Dave Barcos wants you to hang out. With him, with each other and with ideas. It’s just the best way to turn startups into success stories, he says.
“I’m just trying to pull that community together,” said Barcos, who lives in Vancouver. “We’re not a hangout town — Vancouver doesn’t hang out the way Portland does.”
But if it did, oh boy, would things start to happen, he believes.
Barcos, founder of The Startup Brand, has a passion for building a startup culture in Vancouver. He said almost all the pieces for doing that exist; they just need to come together.
“That ecosystem of hanging-out events and education is vital,” he said. “We’ve got critical mass in Vancouver, but the problem is no one is doing it.”
So for the past year, Barcos, 51, launched StartupVan.co and has taken to starting a coworking space and organizing events such as Startup Weekend and the upcoming Founder Institute classes.
He was optimistic about his efforts Monday morning as he sipped a quad-shot latte and waxed on the importance of collaboration and visibility in starting and growing businesses.
“We have solid small business resources,” but little help for startups, he said. The difference between the two, he said, is scalability. “Issues of scale need resources that are not in town.”
But without the kind of knowledge of or communication between those resources and aspiring entrepreneurs, that technology employee with a great idea won’t be able to launch it, Barcos said.
What’s more, good ideas tend to gravitate toward existing networks, perhaps most evident in the morning commute heading south to Portland.
“That sucking sound you hear on the bridge is our brain trust leaving,” he said. “If the option were here, would you make the commute?”
While the future will depend on greater cooperation with Portland, Barcos said, Vancouver can shine on its own using the talents and fervor that are bubbling beneath the surface.
Barcos has been a freelance creative director and designer for 18 years and founded his own startup in the Bay Area in the 1980s. When he came to Vancouver around the turn of the century, he started workshops focused on getting rid of “misconceptions” about branding, hence his company, The Startup Brand.
“When I moved up here, I loved what I saw,” he said. “We have strong values.”
This summer’s 14-week class through the local Founder Institute, which Barcos co-directs with Amey Laud, will be largely based in Portland, but if there’s enough interest some events will be in Vancouver.
The next free “exploratory” session with the group will be Wednesday at Trader Vic’s restaurant in Portland, with the focus on funding startups. Another will be held March 9 with general information about the program. More info can be found at fi.co.
Barcos said an “ecosystem of financial support” and access to capital is sorely lacking in both Vancouver and Portland.
If You Go
• What: Founder Institute exploratory event, “Startup Funding 101: How to Raise Capital for Your Idea.”
As for this summer’s classes, he hopes they will cut through the “folklore” of starting businesses.
“The key thing we’re putting together is mentorship,” he said.
For Barcos, fostering startup culture is about more than helping out a few businesses or a few good ideas.
“They’re not getting in it to say, ‘We want to be the next Twitter;’ there’s a genuine desire to do good things,” he said. “We can build the city we want to see.”
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