Well well well,

That was one heck of a sold-out launch event for North House.

Think we’re bluffing? Here’s an Instagram Recap Video, Photo Gallery, and Stacked silent auction list to prove it.

For the 200 of you who bet on us and joined us in person, thank you for showing up. It means more than you’ll ever know.

We’re almost at our $100,000 fundraising goal, but still need a few more people to step up.

Top Moments of North House Launch

• ☑️ We launched Vancouver’s largest founder-focused coworking space in Vancouver called North House

• ☑️ We hosted Ryan Holmes (LOI’s Founder), Eric Ries (Author of Lean Startup), Tara Bosch (Smartsweets Founder) and Daniel Dubois (Legendary LOI Alumni/YPO Angel Chair)

• ☑️ People bid on crazy silent auction items like “Wine with a Billionaire, Mexico trips, matcha with the Mejuri Founder, sunset plane flights, Ski trips with Ryan Holmes, Basketball suite tickets, coffee with the mayor, zoom calls with Brian Scudamore, and so much more (P.S. still 12 hours to bid, do that here!)

• ☑️ We’ve raised over $60,000 in donations, and you can still donate here if you’d like to help us

• ☑️ 200 Tech Leaders attended (From brands like Google, AWS, Tentree, Osler, Native Shoes, Arc’teryx, Fable, Microsoft, Luma, Front Row Ventures, Gumloop, RBC, TELUS, Tevah, Dell, O2E Brands, MNP, Shopify, Deloitte, Clio, KPMG, and dozens more)

• ☑️ We announced our 10 Founding North House Members (the earliest startups that bet on us and our vision)

• ☑️ We snacked on pizza, salad bowls, smartsweets candy, espresso martinis, fieldhouse beer, nonny beer, BAK’D cookies, rested coffee and so much more

• ☑️ We played beer pong, corn hole, mini-putt and gave away door prizes

The TL;DR? It was a vibe and a half. And since our focus was to make it an Anti-Gala, we broke all the rules of normal galas.

If you wanted to donate to our anti-gala but haven’t already, click below.

Rules North House Anti-Gala Broke

• We did a chill Canadian, patagonia vest dress code

• We hosted it at a coworking space instead of a ballroom

• We let people donate money to buy fake tables and not attend

• We had red solo cups instead of wine glasses

• We had chips instead of fancy salmon

• We printed artwork the day before

• We invented our silent auction 48 hours before

Why did we do this? To save money so we can serve more founders.

We entrepreneured the heck out of the event.

And now, the only thing that stands between us and reaching our $100,000 fundraising goal is communicating our vision to you, our community.

Here’s How You Can Help North House

For some context, North House is operated by the League of Innovators Charity (LOI).

That c-word (charity) means a few things:

It means our team is hella small, and our budget is even tighter.

This is where you come in, the readers.

Since some of you have:

• built and sold $100m brands or

• landed cool jobs at McKinsey, FANG companies or

• sit beside big-name family offices, startup CEOs or billionaires,

• we’re calling for your help.

Yes, help — the thing community is supposed to provide when you’re in need

Our ask?

Donate to our LOI Charity to make this North House mission possible.

How do you do that?

• Donate directly to our charity page here to get a tax slip or

• Bid on silent auction items here with a friend or two

Cmon. Help us build North House.

Canada needs this space for builders.

North House has secured more than ten early-stage companies as founding residents that are already working out of the space with their teams, including Before Company, Admission Prep, Tuff Media, Handled, BuzzMeUp, Six, Grounded AI, TeamTown, TofuGoSnacks, PostUpPro, Xango Accounting, TKS and QuarkBaby with dozens of ventures on the waitlist.

But to serve more, we’re gonna need more cash-ola.

So every donation goes a long way.

It was incredible to see Canada’s top entrepreneurs and investors like Anthony von Mandl, Noura Sakkajhai, Harley Finkelstein, Michele Romanow, Ryan Beedie, Arlene Dickinson, Brian Scudamore, Daniel Frankel, Andrew Reid, Mayor Ken Sim and more raising their hands to help with our launch event via the silent auction.

All these funds will be going directly toward programming and staff to raise up more young founders in Vancouver. For those that would like to learn more about the League of Innovators Charity or want to contribute directly to the North House initiative, you can donate here.

It was a packed room with founders, investors, and executives from all over.

But you wanna know what’s better than a packed room?

A room of builders, doers and donors.

And that’s what this email is going to test.

Are you going to simply hear a vision, sit back in your comfy chair and wait for someone to do it?

Or are you gonna pick up your chequebook, get your hands dirty and commit to helping build the future of startups in Canada?

So many people complain about people leaving down south to build a startup.

We wanna build a community that changes that.

Help Us Spread the Word

If you’d like to make a post about our new space, our silent auction, or the vision behind our new coworking space North House, feel free.

• Grab a photo from the gallery (thanks to Innes Simpson)

• Mention something about the North House launch

• Link the silent auction

• And spread the word to startups, investors and tech leaders

Here’s to seeing more startup stories in Canada.

Here’s to the next wave of entrepreneurship in the North

Upwards and Onwards,

The LOI and North House Fam

P.S. The Silent Auction will close in 24 hours, so place those bids asap