Meet the new owners of the Edmonton Riverboat
Rob Davy and Eric Warnke met in the early 2000s as teenagers working at Nexopia. Nearly a quarter-century later, the two serial entrepreneurs are the new owners of the Edmonton Riverboat.
Davy, co-owner of Laser City, and Warnke, whose startup Mover was acquired by Microsoft, are working to finalize a purchase deal with Jay Esterer, who bought the boat in 2016. The two told Taproot they want to take the Edmonton Riverboat to the same level as attractions like the Muttart Conservatory, Fort Edmonton Park, and West Edmonton Mall.
"I think we can do a really good job of making sure that this vessel is added to the top-of-mind things that people should be doing in Edmonton," Warnke said.
The Nexopia connection has never left Warnke and Davy, who remain close friends. Both said what they did during and after Nexopia is informing how they will approach the business of buying and operating a floating Edmonton icon.
Nexopia was Canada's first social network, before Facebook and Myspace. It was founded in 2003 by Timo Ewalds. Davy was around 18 when he made Nexopia its first dollar. "I put the first ad on it, and we were like, 'Oh my God, you can make money on the internet?' That was not a given," Davy said.
Warnke was at a similar age when he joined. He moderated pictures for the site, which had 1.2 million active registered users at one time. The team ran Nexopia out of Ewalds' parent's house in west Edmonton, and then an office on Rice Howard Way. "We were all still, like, 20 years old," Davy said. "Timo's mom was kind of the token proper adult involved in the organization." Davy and Warnke worked at Nexopia until 2008, when Ewalds sold the business. Six months later Nexopia's competitor Facebook blew up and users started migrating.
Years later, Davy tries to see the silver lining in the different successes Nexopia and Facebook achieved. "You either let it keep you up at night, virtually kicking yourself, or you realize that the experience that you have there is what has got you where you are now," he said. "We were really lucky — we had an opportunity there to learn about things at age 18, 19, 20, that you don't get to in university."
Davy left Nexopia and started a horseback riding stable in Ardrossan, and then a paintball arena with his partner. They added laser tag to the paintball business, and now it's become Laser City. While the core clientele for laser tag (eight-year-olds hopped up on sugar) may differ from the Edmonton Riverboat's, he said both are in the business of offering people a good time. "That's what we do in our business, we make memories. And this is another one of those memory-making experiences."
Warnke stayed in the startup and tech world after leaving Nexopia. He purchased and operated an internet café on Whyte Avenue, and then started Mesh Canada, a company that offered wireless hotspots in restaurants and cafés. "Back then, you still paid 10 bucks an hour for the hotspot, Boingo, or whatever they had at Starbucks, and I hated that," he said. Mesh was in all Original Joe's restaurants and about 100 Boston Pizzas, Warnke said.
Roughly 15 years ago, Warnke took Mesh Canada to a startup accelerator in Chile. And it's there, in a way, where his journey to the Edmonton Riverboat began. At the accelerator, he met Matt Beaubien, who years later became the boat's administrative manager under Esterer. "That's what happens in Edmonton — everyone knows everybody, everyone has some kind of connection," Davy said recently, sitting on the boat.
