs an early stage incubator focused on new mobile ideas.

5:00 pm-5:30 pm: Own the Valley: Lars Leckie, Atlee Clark

Lars is a Managing Director at Hummer Winblad and has played a key role in the firm’s investments in SaaS, virtualization, cloud and mobile technologies.Prior to joining Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in 2006, Lars was involved in founding and operational roles at start-up companies. He was a co-founder of AutoFarm (now Novariant), a company focused on GPS and robotics. Lars was in charge of strategy, product marketing, business development and building the sales team across three continents. While Lars spends less time programming now, he started his technical career coding and hacking computer games. He is the holder of several US patents.

Lars is an avid sailor and a former member of the Canadian Sailing Team. He represented Canada sailing Snipes in the Pan American Games as well as other international events.

Atlee is the Director of the C100. She is responsible for oversight and execution of all C100 programs including 48hrs in the Valley as well as all operations of the organization. Now based in San Francisco, Atlee hails from Toronto and has done significant stints in Calgary and Washington, DC.

5:30 pm-6:30 pm: Community Reception: Pretty straightforward. Time to let loose a little bit!

8:30 pm-1:00 am: Venture Alberta After Party: 10363 104 St. Edmonton

Thank you to all of our AccelerateAB sponsors!