StartupNorth

Category: Ontario

  • FedDev steps up with $190MM for S. Ontario

    Photo by anitakhart http://www.flickr.com/photos/anitakhart/2737188217/in/photostream/
    Photo by anitakhart

    The Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario announced a new Investing in Business Innovation program. The program offers matching for early-stage venture funding. This is a $190MM running from 2010-2014.

    There are provisions for startups and angel networks. Since we’re StartupNorth, let’s try to deal with the startup side first.

    • Startups who receive a termsheet from a qualified angel investor (as defined by the Ontario Securities Commission) or venture capital firm (registered with the Canadian Venture Capital association) are eligible to apply for up $1MM in loan from the federal government.
    • Restrictions:
      • Start-up businesses will be eligible for repayable contributions up to $1 million for no more than one third (33? percent) of total eligible and supported project costs.
      • An angel and/or venture capital investor(s) must be committed to provide at least two thirds (66? percent) of the cash contribution toward eligible and supported project costs.
      • In-kind contributions related to mentoring, networking, and other business skills cannot be considered as part of the angel or venture capital investor’s cash contribution.
      • A maximum of one project per eligible start-up SME can be funded under the initiative.
      • Direct eligible costs for start-up businesses may include:
        • Labour, capital and operating expenditures;
        • Materials and supplies;
        • Consulting and/or professional fees (limited to market rate); and,
        • Minor and non-capital acquisitions (e.g., software).
      • All project activities must be completed by March 31, 2014;

    Basically there is federal government matching loans up to $1MM for startups that are raising angel or venture funding in Southern Ontario. This is a fantastic start.

    It’s great for startups in Southern Ontario, it’s curious that the program is only available in Southern Ontario. Why not all of Canada? How are the repayment terms set? Is this a zero percent interest loan from the Federal Government? Does the term sheet have to be equity investment? Is convertible debt eligible? How do startups “demonstrate they are using business mentoring, counseling, or related services”?

  • Shelter for startups in Ottawa

    Mercury Grove offices
    Catwalk at Mercury Grove/NetworkHippo offices

    Scott Annan announced he was making available some of the space in the newly acquired NetworkHippo/Mercury Grove office space for startups. It is a raw space located in downtown Ottawa to enable startups and entrepreneurs to come together and share. It embraces the idea that great things come out of the collisions that happen in our communities.

    “The idea behind opening up our space is that I think that Ottawa has some of the greatest entrepreneurs, talent, and ideas in the world. But we don’t spend enough time together collaborating on ideas, discussing technology opportunities, or discussing ways we’re changing the world. I think the more we can be surrounded by people who are facing similar challenges (trying to get launched, trying to get noticed, and trying to get paid) the more we can feed off each other’s successes and learn from each other’s experience.”

    This is different than a coworking space. It’s an entrepreneur that values the collisions, differing view points and conversations that happen in larger offices. It’s Scott making sure that he and his staff have a unique experience by getting to interact with others in the Ottawa community. It speaks deeply to why we host events like DemoCamp and Founders & Funders. And you can see venture firms in Toronto and Vancouver taking advantage of the opportunities of having others drop in (BootupLabs during Grow Conference; and open door policy at Extreme Venture Partners and office hours with Year One Labs).

    If you’re visiting Ottawa make sure that you stop by:

    Mercury Grove Startup Shelter
    Address: 738A Bank St. (map here)
    Phone: 613-237-2071
    Email: [email protected]

  • Demos announced for DCT27

    DemoCamp lineup has been announced:

    This is a great set of early stage Toronto and region (Waterloo) based startups. Some of the folks are getting their second shot at a demo. It will be interesting to see how far they’ve come from their launch. I hope that everyone takes the time to understand the need for “wow” in the demo. And remember the goal is not to heckle but to give entrepreneurs a chance to show what they’ve been working on, how they’ve improved and to get feedback.


    DemoCamp Surprises

    Anand Agarawala has stepped up with an EPIC DemoCamp sponsorship as a thank you for all of the support from the Toronto community and DemoCamp for helping promote and inspire Bumptop. We’ll take none of the credit for Anand and the Bumptop team’s hustle in getting acquired by Google, but we’ll enjoy the rewards at the next DemoCamp.

    Sponsors

    I know and appreciate everyone paying for a ticket. We don’t run DemoCamp as a business. We run it as a cost recovery event, that is, our goal is not to generate a profit (often we run at a loss). We couldn’t do this with out the support of our sponsors. There are some great local companies including:

    • Anand Agarawala and Bumptop! You have to be at DemoCamp from 4pm-6pm to find out what it is.
    • Eqentia builds the a semantic publishing platform for knowledge tracking & competitive analysis
    • XtremeLabs is hiring agile engineers and ui designers for the hottest mobile development company on the planet.
    • Microsoft BizSpark jumpstart your startup and speed up your time to market.
    • FreshBooks is the fastest way to track time and invoice your clients.
    • Mercanix develops tools that enable organizations and their people to do good work.
    • Rob Hyndman is the bee’s knees & the cat’s pajama. Startups looking for a lawyer. Start here.
    • Rypple builds social software that makes workplace feedback easy and fun.
    • Dayforce is the an enterprise software company in Toronto. Hiring dev, qa, ui and sales ninjas.
    • Kontagent is a Facebook Fund funded startup that is hiring rockstar developers in Toronto.
    • OCE helping commercialize the next generation technologies like Bumptop & Sysomos.
    • KPMG Information, Communications & Entertainment (ICE) practice helps startups to succeed in turbulent markets.

  • Rypple raises $7m in new round


    Rypple has gone public about their latest round of financing which appears to include Bridgescale. Bridgescale’s participation likely came through their acquisition of Edgestone. Edgestone’s GPs participated personally in Rypple’s initial angel round.

    We will post more as we hear it.

    Here is the official word from Ryple:

    Toronto, Ontario – September 29, 2010 – Rypple announces it has raised $7 million in financing led by Bridgescale Partners. Rypple makes social software that makes workplace feedback easy. Howard Gwin, a Bridgescale partner and former EVP at PeopleSoft, and Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, will join the company’s board of directors.

    Additional investors include: Edgestone Capital Ventures, Extreme Venture Partners, Peter Thiel, Seymour Schulich, Roger Martin and Joe Sigelman. To date, the company has raised a total of $13 million in financing.

    “Employees and managers are fed up with HR software that sucks. They don’t want top-down performance software focused on process, not results. What people really want is frequent, useful feedback to do their jobs better. Rypple delivers this feedback so people can stay on track, learn faster, and consistently hit their goals.” said Daniel Debow, co-CEO, Rypple. “Our customers are innovative companies including Mozilla, Rackspace, and VivaKi (Groupe Publicis). Their employees use Rypple because they love it, not because they’re forced to.”

    “Rapid adoption social software is providing companies big and small with a significant competitive advantage,” said Howard Gwin, partner, Bridgescale Partners.  “Rypple is a key solution for companies today as it enables the process of continuous feedback. Their customers tell us that they have seen a noticeable improvement in employee engagement, focus, and performance since they started using Rypple.”

    “We were up and running within an hour of introducing Rypple to our organization. We were customers before we were investors.” said Amar Varma, co-founder, Extreme Venture Partners. “Our team’s love of Rypple was a big part of our motivation to get involved. People want relevant feedback at work and no other company can deliver it as easily and effectively.”

  • StartupWeekend Toronto recap – 200 people, 13 ideas and 5 winners

    This is a guest post by Chris Eben who, along with Karthik Soravanahalli and Ahmed Badruddin, organized StartupWeekend Toronto.

    Startup Weekend Toronto ended late Sunday night. While I’m still going to need a few days to reflect on the weekend, I thought I’d take a few minutes to jot down some thoughts…

    Given my initial apprehension about taking on the organization of this event, I couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out. What an amazing community of startup and tech professionals and enthusiasts we have in Toronto. Starting with the buzz that began weeks before the event, it was clear that Startup Weekend needed to come to Toronto.

    Friday night was quite something. A capacity crowd of over 200 people gathered at Ryerson’s amazing Atrium. I kicked things off briefly and explained how I got involved and what Startup Weekend is all about, immediately sensing the excitement from the crowd to start pitching and building new startups. But first we heard from Mike McDerment of Freshbooks about truly understanding the benefit you provide with your startup. Mike was followed by a great panel made up of Leila Boujnane, April Dunford and Sarah Prevette, moderated by Dan Martell who came in from San Francisco to help out. Mike sat on the panel as well. Lots of great stuff here – we’ll be posting the videos of the entire weekend when they’re ready.

    And then onto the pitches… We had 38 people come up and give 60-90s pitches. This was amazing. I was so impressed with the level of participation and the great ideas. At this point, I had no doubt the weekend would be a success. Then came what I like to call “organized chaos.” Voting on ideas followed by team formation. After the top 20 ideas were selected teams started forming over the rest of the night and following morning, resulting in 13 great ideas and teams, ready to get working.

    Now the whiteboarding, coding, strategy discussions, business model validations, etc started in full swing with mentors wandering around helping out the teams and some great insights from our Saturday night speakers (Mark Ruddock, Tim Smith and James Lanthier). After many all nighters, lots of food and coffee, and some beers, the teams were ready to start pitching on Sunday at 4pm.

    The pitching is where it all comes together. What a site to see 13 teams come up and show what can really be accomplished in a weekend-  often from ideas barely conceived until the Saturday morning, and with teams made of people who just met. Most teams actually had mockups or working code and even a few live demos. TadWanna even had 2 paying customers. While there were officially 5 winners (the top 3 as voted by the community and the judges, and 2 categories for honourable mention and the startup most likely to change the world) all 13 teams did something special.

    Congratulations to our winners! Task Ave. took 1st place and upwards of $25k in prizes. Schedify took 2nd, winning some great prizes and is already invited to pitch to the Ryerson Angel Network. In 3rd, RateHub is well on its way and has a complete new set of features for an already great web app. In our other 2 categories, Styllist got honourable mention with a really cool and working demonstration and N2O showed us how they will change the world with a Facetime app bringing doctors together from around the world.

    There were so many other great ideas and startups that I truly hope will keep going. This is an amazing time in Toronto – the community is vibrant and something is in the air. We’ve already seen the talent this city and country has to offer and I know that there is so much more to come.

    With such great feedback after the weekend, we’re going to do it again in April 2011. Mark your calendars and come out to build something amazing.

    A special thanks to my co-organizers. Ahmed Badruddin is the founder of Simpleafy, a GreenTech startup helping home owners track and better understand their energy consumption and discover ways to reduce it. He’s passionate about energy efficiency – check out his blog. Karthik Soravanahalli brought together the SIFE Ryerson team to make this event work. He’s killing it for Tim Smith at Gridcentric and finishing off his degree at Ryerson. And of course, thanks to all our amazing SIFE Ryerson volunteers!

    Thanks of course to Marc Nager from Startup Weekend headquarters in Seattle. He’s one of the guys responsible for bringing these awesome events to cities all over the world!

    If you want to talk to me about Startup Weekend Toronto, get in touch. I blog at The Low Post and am on twitter – @ceben and @startupwkndTO.

    Thanks to all our sponsors and to everyone who took part!

  • Year One Labs "Office Hours" in Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa

    The Year One Labs team will be in Waterloo and Toronto tomorrow, September 28th for “Office Hours” and follow that up with a visit to Ottawa as well (on Wednesday.)

    “Office Hours” gives entrepreneurs the chance to meet the partners, talk about the program we offer and connect with fellow entrepreneurs. It’s extremely informal. We’re not doing formal pitches, but we do encourage entrepreneurs (regardless of the stage you’re at with your startup!) to pitch us and talk to us about your ideas.

    You can learn more on the Year One Labs blog.

    Here’s the quick itinerary:

    • Waterloo – Tuesday September 28th 1:00PM – 3:30PM (Velocity Centre – U Waterloo) RSVP
    • Toronto – Tuesday September 28th 5:30PM – 8:00PM (Jet Cooper offices – 20 Maud Street) RSVP
    • Ottawa – Wednesday September 29th 4:00PM – 6:00PM (Code Factory – 246 Queen Street – 2nd floor) RSVP

    If you can, please RSVP. But you don’t need to RSVP – all entrepreneurs are welcome.

    Year One Labs is an early stage accelerator. StartupNorth wrote a brief post about Year One Labs when we launched.

  • David Crow is moving on from Microsoft

    John Oxley outed the news tonight. David Crow, one of the partners in crime here at Startupnorth, will be off the payroll at Microsoft as of the 24th of September.

    David has spent the last 4 years going to bat for startups inside Microsoft. Anyone who has asked for his help knows just how relentless he has been in making sure that the best entrepreneurs got the support they needed.

    I’m happy to see David moving on. Not because of anything to do with Microsoft, but I just think 4 years is long enough for anyone to stay at a corporate gig. It’s time for David to get back in the game and to kill it.

    Having worked with Dave to organize dozens of events and to write this blog, I can tell you that he is rare in his focus and his ability to obsess with details while still keeping this big picture in perspective (and to remind the rest of us about why we are doing what we are doing).

    He’s not talking about what’s next yet, but I know it’s going to be great.

  • Toronto community mourns passing of angel investor

    Paul Maasland from CBC
    Paul Maasland source: CBC & OPP

    Local angel investor Paul Maasland was murdered, his body was found north of Toronto at a public boat launch. We extend our deepest condolences to Mr. Maasland’s family. And our sincerest concerns go out to his friends and colleagues at Maple Leaf Angels and his investments (according to Mr. Maasland’s LinkedIn profile) including:

    The conversations with his investees shed some light on Mr. Maasland as an investor. From one of the portfolio companies CEOs:

    “I’d just say he was very generous with his time and resources and provided great input into how we ran [company removed]. He always was positive and excited about the initiatives were were doing.”

    These comments were repeated throughout Mr. Maasland’s portfolio. He was a knowledgeable, generous investor that provided useful guidance and support for his companies.

    This is an unexpected situation for anyone including many startups. It opens questions for startups about succession planning for Board Directors, questions around the Shareholders Agreement and the shares of a deceased investor. Hopefully most Boards are experienced in succession planning. As the shareholders change over time with new investment, replacing board members is a fairly straightforward and common practice (albeit usually under very different circumstances). Regarding what happens to a deceased investors shares this is decided between the deceased’s estate and the shareholders agreement. If an estate needs or chooses to liquidate the investment, many shareholders agreements have a clause that allows the company or other shareholders to purchase the investment at Fair Market Value. There are tax and legal considerations, so this should not be considered tax or legal advice, please consult a professional.

    It’s unfortunate for our small close knit community to suffer such a sudden, tragic loss. We are deeply saddened to hear about the loss of a member of our community.

  • DemoCamp with Fred Wilson

    Mark your calendars.

    Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures will be keynoting DemoCamp Toronto # 27 on October 6, 2010.

    EquentiaHow did we pull this off? Well the big shout out goes to William Mougayar at Eqentia, this would not have happened without the support and efforts of William. In case you haven’t seen Eqentia, they power custom portals for media monitoring, competitive intelligence, knowledge tracking and more. They power two sites that I use daily to track the Canadian emerging technology scene: CVCA and NextMontreal news widget.  We’ll be launching a full Eqentia powered news portal in the next couple of weeks.

    The full details about DCT27 are still being locked down. The venue is still to be determined. The venue is the bulk of the ticket price. The goal with ticketing has always been cost recovery and we’ll aim to keep tickets inexpensive (current model show about $25/person less for students). Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

    DemoCamp Toronto 27 Details

    • Date: October 6, 2010 [Hold the Date – iCal]
    • Time: 11:30am – 3:30pm
    • Location: To be determined
    • Notify me when tickets are available

    I want to demo! Pick me, pick me!

    We’re also looking for up to 5 local demos that match the investment thesis at Union Square Ventures. If you think your company has the right stuff then you should apply to demo.


  • Startup Weekend Toronto September 24-26

    This is a guest post by Startup Weekend Toronto organizer Chris Eben.

    Let’s build some more startups in Toronto! According to StartupIndex, the GTA has 325 startups – by September 26, we might be able create 10 new startups in Toronto.

    Startup Weekend, a 54 hour event in which teams go from idea to launch to pitch in a weekend, comes to Toronto September 24-26 at Ryerson University through StartMeUp Ryerson. Check it out here and get registered while tickets are still available.

    The only way to determine whether entrepreneurship is for you is by actually going for it, and Startup Weekend gives you that opportunity. Going from idea to pitch requires working on every facet of entrepreneurship – researching a market, articulating the unique value proposition, competitive advantages, user acquisition strategy, business model, building the prototype, and more. You will work on and learn all the critical things you should be thinking about when starting a company and get practical experience.

    After the weekend, you can continue working on your project making it your path to entrepreneurship, or you can take what you learned during the weekend and apply it to your next venture. Over 36% of Startup Weekend companies are still alive after 3 months, and over 10% of companies go on to produce revenue or get seed funding.

    Startup Weekend is a great way to network with other passionate entrepreneurs and find potential co-founders. During Startup Weekend, you will not only meet some talented individuals, you will get to see how they work, helping you evaluate the potential for long term fit. Interaction and exchange of ideas between different teams is common which means your networking opportunities are not limited to your immediate team.

    Every Startup Weekend participant walks away learning a lot about startups and making some valuable connections. There is a great line up of speakers:

    • Mike McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks
    • Mark Ruddock, former CEO of Viigo (bought by RIM)
    • James Lanthier, COO of Mood Media
    • Sarah Prevette, CEO of Sprouter
    • Tim Smith, CEO of GridCentric
    • April Dunford founder of Rocket Launch Marketing
    • Leila Boujnane, founder and CEO of Idee Inc.

    They, along with a growing list of other experienced folks from the local community will be involved as mentors and judges to help teams during their weekend journey and provide constructive feedback. Attendees will take away valuable lessons to be applied to their current projects and anything they do in the future.

    While Startup Weekend is a non-profit organization, there is a cost to the event to cover expenses.  StartupNorth readers may use discount code “StartupNorthSWTO” for a significant discount.

    Follow @startupwkndTO and #swtoronto for news and updates leading up to the event.