Some headlines from the past few months:
WeWork leased seven floors (80,000sf) in Bentall III in March
http://vancouversun.com/business/local-b...r-for-tech-startups-freelancers-to-share
WeWork gets lambasted as a daycare for trustafarian "entrepeneurs" (or those with more VC money than sense), but Pinterest Seattle opened in the SLU WeWork office so who knows. Pinterest Vancouver?!
Pricing is already on WeWork's site (and they're nice enough to quote in CAD):
- "Hot Desk" (workspace in a common area, ShareDesk has a similar product: $450pp/mo
- Dedicated desk: $600pp/mo
- Private office: From $860/mo (1-seat) to $19,650/mo (50 seats)
One thing that confuses me is, is it five floors or seven floors? The media releases say seven, WeWork's site says five. And has it been revealed yet which particular floors have been leased?
Google buys AppBridge (also in March)
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/google...-move-their-files-to-its-cloud-services/
http://www.newventuresbc.com/2017/03/appbridge-acquired-google-data-migration-services/
This marks Alphabet's first permanent presence in Metro Vancouver. AppBridge is in the Flack Block building (163 West Hastings).
Expa Labs opens first Canadian office in Vancouver
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o...or-sets-up-in-vancouver/article34106554/
Expa Labs is the startup accelerator by Garrett Camp (founder of Uber). It has a US$100M bankroll from investors like Richard Branson and the author of
The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss. Job postings have already popped up on angel.co and the posted salaries are higher than at most Vancouver startups on the site (except for maybe A Thinking Ape). Startups in the Expa batches do not have to be based in Vancouver, they can be based anywhere in Canada.
I think Expa Labs chose Vancouver as its first office outside the United States, rather than Waterloo or Montreal, because one of the executives is a local. Milun Tesovic is a partner at Expa, he's a Beedie grad (getting his BBA in 2008) who founded MetroLyrics.com when he was just 15. It was bought by CBS in 2011, netting him a nominal payday. He was named the Student Entrepeneur of the Year in the Faculty of Business Administration (now Beedie School of Business) in 2008 and made the BC Business 30 under 30 list in 2014.
Try as I might, I was unable to find the address of Expa's Vancouver offices. I couldn't even find Expa the CoV's open data catalogue (they have a list of business licenses). I did find one address, 375 Water Street (The Profile co-working space), it was in the Industry Canada registry (of federally incorporated companies under the Canada Corporations Act). I'm
guessing that might be Expa's address because Milun's name shows up on the federal registry, but I'm not 100% sure.
This is the fourth global startup that I know of with a BC connection; three of the four are connected to SFU's School of Computing Science.
- Mobify: Founded by Igor Faletski (BSc 2007) and John Boxall (BSc 2007)
- BuddyBuild: Founded by Dennis Pilarinos (BSc 2002); was an AWS manager before raising a US$7.6M series A round from KPCB, which didn't not moving HQ to SV
- Slack: Founded by Stewart Butterfield (BA in Philosophy from UVic in 1996 before getting his PhD at Stanford)
- And now Expa Labs: Milun Tesovic (BBA '08)
I wonder why I don't hear more UBC grads being attached to world dominating startups, like SFU grads are.
Other headlines:
Quote:
Originally Posted by LeftCoaster
Word is Google is touring the market looking for a decent chunk of space for a Vancouver office...
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Are you confident that your source was reliable? Because I was under the impression that Alphabet was passing on opening a standalone engineering office in Vancouver, in favour of expanding their Kitchener, ON office. The new office is 185,000 sf in the redeveloped, now-LEED v4 Silver Breithaupt Block, and was opened by Justin Trudeau last January.
In fact, Sam Sebastian, the Alphabet VP who oversees Google Canada, told the Vancouver Board of Trade not too long ago that there were no plans to expand into Vancouver (the purchase of AppBridge notwithstanding, I guess). And if I were to guess why, I think the lack of affordable 2br/3br housing close to downtown may play a factor. It makes convincing executives to relocate themselves and their families a bit difficult when 2/3-bedroom housing targeted towards families in CoV besides SFHs is almost non-existent. I'm surprised Gregor and Vision have gotten a free pass on their archaic zoning policies (look at how New West/Surrey/Langley have mandated developers offer a certain proportion of 2/3br density), but that's a subject for another time.
Finally, does anyone know when A Thinking Ape moved from 322 Water to 1132 Alberni? Or when Mobify moved from 948 Homer to 725 Granville? There's been a flurry of big office moves in the last few years (AMZN: 555 Robson -> Telus Garden (Aviglion took the vacated space); MSFT: 840 Cambie -> 725 Granville (Animal Logic took the vacated space)).
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpongeG
Global did a report last week or the week before and said Vancouver has the most supercars in North America per capita.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpongeG
yeah, there were quite a visible amount in the 80's. I remember driving past a party on SW marine drive at one of the big mansions there and it was having some party an dthe cheapest looking car was a porsche. It was all jags, bentleys, rolls, land rovers. It was quite the collection parked outside along the road. They even had a valet at the gate.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeftCoaster
Typically a Porsche costs more than a Jag or Land Rover. Especially back in the day before they diluted their brand with the Boxer, Cayman and Panamera.
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I live in North Burnaby (near Hastings/Duthie) and I think I almost see more F85 X5Ms/F86 X6Ms, Mercedes-AMG G63s/GLE63s, Cayenne GTSs/Cayenne Turbos, Nissan GT-Rs, Jaguar F-Types and supercharged Range Rovers around here than I do Hondas or Toyotas. There's a stupidly large amount of baller Chinese here (the baller Koreans are to the east, in Burquitlam).
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