Xtranormal launched a private beta.
Size matters… for follow on rounds.
Mark added 5 DOs when raising capital, to compliment the 7 DON’Ts.
Author: Jevon MacDonald
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Introducing the StartupNorth Event Calendar
We get emails just about everyday asking for a calendar of startup events across Canada. And it is a damn shame for entrepreneurs to miss a chance to meet up just because there is no event calendar. So without further ado, head on over and check it out. Right now, we just have Toronto events listed, but we’ll be adding Calendars for all the other great regions across Canada as soon as possible.
We are using Google Calendar so people across the country can collaborate on this project. If you already use Google Calendar and would like to occasionally contribute by posting events, contact us and we?ll provide you with this super power.
Updates: Edmonton is now onboard (thanks to Cam)! Montreal coming soon (thanks to Heri)! And Waterloo too (thanks to Thom)! Note: If you also live in these cities and are interested in contributing, please contact us as well!
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Mea Culpa. I pulled the image that originally accompanied this post. Why? Well first off, I wasn’t particularly satisfied with it to begin with. While this Calendar Project is something we?ve been thinking about for a while now, the image to accompany the announcement was just something I rushed out this morning. Yes, of course it was just a joke. No, this was not my finest work with Photoshop. For those of you curious what all the hoopla is about, you can find the image posted here.
My hope is for this Calendar Project to help get more people (men AND women) out to events and as a result working together building great companies. I?d hate for anyone to feel left out. Two of the many things I love about Canada are its inclusiveness and that people call things how they see them. I wouldn?t change either of these things for the world.
I hope you find the calendar useful. See you at an upcoming event.
Jonas
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PoolExpert acquired by Rogers
Toronto based PoolExpert, one of Canada’s leading fantasy sports providers, announced their acquisition by Rogers Media earlier this week. While financial details were not released, this has to be a nice little exit for co-owners Ron Watson and Steve Hulford. Ron and Steve acquired PoolExpert in 2005 (the site was founded back in 1999) and grew the company over the last three years to hundreds of thousands of registered active players.The duo are already onto their next venture, Filemobile, an on-demand social media platform company. Word is that Filemobile is growing fast and already profitable with clients such as: CTV, TSN, CBC, MTV, MuchMusic, and Molson. Starting a company is a tremendous amount of work and exiting PoolExpert should allow these two to focus their full attention on growing FileMobile as fast as possible.
Congrats on the exit guys! We’re looking forward to posting about the next win soon!
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Weekend Reading – July 26, 2008
5 more reasons to go with the little guy.
VC musical chairs continues: Marc Faucher departed Summerhill Venture Partners to join JLA Ventures and drive their investment efforts in the new BlackBerry Partners Fund. / And here is Rick Segal on the the Berry Fund.
IDC released a list of Canadian web 2.0 companies to watch.
Links galore: Resources for founders in Vancouver.
How to interview a startup. / And how to interview a VC.
b5media CEO Jeremy Wright’s open letter offer to buy nearly imploded Know More Media. / And his thoughts on the infeasibility of Small-Scale Blog Consolidation.
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J2Play scores $250K grant from fbFund
J2Play, based in Waterloo, has landed a fbFund grant of $250,000. Founded by Rob Balahura in 2000, J2Play is a ?viral distribution framework for existing Web, Mobile, and PC casual games that helps them move their business to the social web.?
J2Play offers game developers a social wrapper that allows players to chat with their friends, receive awards, rank on leader boards, place advertisements, and generate revenue by promoting other games. The wrapper reaches across social networks, so for example: a Facebook user playing a game of Texas Hold?em Poker could play with one friend who is using their mobile phone and chat with another friend playing within Myspace.
Extreme Venture Partners, run by Amar Varma and Sunny Madra, had already invested a seed round in J2Play and no doubt played a large role in helping J2Play land the fbFund grant. Pretty good value-add for J2Play and a great way in leverage, validate, and de-risk the investment for XVP. This didn?t happen overnight, XVP has been working with J2Play since at least StartupCamp Toronto 1 back in December of 2007.
This fbFund grant doubles the company?s runway and is a big win. Facebook is about as good a strategic partner as one can get for a company like J2Play. Having Facebook onboard also might make it less likely that J2Play will be run over by Facebook launching a Games platform of their own? but you never know.
While we have been pretty critical of the hoards of folks building Facebook Apps and pitching those apps as scalable businesses, it was hard not to be impressed by the enthusiasm. Each Facebook Camp in Toronto has attracted over 400 attendees and Facebook often had an official representative at each event. There is a bigger picture here, companies out in Silicon Valley are paying attention to what we have going on up here in Canada.
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Weekend Reading – July 5, 2008
Loyalty Match, who pitched at StartupCamp Toronto, got written up in The New York Times.
Don’t walk into a VC’s office naked… of course, you already knew that.
Every once in a while you need to step off the roller coaster to appraise the health of your startup. Here is a checklist for putting together a halftime report.
Iterative development is great, but you still need to launch with a bang every once in a while.
Startups – Beware of the consulting trap.
It’s supposed to be a scorcher this weekend… so here is a cold shower: the startup equity simulator. Remember 10% of something is worth more than 100% of nothing.
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Weekend Reading – June 28, 2008
