One of Rick Segal’s favourite examples about new business ideas is a Blackberry app that would know when you’re in a meeting and silence the alerts and such.  No wonder then that he’d be involved in a startup fund for new Blackberry software:

VentureBeat decided to jump the gun this weekend and post some news that has been floating around lately about a new Blackberry fund. They deleted the post from their blog, but it was still available in Google Reader and in other places and TechCrunch got to it late on Saturday. The new fund is being managed by RBC Ventures, who just last week closed an investment in Toronto-Based Blackberry application Viigo, and JLA Ventures. RIM, maker of the Blackberry, is a limited partner in this fund, but is not involved in the day-to-day investment decisions. The rumor mill has been churning away on this one for months here in Toronto. Originally the numbers we were hearing were $100 million, but as the weeks went by, people started to hint that things had heated up and there were partners involved up to $150 million. That number, $150M, turned out to be true. StartupNorth » Blog Archive » New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada

VentureBeat earlier broke the news that RIM and other investors, including JLA ventures, have created a $150 million investment fund to back start-ups that work on the Blackberry. Here’s a Q&A with Rick Segal (left), a partner at JLA Ventures, who will invest the fund. We corresponded today by email. The official announcement comes tomorrow. Q&A about the $150M Blackberry Partners Fund » VentureBeat

Your can read the press release about this and the article on Techcrunch–The iFund Has Competition: $150 Million Blackberry Fund To Be Announced Soon.

Given the new Blackberry that was just announced, I see a ton of new Berry apps coming out to take advantage of the new screen and more powerful connectivity.

Just hope they get to Canada soon.

Rick Segal of JLA Ventures (JLA Ventures is one of the founders of b5media) is starting his Canadian tour of VC Roundtables starting in Eastern Canada:

April 14th Morning - Halifax NS

April 14th Evening - Moncton NB

April 15th Evening - St John’s NF

Here are the ground rules/information for entrepreneurs who would like to present ideas:

About 2 1/2- 3 hours in length

Informal/Free (super important!)

Small Groups (super important!)

Information on VC/Angels and the process.

Sample Term sheets, documents, business plans, PowerPoints

Example Pitch or Pitches to show what’s interesting/good/bad

Open questions for a good chunk of time. Source: The Post Money Value: VC Roundtable - Block One

Can’t wait until he makes it out here to Western Canada (Victoria, specifically).  Rick is an awesome guy and I’ve always been flattered that he knew who I was over two years ago at the first MESH conference.  Since then I’ve been able to chat with Rick occasionally, and yeah, he gets it.

Rick says on his blog that to sign up all you need to do is to email rick at jlaventures dot com with the word roundtable in the subject line.

Hey Rick, need a roadie?

Hat tip to Jevon at StartupNorth

What’s hot in Canadian tech?  Yeah, a lot, but how can you learn about all the great stuff going on?  At the end of April I think you’ll have your chance to see what’s hot now and what will be hot soon at the Canadian Innovation Exchange in Toronto:

The inaugural Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) is on the calender for April 29 & 30th at the Carlu in Toronto and promises to focus on innovation. The two-day event will feature an innovation marketplace, flash-forward presentations on the state of technology, and facilitated networking opportunities. Key participants from the US and across Canada have been invited and confirmed attendees include: Mark Skapinker of Brightspark, Barry Gekiere of Ventures West, Bryan Kerdman of EdgeStone Capital Partners, Steve Hnatiuk of Yaletown Venture Partners, and Rick Segal of JLA Ventures. Source: Canadian Innovation Exchange

Okay, yeah our two primary VCs are going to be there.  So of course I have to give them props, but really we need more of these events and not just in Toronto.  We need one in Montreal and Vancouver as well.

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  You need to be around innovation.  You need to be exposed to new ideas and exciting people.  Doesn’t matter what you do or where your passion lies, you need to always challenge yourself.  Push the boundaries.  Expose yourself to new and challenging ideas.  Even ideas that seem contrary to what you think is right. often those lead to insights and inspirations you couldn’t see before.

What’s stopping you from innovating?  Is it you?

You should know, of course, that JLA Ventures is one of b5media’s VC backers (the other is Brightspark).  Now I read Rick Segal not just cause he’s our VC, I was reading him long before that, I read him to get insight into venture capital and entrepreneurship.

This recent post, which I don’t think Rick’s mind is spooky at all–messy, well, who am I to talk, Rick outlines some insights that I think entrepreneurs who are looking for VC funding should read:

There are two ways to answer this. First, is the obvious answer: All things coming in the door are evaluated on their own merits.  The second is really an expanded answer to the first one so here goes.

Tons of VCs will tell you that getting a referral is the fastest/easiest way to get into a VC’s office to make that first pitch.  I suspect with the massively large players, this is probably true. They see 1000s of deals every day, field 100s of calls, 100s of emails, etc, so getting to the top of that list will not be a cake walk.

For me and the spooky place called my mind/space/time, there is somewhat of an unofficial process that I use. Source: The Post Money Value: Inside the (messy and spooky) VC Mind

If you have read his post by now, I’m not offended if you open it in a tab, read it and come back here, you should probably be thinking “yeah that makes sense”.

The key for me is: Solve a problem.

No, don’t create a solution waiting for a problem.  Look at what people need now and figure out a better or new way to solve it.

Take RSS.  Both FeedHub and aideRSS are working to solve a problem–info overload.  It’s something I suffer from all the freakin’ time.

Think about it.  What isn’t working.  What could be better.  Now, can you make it better?

Start there.

Then talk to Rick.