in Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Toronto

Everyday be hustlin’

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AdParlorCongratulations to Hussein, Kristaps and their team at adParlor.

In case you missed it, Toronto-based adParlor has been acquired by AdKnowledge. adParlor is the second Canadian acquisition for AdKnowledge, who acquired Vancouver’s Super Rewards in July of 2009 for a reported $50 Million.

They managed to build one of “the largest [Facebook] Ads API vendor” and do it here in Toronto.

“We’ve established an office over here where we now have 11 employees, and we’re all based and comfortable in Toronto. We do have our business development manager in San Francisco way more than he’s here in Toronto.” – Hussein Fazal (LinkedIn, @hussein_fazal) on Mixergy

Even more impressive is that they built a site, that manages over one billion impressions a day, without raising outside capital. This is freaking impressive. I’m sure there was likely a combination of SR&ED credits, IRAP money, and others. Every entrepreneur should take note: A billion daily impressions without venture funding. Go read or watch Hussein’s interview on Mixergy, he talks about the 2 pivots for the company, the hard decisions, staying in Toronto. He doesn’t talk about all of the successes like the MaRS AlwaysOn trip, the CIX Top 20, but their relentless hustle and drive built a great business with massive traction.

“no one has hustled harder, stayed humbler, and executed better than him.” – Anonymous VC Comment about Hussein & adParlor

Thanks for building a fantastic example for Canadian entrepreneurs.

  1. That’s a great story & I’m sure there are others like that quietly executing away from the razzle dazzle.

    Case in point from a previous post re: Canadian media not digging enough to write about Canadian startups. It’s easy to write about what’s visible. It takes investigative journalism to write about what’s not so obvious.

  2. great Canuck news here, David! big #Kudos to one and all the founders for this kind of role model leadership too!

    :-)Jim

  3. Lol…you’re a troublemaker & agitator. That makes you anything you like to be.

    Kidding aside, I meant that the mainstream media should be digging the good stuff and writing about it.

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