I met Avi over 2 years ago when I had just come back to Vancouver, at Roland's Geek Dinner (yes, where I met Roland for the first time in person). Avi promptly moved off to Amsterdam so I didn't see much of him for quite some time.
Then he and Andrew were back in Vancouver, getting interested in the Innovation Commons, hanging out at our local "third place", Take 5 Cafe, and generally being part of the very interesting Vancouver scene that continues to build.
Avi wowed the computer science nerds at the Open Source CMS Summit talking about Smalltalk/Seaside (see the video by Roland), and then thanks to coming out to Northern Voice's MooseCamp, landed a spot on Under the Radar. And then winning best in show at UTR, showing that made-in-Canada can easily go down to the Valley and kick butt.
And now Avi and Andrew's DabbleDB has made it on to TechCrunch:
Every so often I get asked ‘what is the latest hot app’ and after using DabbleDB I have a new answer to that question. DabbleDB is a platform that allows you to create applications online using a web interface. The sort of applications you would create and then use are what most of us normally hack together in a spreadsheet or using some other database application that is often complex.
Congrats, guys. Still lots of work ahead of you, and the one thing I hope is that you don't get sucked out of Vancouver and down into the Valley...we need these success stories to stick around and continue motivating other local Vancouver teams.