About Stephen Jagger

Co-Founder of PayrollHero.com

C100 – Networking Event, San Francisco

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

Last night Mike Stephenson and I found our way into (thanks to Kris Krug) the networking reception for the C100’s 48Hours in the Valley. The networking event was hosted by the Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco and Palo Alto and Ericsson. It was a great evening of networking with tons of other Canadian entrepreneurs and investors working in the San Francisco area.

What is C100?
“C100 is a non-profit, member-driven organization dedicated to supporting Canadian technology entrepreneurship and investment.

C100 is comprised of a select group of Canadians based primarily in Silicon Valley, including executives of leading technology companies, experienced startup entrepreneurs and venture capital investors. C100 members are passionate about leveraging their collective experience, expertise and relationships to help mentor and grow a new generation of successful Canadian-led technology companies.

C100 Charter Members include startups CEOs, top executives of companies such as Apple, Cisco, EA, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Oracle, and venture investors representing more than $8 billion in capital.”

Kris Krug and Stephen Jagger

50 Coffees: Sunil Nagaraj of Bessemer Ventures

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

Sunil Nagaraj of Bessemer Ventures dropped by the Warm Gun Conference to meet up and chat about what we are doing with Payroll Hero. It was a great meeting in a very Zen like location. We sat outside on a couple of large rocks in the Hotel Kabuki‘s inner courtyard next to their koi pond.

Sunil had some great insights into the space Payroll Hero is pushing into and has some great experiences that lend well to where we are going. We will be meeting up again to go through the product with him.

(50 Coffees)

Warm Gun Conference, San Francisco

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

We attended the Warm Gun Conference in San Francisco on Friday which was put on by 500 Startups. It was an excellent conference with a solid line up of speakers that kept us entertained all day.

“…Warm Gun unites designers & startups to learn about web design that isn’t just pretty, but actually converts!”

The event finished (quite behind schedule) with a panel of rockstars (a few beers deep) giving feedback to brave entrepreneurs who offered to have their products reviewed in front of the crowd. Made for some very entertaining moments.

BC Caregiver/Nanny Survey

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

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50 Coffees: Indy Guha of Bain Capital Ventures

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

I just got back from a meeting with Indy Guha of Bain Capital Ventures. (Bain is also a “newbie” to the Silicon Valley area with new offices in Palo Alto and downtown San Francisco.) Indy and I had a great chat. He explained how Bain has its fingers in many pies around the world and through its affiliated companies. Bain has lots of experience and connections in many large industries with ownership in many big name businesses.

We chatted about PayrollHero, the direction we were taking it and about our plans for the near future. Sounds like Indy is going to swing by the PayrollHero house sometime soon to meet the rest of the team and see the product.

(50 Coffees)

Demo Of PayrollHero with Robert Scoble

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

I emailed Robert Scoble a few months ago about meeting up with him while we were in San Francisco to chat about our journey and what we are up to with PayrollHero.com. His schedule is crazy and November 29th 2011 was the first spot he had available. So today, Mike Stephenson and I drove over to the new Rackspace offices in downtown San Francisco to meet with Robert.

Their new offices are really new. They were still setting things up when we got there and Robert was even attaching lights to the interview area that they dedicated to his program.

It was an interesting meeting, we chatted briefly before Robert turned the camera on, and then he went right into asking questions about PayrollHero and doing a live demo. Mike did a great job of showcasing the system, talking about where we are going and the market that we are in.

It was a great experience and I look forward to seeing the video. (sounds like it will be online in the next few days)

Note the signatures on the post – these are the people that he has interviewed thus far in this new location(L – R) Robert Scoble, Michael Stephenson, Stephen Jagger

(50 Coffees)

Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup, Comes to Luxr

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

Today’s Luxr session was fantastic. We had Eric Ries, the author of the best selling book The Lean Startup come by to have a fireside chat with us, moderated by Luxr co-founder Janice Fraser. It was a great session with Janice asking some very relevant questions that allowed Eric to explain his thoughts on the lean startup world. He told some great stories, including a funny one about his experience on Fox News.

Eric is a very sharp individual who has taken the tech community by storm with his lean startup concept and it was a pleasure meeting him again. (Mike and I met up with Eric a while back in Whistler, which indirectly lead us to Luxr and moving to San Francisco) As part of our bulk purchase of Eric’s book, we get 4 hours with him to chat about whatever we want. I look forward to having him over to the PayrollHero house and showing him in more detail what we are up to. Sounds like mid December we will have that opportunity.

Here are a few pictures from today:

(L – R) Piotr Banasik, Stephen Jagger, Eric Ries, Michael Stephenson, Adam Baechler

Eric Ries signing 1 of our 500 copies of The Lean Startup (watch this blog for book giveaway details)

Janice Fraser of Luxr and Eric Ries

(50 Coffees)

50 Coffees: Joe Gebbia, Co-Founder of AirBnB.com

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of AirBnB today at their San Francisco offices. Joe, was in the office on a Saturday of a long weekend, but made time for me so that I could pop by and get a tour of their operation as well as learn more about his experiences growing a startup in San Francisco as his learn more about their journey in launching AirBnB.

I have seen Joe speak twice, once was a few weeks ago at FailCon, the other was a few months ago at the Inman Connect Conference. Joe and his co-founder have a very cool story that involves creating a breakfast cereal to keep the cash flowing while they continued to revise the AirBnB business model.

It was great catching up with Joe and listening to his experiences. I look forward to watching their company continue their massive expansion.

Their meeting rooms are all modeled after some of the real rooms
at some of the AirBnB listings

A huge version of their breakfast cereal

(50 Coffees)

50 Coffees: Leah Busque, Founder of TaskRabbit

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

Leah Busque was kind enough to make time to meet up with me today at the TaskRabbit.com offices in downtown San Francisco. Leah has a very cool business working on the simple premise of neighbours helping neighbours. TaskRabbit is an online marketplace, connecting people, to get everyday jobs and tasks done. Leah raised $6.85MM in financing from Shasta Ventures, Collaborative Fund, 500 Startups, Floodgate Fund, First Round Capital, and Baseline Ventures.

I dropped into their very green offices today to sit down and chat with Leah. We talked about what we are up to here at PayrollHero.com, our similar experiences being “new” to the Silicon Valley world and how TaskRabbit was planning for the future. Leah was kind enough to share her insights on fund raising, the need for mentors and advisors and how she was growing her business.

(50 Coffees)

East Meets West Dinner; Manila, PH

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Stephen Jagger

Three of the four PayrollHero team, who are currently living in San Francisco took off the other day for a 20 hour trip to Manila, PH to meet up with the PayrollHero team in Manila. They will be in Manila for 6 days, then coming back to San Francisco. It is a quick trip and is taking advantage of the break in the Luxr Residency for American Thanksgiving. (Canadian Thanksgiving was last month)

The idea of the trip is for Piotr Banasik, lead programmer at PayrollHero to meet with the 3 new team members that have joined the team while he has been in San Francisco. This will be the first opportunity for the whole development team to all be in the same office at the same time.

Mike Stephenson and Adam Baechler along with Piotr Banasik will be leading coaching sessions on some of the techniques that we have been learning at Luxr over the past few weeks.

Here are some of the pictures that Mike sent me today: