Digital Media Investment Trends:
New Media is a fast growing sector in our local economy. The combined wireless and mobile, video gaming, animation and VFX, web 2.0 and social media, interactive marketing and e-learning sectors includes more than 1,300 companies, it employs 22,000 people, and generates revenues of approximately$3B a year in BC.
VEF is hosting an evening with a panel of Canadian and US VCs who invest in the digital media space. They will discuss what they look for when evaluating investment opportunities and give the audience their perspectives and outlook on trends for the sector.
Danny Robinson of Bootup Labs will moderate the panel which will include: Shawn Abbott – partner at iNovia Capital; Steve Hnatiuk – co-founder of Yaletown Ventures: Bill Bryant – venture partner with DFJ Ventures, and Kushal Saha – Managing Director at Cascadia Capital. Join us for an evening of lively discussion.
To Register
Shawn Abbott: A partner with iNovia Capital, Shawn Abbott serves on the boards of technology start-up companies in Canada and internationally. In the past decade, his work 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. He has spoken at more than 100 conferences and taught internationally on topics specific to digital security. He holds an early patent as one of the inventors of now popular USB keys. His publications
include a chapter on hardware cryptography in the ICSA Guide to Cryptography. Shawn earned his Bachelor’s of Science in physics at the University of Alberta. He and his family returned home to Calgary in 2004 after living in California for an extended period.
Steve Hnatiuk: Steve co-founded Yaletown Venture Partners in 2001. He has 20 years’ experience in technology, business development, and private investment. Investments led by Steve include current Yaletown portfolio companies Genologics, Parnerpedia, and Mixpo, which in 2009 was named to the OnMedia 100 list of the most promising private digital media companies in North America. Steve’s personal venture investments have included successes such as ActiveState, acquired by Sohpos in 2004, and Bycast, acquired by NetApp in 2010. Prior to co-founding Yaletown, Steve started and built TD Bank’s technology financing group in BC where he backed a portfolio of emerging technology companies during the 1990s – a formative decade in the region’s technology industry. Steve began his career as a software engineer and served as an executive in the Technology & Entertainment group at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Active in industry and community, Steve is on the boards of DigiBC, the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association, the Science World Capital Campaign, the Pacific Parklands Foundation, and is on the editorial boards of Canadian Private Capital magazine and Business in Vancouver newspaper.
William K. (Bill) Bryant: Bill has had early and instrumental involvement in over twenty leading software, Internet, mobile and digital media companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor, advisor and Board Member. Companies which reached a past liquidity event include Visio, Netbot, Qpass, Isilon Systems, Loudeye, AEI Music, Viafone, Teamplate, Exstatic Software, Throw, Singing Fish, NearMe and Web Relevance. Currently, Bill is involved with Opscode, Mpire, Medio, Winshuttle, Swype, Liquid Planner, Socrata, Vholdr, Minfo, ACL, Sensors in Motion and Limeade. In his varied capacities, Bill has defined core product and market strategy; raised >$150M in venture capital; recruited senior management teams; and built customer, partner and channel relationships in launching numerous software products, Internet and mobile services. Bill is currently a venture partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson (http://www.dfj.com/team/WilliamBryant.shtml), but still views himself very much as an entrepreneur looking for the Next Big Thing.
Kushal Saha
Kushal has over 10 years of Investment Banking & Corporate Finance experience and has executed over $15 billion of M&A and Financing transactions. Most recently he was a Senior Vice President at Merrill Lynch in the Technology investment Banking group where he led the Internet & Digital Media efforts. Kushal was responsible for origination and execution of transactions and played a primary role in the growth of the practice. He has executed several high profile M&A and financing transactions for eBay, IACI, HP, etc., and maintains an active dialogue with key industry leaders. Prior to Merrill Lynch, he was a Vice President in the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Wachovia Securities where he led teams on executing deals for corporate and private equity clients in Software and Internet. Kushal started his career on Wall Street at JP Morgan Securities where he was a Summer Associate in the High Yield and Restructuring groups and an Associate in the Technology Investment Banking group. He was also a Vice President in the Structured Finance group at State Street Capital Markets. Prior to business school, Kushal was a Management Consultant at Andersen, where he worked with a team to start the Corporate Finance & Strategy practice in India. He advised several foreign private equity and strategic investors on several investments in India. Kushal holds an MBA from Boston University (Beta Gamma Sigma), Chartered Accountant (CA) from ICAI (India), and MA and BA in Finance & Economics from the University of Bombay. He holds Series 7 and 63 licenses.
Moderator: Danny Robinson, Managing Director Bootup Labs: Danny has been starting and advising early stage technology companies for over 15 years. In this time, he has closed more than $100M over 9 rounds of venture capital financing. Prior to founding Bootup Labs, Danny co-founded Strutta, a platform that enables anyone, from a small publisher to the world’s premier brands, to easily create online promotions centered around consumer generated content and social media. As an accomplished entrepreneur, Danny works to promote Vancouver as the tech center he believes it can be by connecting local entrepreneurs with Silicon Valley-based VCs, co-organizing the popular tech mixer, Launch Party, speaking at local and international tech events and serving on the Science World Equity Committee. Danny is a member of the Board of Directors for Strutta, Suite 101, and the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society.
