StartupNorth

Category: Ontario

  • iUpload moving south

    Word comes from Suzie at Venture Law Line that iUpload, an enterprise blogging platform based in Ontario will now be moving south to the US.

    iUpload recently took on a large Round A of funding which came in at $7 million from two top tier American Venture Capital funds.

    It’s another missed opportunity for Canadian venture money, which could have easily put together the $7 million needed, and could have kept the company in their own backyard.

    iUpload competes most directly with California based blogtronix, who are currently trying to raise their own funding round. With marquee customers like McDonalds, who are actively using their platform, iUpload might not have the most visibility of all the players, but they have the most traction in their space.

    The most interesting thing about iUpload? For a blogging and Social Media company, they don’t do very much blogging themselves.

  • R|Mail – RSS to your inbox, just acquired

    Randy Charles Morin is best known to some of us as one of the early advocates and defenders of RSS and a member of the RSS Advisory Board, but he also maintains a handful of blogs and has been running his R|Mail service for a few years. Last night he dropped the word that R|Mail was acquired.

    My guess is that it wasn’t a big deal, but it’s also a well deserved payoff for Randy, who is one of blogging’s hardest working guys.

    Randy had funding options and had offers from several sources, none of which were Canadian. He had been looking for funding later in 2006 and in to mid-January of this year.

    The scoop came from PaidContent.org and then Maple Leaf 2.0

    Update: An Interview with Randy on MapleLeaf2.0

  • devshop.com – online software project management

    Devshop.com is a hosted project management application for software projects. I took Devshop for a test drive a few months ago at the beginning of their beta and found it to be straightforward, but took a pass on it because it felt like it was focused on larger projects. It seems that Devshop is a legitimate competitor to most major project management software, and at 24$US per seat per month, it is priced well, although that could definitly add up for larger teams.

    There would be a good reason to pay for Devshop however, and that is their approach. Devshop focuses first on requirements and also focuses on time estimation and actively measuring progress against the project schedule. Devshop also brings the entire development team in to the same enviroment, so you don’t have to worry about updating MS Project files or emailing spreadsheets between team members.

    Their “squash the risk” approach, which addresses the most real need of project managers, is what will help make Devshop successful. I think that being focused on Software Development, and only Software Development means that Devshop can keep innovating features that affect their niche audience directly, rather than a lot of the bloat that you get from more general purpose project management vendors.

    Devshop is based in Ottawa, Ontario, and they have 5 employees. They were founded in September 2005 and their software went in to public beta just over a year later. To date, Devshop has been funded to the tune of $200, 000 and they are currently looking for angels to top off a second round of funding.

    Considering what they have done with the small investment they have taken so far, and the fact that 2000 customers totaling over 7000 users are using Devshop already, while it is still in beta, is a pretty good sign of things to come.

    Depending on their plans, I would also think that Devshop will have some pretty attractive exit opportunities. Everyone from Borland to Sun and Microsoft will need a tool like this in their back pocket and will be willing to pay to scoop up the market leader.

    Contact Craig Fitzpatrick