The rumors are true, The Toronto Venture Group is no more.
The TVG, like the Toronto Angel Group (which is probably dead too, more on this soon), is one of the many often-flirted with, rarely treaded on groups that court Canadian Startups to get on stage, or to send their business plans around. The effect on the startup was feeling more like they were being asked to take their pants off in the waiting room before going in to the Doctor’s office. More often than not, it was some sort of witch doctor behind the door anyway, and you would have kept your pants on if only you had known.
That leaves us with a slew of angel groups who are all still asking Startups to take their pants off well in advance of a typical show-all timeframe for a real relationship.
Do these groups actually work? One telling aspect is that many of them claim to model themselves after Silicon Valley groups. The problem is, there is no evidence (and conversations tell me otherwise) that these groups actually do many deals themselves. The world of Angel, Venture or other investment is about relationships. When you, as a startup, start to meet Angels and VCs, your focus should be completely on building a relationship with them, the deal can flow from that.
There are always exceptions to the rule, I know that b5media was funded out of a TVG event in Toronto pretty quickly. I don’t know of any others though.
Like I do our friends in the Den, I tend to question the value of these groups, especially the ones that charge upwards of 3000$ to the entrepreneur for participation (like First Angel Network), but it’s also important to recognize that the members of these groups can been keen, hungry and able investors. The trick is to pick them out of the pack and focus on dealing with the individual directly. Your $250,000 deal doesn’t need 4 weeks worth of legals holding it up when a simple note and issuance of shares could do the trick.
The obituary after the jump. Who wants to sing the requiem?
(more…)
You have probably heard about Amazon’s new Flexible Payments Service… what you didn’t know is that FreshBooks, the Toronto based invoicing startup, was one of the very first companies invited by Amazon to try integrating the payment service. Great news all around! Amazon’s entry means more competition in the online payment market… good for consumers, good for startups. And FreshBooks was recognized by Amazon as the perfect partner to demo their newest web service utility. Think Canadian startups are going unnoticed by the web giants? Think again!
Freshbooks announced today that they are releasing a mature API. From what I understand, this is a direct result of their hiring of 
