The Flack Block. Photo: Steven Ballegeer
In today’s post I interview Boris Mann of Bootup Labs. Housing several tech startups, Bootup is an accelerator designed to help founders build their companies and products and take them to their first round of funding. They offer direct mentorship and support over an 8 month period directly helping creative ideas and fledgling companies take form. Having relocated to the increasingly attractive Flack Block on Hastings, Bootup is a growing company themselves and could have relocated anywhere in the city but they chose Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Boris gives us some good reasons why.
BOBBlog: Your company is doing well, you’re growing, you could have chosen to relocate to Yaletown or another part of the city but you stayed in the DTES. What were some of the benefits of locating your offices in this part of the city?
B Mann: The vibe of the area was one of the biggest factors. Food, drink, art, diversity. The opening of the new W2. Cost was definitely a factor, as was the type of building / space we wanted. Part of Bootup Labs is to build a great atmosphere for culture to flourish in. Culture has trouble doing that in big corporate office spaces. We wanted bricks, open spaces, and quirky features like the old safe in my office.
Honestly, I just can’t see locating a web business anywhere else in the city. The concentration of companies in the area doing great things – Nitobi, Mozilla Messaging, and Joyent to name a few – just isn’t happening anywhere else in the city. And I didn’t even start mentioning the service oriented businesses like Work At Play, Giant Ant Media, and so on.
BOBBlog: Having been operating in the DTES for nearly half a decade have you seen improvements? What are some of the most noticeable changes in your opinion?
B Mann: Street traffic is now much more than just tourists along Water Street. There are lots of “locals” that live, work, and play in the area. No one has Yaletown envy any more (maybe the reverse is even true?)
BOBBlog: Favorite pub- favorite quick lunch bite- favorite coffee shop?
B Mann: This is hard, because there are many pub/lunch/coffee places that are springing up and doing excellent, new, innovative food and drink in our little corner of the city. The rate at which places are opening AND instantly excelling is dizzying. I’ll focus on food places for now.
Currently, I believe the Revel Room actually is serving the best burger in the entire city (with apologies to Moderne Burger). They are made from Pemberton Meadows natural beef and served pink. I also love the lunch at 2 Chefs and a Table. Oh wait – and La Taqueria is serving the best San Fran-style Mexican tacos in the city.
BOBBlog: Do you feel that this neighbourhood has the potential to be recognized as an area with a high tech/software and creative cluster?
BOBBlog: The neighbourhood won’t be recognized outside of Vancouver. Vancouver itself must grow up and be recognized as a whole. We *need* to point to universities westwards (UBC) and eastwards (SFU Burnaby Mountain), the Microsoft Dev Center in Richmond, the EA buildings in Burnaby, and so on. Once inside the city, early startups will gravitate towards the DTES as bar/coffee/tech culture grows.
We need more common gathering spaces. We need less expensive live/work spaces. We need coffee shops and other stores that stay open late / 24 hours. We need lots of wifi. We need more commercial ventures that aren’t high end fashion or tourist knick knack stores. We need to commit to building a cluster in the area that supports the “top of the funnel” of people starting ideas and companies in coffee shops, moving into their first shared space, their first private office space, and growing from there. Part of that growth will include moving to commercial office space
BOBBlog: From a business owners point of view what is the greatest challenge to this area of the city and what do you feel is the most important next step in improving the DTES?
B Mann: We can’t let the area gentrify too quickly. I see signs of this already. And perhaps by that phrase I mean “rents go up and everything gets gold plated so that beginning businesses start elsewhere”. Look at an area like The Mission in San Francisco – it has a certain edge to it, and that’s part of the reason that it retains its vibrancy: art, tech, food, residential and so on. I think diversity and co-existence are key – of both types of people and businesses.
BOB welcomes Bootup’s decision to stay in the DTES and wish them continued success. For more information on the vast array of services and products helping to make Vancouver’s historic inner-city a great place for businesses visit BOB’s Social Purchasing Directory.
For more information on Bootup.
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