Startup M&A – Raincity Studios acquires Bryght

Bryght, a Drupal managed hosting startup based in Vancouver, BC has been acquired by long time partner RainCity Studios, who have developed sites such as Ozzy.com and Ask a Ninja.

While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and I am not sure the number would be huge, this feels primarily like a smart consolidation of two very complimentary businesses. Servicing the same niche doesn’t necessarily mean two businesses should merge, but in this case the two organizations have been working together on so many projects, for so long, I have a feeling that this will be a chance to consolidate their efforts and cut some of the fat by re-directing effort.

Many of the Bryght and RainCity Studios employees and partners are also responsible for the Northern Voice conference, which has been a huge hit for years.

The new company is underway opening a new office in Shanghai, China, and my bet is that the renewed energy from this merger will result in a lot of cool projects in the near future. Kris Krug will be the President of the new organization with Robert Scales as CEO and running the European and Asian side of the company.

I should also disclose: I have been a happy client of both of these companies in the past.

Update: More straight from the source here.
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Coast to Coast: Amateur Sports Teams 2.0

One of the first startups we profiled on StartupNorth was New Brunswick based Yourteamonline. Since then Yourteamonline has launched version 2.0 of their sports team management suite and added a slew of new features. In the meanwhile, Victoria based TeamPages has also risen in prominence.

Both TeamPages and YourTeamOnline provide player pages, statistics, team pages and league interaction. It seems like we have a coast to coast fight for the amateur sports team demographic.

The market for amateur sports related spending in North America alone is $111 billion. More than enough room for two leaders, and even better if they are both from Canada. The amount of targeted advertising dollars up for grabs is staggering. Add on the amount of money that changes hands for local team sponsorships every year, and things are looking up!

The first similarity I noticed was the abundant use of blue on both companies’ websites. The choice of colors is not where the similarities end however. And this is where I start to wonder a little.

Both YourTeamOnline and TeamPages are marketing themselves as a generalized sports team management toolkit. If I were calling the shots here (which I am not!), I would approach each sport differently. YourTeamOnline is starting down this path, they have customized versions for Hockey and Soccer, but their marketing is still focused at a general market, which is going to be tougher to capture. This is the same strategy that every other competitor in the marketplace is using and it is going to be tough to stand out, even with a much better than average offering.

YourTeamOnline and Teampages both focus on letting individuals, teams and leagues build social networks, and each have unique characteristics that, in my opinion, make them the two best team/league platforms out there. Where most competitive packages focus on the minutiae of managing a team, YourTeamOnline and TeamPages focus on the individual users, whether they are coaches, parents or players.

I am also impressed with the roadmaps that both companies allude to on their sites. YourTeamOnline has plans to launch youtube-like video uploading and a feature called “SportsWire” that helps get team statistics out to the public, newspapers, and other consumers of team data.

Is this a clash of the titans? A fight to the death? Jackie Chan vs. Chow Yun Fat? I think it is probably more the result of an overdue idea and a huge market, with scalable revenue opportunities. Will there be one winner, or two? We’ll be watching to find out.

YourTeamOnline and Teampages have each taken early-stage funding.

BC Startup Competition – Dec. 17 Deadline

Fear not, the east coast is not the only part of the country with a startup competition. Small Business BC is hosting their own business plan competition.

There are separate categories for startups and for more mature growth businesses. Each category is up for a $40,000 prize (we think, it’s not clear).

This contest seems pretty well run, and is much more open in terms of the types of businesses that can apply, but it also seems to have a much less attractive prize package. There may be ancillary prizes we just aren’t aware of yet however.

They are also very prescriptive of how your business plan should look which doesn’t nessecarily mean that they will find the best startups, or the best entrepreneurs, instead they may just find the best darn bunch of business plan writers in BC.

Business Plans aren’t always where you should be spending your time, instead I think that a competition like this should leave the criteria much more open and should simply judge each entrepreneur and business based on how well the idea is presented.

Only a few tech startups have won in the past.