StartupNorth

Category: Vancouver

  • ThoughtFarmer – Facebook for the Enterprise

    Thought Farmer LogoThoughtFarmer, based in Vancouver, BC, is a startup in the hot enterprise 2.0 space. Why is the sector so exciting? Because it is changing enterprise work flow, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. Try imagining university before Facebook.

    ThoughtFarmer’s journey began with a consulting project in 2004; a client wanted an engaging intranet and knowledge repository, all without staff dedicated to the project. The solution… a wiki. The product developed from there, inspired by JotSpot and the growing importance of social networks.

    ThoughtFarmer sold its first license in 2006. Yep, this is behind-the-firewall software. With companies large and small racing toward the era of software as a service, this is an almost contrarian bet. It will be interesting to follow this company and see how it all plays out. One last thing… ThoughtFarmer is profitable and not seeking funding.

    Contact: Chris McGrath

  • NowPublic gets kudos from Time.com

    NowPublic, the website concept we all thought about in 1999 but didn’t do anything about, has been named one of the Top 50 websites by Time.com

    The Vancouver, BC company has almost 100,000 different contributors and can often be found at the top of a google search about recent events.

    The list is actually a lot better than the contrived Time.com editorial-list you’d normally expect from summer intern-journalism. Etsy, Prosper and others are all good company.

  • esy – local price comparison – early stage and ambitious

    picture-2.pngEsy Shopping is an early stage startup, based in Vancouver that is aiming to consolidate local shopping inventory information online.

    Esy plans to launch next month, and we haven’t been able to see any screenshots, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt on how they are going to build their database of locally available products. If they can get that right, they are going to do well.

    Esy will generate revenue through advertising alongside the local shopping search results. While they may get some national advertisers, this model may require them to sell ads on a local level. Selling localized ads for the internet has always been tough and my guess is that it still is today. I’m looking forward to seeing how they handle this at launch.

    Just as interesting as Esy itself is it’s 19 year old co-founder Theo Tonca. Theo founded his first company at age 15 and has been hacking away at the web startup thing ever since. Suffice to say, even if Esy doesn’t fly, Theo will be back and swinging for the fences again soon after.

    We will follow up with Esy after their launch to see how things are going.

  • Lululemon files for IPO

    Lululemon logoLululemon, a hipper than thou yoga wear company, has filed for an IPO to raise as much as $230 Million.

    Founded by Chip Wilson in 1999 after a particularly good yoga lesson, this Vancouver company?s beautiful stores (think Apple Stores for yoga gear) and high prices have stretched its share of wallets. The curious brand name was selected from an original list that included ?Athletically Hip?, wonder where they would be with a name like that…

    A serial entrepreneur, Chip had previously founded Westbeach Sports, a surf skate and snow retailer, in 1979 and grew the company to 8 stores in Canada and an international wholesale business before selling the chain to a publicly traded US corporation.

    The IPO might mark a good place to end coverage, here at StartupNorth. Congrats to Chip & the lululemon team.

  • eqo.com – Instant Messaging and Skype on your cell

    eqo.com is a Vancouver, BC based mobile services company that has just gone from Startup to well-funded with a 9 million dollar series B round of funding, which actually included real live Canadian Venture Capital firms Ventures West, Growthworks and the BDC. Their round A was primarily subscribed by BDC Venture Capital from what we understand.

    The news was all over the place this morning.

    Their app is built for cellphones and gives you access to your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, GoogleTalk and Skype contacts, and it goes as far as allowing you to make actual skype calls right from your mobile.

    The Mobile App sector has had the most momentum of all the software niches in Canada for some time now and still seems to be inherently more sexy to investors than web startups and seems to be on par with BioTech for pulling in funding (that needs some research).

    As for Eqo, you can bet that Canada and our carriers are not their primary target market, but it’s great to have them here and kicking butt. We’ll follow up when we hear more from them.

    Contact Eqo