Editors Note: This is a guest post by Chris Arsenault (LinkedIn, @chrisarsenault) a tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Chris is the Co-Chair of the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), a board member at the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA), a Supporter of the C100, among other things. Follow Chris at chrisarsenault.wordpress.com or on Twitter @chrisarsenault.

 Some rights reserved by antmoose

The last few weeks have certainly proven to be extremely promising for Canadian Tech Entrepreneurs. Almost $80M of equity financing has recently been secured from some of the top investors in the world to help build our next generation of massive tech companies. It’s even more exciting when you realize that these funds are going to three especially young, dynamic and opportunistic companies, all of which are in our backyard!

Beyond the Rack

Yona Shtern, Robert Gold and the team over at Montreal-based Beyond the Rack (“BTR”) lead the way with a whooping $37M financing round that should propel the company to new heights yet unseen on the Canadian eCommerce front. BTR has quickly established itself as an eCommerce leader by showing the market that Canadian companies really do know what a “hockey stick” revenue growth chart looks like. The teams’ ability to build such a big company in such a short time frame has earned them our utmost respect. We initially met the team and reviewed their business plan in late 2008; by 2011, they were already ranked as one of the fastest-growing online retailers in the entire world. Yona was also wise in choosing his investors, be it industry specific angels or great VCs such as Panorama Capital, iNovia Capital, Rho Canada, Tandem Expansion, BDC Venture Capital, Highland Capital Partners, EDC and Montreal Start Up. If you aren’t a Beyond the Rack member, don’t wait – register now, and you’ll be impressed!

Shopify

Just down the road from Montreal is another world class eCommerce team. Ottawa-based Shopify recently closed a $15M second round of financing. Tobias Lutke, Cody Fauser, Daniel Weinand & Harley Finkelstein have developed an industry leading eCommerce platform that is already being used by thousands of leading online retailers around the world. The team, their vision and commitment to execution all combine to make Shopify one of Canada’s tech leaders in an extremely high growth global market. Unfortunately, we missed the boat on the opportunity to work with them, but our friends over at Bessemer Ventures, Firstmark Capital, Felicis Ventures and Georgian Partners were more than happy to come aboard. I’m expecting to see Shopify rise above the tide over the coming years and establish itself as a global leader in its space.

Fixmo

The most recent team to announce a substantial equity-financing round is Toronto-based Fixmo. Led by its founders Rick Segal, Shyam Sheth and Joyce Janczyn, Fixmo just announced a $23M round. This investment round included both existing investors (iNovia Capital, Panorama Capital, Rho Canada and Extreme Venture Partners) and an impressive syndicate of new lead investors: Silicon Valley-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Washington-based Paladin Capital Group and Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures. While the company’s core vision has not changed over the last two years, the product development road map has evolved at a rapid pace. Within an extremely short time frame, Fixmo launched a series of Government and Enterprise products, acquired two companies (Conceivium Business Solutions and Chocolate Chunk Apps), established a series of key partnerships and practically jumped ahead of every other Mobile Risk Management solution provider in the market. Obviously, the founders didn’t do it alone, but the sheer fact that Rick was successful in attracting some of the best talent out there (Bruce Gilley, Jonas Gyllensvaan, Tyler Lessard, Lee Cocking, John Yuen and others) speaks to the long term execution ability and potential of Fixmo.

Ambition coupled with Execution

The average tech financing round in Canada is under $4M. Therefore, the aforementioned three companies basically raised as much cash as 20 average Canadian tech startups combined. Obviously, I get nervous when I see a company (portfolio or not) raise such a large chunk of cash. Why? It’s not because I like the small size of the average Canadian financing rounds. Rather, it’s because I think that too much money for a young business can be as bad as or worse than not having enough. $15M-$40M rounds for Canadian tech companies are amongst the largest we have seen this side of the border in over 10 years. That being said, I do also think that Canadian Tech Entrepreneurs are now entering a phase of Ambition coupled with Execution. We have lived through too many years of “lack of ambition”, quickly followed by “lack of execution”, not to mention the much lamented “lack of capital”. However, we are now seeing deals done where massive amounts of ambition and execution converge, and capital is becoming available to build large tech companies right here in our own backyard. With more companies able to raise the amount of funding they truly need to generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, not only we will stop selling our companies short, they won’t need to move down south. Hopefully other investors will note the phenomenon, and future startups won’t have as much trouble raising the capital both from Canada and into Canada. And that’s good for all of us.

At iNovia, when a massive opportunity knocks, we answer! I’m expecting to be sharing a lot more stories about successful Canadian entrepreneurs, and how they’ve built hugely successful companies here as they compete globally for resources, capital and market share. There isn’t much stopping the entrepreneurs driving Canada’s next generation of large tech companies, and for the likes of Beyond the Rack, Shopify, Fixmo and many others, this is just the beginning.

Congratulations to all the teams mentioned in taking important steps on their paths to success!

Below some article worth reading with regards the above companies:

• TechCrunch - Flash Sales Site And Gilt Competitor Beyond The Rack Raises $37 Million
• Financial Post - Montreal’s Beyond the Rack closes US$37M funding round
• GigaOm - Shopify raises $15M to expand online shopping platform
• Financial Post – Toronto’s Fixmo lands $23.4-million in funding from top VCs
• CRN – Security Vendor Fixmo Gets VC Boost

Editors Note: This is a guest post by Chris Arsenault (LinkedIn, @chrisarsenault) a tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Chris is the Co-Chair of the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), a board member at the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA), a Supporter of the C100, among other things. Follow Chris at chrisarsenault.wordpress.com or on Twitter @chrisarsenault.

DFAIT is sponsoring the Technology Growth Initiative (TGI) Business Bootcamps Spring 2011 to help Canadian companies go-to-market in specific US markets (Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, San Diego, San Francisco/Silicon Valley and others). The program provides startups with access to webinars, a one day bootcamp session and direct connections with VCs and local entrepreneurs to share experiences and find funding.

The one day bootcamps are being help in April and May 2011 from Halifax to London. The bootcamps are interesting, they provide entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch and get feedback from trusted experts (yeah right I think I served as an “expert” in 2009 ;-). But it is a great opportunity to get a different set of eyes on your pitch. And it plays to the old adage, “how do you know when an entrepreneur is dead? he stops pitching”.

Registration for One Day Business Bootcamp

• Halifax: April 27th, 2011 - Cleantech and ICT
• Quebec City: April 28th, 2011 - ICT
• London: April 29th, 2011 - Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
• Toronto: May 2nd, 2011 - Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
• Ottawa: May 3rd, 2011 - Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences

There is also the upcoming April 6th, 2011 11:30EST seminar with Mike Grandinetti (he’s also a TechStars mentor) focusing on “Lean and Mean Startups”.

April 6th: 11:30 EST (Upcoming Webinar – Soon)

1. Lean and Mean Start-ups – Presented by: Mike Grandinetti, Managing Director, Southboro Capital, Boston.
2. So you think you are ready? – 10 things you need to know before presentation day – A candid talk on presentations gone horribly wrong and how you avoid that – Presented by: Coby Schneider – Miller Thomson & Others.

These are great opportunities to learn about expanding into specific US markets. The DFAIT team brings key players to local markets and makes it easy to establish relationships that allow companies to grow. There are lots of opportunity to criticize some of the efforts, but the team at DFAIT have run this program for the past few years with varied success. It’s worth the time of startups actively looking to expand their customer base (this means that you’re beyond seed stage, you probably have customers, you have a product, you’re looking for a scalable business model) to explore how DFAIT can help.

The event is co-hosted by our sponsors and friends at KPMG are corporate partners helping DFAIT and startups. There are a lot of cross-border issues concerning corporate structure, financing, taxation and other where KPMG can leverage their experience to help early and growth stage companies.

Catwalk at Mercury Grove/NetworkHippo offices

Scott Annan announced he was making available some of the space in the newly acquired NetworkHippo/Mercury Grove office space for startups. It is a raw space located in downtown Ottawa to enable startups and entrepreneurs to come together and share. It embraces the idea that great things come out of the collisions that happen in our communities.

“The idea behind opening up our space is that I think that Ottawa has some of the greatest entrepreneurs, talent, and ideas in the world. But we don’t spend enough time together collaborating on ideas, discussing technology opportunities, or discussing ways we’re changing the world. I think the more we can be surrounded by people who are facing similar challenges (trying to get launched, trying to get noticed, and trying to get paid) the more we can feed off each other’s successes and learn from each other’s experience.”

This is different than a coworking space. It’s an entrepreneur that values the collisions, differing view points and conversations that happen in larger offices. It’s Scott making sure that he and his staff have a unique experience by getting to interact with others in the Ottawa community. It speaks deeply to why we host events like DemoCamp and Founders & Funders. And you can see venture firms in Toronto and Vancouver taking advantage of the opportunities of having others drop in (BootupLabs during Grow Conference; and open door policy at Extreme Venture Partners and office hours with Year One Labs).

If you’re visiting Ottawa make sure that you stop by:

Mercury Grove Startup Shelter
Address: 738A Bank St. (map here)
Phone: 613-237-2071
Email: info@mercurygrove.com

The Year One Labs team will be in Waterloo and Toronto tomorrow, September 28th for “Office Hours” and follow that up with a visit to Ottawa as well (on Wednesday.)

“Office Hours” gives entrepreneurs the chance to meet the partners, talk about the program we offer and connect with fellow entrepreneurs. It’s extremely informal. We’re not doing formal pitches, but we do encourage entrepreneurs (regardless of the stage you’re at with your startup!) to pitch us and talk to us about your ideas.

You can learn more on the Year One Labs blog.

Here’s the quick itinerary:

• Waterloo – Tuesday September 28th 1:00PM – 3:30PM (Velocity Centre – U Waterloo) RSVP
• Toronto – Tuesday September 28th 5:30PM – 8:00PM (Jet Cooper offices – 20 Maud Street) RSVP
• Ottawa – Wednesday September 29th 4:00PM – 6:00PM (Code Factory – 246 Queen Street – 2nd floor) RSVP

If you can, please RSVP. But you don’t need to RSVP – all entrepreneurs are welcome.

Year One Labs is an early stage accelerator. StartupNorth wrote a brief post about Year One Labs when we launched.

Next Wednesday (May 26) StartupNorth is organizing an Open Coffee in Ottawa. It is an opportunity for entrepreneurs, developers, and investors to connect at an informal meetup. We’ll be heading to Bridgehead Coffeehouse (109 Bank Street, Ottawa) from 10am to 1pm.

Open Coffee Ottawa
Bridgehead Coffeehouse
109 Bank Street, Ottawa
10am to 1pm

This was a crazy weekend for Canadian startup acquisitions.

First there was Bumptop announced their acquisition by Google. There is StandOutJobs.com being acquired by an unnamed company. Now Ottawa-based dna13 has been acquired by CNW Group. Read the Social Media Release for more details

“This acquisition reinvents the newswire and we’re terribly excited about it. It’s of benefit to our clients because we’re taking dna13’s technology platform, which is best-in-class, and marrying it with CNW’s suite of offerings. For the first time we’ll be providing an end-to-end solution that will really allow communicators to manage every facet of the communications process. Everything from creating content; targeting your message; distributing your news and information; understanding how that information is being received by your audience to further refining your message and developing metrics. That will all be available to CNW clients in one, single platform.”
– Carolyn McGill-Davidson, President and CEO, CNW Group

This makes a lot of sense since CNW Group is a reseller of the dna13 platform under the MediaVantage brand. No details about the purchase price have been disclosed. 

Looking at the cached Board of Directors page we find:

• Our good friend, Howard Gwin, now of Bridgescale Partners.  
• Thomas Birch, Propulsion Ventures
• Pierre-André Meunier, Celtic House Venture Partners

We can hope that this was another 10 banger for a Canadian startup.

Congratulations to Scott Annan and the Network Hippo team for their great demo at Demo Spring 2010. Scott Lake wrote about the performance on StartupOttawa, and I’d agree it’s worth taking the 5 minutes and 24 seconds to watch a great demo.

Funding Details

Self-funded

Competitors

No direct competitors. Secondary competitors include Gist, Plaxo, Xobni, Highrise, and Batchbook.

Product Description

Network Hippo is the smartest way to manage your network. We help individuals and businesses manage and stay connected to people across social, professional, and business networks. Network Hippo aggregates and organizes contact information intelligently from email and social networking sites and has proactive, addictive tools to engage your network. Close more deals, crowdsource your next product design, or change the world: Network Hippo and your network make it possible.

Market Opportunity

Jack Myer’s Media Business report forecasts spending in social marketing to grow from $800 million to $3.2 billion by 2012. AMR projects CRM revenue of $22 billion in 2012 (up from $14 billion in 2007) and Gartner predicts 80% of the immediate growth to come from “social application vendors.”

Crash Davis: Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: [to himself] What’s this guy know about pitching? If he’s so good how come he’s been in the minors for the last ten years?

I guess this makes me Crash Davis, ten years in the minors, makes me wonder when my Waterworld is coming (so please make sure you take any feedback with the appropriate sense of pending doom).

“Open challenge to local startups to “pitch” for a meeting in a 140 characters or less in the comments (more realistically less than 420 characters – basically 3 tweets).”

In response to my Pitching Fastballs post on StartupNorth (reblogged), Trevor and Karim from Big Time Design have answered my open challenge, along with a bunch of others in the comments. Along with Scott Annan and Tim Harris.

Big Time Radar

big time Radar is: Discreet, targeted messaging; customers ask for it & you deliver via Live Messenger, Twitter, SMS, email & Facebook from one interface.

Big time’s management team consists of three guys from marketing, design and development backgrounds.  Radar’s market opportunity is massive for anyone in the marketplace looking to use social media to sell, communicate and connect with their customers.  Initially, we plan to focus on four verticals: retail, events, media and real estate.  Our pricing model is segmented by number of users and selected features. We are currently in the beta phase (with very positive initial results) and are bootstrapping rather than looking for funding as our overhead cost is negligible. 

Commentary/Feedback

This is a great approach to layered information. The piece that is missing for me is the separation between Big Time Design and Big Time Radar. I’m assuming Radar is a product offering of Big Time Design. That coupled with I’m curious at the benefit of the solution, i.e., it sounds like a multi-channel replacement for MailChip or Constant Contact, i.e., email marketing that uses social media for notification beyond just email. A little more clarity about how it fits with respect to these other offerings might be helpful.

Network Hippo

Network Hippo is a smart address book for startups and professionals. It combines and scrubs contact information from dozens of sources, finds more info about them on the web and social networks, plugins into your email, and alerts you when – and who – you should contact. It’s a smarter, personal, social CRM. We’ll replace Highrise completely & Salesforce’s smallest customers.

Commentary/Feedback

I also like the one provided on Network Hippo’s home page , “Network Hippo is a powerful and unique network relationship application that puts your professional network to work. We help professionals and small businesses build their network, identify their most valuable contacts, remind them when somebody needs a call, and track deals for their business.” It’s very clear who the product is for, what the product does, and who are the competitors. I would like a little more detail on the differentiator, i.e., what makes Network Hippo special?

Star Return

Star Return links out door media to rich media content on handheld apps via web services, while providing advertisers with solid analytics to evaluate effectiveness and viral affects of their campaigns.

Commentary/Feedback

I’m still not sure how Star Return links outdoor media to rich media content (I’m assuming that this is online content). I still don’t actually know what Star Return does. Jumping on the Interwebs, I find “We are Star Return. We allow you to download information to your mobile device, related to products, places, people and businesses.” and “Star Return puts a new twist on information access. Users – anytime, anywhere can now access information on restaurants, stores, products, sporting events, concerts, bands, real-estate and much much more.” My guess is that it’s bit.ly for billboards?

Dex, a new social CRM application from MercuryGrove is doing a roadshow for the next few weeks to demo their release and spread the word.

I have been excited about Dex since Mercury Rising was announced.

This has been such a great, collaborative journey that we decided the best way to tell people about dex was to go tell people about dex. So we’re packing up our best suits, dressing dex up really nice, and taking her on the road to tell people about our development experience, show them the final result (beta), and hopefully get a lot of great feedback that we can jam into the first release!

Here is the schedule:

• Toronto – Tuesday, January 20th @ CSI
• Ottawa – Wednesday, January 21st @ The Code Factory
• Montreal – Thursday, January 22nd
• New York – Monday, January 26th @ New Work City
• Boston – Wednesday, January 28th @ BetaHouse
• Philadelphia – Thursday, January 29th, 6pm @ Indy Hall

I will be speaking at the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s upcoming professional development day on October 15th. I will be on a panel with Rob Lane, from Overlay.TV and Maggie Fox from Social Media Group.

Our session description is

?Going global” is no longer an option for many companies. It is a necessity. This session will examine issues and strategies in building international networks that will lead to business opportunities and enhanced returns. Learn how to link into international networks of customers, partners, acquirers and investors to better position your companies for global success. The role that social technologies can play in fostering these global networks will also be discussed.

Other sessions include “THE BIG PICTURE ? KEY STRATEGIES FOR CREATING ESSENTIAL INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS” with Jennifer Brooy,Vice President, EDC Equity and Rajiv Pancholy, Chairman and CEO, TenXC Wireless as well as “RELATIONSHIPS WITH GLOBAL SYNDICATE PARTNERS AND ACQUIRERS ? THE VIEW FROM HOME AND ABROAD”

It looks like a good day and if it is typical of CVCA events, the biggest value will be in having a chance to hang out with some of the other attendees who tend to be other startups (the smart ones go to CVCA events when they can afford them) and funders.

The half-day event is $299 for non-CVCA members if you attend in-person in Toronto, and $70 if you watch it from one of the simulcast locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Fredricton or Halifax.