BCBusiness

"It starts with an outstanding entre- preneur who has a big vision and can rally people," says Boris Wertz, founder of Vancouver venture capital 'irm Version One Ventures and co-founder of AbeBooks, which sold to Amazon in 2008. There's also a matter of timing. "You look at Flickr: back in the day, there weren't a lot of U.S. investors investing in Canada," Wertz says, referring to the popular photo-sharing website, founded by Vancouverites Stewart Butterˆeld and Caterina Fake in 2004 and sold a year later to Yahoo for $35 million—far less than it would eventually be worth (San Francisco-based Instagram, for example, another photo-sharing site, sold for $1 bil- lion in 2013). Fewer dollars were being invested in Canadian companies back then, Wertz explains, "and Flickr was a hard product to monetize." Which brings us to the third special ingredient: revenue. Hootsuite has been earning money since 2010 with premium accounts. "When you look at most of the Vancouver startups, a lot are in com- merce—things that monetize early on," Wertz explains. Flickr, on the other hand, was an Instagram or Facebook: a social network with no immediate ROI strate›y. In Canada's more conservative climate, those are the sorts of businesses that don't stick around for long—at least not locally. And the fourth pillar of Hootsuite's success? Talent. While Vancouver has designers and programmers aplenty, it lacks senior talent, Wertz says. "We just don't have enough big companies where you can hire people who have seen and done it before." The solution, he says, is twofold: create your own leaders by promoting employees who show prom- ise; and identify candidates you think could be convinced to move to Van- couver, like Canadians working abroad (by one estimate, Silicon Valley is home to 350,000 Canadians). Hootsuite's senior leadership team is a mix of both. VP of talent Ambrosia Vertesi, who joined the company in 2011 from Aritzia, has seen her responsibilities grow with the company, while CTO Ajai Sehgal, a Canadian who held VP roles at Groupon (where he helped launch a Seattle oŸce) and Expedia, was poached from the for- mer just last year. For CEO Ryan Holmes, however, there's a more basic reason he kept Hootsuite at home: because he could. Because, in the new world order, being at the "centre of it all" isn't everything. "We're seeing a decentralization of start- ups around the world," he says. "Why do these disruptors¢ have to¢ be in San Francisco? They can be anywhere. They can be right here in Vancouver." 36 BCBusiness NOVEMBER 2015 kRis kRÜg his summer, Charles Chang sold his Burnaby-based nu- tritional products company, Vega, to an American ˆrm for US$550 million in cash. Every entrepreneur dreams of such a payday, but successfully stepping away from something you've built takes planning and smart decision-making. Leadership consultant Greg Nichvalodo¥, of Inscape Consulting Group, says the best leaders have an end in mind when they start. "It really starts with being able to understand what stage you are in: the innovation, the growth or the maturity stage?" Nichvalodo¥ explains. Often it's wisest to sell while the company is still growing. When growth begins to slow, it takes ener›y and resources to renew the company. Nichvalodo¥ says a leader must ask, "Do I have the impetus and ener›y to take it to the next level?" —Dee Hon as for that guy who sold Flickr, stewart Butterfield is now cEO of slack, a corporate messaging company worth us$2.8 billion according to an april valuation. While headquartered in san Francisco, slack has a Vancouver office with 45 employees (as of september) and plans to grow, having just upgraded to a bigger space in Yaletown

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