Looks like US VCs are continuing to look at deals in Canada. Wave Accounting announced a $5MM Series A led by Charles River Ventures (CRV) with follow on participation from OMERS Ventures. It is great to see Devdutt Yellurkar (LinkedIn) looking north of the border. Devdutt has an amazing track record at CRV and previously at Rho Ventures, Sterling Commerce and Yantra Corporation. Guessing based on the press release that Devdutt will join Peter Carrescia (LinkedIn, @pcarrescia) from OMERS Ventures on the Wave Accounting board.
Great news for startups, we’ve now seen Matrix Partners (TribeHR), Union Square Ventures (Kik & Wattpad), CRV (Wave Accounting), Bessemer (Shopify), Freestyle/Greylock/Embracardo (GoInstant) and one other Sand Hill Road firm all make active early investments in Canada. This doesn’t include the Canadians that have raised during stays in the Valley during YCombinator and 500Startups – Vidyard, Upverter (True Ventures), BackType (True Ventures), Kiip (True Ventures), Rewardli (500Startups) and others.
This is great for Canadian entrepreneurs.
This is great news, fantastic investors investing in a very promising venture. Devdutt has put some money into Influitive and his involvement has really moved the meter for us.
Congrats to Kirk and James from Wave and also Devdutt! Great story in the making.
Congratulations to Kirk, James and the rest of the Wave team! This is huge.
Congrats guys. I’d also add Metamorphic(NY) to the list of active investors in Canada. They were early investors in both Tynt and Chango
I like what you guys are doing. Such smart work and reporting! Carry on with the excellent works guys. I have incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it will improve the value of my web site.
http://www.termometrodigital.eu/
Termometro Digital
Thank goodness for the US VC that are being more aggressive than the Canadian ones and picking the startup gems. We can expect to see more that trend.
Yeah William, you got that right. The best way to get a Canadian VC to invest is to get a US VC to invest, then the sheep will follow. At Eloqua we just skipped over the Canadian VCs as they were generally a waste of time and did three rounds from US VCs on both coasts. I have a feeling though that OMERS is confident enough in themselves and in the potential of Canadian startups to make their own bold calls.
Re: your last statement,- that remains to be seen.
Wonderful news for all Canuck StartUps! the fact that US VCs are looking up here for investment is sterling! Thanks David for the headsup on this too!
Panorama (Fixmo, Tynt, Bel-Air Networks) and FirstMark (Shopify, Status.net) too…
Can’t forget the recent Enflick raise with Freestyle and Menlo.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/test-messaging-app-developer-enflick-raises-1m-from-freestyle-capital-lady-gaga-and-biebers-managers/