StartupNorth

Category: Toronto

  • Tineye now in Open Beta

    For everyone who didn’t get in on our rounds of TinEye invitations, suffer no more! The service is now in open beta and you can get a free account.

    The launch is getting a lot of coverage including Ars Technica, Information Week, and PC Pro. 

     

  • classtell.com – easy class websites

    Serve-yourself class websites aren’t entirely new. ChalkSite has come and gone, Engrade is a long-time option and there have been a mish mash of others. Toronto’s own Savvica had Nuvvo.com for a while as well, which was not quite the same, but close. They have since closed Nuvvo and have created LearnHub.com. One of the biggest new entrants in this market is Google. They have been marketing their Google Sites product heavily to educators.

    Classtell is the latest offering in this space by Kasra Kyanzadeh from Toronto. Kasra is 15 years old (and doesn’t mind advertising it) and he has a decent set of sites under his belt.

    This is a crowded space, but Kasra has built a fantastic vertical-specific CMS tool. There is a lot of room for micro-CMSs like this in all sorts of markets. Paul Graham identified sites like this in his “Startup Ideas we’d like to fund” post.

    Classtell is 20$ CAD per year, and you get a 90 day (wow!) free trial to test out and get comfortable with the site.

    The thing I love the most? Kasra has built the product on his own, established an early business model (rather than just giving it away), and to be honest: the product is fantastic. I played around with the demo, and it did everything other LMSs do and more.

  • 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.

  • 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”

  • Founders and Funders Toronto Wrapup

    Founders and Funders Toronto took place this week and we had another sellout. We had just over 100 people who came out to hang out, pitch their startups and find fundable companies.

    A lot of food went cold however, as people could barely stay in their seats. The room was buzzing and so far the reviews have been great.

    Ali Asaria, from Well.ca, sent us a note that I think summed it up:

    “This was the first time we as a company were approached by investors, instead of us having to approach them. The atmosphere was relaxed, but at the same time there were always four simultaneous, deep discussions happening at our table on the subjects of investment, entrepreneurial stories, and industry trends.

    In one single night I was able to talk directly with five different VCs, and we had the time to talk about details of our business, without the “what’s your pitch?” awkwardness. I had the chance to sit next to some of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs from whom I learned so many lessons. What a great event — it’s the next day now and I return to my desk energized!”

    A big thank you to our sponsors

     

    Founders and Funders Vancouver

    Boris has announced Founders and Funders Vancouver for June 17th. If you would like to attend the dinner, please fill out the following form and let us know who you are.

    As with the Montreal and Toronto dinners, Microsoft was gracious enough to sponsor Vancouver as well. These dinners really would not have been possible without them taking the lead and having a vision to help Canadian early-stage companies.

  • Mesh Conference – 15 Minutes of Fame

    One of the startup-focused parts of Mesh is the 15 Minutes of Fame they do evey year. Each day of the conference 3 companies are given 5 minutes each to pitch themselves or their product to the audience.

    What I love about it is that it really is completely open to whoever applies, and it is not an opportunity for the conference organizers to just give stage time to whoever will pay. (paying to do something like 15 minutes of fame is far more typical than you might realize)

    The lineup this year was solid, with some new companies and some more established startups.

    15 Minutes of Fame is a great way to get your startup in front of a new crowd in Canada, so think about doing it next year.

    • Carbonetworks, which has developed software that helps companies create effective carbon emissions strategies to reduce costs and capitalize on emerging global markets.
    • GigPark, a place to receive recommendations about a wide variety of services from friends and their friends.
    • AidesRSS, which has created technology to make reading RSS feeds more effective and valuable.
    • Well.ca, an online health and beauty store that ships across Canada.
    • OverlayTV, an interactive media company that provides a video commerce platform that lets Internet users, content owners and e-commerce sites to monetize and customize their video assets.
    • Enomalism, an open source consulting firm that focuses on solving the cost and complexity for enterprises that run large technical server infrastructures.

  • Pride and Prejudice – Why startups need community

    I was feeling extraordinarily proud of Idée last night when I saw that they received glowing coverage on TechCrunch. It is well deserved, and it seems like they are just getting started in terms of press coverage. They recently had a huge profile in the Financial Post, written by David George-Cosh (who has been getting more and more connected with the Toronto community as of late). We have been tracking Idée for a while now.

    Then as I kept flipping through my news feeds, I came across an embarrassing update about MediaScrape, which Heri and Mathew Ingram both covered well. When we first posted about MediaScrape, Tyler Cavell, the founder, responded in a much more succinct way than he did to TechCrunch’s latest post. Heri had even convinced me to lay off and see how things work out.

    I almost feel like I am doing Idée a disservice by mentioning them in the same post as MediaScrape. Where Idée has focused on perfecting their technology and winning customers, MediaScrape seems to be prone to distraction and tends to make simple matters much more confusing and difficult than necessary.

    Heri made the point in his post yesterday that when entrepreneurs are disconnected from their local community, they seem to be more likely to go off the rails. I think Heri is on to something that investors need to take in to consideration when investing.

    Again, Leila and the crew at Idée are a great contrast and example of how to do things right. While Idée is possibly the busiest startup in Canada, and one that is spending its own money (ie: they have no time to waste), they still manage to be tightly connected to the community here in Toronto. Leila is constantly organizing, co-organizing or speaking at events, and when she isn’t doing that, she spends a lot of time each week mentoring other startups.

    Capazoo and MediaScrape, according to Heri, have never made it out to a single Montreal event and have generally kept a distance from their local startup community.

    Perhaps one of the measures that investors, both Angels and VCs, take in to account when deciding whether they want to put money in to a startup or an entrepreneur should be whether or not that person has been able to take the time to connect with a community of startups. That way you know they have a social and professional circle that will keep them accountable, demand progress and that will criticize their execution, rather than patting them on the back and telling them they are going to be rich.

    If your friends tell you that you will be rich and famous, then you have the wrong friends.