Category: Ontario

  • AndyCamper.com – Get kids outdoors

    AndyCamper.com launched this week. The Ottawa based startup is a sort of “activities portal” targeted at kids. 

    The site categorizes activities in the same way that kids tend to, using broad titles like “bugs”. When you click through there are all sorts of videos, ideas and games about what you can do to learn about bugs.

    I would have been all over things like How to Create and Berlese Funnel and to be honest, it is still tempting!

    The amount of content available on this site is incredible. It sort of makes me wonder if the days of “Mom, we’re bored!” will soon be a thing of the past. “Just go to AndyCamper.com kids

     

     

     

  • iLoveRewards closes $4.7million Series A

    Here is a company worth talking about.

    iLoveRewards took a big problem and found a quirky and economical solution to it. This is the kind of company had me gushing 10 seconds in to the pitch. I’m sure that John Albright and company saw it from a mile away.

    ILoveRewards is sort of like one of those midway games that pumps out tickets every time you get the ball in the middle hole.

    In the case of iLoveRewards, employees of a company can earn points for things like good attendance, hitting sales targets or customer satisfaction. As these points build up, the employee can redeem them through iLoveRewards.

    Todays announcement is that JLA is contributing an additional $1.5 million to the round which will be used to create a US-focused brand for the service as well as to finance more sales and marketing initiatives.

    iLoveRewards competes with more established companies such as another favorite of mine, SuccessFactors, and I have no doubt that the competition will be moving to copy some of the novel things that iLoveRewards has been doing.

  • Kontagent – Deeper Social Network Analytics

    Kontagent, which straddles Toronto and San Francisco and Toronto, and is co-founded by Toronto native Albert Lai (no relation to Rick Segal), launched today at the Facebook Developers Conference. This is one of a few Canadian announcements coming out of the conference.

    The application is an analytics suite focused on social networking platforms, not unlike Refresh Analytics who we profiled several months ago.

    Kontagent claims to offer a deeper level of analytical reporting than other available tools and, based on the previews available on their website, they have taken a page from some of the larger analytics suites.

    The platform has been under development for almost a year and requires deeper integration in to the application it is monitoring than other suites might. It is also currently free, but is in Alpha testing.

    It’s good to see Albert take the shroud off of what he has been working on, he has been pretty quiet since he left Kaboose, inc., after selling his last startup, BubbleShare.

  • AideRSS – postrank.com and a slew of updates

    AideRSS was one of the first companies I really got excited about. I had (and have) done a lot of thinking about RSS as a market and how you would need to build a technology and a product in that space. When Ilya sent me an email about AideRSS, I loved it.

    That glowing review was the first posts on StartupNorth that really generated significant feedback for me. Comments, email and phone calls from VCs and companies who wanted to know more about them. It was fun, and Ilya didn’t disappoint. He continued to build the company back then with Kevin Thomason and they pushed product out the door.

    In the intervening year they have secured funding, Kevin has moved on and they are starting to make updates regularly. I have given Ilya a hard time in the last year about focusing on the product, but I did it knowing he could deliver. With a great team behind him now AideRSS has been doing partnerships.

    Today they are launching PostRank.com, which is a promotional site for their PostRank system, and they are also introducing Thematic Postrank, their Google Reader Extension and a set of APIs that produce PostRank calculations to developers. This change means that PostRank is no longer just a component of the AideRSS website, but it is now an independent service that other applications will be able to use.

    Thematic Postrank is a new service that helps cluster topic-specific blog posts together. I will be interested to see how good this service is. It could potentially be the start of a better Techmeme (my words, not theirs).

    They are also expanding the list of sources that they draw from to calculate a PostRank score, adding clicks, views, Ma.gnolia, and Pownce.

  • IT LAUNCHED! PlanetEye finally goes live

    After my first post about PlanetEye and the teddy-bear response it garnered from their VC and co-founder Rick, I am not really predisposed to writing much about PlanetEye.

    Well, that was back in September and their new CEO, Butch Langlois, was just getting settled in. Without speculating about how much money PlanetEye has gone through getting off the ground or how long it has taken, I’ll just say congratulations. The progress under Butch has been impressive to everyone, and the product looks great.

    When I asked Scott Pelton why he joined Rick in funding PlanetEye, he was candid. He said “do you think that cameras will someday come embedded with GPS location and that it will be a big deal?”.

    I think that day is coming. It might be a little ways off, but with GPS chips the size of your fingernail out there, it won’t be too long. And yes, I do think it is going to be a big deal.

    The fact is, two Canadian VCs took a big bet on the future and did more than most Canadian VCs do: they followed a vision.

    Sites like Panaramio (which integrates with Google Earth) offer a similar pictures-on-a-map experience, but do not have the travel focus that will either make, or break, PlanetEye.

    So, a tip of the hat to Scott and Rick and their firms, Growthworks and JLA. I hope this one goes all the way.

  • LearnHub.com Launches World's Largest Free SAT and GMAT Question Banks

    Toronto based Learnhub.com, who we have profiled before, is making a big announcement today.

    LearnHub, who are doing deals all over the place these days, is quickly becoming a huge destination site for international students. Being able to practice SAT and GMAT questions online will be a fantastic addition for their audience.

    Along with the availability of the new SAT & GMAT question banks, today’s announcement includes a significant update to LearnHub’s community platform. Over 1,500 members use this innovative social interface to practice for exams, which includes tools to allow members to time themselves, debate solutions and strategy with each other, and to track their improvement over time. The question banks grow daily as members and staff add new questions. As one of the only alternatives to expensive books and courses, LearnHub’s free SAT and GMAT communities are catching on quickly, averaging 50 new members every day since their launch.

    Learnhub gives wannabe international students an online social network and learning site that North American schools then tap in to via recruiters in order to attract top-tier talent. The model delivers new value to all of their audiences, and while I am not in any of their target markets, I think the value of the site huge.

    I even started startups.learnhub.com a while ago, and will start populating it more soon. Jump in and help out!

    LearnHub, who took a large financing round from India-based EduComp Solutions, was recently in our Top 10 Startups to Watch list for Canada.

  • ChickAdvisor launches new show, does deal with Rogers Media

    Toronto based ChickAdvisor.com has gone from fledgling community startup to a deal-making media machine overnight!

    The deal kicks off production of ChickAdvisor’s second video series, called ChickChatTV. The series, which is made up of 20 episodes at 90 seconds each will feature commentary that is based on the conversations that site members are having in the Chick Advisor forums. The host, site co-founder Ali de Bold then poses questions to people on the street.

    “ChickChat TV” is based on the juicy discussions that take place on ChickAdvisor’s popular forums, ChickChat. Questions posed to unsuspecting strangers include: ‘Would you take back a cheater?’ ‘”Who should pay for the first date?’ ‘Can Dudes be Fashionistas too?’ The series will air in Fall 2008 on ChickAdvisor.com and Rogers Media properties including their Pizza Pizza network, which have a combined reach of over 685,000 viewers per week.

    This is a great leap forward for ChickAdvisor, who were featured on Fortune Hunters earlier this year and were very candid about how well, and not well, things were going.

    Co-founder Alex de Bold says this will bring them a lot of new exposure and that they are “hoping that this announcement will bring us more top of mind with brand managers too as they do their 2009 planning”

  • Conceptshare launches new desktop companion

    Sudbury, Ont. based Conceptshare launched a new desktop companion application today to make it easier to keep track of your Conceptshare workspaces.

    Conceptshare, who we have covered a few times before have been constantly improving their product and this update comes just over six months since their last major iteration.

    The companion application is currently in “beta”, and there were a few obvious problems when I tried it out, especially the part where it told me I had no internet connection, but I am confident that it will be in good shape by the time they are pushing it out more aggressively to customers.

  • Dan McGrady: 7 Reasons Why My Social Music Site Never Took Off

    Dan McGrady has been on a roll with some great posts lately, and “7 Reasons Why My Social Music Site Never Took Off” really grabbed my attention yesterday.

    Dan started Contrastream last summer. I liked the site a lot, as I think music discovery is a huge problem that is being approached in the wrong way by the major music sites/stores. The site was well put together and full of potential, but it just didn’t take off.

    This is where, I believe, Dan is making the shift from being someone who cobbled together a website to being an entrepreneur. Instead of hiding the fact that Contrastream didn’t really take off, Dan is making a clean break, reflecting on what he learned and what he did wrong, and he is hitting the ground running with his next startup: IntegrateSales

    Dan’s reasons his site never took off? Read his blog for his full analysis

    • Design Perfection
    • Underestimated the ?Cold Start? problem
    • Market Size vs Business Model
    • Bad launch
    • Competition
    • Motivation
    • Co-founder
    • Derivative Idea
  • $205M Ontario Venture Capital Fund

    Funding for emerging Ontario companies dropped from $1.5 billion in 2000 to $236 million in 2007. The number of Series A rounds has reached a 12 year low. Clearly there is a problem, one with long term implications. And so the Ontario Government has stepped up to the plate, investing $90M into a fund of funds in partnership with OMERS Capital Partners, RBC Capital Partners, Manulife Financial, Business Development Bank of Canada, and TD Bank Financial Group for a total commitment of $205M.

    This fund of funds will be managed by TD Capital Private Equity Investors who will in turn spread the $205M across Ontario venture capital and private equity groups who will be responsible for making direct investments.

    A minimum of 80% of the funds will be invested into Ontario companies. 75% of funds will be allocated to venture funds who invest in emerging companies, the remainder being set aside for private equity funds who invest in mid-market companies. It is anticipated that the fund will be invested over four years starting this year. All this translates to approximately $123M to be invested in emerging Ontario startups.

    “The decline in Ontario venture capital has coincided with greatly lowered investment by institutions such as pension funds and insurance companies. In 2000, institutional investors represented 21 per cent of venture financings. This has dropped to one per cent or less in the period from 2005 to 2007.”

    It is rumored that the capital co-invested by the other limited partners is secured by the Government of Ontario’s $90M. If this is true, what the Ontario Venture Capital Fund is really addressing is the unwillingness of Canadian institutional investors to continue supporting Ontario’s venture capital funds. It seems dismal returns have soured LPs on the asset class or perhaps the venture funds they had previously invested in.

    In the last three months two funds have closed rounds almost as large or larger than the OVCF. In March iNovia closed on a $107M fund and in May JLA closed on a $150M fund. Unfortunately, the $123M is likely to be spread across the same old funds. No one ever got fired for making the safe bet. The question is, what does an additional $20M in five preexisting funds do for Ontario? I would hazard to guess that the best possible result of the OVCF would be the creation of 1-2 new venture capital funds based in Ontario.

    Ever the optimist, I suggest we focus on the bright side, three good things might come of the OVCF:

    1. Institutional investors rediscover Ontario’s venture funds and pleased with returns from the OVCF decide to increase the amount of capital they commit for investment in early stage growth companies.

    2. $123M is invested over the next four years across 15-30 Ontario startups. Some of who might not have been able to raise money otherwise. More money = More startups.

    3. A new crop of venture investors emerge, with greater skill, luck, or just plain old good timing and reinvigorate the ecosystem, going on to raise new funds to provide all the growth capital Ontario startups need.

    Ultimately the onus is on Ontario’s entrepreneurs to build companies that can scale. Money is everywhere. 59 per cent of foreign venture capital invested in Canada is invested in Ontario. Ontario’s venture funds are only as good as the companies they invest in. So get back to work! There is $123M more now available to fund your startup.