The Vancouver Board of Trade has collaborated with 2010 New Ventures BC competitor SilkStart to become Canada’s first chamber of commerce to offer an exclusive hub for bidding on contracts.

The new hub will be called the Board Business Exchange, or BBX, an e-marketplace through which the Board of Trade’s 5,500 members have the opportunity to bid on a range of contract work across a range of industries. Included ion the SilkStart-powered e-marketplace is an interactive element that includes networking through chats and discussions, as well as communicating across social media platforms, and setting up email alerts.

“BBX has been launched to benefit our members in business,” said Jason McLean, chairman, The Vancouver Board of Trade. “We are the first chamber of commerce in Canada to offer this unique mix of a social business platform which, with our members’ support, is set to grow into a major regional hub for bids with international potential.”

“This latest technology across multi-platforms will transform the way The Board of Trade communicates and does business,” said SilkStart co-founder and CEO Daniel Chu. ”We chose to partner with The Board of Trade exclusively in the Lower Mainland because it is Western Canada’s leading business association and we wanted to customize this technology for a sizeable business organization. Our mission is to revitalize membership organizations around the world. We believe that an association that is well-equipped with the latest technology, such as The Board, empowers its members and volunteers to easily communicate and connect with one another, enabling them to make a difference.”

Check out the BBX here.

2010 New Ventures BC Competitor Echoecho got some great press in the Vancouver Sun today in an article by Gillian Shaw titled Vancouver startup fine-tunes geolocation with new app.

When Cea Person is looking for her husband Remy Kozak, she doesn’t have to call or text him. A click on an app on her iPhone and Kozak’s face appears on the screen, pinpointed to a location on a Google map. If he’s nearby, she might click on a coffee shop between them, with that location popping up on Kozak’s phone screen as a suggested meeting place. The connection is thanks to Echoecho, a mobile application created by Kozak and his co-founders in a Vancouver startup. The application is winning converts among users who want to share their whereabouts with friends and family with more precise control than that afforded by Foursquare, Facebook Places and other location-based services.

Kozak teamed up with cofounders Nick Bicanic, Andrew Wanliss-Orlebar and Davor Dubokovic to address a gap in location-based offerings and Echoecho was born. Launched last fall, there are already 100,000 people using the Echoecho app users. An update for the iPhone app has just been released and a further update in the Android market is due early next week. The app is also available for BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones.

According to the article, Kozac hopes to scale to one million users by the end of the summer and expects to close a seed round of financing soon to raise at least $500,000.

Earlier this week Solegear Bioplastics  founder and CEO Toby Reid was honoured as an official nominee for the prestigious 2011 Manning Innovation Awards, in addition to being invited to share his insights on building sustainability into business at the Pacific Northwest Economic Conference in Vancouver, on February 5th.

“It is a huge honour to be recognized nationally by the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation for the work Solegear has done to date to drive the transformation of the plastics industry. This is a nomination that I proudly accept on behalf of my committed Solegear teammates. Together, we have been through a lot to get to this point today, and I know they are as excited about this nomination, and our future, as I am,” said Solegear Founder & CEO Toby Reid.

The Manning Innovation Awards is a competition that recognizes and promotes excellence and innovative talent in developing and marketing new concepts, processes or procedures. Reid has been recognized for his contributions in bioplastic technologies, specifically for the advancement of high-performance bioplastics and biocomposites through his guidance of Solegear’s R&D, marketing and business development activities.

Vancouver-based Solegear was a New Ventures BC 2010 2nd place finisher. Founded in 2006, Solegear is leveraging patent-pending technologies, diverse R&D and new business development programs in 2011 to take the next major step in the Company’s development on the way to becoming an enduring leader in the bioplastics industry.

Yesterday New Ventures BC 2010 winner Hiretheworld.com was featured on a new Young Entreprenuer series on BNN.

CEO Terry Beech got a chance to chat with show hosts as well as a special guest – Miles Nadal, Chairman & CEO of MDC Partners. Nadal was extremely impressed with Beech’s polish and that’s a big deal considering Nadal runs a 7,000 employee strong, billion dollar company.

Watch the interview online here.

2010 has been a year of firsts for the BCIC-New Ventures Competition: celebrating our first decade, awarding three awards to one recipient for the first time in the competition’s history and launching our first Regional competition exclusively for entrepreneurs located outside of the Lower Mainland.

Congratulations again to the winners of the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place BCIC prize packages in our 2010 provincial competition: Hiretheworld.com, Solegear Bioplastics and Quadrogen Power Systems. Quadrogen and Solegear also garnered additional prizes, with Solegear winning an unprecedented three awards.

In addition to the networking and mentorship opportunities offered to entrants in the competition, the education component has always been integral to the success of the program and its applicants.  Topics like “The Lean Startup”, and “Social Media for Startups” were among the 11 seminars presented this year.

The BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional attracted more than 40 applicants, with 39 eligible candidates from across the province proceeding to Round 2.  In the second Round, entrepreneurs in cleantech, medical device technology, digital media, web and other industries pitched to a panel of industry experts. On December 3, we announced the Top 20, with representation from the Thompson-Okanagan, the Kootenays, Northern BC, the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island. Our three winners will be announced at the February 24 awards ceremony in Kelowna.

In closing, thank you to the applicants, volunteer mentors, board members, sponsors, judges and speakers who continue to ensure that the BCIC-New Ventures program is a key component to fostering innovation in British Columbia. Not only were we proud to celebrate our tenth anniversary this year, we were pleased to announce our new brand as the BCIC-New Ventures Competition. Thank you to our title sponsor BCIC for their continued support.

Similar to the province-wide competition that celebrated its 10th anniversary in September, the four-month, three-round regional competition includes a unique mix of business education, networking and mentoring. This year’s regional competition attracted more than 40 applications from technology startups across our province.

The top 20 finalists include businesses in the life sciences, cleantech, sustainability, new media and high technology sectors.

They are:

The top 20 companies will now be paired with a team of mentors and will attend a final business education seminar in January. Each company will have one more chance to present to a panel of experts from February 9-11 in Victoria and Kelowna where they will convince a jury of venture capitalists, financiers and angel investors of the commercial viability of their business idea and that they have what it takes to succeed in the marketplace.

BCIC is the title sponsor of the 2010 BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional and proud to support the competition’s top three prize packages for a total of $60,000. They include the $30,000 BCIC First Prize, $20,000 BCIC Second Prize and $10,000 BCIC Third Prize.  This contribution is part of BCIC’s overall commitment of $390,000 as title sponsor of both the regional and larger provincial technology idea competition advancing BC’s emerging technology industry.

The winners of the 2010 BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional will be announced February 24, 2011 at a special reception.

Today New Ventures BC 2010 2nd place finisher Solegear Bioplastics was recognized for its innovative leadership with the 2010 CYBF (Canadian Youth Business Foundation) Best Green Business award. This is Solegear’s fifth major award since August 2010, and acknowledges the determination and entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, Toby Reid.

Frost & Sullivan, a leading global market research firm, recently presented Solegear with the 2010 New Product Innovation of the Year Award in Bioplastics before Solegear won an unprecedented three awards at the BCIC New Ventures competition.

“I am most grateful to have been supported by the CYBF and Small Business BC in Solegear’s early days. Five years in, the increasing recognition from investors and major organizations alike has produced revenues and a sales pipeline that was only a possibility back in 2006.” He continued, “That being said, we’re only just getting started. We are currently raising the capital to meet higher-than-expected market demand, to fund the installation of our own manufacturing facility and to make key hires, all of which are critical to achieving our business milestones. My hope is that we continue to attract quality investment partners to Solegear as we transition the plastics industry towards cleaner, safer, more efficient and more sustainable materials.”

In 2006, Reid founded Solegear with a vision of producing the world’s first 100% natural, high-performance biodegradable plastic to address exponentially growing pollution, increasing energy consumption and destabilizing oil supply. The CYBF, with assistance from Small Business BC, provided Reid with the initial funding to pursue this lofty goal.

Launch Party Vancouver 10 is on December 1st at the Canvas Lounge and the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society has announced the names of the nine companies chosen to demo their startups at the event.

Among the companies that will be ” launching” are 2010 New Ventures BC Competitor Clinicbook.

If you’re sitting on the fence on whether or now you’re going to attend, check out this little promotional video that is making the rounds.

Register online to attend LPV10.

We’re pleased to announce the 39 businesses advancing to Round 2 of the BCIC-New Ventures BC Competition: Regional after completing and fulfilling the eligibility requirements in Round 1.

These businesses will be presenting to the jury over four days (November 29th – December 2nd) onsite in Kelowna and Victoria.

The regional competition was open to businesses located outside of the Lower Mainland and the breakdown of applications by place is as follows:

• Island: 17 (44%)
• Okanagan: 12 (31%)
• Thompson: 5 (13%)
• Kootenays: 4 (10%)
• North: 1 (3%)

Congratulations to those advancing (in alphabetical order):

1. A22 Rent-A-Bike
2. AC Global Systems Ltd.
3. AlphaSimple
4. Altapure Canada Inc.
5. ApplyNowApp
6. AWCER
7. Bravius Software Inc.
8. BusinessManagementCloud.com by www.FUSIONfinancial.ca
9. Digital Cavalier
10. eAccounting.ca
11. EcoMeter by EnviroSpeak Media
12. ePrescribing Product by Upscale International
13. Factor 9 Sports Inc.
14. Fat Wallet
15. Find It EZ
16. HuStream Technologies Inc.
17. Hydra Cat Performance System
18. JuliasWild.com
19. KoK Technologies Inc
20. Kootenay Alternative Fuels
21. Little Green Book
22. LoCal Technologies
23. Map Jungle
24. MemoryLeaf Media Inc
25. Nitro Technologies Inc.
26. Rapid Water Testing Ltd
27. Reef Safe Fish Inc.
28. Resonessence Labs
29. Ripcharger
30. SchedulePanda.com
31. SideStix Ventures Inc.
32. Situware.net
33. Smile software (Smart Menu)
34. TRiBiNET
35. Truesheet
36. Universal Collaboration Web Services
37. Vida
38. Wolf Trailer Company, Inc.
39. Xeri roX Productions Ltd.

The winners of the 2010 New Ventures BC Competition were highlighted this week in the Vancouver Sun on the front page of the business section.

Hiretheworld.com‘s Douglas Beech, Arash Afrooze, and Terry Beech were interviewed by the Sun’s Scott Simpson at the company’s office space at Discovery Technical Park on Burnaby Mountain, just downhill from Simon Fraser University.

Hiretheworld.com was just a glimmer of an idea 17 months ago when chief executive officer Terry Beech was struck by the notion that a business opportunity was emerging for a company that could find a way to connect small and medium businesses via the Web to a global network of graphic designers. Especially if they could find a way to make it inexpensive and fast.

He convinced twin brother Doug Beech and friend Arash Afrooze to shape the concept into a viable enterprise and this year, began looking for financial support to carry it forward.

They’ve put in a lot of hours but so far there haven’t been any bumps in the road.

After winning $100,000 in cash plus $23,000 worth of in-kind legal, accounting and business services, Hiretheworld.com is on top of the world. The ride doesn’t stop here though.

They will be featured on a forthcoming episode of CBC’s Dragon’s Den show on startup businesses.

Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG