Hi, we're the co-founders of Grapevine6. We’re a laid back group that loves sharing stories, so let us tell you about how our experience in our first tech startup inspired us to create Grapvine6.

We started our first venture right out of school, building technology for an emerging platform called the World Wide Web (yes, it was a while ago). It’s during that first venture that we learned how important client relationships are and how tough it is to build them. They didn’t teach engineers relationship management in school! We toughed it out though and got better. And eventually we were acquired by the absolute masters of relationship building – an Ad Agency. In one signature we became veritable Madmen. As it turned out, nobody knew the science of relationship building like them. From individual relationships to a mass scale with huge audiences, they really knew how to connect with people. Today few are better at it then the company that acquired us. Cundari is now one the largest digital ad agencies in Canada and one of the most awarded globally.

We put these two life experiences together and came up with Grapevine6. It’s a product we hope will help entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and relationship managers everywhere build awesome business relationships.

Yes, it’s our second start-up and we can tell you we’re still having fun learning tough lessons from the entrepreneurial school of hard knocks. If you’ve got comments, feedback, suggestions or just want a little human contact, give us a call.

Wayne graduated from the University of Waterloo’s Computer Engineering program and quickly turned into the “client relationship guy” during our first venture. The challenges he overcame in learning to build client relationships were challenges we all faced and why we built this product to make it a little easier for entrepreneurs and relationship managers. At Grapevine6, Wayne is still the “client relationship guy”. Now a “seasoned veteran” he’s able to do some blue sky thinking while building relationships. When he’s out there pitching our product and telling our story, he’s also busy getting inspired with new ideas to take the product to another level. Always a steward of the user, he works hard at listening to what they say, delivering that message to the team, and bridging it with every aspect of our business. Prior to co-founding Grapevine6, Wayne started Rich Internet Group which was acquired by Cundari, where he stayed on as CTO and Managing Director. He’s an avid fisherman and an outdoors enthusiast.

Lucky for us we’ve got Mike. He’s our product manager/strategist that somehow brings everything together release after release. But his true asset, and what makes this character great, is his ability to take good ideas and find ways to make them great. He doesn’t just deliver results consistently, he delivers better results consistently. Mike met Wayne studying Engineering at the University of Waterloo (Chemical Engineering so we don’t let him touch any code) after which he spent several years in management consultant working with some of Canada’s marquee brands before helping out the team on the first tech venture and later joining the group full-time at Cundari. At Cundari, he led a strategic think tank and project management department behind all of Cundari’s digital work, some of it globally awarded. Mike lives in Toronto, bikes to work, runs after his kids and has an appreciation for fine wines, although he drinks affordable Italian ones...

Jonathan is the guru of user interface technology. And trust us, there’s a lot of it in Grapevine6. His greatest strength though is having that perseverance to “get it done”. When things are tough and the chips are down, this guy always delivers. And that’s what really counts when you’re on the entrepreneurial roller coaster. A graduate of Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario, Jonathan’s specialty is human computer interaction. He was a co-owner in our previous tech venture where he ran the client-side technology team. A thought leader on emerging user experience (UX) technologies, he was one of a few Canadian Certified Adobe and Laszlo Instructors. After we were acquired, he ran a dedicated UX technology department within Cundari and produced digital experiences that Cundari continues to be recognized for. He lives in Toronto is an avid scuba diver, traveller and borderline crazy snowboarder.

Pankaj is a hard core software engineer and is the architect powering Grapevine6’s server technology. For such a hard core software guy he presents with an unusual charisma, likely attributable to his tenure as a senior Deloitte consultant. A quintessential professional, he graduated from the University of Waterloo’s highly reputed Computer Engineering program (where he met Wayne). Before jumping into the Grapevine6 venture, he was a lead engineer in our previous tech venture and assumed the same role at Cundari post-acquisition. Pankaj has worked at United Way, where he successfully lead the transformation of their global donation platform, and Artez Technology Inc., where he architected the company’s flagship product e2RM. Pankaj lives in Toronto and loves to ride motorcycles at some of the best race tracks Ontario has to offer. He's also managed to crash test a number of helmets and race suits in the process.

Much like Pankaj, Danko truly personifies deep engineering thinking (he plays chess to relax, online of course). At Grapevine6, Danko has become the custodian of the insight and search engines that power our product... the most complex components of our platform. With a militant approach to software development he brings an old-school discipline to the team that simplifies solutions and, quite frankly, delivers results. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Computer Science program, he too was a co-owner in our previous tech venture and subsequently a senior member of the Technology department at Cundari post-acquisition. Danko lives in Toronto, is a cycling addict and drinks more espresso than anyone else on the team.

By Michael Goodwin | Yahoo! Small Business Advisor – Wed, May 28, 2014 7:15 PM EDT

There's an art to starting a conversation. At the high end, a legendary practitioner like Duke Ellington, opened conversations with women by saying stuff like, "Well, my dear, you certainly make that dress look terrific." At the low end, you get, "This might seem a little weird, but I like your posture."

If you're a small business owner, and you ask Wayne Gomes, the Co-Founder of startup Grapevine6 Labs, he'll tell you that a truly compelling way to open a business conversation might be: "Did you have a chance to read that article I sent you?"

Read the full article here.

By Samantha Gale | 60 Second Marketer - Apr 5, 2014

LinkedIn is a hard nut to crack. Everyone recognizes that it’s important, but, unless you’re actively searching for a job, the benefits for individuals tend to be less tangible. It’s hard to know how to make the most of the network you’ve so carefully built without spending hours sorting through the muck and mire to do so.

Enter Grapevine6. Its primary purpose is to help you find and deliver content to key connections that will be interesting to them specifically and will help open the door for other kinds of communications. It’s a very niche tool, but, because everyone has to nurture their networks, it avoids the trap of being too narrow a niche. It’s actually a very cool tool

Read the full article here.

CRM Idol is an annual competition that provides CRM industry related small businesses an opportunity for exposure, resources and advice that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

Read the announcement.

Justin Mastrangelo, @JustinPGH

Grapevine6 monitors popular content and then recommends posts via email that might be interesting to my most important LinkedIn connections.

See the full list here.

posted by John Jantsch

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

Grapevine6 – Tool that connects to your LinkedIn account and suggests content to send to people you want to network with

See the list here.