StartupNorth

Author: Jonas Brandon

  • Week in Review

  • Week in Review

  • Vancouver based Layerboom acquired by Joyent (?)

    A few hours ago Techvibes reported that Vancouver based Layerboom has been acquired by Joyent.

    The post was subsequently taken down however, but once you tweet it, it is there for the world to see. I assume Techvibes was asked to take down the post as they jumped the gun on posting. We always respect embargo’s and I am sure this was a mistake, but I am happy to take the jump and push the speculation along.


    Joyent, which started as a shared hosting provider and online office suite, has long had a Vancouver office. Toronto native Rod Boothby has been part of the early Joyent team and is currently their Vice President, International. As soon as he starts picking up his cellphone I hope to have confirmation on the acquisition.

    This win could be two-fold for Vancouver: Layerboom is a Bootup Labs incubated company and competes with Toronto based Enomoly, among others.

    Layerboom provides hosting companies with a comprehensive solution which enables them to build and sell virtual private server clouds. After installing Layerboom software, hosting companies can manage their physical and virtual server inventory, customer accounts, define virtual machine sizes, packages, and pricing, as well as customize a hosted dashboard.

    Bootup Labs has recently had their share of problems and Boris Wertz, Vancouver’s rockstar angel and early stage investor, has stepped in to turn it around with original Bootup partner Danny Robinson. This could mark a turning point which would help Bootup regain needed credibility in the Vancouver startup community.

    You heard it here first folks.

  • Quebec City based Poly9 group acquired by Apple

    Techcrunch is reporting that Quebec City based Poly9 group has been acquired by apple. Details are thin and it looks like the team has gone dormant.

    It will be interesting to find out exactly what has transacted in this case. Just last night I was telling David that Quebec City is consistently underrated for startup potential in Canada.

    We have been tracking Poly9 since they added themselves to the startupindex.

    Poly9 is a technology studio in Quebec City specializing in 2D & 3D web mapping, and interactive media.

    Since 2005, we have designed and developed some of the most exciting and popular web mapping applications for major clients. We are also behind highly visible Google Gadgets, running on iGoogle and the Google Gadget Ads platforms. Take a look for yourself at the Our work page.

    Our company’s flagship product, Poly9 FreeEarth, is the first geographic 3D globe that works in all browsers, and does not require any download or installation.

  • Beyond the Rack raises $12million

    MontrealStartup is reporting that their portfolio company, Beyond the Rack, has secured a new round of financing with BDC Venture Capital and Highland Capital Partners.

    I have been watching Beyond the Rack since Montreal Startup’s initial investment, but I had no idea they were getting so much traction. The company is just under two years old and is led by Yona Shtern, who was an employee at My Virtual Model, one of the bubble-era startups that swept through Montreal. More recently Yona was the Chief Marketing Officer at Ice.com.

    The Montreal Startup team recently secured the first commitments for Founder Fuel, which will be a larger sister-fund to Montreal Startup. Their early stage investment in Beyond the Rack will hopefully make it easier to secure the remaining commitments for the new fund, and this puts the team squarely in the top-tier of early and seed stage investors in Canada along with Extreme Ventures and Scott Pelton at Growthworks.

    This also represents one of the most significant follow-on rounds for a Canadian micro-fund. The fact that BDC Venture Capital was able to participate and keep some of that action in-country is nice.

  • Week in Review

  • Dayforce secures an additional $10million

    VentureBeat is reporting that Dayforce has secured an additional $10million in financing, bringing their total pool of raise capital to $20million.

    This isn’t a major surprise for anyone who has been watching David Ossip over the last 3 years. After selling Workbrain for $227million in 2007, David only seemed to get more ambitious. Perhaps the acquisition left him with just enough of a taste to want more, or perhaps he felt like he didn’t get the job done with Workbrain. Either way, after sitting around waiting for his non-compete to expire, he got back in the game with Dayforce. So here we are.

    David is the entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, and I am happy to see that he is able to get the resource together to build Dayforce in Canada. His desire to contribute back to the startup community has set him apart in recent years. We have previously published a profile of Workbrain spinoff companies. This also represents a significant additional step for Bridgescale Partners, and represents their first deal in Canada since their merger with Edgestone in May. Edgestone was one of the original investors in Workbrain up until it went public in 2003.

    We will add more details as we get them.

  • Sysomos acquired

    News has leaked out today that Toronto-based Sysomos, a social media monitoring firm, has been acquired by MarketWire.

    As usual, the terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but we do know that, like BumpTop, Sysomos was funded out of the Growthworks Commercialization fund. That would put this deal at well north of $25million, likely landing in at around $35million.  Sysomos was also funded by Ontario Centres of Excellence, who were also instrumental in supporting BumpTop. In fact, like Bumptop, Sysomos also originated at the University of  Toronto and does retain some useful and unique IP.

    This is the second exit for Scott Pelton, who only took over managing the Growthwork’s comm fund in 2008. By Canadian VC standards (or any for that matter), he is on fire and, by my estimate, is chalking up one of the best IRRs that the business has seen yet in this country. Who says VC is dead?

    Sysomos has made rapid progress since taking investment and has managed to consistently raise the bar of social media monitoring standards. No doubt that MarketWire is looking for ways to develop beyond their more traditional media monitoring solution to something that offers more social media coverage. Sysomos’ strong analytics capability will no doubt be useful to MarketWire customers as well.

  • Day 1 as Entrepreneur in Residence

    I am starting my new role as Entrepreneur in Residence at Innovacorp today.

    While a lot of the details of what that means still need to be worked out, I can tell you what it means for me in the short term:

    • I will be home. I have been traveling a lot in the last year. 85,000 miles in the last 6 months. That kills your creativity and I am looking forward to having my feet on the ground more often.
    • I will be reconnected. Some of you may of noticed that I basically fell off the face of the earth in January 2009. David Crow picked up the slack in blogging here. After selling Firestoker and joining Dachis Group, I felt that I had no time to stay connected to the community. I am looking forward to getting re-engaged and to start moving some of the conversation about what it means to be a startup in Canada forward again.
    • I will be working with startups. Innovacorp has invested in some pretty great startups here in Nova Scotia, and I am going to work with a few of them and help as best I can. I will be working with Ben Forcier and the Investment team, as well as Stephen Hartlan, the CEO. I have had a chance to get to know Ben, Stephen, Patrick and many of the other folks at Innovacorp in the last few months and I have been impressed with all of them. I love digging in to startups and figuring out what makes them tick and that was a big part of why I agreed to join as EIR.
    • I’ll be building my own startup again. I can’t help it. Let me at it! This will be my focus.
    • I’ll be blogging more. Enough said.

    The decision to leave Dachis Group was a tough one and certainly the most bittersweet thing I have ever done. I had a chance to work with some of the most devoted, brilliant and kind people I have ever been lucky enough to be involved with. In a year and a half we went from 4 of us sitting in a board room in Austin to 150+ employees, 2 major acquisitions, offices in 5 cities and we were able to count the largest companies in the world as our customers. Looking back on it, it seems wild, but the truth is that it feels like Dachis Group is just getting started. As the company hits milestones and continues to grow, I will feel proud every step of the way, and I will continue to contribute in every way I can.

    Things have been changing quickly here in Canada however, and I am glad to be part of the community again. The momentum is building slowly but steadily: The Job Board has more startups than ever looking to fill positions, we are seeing more and more new financings, and we are seeing some of the first exits from members of the community. The Canadian economy is also strong relative to foreign markets and the quality of talent available in Canada means that we should be able to be more competitive internationally than ever. Access to capital is still “complicated” in many ways, but we are seeing significant changes in availability and the sophistication of the investors deploying capital in the country. I hope that that shakeout continues.

    This is an incredibly rich place to build a startup, and I plan to make the best of it.

    Have something interesting? An idea or a new startup? Get in touch and let’s make it happen.

  • Week in Review