StartupNorth

Year: 2008

  • DemoCampGuelph Tonight – April 9th 2008

    Jonas and I are heading to DemoCampGuelph tomorrow. The lineup looks great, it includes: Liveoffcamp.us!, doctopus, myvine and fossfactory.

    While this isn’t a startupcamp, Jonas and I will be doing a rapidfire pitch of our own: (Less Stupid) Startups, including some secrets on how to get covered on blogs a little more easily.

    So if you are in the area, or just want to find out what is happening in Guelph (lots of cool stuff!), then sign up and I am looking forward to seeing you there. Be sure to say Hi!

  • Spring Acquisitions: Meriton Networks & Sirific Wireless

    As promised… we have a couple spring acquisitions:

    Meriton Networks, an optical networking infrastructure company based in Ottawa, has been acquired by Xtera Communications. Meriton had taken venture financing from: Desjardins Venture Capital Group, Newbury Ventures, Nomura International, Primaxis Technology Ventures, RBC Capital Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, VenGrowth Capital Partners, Skypoint Capital. The acquisition price has not been disclosed.

    Sirific Wireless, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in CMOS RF transceivers based in Waterloo, has been acquired by Icera. Sirific had taken venture financing from: Agilent Technologies, BDC, Celtic House, GrowthWorks, Hunt Ventures, Intel Capital, Solowave Investments, TD Capital, and Tech Capital. The acquisition price has not been disclosed.

    Hat tip to Mark McQueen of Wellington Financial, who described the exits as follows:

    Although details weren?t announced, these don?t feel like successful exits. Probably somewhere in that middle of pack for that vintage. Neither company had announced the kind of revenue generating customer traction (think Dragonwave and Clearwire) that drives a home run. And they both raised tens of millions over 8 or so years. Yes there was value built (which the strategics can afford to fund and harvest) but after that long these are deals where the clock ran out.

    Sounds like a little portfolio spring cleaning to me.

  • Sneak Peek: Brain Park

    Brain Park LogoEarlier today Marc Dowds released a PDF Diagram that gives us a hint of what his latest venture, Brain Park, is all about. Take a peek… Is there a pot of gold waiting for Brain Park at the end of the organizational intelligence rainbow? Park your thoughts in the comments.

  • Angel financing – Term sheets (part 2)

    One of the first things a term sheet will outline is the investment mechanism for the deal. The two most common types are equity (via common or preferred shares) or convertible debt. Equity, as the name implies, is taking on investor’s money in exchange for shares. Say for example your company currently has 1,000,000 shares outstanding. You and the investors settle on a valuation of $1 per share for a pre-money valuation of $1,000,000. The investors put in $250,000 and in exchange they are issued 250,000 shares. The post money valuation of the company is $1,250,000 and investors own 20% of the company.

    Investors can either be issued common or preferred shares. Depending on how your current shareholder’s agreement is written & company capitalization structure is, you will probably have all shareholders (founders) holding common shares. If investors are issued common shares, they have the same class of shares as the founders and hold the same rights. Since the investors are often the ones putting the most hard cash (as opposed to sweat equity) into the venture they will often want to protect themselves with additional rights.
    (more…)

  • Weekend Reading – April 5, 2008

    Spring is finally in the air, and with it acquisition offers, financings, and lawsuits. Mostly hijinks so far, but some big announcements are sure to follow in the weeks ahead.

    Well.ca gets an acquisition offer.
    Canadian blog network raises $3M.
    Sold too soon? iStockphoto, which Getty acquired for $50M in 2006, hits revenue of $71M for 2007.
    Austin Hill of Radial Point to appear as expert witness in $25M lawsuit against Facebook.
    Alec Saunders thinks it?s time to abolish VC beauty contests.

    Don’t forget to apply to pitch at StartupCamp Toronto 2! Applications must be received by next Sunday April 13.

  • StartupCamp Toronto 2: Leila Boujnane

    I am excited to announce that Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idée, will be closing the evening. Idée, who we have previously profiled, is one of Toronto’s biggest startup success stories, and the wonderful thing is that they are just getting started.

    Leila is constantly providing help and guidance to other entrepreneurs, myself included, and she has even been known to take a whip along when a startup isn’t hustling as much as they should be.

    I am going to send Leila 5 questions next week, so I want your help. Post or email your questions about starting a company and growing it to be as great as Idée.

    Our Sponsors

  • stopfinder.com – Should you take transit or take the car?

    stopfinder_small.pngThere have been a handful of Parking-Finder map sites lately. They were all neat, but seemed to lack that extra bit of information I wanted to know: How much is this going to cost?

    As you would have it, I have a meeting today up in the hinterlands that is Young and St. Claire. Because it is pouring rain I thought about taking the car. Because I don’t know the area, StopFinder popped in to my head. The founder of the site, Michael DiBernardo emailed us a couple of days ago to let us know that it launched.

    Stopfinder offers a huge amount of information, but it is all presented incredibly clearly. Subway and Bus stops are placed with nice big markers, and parking lots are easy to spot.

    With StopFinder you enter the address of where you are going and the time you will arrive, as well as how long you will be staying. StopFinder then calculates the closest parking lots, how much they cost in total, and which is the best combination of distance and cost from your final destination. Pretty cool, but what I love is that it also shows you public transportation options for getting there as well. In this case, we are basically right beside a subway stop. So I will do the right thing, leave the car in the garage and jump on the subway. That’s fine by me. I hate driving.

    Michael pointed out two kinds of pain that StopFinder helps solve:

    StopFinder finds the closest, cheapest parking lots and the surrounding TTC stops for a Toronto destination. This eases two kinds of pain:

    (a) There aren’t many good ways to figure out how to get where you’re going on the TTC right now. We think StopFinder beats what is out there.

    (b) When planning a get-together, some guests will come by car and others by transit. You can provide everyone with a single link that helps them get there.

    I am pretty happy with this service so far. The amount of data they seem to have aggregated is incredible. They also have an API that other developers can use to access their data.

    StopFinder might not have the largest audience yet, afterall it is Toronto-centric, but they are solving a real problem. Finding parking was never the problem for most of us, it turns out that it was knowing when to take a car and when to take transit. Even I didn’t know that until I experienced the solution, but I can tell that StopFinder will become a part of my toolkit from now on.

    Give it a try and let us know what you think. Post in the comments below.

  • Launching TalentEgg

    Two months ago we received an email from TalentEgg’s founder, Lauren Friese, brimming with excitement about her latest venture into the world of online recruitment. TalentEgg, which just hatched, is a website that connects high quality Canadian employers with students and recent grads that are looking for meaningful work.

    Job seekers using the site will be able to build TalentCards (Resumes), ask for advice using Grad Q&A (Forum), and read up on how to land a job on the TalentEgg Insider (Blog). Employers can create a free profile, but have to pay to advertise specific job openings, create awareness with site sponsorship, search through TalentCards, and send out targeted emails to job seekers. For the month of April the site is free on a trial basis to employers. TalentEgg hopes to cater to small and medium size employers who can’t make it to every campus recruitment day.

    This is a tough market to crack, TorStar’s Workopolis dominates; even the venerable Monster has had trouble getting traction in Canada. And TalentEgg faces a classic chicken or the egg problem: job seekers are interested in sites with lots of jobs and rational employers will only pay to advertise once the site’s user base reaches a certain threshold. Despite all this, something tells me it is only a matter of time before Lauren Friese figures out how to make this site lay some golden eggs. Congrats on the launch!

  • Reminder: CIX and StartupCamp Deadlines

    Time is running short to apply to pitch at CIX, and also to get help with your pitch at StartupCamp.

    The deadline to apply to CIX is April 4th, you can apply here. It is worth noting that the pricing structure has changed based on feedback and it is now half the price it used to be for startups who present.

    StartupCamp Toronto 2 is happening at the same time as CIX, and you can apply to present here, you have until Sunday April 13th for that one.


    We’d like to thank our first confirmed sponsor as well, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, as well as service providers who have purchased tickets: Mike Middleton (Q1Capital Partners) and Frances Fast (Q1Capital Partners), and Daniel Shapiro (Microsoft)

  • AideRSS Announces Google Reader Integration

    AideRSS, who we originally covered last July, and who recently took funding from TechCapital Partners in Waterloo, are announcing integration with Google Reader today.

    The extension, which comes in the form of a Firefox plugin, gives AideRSS its first opportunity to hook in to the everyday workflow of heavy RSS users. Until now, You more or less had to go to AideRSS.com to make use of their tool. Building a Firefox extension like this will give them additional reach.

    The appeal to the end user is that you can use AideRSS as an initial filter for your feeds. Getting up in the morning and seeing that you have 500 unread items is painful, and I know that I will enjoy having a first line of defense.

    So, we have for you, our lucky readers, 50 invitations that will get you in on the ground floor of the beta. Get em while they’re hot.