Happy Canada Day!
Hello and Welcome to the New Edition of the EH List Monthly-ish Newsletter
The EH List has been around for a long time and holds a valuable place in many of the hearts of Canadian founders around the globe. Now, with IRL events back and AI making this 'the best time to start a company,' it's time to re-energize the EH List to support the 1150+ Canadian Founders in our Slack.
Here is our first big push to get things started again:
Calling You Back to The EH List Slack
The EH List Slack has had its ups and downs from an engagement standpoint over the years, but the fact that it has served as an invaluable difference maker for many Canadian founders since Sean founded it in 2012 isn’t debatable. There are 1151 of you still in there, some with old e-mails, some more lurking than engaging, but this your moment to jump back in. We have all sorts of weekly programming scheduled to bring the engagement back - come and be a part of that (if you are receiving this, but aren’t in the Slack, please reply to me here and I’ll sort you).
We Have 3 Great Founder Talks to Re-Kick Things Off
Andy Mauro
Andy Mauro
WHEN: JULY 8TH
12:00-1:00 EDT
Andy recently raised from SignalFire (Josh Constine) and Khosla (Vinod himself) for his generative AI game, Storycraft. He'll share his alternative to the typical pitch deck: the vision pitch format for AI-era early stage companies.
Previously exec at Nuance, then founded/exited Automat (AI chatbots before it was cool). Come with your gotcha questions and current challenges - Andy's here to help.
Sean Lynch
Sean Lynch
WHEN: JULY 31ST
12:00-1:00 EDT
Ask anyone about Sean Lynch - he co-founded Census, raised $60M from Sequoia/A16Z, and sold to Fivetran. But more importantly, he's the architect of the EH List. From small-town Saskatoon to Google to Dropbox's early PM team to YC, Sean built the bridge while crossing it.
Join us for the real story: the unglamorous early days, the Dropbox rocket ship, why he started EH List, and what actually happens when you sell to a unicorn. Bring your hardest questions.
Guy Gal
Guy Gal
WHEN: AUGUST 14TH
3:00-4:00 EDT
Guy Gal is founder/CEO of Side Real Estate, which hit unicorn status at $2.5B just 4 years from founding. Side has raised $250M+ from Tiger, ICONIQ and D1, and is now the 9th largest US brokerage by volume.
Guy is allergic to playing small and won't hesitate to tell you. Come prepared to have your mindsets challenged, your ideas flipped upside down, and to leave reeling from rapid perspective shifts.
Other Upcoming Speakers
Amir Feizpour
Upcoming Virtual Speaker Series on Agentic AI
Amir Feizpour, PhD is bringing his popular Maven bootcamp on building LLM agents to EH List! As founder of Aggregate Intellect (5000+ AI community), former NLP Product Lead at RBC, and instructor of multi-agent systems, Amir has helped hundreds ship production agentic applications.
Join for 20-30 min lesson extracts from his bootcamp covering everything from "You Probably Don't Need Multi-Agents" to advanced evaluation techniques, followed by 30-40 min open Q&A on your agentic AI challenges. Monthly series starting in September. Dates to follow.
Do you have a topic you want to talk about or have someone you want to see talk with a connection to the group? Recommend them here.
Weekly Accountability Groups and #EH Momentum Threads
We are also launching EH List Virtual Accountability Groups. Over the past few weeks, we have started weekly momentum/wins-sharing in the #eh channel and this has sparked a momentum pickup from our members. Michael, Amir, Josh, Ashley, Gabriel and I have been sharing our weekly focus and wins. Join the conversation and feel the momentum of the builders in our community.
In an effort to continue this initiative, and due to expressed interest from the community, we are launching the WAG (Weekly-Accountability-Group) initiative.
Here’s how it is going to work:
Get sorted by yours truly into a pod with 3 others based on the expressed challenges you’ll be facing over the next quarter
Self-organize as a group how you want to touch base: weekly/monthly/async/zoom, etc
Share a few of your wins in the #eh channel for everyone else to feel the momentum from
At the end of the quarter, we will repeat the process again and reorganize the groups based on each person’s up to date challenges, interest, and availability.
New Brand
The EH List has never really had a pronounced brand—for this next stage we needed something simple and evocative that speaks to the ‘up and to the right’ motion we’re all chasing as company growers. At an Ottawa EH List coffee a few months ago, Sam offered some resources from one of his interns at ANVIL.AI, to help with some visual work. Luna worked over the course of several weeks to help us reestablish our visual brand with something fresher, higher energy, and more recognizable - and voila - here is where we got.
Let us know what you think! Follow (and thank) Luna on LinkedIn here.
Call to Action: Local Coffee Event Hosts Needed
The core touchpoint of the EH List has always been the monthly-ish coffee meetup in a plethora of localities. Over the past few months there have been events in Ottawa and Victoria.
We’re looking for local hosts to bring this magic back. Reach out to me ‘@kyleboulay’ on Slack, reply here, or sign up here, to let me know if you’re interested in hosting near you.
Here are some recent and upcoming local EH List events:
In Toronto, we have Alison who has offered to host - join the #yyz Slack channel to follow along.
In Victoria, Ian Paterson organized a coffee last month - join the #yyj Slack channel to follow along for the next one.
In Montreal, Gabriel will be hosting a founders cocktail after day 2 of Startupfest in collaboration with the EH List - join the #yul Slack channel to learn more.
In Ottawa, Ali and I will be cross hosting the Ottawa EH List members and the Ottawa YC alumni at Bower Coffee on July 15th. Join #yow in Slack to follow along.
Community Growth + Ways To Follow Along
Over the past month, the EH List has onboarded 13 new members. As a reminder, our application process happens here: ehlist.network/join. Without any real initiative, the EH List continues to grow organically through referrals - a true testament to the need an desire for us to group together as Canadian founders and help each other scale.
Launching the EH List on LinkedIn and X
The EH List has never had an official presence on LinkedIn, but that’s changing now. Having a LinkedIn presence will help us promote and grow. Plus, many of us are proud of this community and want to show it off - a LinkedIn presence will enable us to do that.
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If you’re interested in adding the EH List to your LinkedIn, you’re welcome to do so. In fact, we encourage it! Please follow this guide while doing it so we can present ourselves as a united front.
EH List is also coming to X — follow here.
Other Action Items
That’s just the beginning, for now. More activity coming soon! In the meantime…
Join Us In Slack To Keep The Momentum Going and Good Building, Eh!
Steering the canoe for now,
Kyle
ps- if you feel like you are receiving this in error, please accept our very Canadian ‘sorry’ and simply unsubscribe or reply to this e-mail and I’ll immediately remove you from the list. We are not trying to spam anyone, but this newsletter list is old and I’m not 100% sure how every person got on here. All the best!
