In this informal video update, Joshua Fraser announces that he, along with teammates Jordan and David, have been accepted into the three‑month Techstars accelerator in Boulder, Colorado. He explains what Techstars is, its global reach, and the selectivity of the program, emphasizing how rare the acceptance is. Fraser outlines the strategic changes this creates for their company: opening an employee equity pool, allocating a small equity stake to Techstars for mentorship, and planning to become a more virtual organization with a future U.S. office and a capital raise. He reflects on the past year’s rapid growth, his recent personal “soul‑searching” travels, and his confidence in the team’s ability to run day‑to‑day operations while he spends three months in Boulder. The tone is conversational, enthusiastic, and appreciative, aimed at keeping the internal team informed and motivated.
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Jaybird wanted me to do a really fancy introduction, but I don't really care enough for it. I love him though. We're hanging out here in the hotel room in the Big Apple and I promised you all this week that we were gonna have some exciting news to talk about. So I made a few notes as we definitely have a few things that I want to share this week on Monday, where Jordan, David and I are going to be moving to Boulder for two weeks to join the three month techstars program. I'm sure a few of you at the office already know about this and I was trying to write an email. It's a lot easier for me to just talk to you guys over video if you're not familiar with techstars. When we were in Montreal in July, it was in July we randomly came across Natty and Julie, who are the program managers of the tech stars in Boulder, Colorado. I think there's tech stars actually in about. Geez, I don't know how many. 20 different cities, how many different cities, and they're all over the world. It's pretty cool. But in the 10 years that they've been around, they've, they've had about 884 companies go through their program. 90% of them are still active and or have been acquired. They've funded 2.75 billion dollars into those 885 companies. With a 7.5 billion dollar market cap. Less than 1% of the companies that apply for this program actually get accepted into it. And we've been lucky enough to basically be headhunted by them. And I'm extremely grateful. There's been a lot of things going on with our company and 2016 was an amazing year for us. We doubled, maybe even tripled in size and our product got a million times better. And I'm really excited. But I can see that there's still some missing pieces in building the company of my dreams and what I'm extremely passionate about. And I see this as being an opportunity for us to really build something that will be remembered for a long, long time. When I was in Boulder, they gave us just this crazy curated trip. We got to hang out with guys from Twitter, Sphero, some really experienced entrepreneurs, the Mayor of Colorado, the governor as well. They took amazing care of me and initially I said no to this opportunity because there were a lot of voices in my head on top of that. This is the first time we're going to be opening up the equity of the company, which is really exciting for all of us for several different reasons, which we can dive into more at a later time. But we are going to be giving up a small percentage of the company to Techstars for their mentorship. They have over 1500 mentors all over the world that have an insane amount of experience that we will never be able to find in Kelowna. And that's kind of just getting our foot in the door. And I didn't want to pass up this opportunity on top of that. So we're going to be opening up an equity pool for all of our employees. So that's all of you guys, which is really exciting as well. I guess not much is going to change. I've been so happy with all of you being self sufficient and crushing your jobs. Well, I was gone for the last three months. I did a little bit of soul searching there. For those of you that know me or are newer to the company, I probably spent three years just building this thing with not enough vacations. So I did end up taking a few months there to kind of go and explore and experience a lot of the opportunities that have been given us. Going to Portugal with ICT west, going to X live in Vegas with another friend of mine, Cuba, is that entrepreneurship. Going down to Encinita and working at the orphanage, all those things were blessings and they came because of what I've been building for the last three years. And now all of you guys have stepped in and are doing a way better job than I could ever do. And, and I'm so happy about that. And to ensure our success and make sure that things don't fall apart. Most businesses, nine out of 10 businesses barely make it out of the first five years and then it's like 4% that actually make it to 10 years. And that's a terrifying stat. And I don't want that to happen to us. So I want to do everything in my power to ensure our team's success. So I've been really focused on what we do to increase the longevity of our company and I thought that this was a really good opportunity. So I personally will probably be gone for the next three months. While I'm gone, Evan pretty much manages the office. Thank you, bro. I really appreciate it. And I don't see too much changing on the other side. We're definitely going to become more of a virtual company. We're going to be opening an office in the US somewhere this year. I'm not sure where. Probably where we can get the most talent in a city that's not as competitive as like San Francisco, you know, L.A. and Seattle are kind of on my radar. We could fall in love with Boulder. It's very similar to Kelowna. It's a hub, so that when we need to travel, it's really easy to get in and out of there. And. Yeah. So we're probably going to end up raising capital this year and building a huge valuation around our company, which is extremely exciting. And that's just what I wanted to share with you guys on this Friday. So I'll talk to you later. That's great. That's a great format to do that. That's way better than the email. Oh, fuck. I much prefer that. I think that gets. I think that can. Just the reception for it will be better. Yeah, that's.
