Check out the video to learn more about the site and Kelle’s big plans:

Mike & Mohamed in the GrowLab Office in Vancouver

I caught up with Mohamed recently to find out more about his entrepreneurial journey and why he set his sights on starting a company in Canada.  

Maura: Welcome to Canada! Tell me a little bit about your entrepreneurial background:

Mohamed:  In 2001, I was a telecom and computer engineering student in Egypt and fell in love with Bluetooth and wireless technologies. That same year, I entered the Computer Society International Design Competition with a Bluetooth-based system I created to aid the visually impaired. Shortly after that, I started my first company, Design Valley, a one-stop shop for design-based applications and websites. I applied for a Canadian Visa to bring Design Valley to Canada in 2004 but was denied access.

You are not only an entrepreneur, you are also a filmmaker. Tell me about your latest startup, Crowdsway.

Crowdsway is a crowdsourcing platform for film, video and media. It connects filmmakers and artists looking for projects with SMEs and NFPs wanting to create promotional videos, commercials and films. It started after I attended a Kino filmmaking workshop in Manchester, named Filmonik. I met and worked with amazing talents that produce quality films and videos but who can’t make a living from what they love doing. Hence, Crowdsway was incorporated 2 years later.  After attending the workshop in 2010, I decided to become a filmmaker.

How did you get connected to Mike Edwards?


Clint Nelsen, co-founder of Startup Weekend and Startup Labs introduced me to Mike Edwards. Startup Labs is also an investor in Crowdsway Inc.

Why Canada? 

I wanted to come to Canada because it’s a place I knew I could call home. It’s also a technologically advanced, friendly country that welcomes immigrants. I knew I’d have a much better chance for me and my startup if I moved to Canada.

What was it like where you were before you came to Canada?


In February 2012, I was accepted into Flat6labs, which is one of the best Startup incubators in Egypt. Flat6Labs was the first step towards making Crowdsway a reality. Startup Labs also joined Crowdsway and gave it another great step forward by introducing me to Mike Edwards of Initio. Since Crowdsway is a company and movement that has a global reach it was a necessity to find a good place to reach the world, which is why I chose Canada.

What was the process like to get a Canadian visa?


8 years of preparation and dreaming and 2 years of applying and waiting. Bottom line, it’s not easy but definitely worth it!

Did you receive outside investment for your startup and how big is your team? 

I received seed investment from Flat6labs and Startup Labs and have 2 full-time employees and 4 part-time freelancers. In the Crowdsway network we have hundreds of filmmakers and artists that we hope to help make a living doing what they love doing.

What are your plans now that you are in Canada?


Find my next investor, build a network of Canadian filmmakers and artists and take Crowdsway to the next level.

Mohamed landed in Vancouver, BC on May 23. He will be working out of the GrowLab office and couch surfing with Mike until he gets his bearings. If you would like to learn more about Mohamed, check out his website and follow his adventures on Twitter.  

Sign Up
We are looking to meet talented, early stage entrepreneurs with big ideas and a #GSD attitude. Bring your passion, a short presentation or a live demo with you to the meeting to showoff what you are working on. If you are out of town, we are also open to Skype meetings and demos.

There are six,15 minute pitch slots available on a first-come, first-served basis.  If you are interested in signing up, please take a moment to fill out this form and tell us a bit about your startup. We will email you back with your confirmed time slot before May 9.

Interested in Joining a Startup?
Our portfolio companies are hiring! If you are interested in joining a startup, send Maura at InitioGroup an email and we will try and match you up with the right opportunity.

The best accelerators are incredibly selective and can make a world of difference in the connections, mentorship and access to funding they provide startups. If GrowLab was around when Mike started his companies, he would have applied in a heartbeat.

“I think of all the costly mistakes I made when I was starting my first company,” said Edwards. “Those lessons that I paid for and learned from, I can now share with other entrepreneurs so they can benefit from my experiences.”

As an investor in both Dave McClure’s 500 Startups in Mountain View and Vancouver’s GrowLab, Mike encourages other entrepreneurs he meets with to consider an accelerator program.

“About 25-30% of my investments are in startups that have completed an accelerator program,” said Mike Edwards. “It’s much easier to write a cheque on the spot to a company that has been vetted and put through the paces by people like Dave McClure or Boris Wertz than it is to bet on an unknown.”

Having been involved in the Vancouver startup ecosystem for many years now, I think Mike is a natural choice for this role. As ED, he will definitely have a chance to roll up his sleeves and make a difference to the startups in GrowLab, as well as have an opportunity to positively impact the entire Vancouver startup community. Mike is humble and loves working with entrepreneurs.  If he asks you, “how can I help,” you can trust that he means it!

GrowLab is about to see first hand what Massive Action really means! Good luck, Mike!

When Mike Edwards returned to Vancouver in the fall of 2010, the first event he attended was Bootup Labs Demo Day. Summify, which creates a summary of your social news feeds and delivers it to you via a daily digest, was one of the companies pitching at the event that day. Impressed by founders Cristian Strat and Mircea Pasoi, who came all the way from Romania to build their startup, and their traction coming out of the Bootup Labs program, Mike decided to invest on the spot. It was the very first cheque Mike wrote for Initio and kicked off a year of massive action including over 40 investments in the fund.

Today, Summify announced they will be joining the flock at Twitter and we couldn’t be happier for the team. We think this is a great partnership that will help them achieve their long term vision.

Good luck boys!

Founded in the Spring of 2011, Console is a social music streaming service that uses its own algorithm to find and serve up cool tracks, which are displayed in various music channels such as Deep House, Chill Out or Dubstep. Console automatically organizes and plays music via Soundcloud. Think Pandora meets Turntable.fm, which are both restricted to service in the US due to licensing constraints.

Mike Edwards met the Console team last spring when they were going through Dave McClure’s 500 Startups accelerator program and decided to invest shortly after that.

I personally like Console’s Mashup Channel, which serves up a bunch of fun mixes like Moves Like a DeadMau, Where Dem Levels At, and Womanizer on Fire. If you are coding and prefer less dance and fewer lyrics, check out their Trance Channel. Then go #GSD!

If you would prefer to spend your Christmas Eve celebrating with friends and family rather than fighting the mall crowds, then you should seriously check out these wonderful gift ideas from some of our portfolio companies. These services will not only save you precious time this holiday season, but we think they will bring smiles the whole year through:

Hoseanna
Hoseanna delivers monthly “must haves” like deodorant, razors, legware and femcare products right to your door. And this holiday season, they have several great gift ideas for the time starved women in your life including gift cards, 15 % off legware (Use the Promo code: HIGHGEAR) and neat little Express Kits + Free shipping all month long.

If you are interested in getting down in the trenches and hearing an insider’s view on early stage investing, then you should check out the VEF’s Angel Investing event on November 22, 2011 at Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver).

Angel Investor of the Year, Boris Wertz from W Media Ventures will be moderating a panel with:

• Mike Edwards, Managing Director Initio Group
• Geoff Entress, Venture Partner Voyager Capital
• Jason Bailey, CEO Eastside Games and Co-Founder of GrowLabs
• Paul Antoniadis, Partner – Scenario Creation Ltd.

It’s sure to be a lively and information discussion with lots of opportunity for Q & A, followed by networking.

Bring your ideas, your enthusiasm and a #GSD attitude because this weekend is all about building stuff.  And you only have 54 hours to build a startup from scratch and hone your pitch before presenting to an experienced line-up of judges on Sunday night.

Judges
Our very own Mike Edwards will be one of the judges evaluating your startup on Sunday at Club 560, along with our friends:

• Boris Wertz, W Media Ventures
• Maria Pacella, GrowthWorks
• Brent Holliday, Capital West Partners
• Mike Satterfield, Yaletown Venture Partners

“We all know an idea falls flat if you do not have the right talent to execute,” said Edwards.  Beyond the market opportunity, I I take a good look at an entrepreneur’s ability to attract and retain talent and overcome obstacles from the onset.”

“It usually comes down to 3 things: teams with very strong engineering and design talent, large market opportunity and traction.”

You may be under a bit of pressure over the weekend to produce the kind of pitches Edwards, Holliday and Wertz are used to seeing but it sounds like if you have a solid idea, can identify and pull together a strong team from the SW attendees and get a bit of traction during that window (think feedback from customers using your product and people eager to sign up) – you may just win over Edwards, Holliday and Wertz.

Feel free to do some digging on Pacella and Satterfield over the weekend to see what kinds of companies they usually invest in and check out Startup Weekend Vancouver organizer and GrowLab’s Executive Director, Michael Tippett’s Get Ready to Pitch post to help you prepare for Sunday night.

Startup Tools to Consider

In addition, two startup tools that you may want to consider using this weekend that Initio likes are:

• Launch Rock - which enables you to set up a “coming soon” page in minutes and collect interest, share and build your audience
• Unbounce - Local startup Unbounce makes it easy for you to create, publish and optimize landing pages without I.T.