StartupNorth

Category: Toronto

  • easypost.ca – Quick and easy mailing in Canada

    Alright, here is one I am not sure what to think about. Easypost.ca is a dead-easy way to send letters anywhere in Canada. Type in an address, type in a letter and they print it and send it.

    Seems silly right?

    Well, there could be a lot more to this service, which is in a free-beta right now, that could make them more than just a letter sending website. Right now there are API‘s for everything you can imagine. When a programmer wants to add a service to their web-app, they use an API to tell another site to do the work for them. You might, for example, tell Google to draw you a fancy GoogleMap, or you might tell YouTube to tell you what the most popular 10 videos are.

    Freshbooks is one of the few sites doing ground-mailing services right now, but I can think of a few other places I would like to have the service. For example, I wouldn’t mind being able to upload an Word Document, Email or Powerpoint Doc and have it mailed on occasion.

    So, theoretically (and I haven’t asked them), easypost.ca could become a sort of API to connect websites to the real world and make ground mailing super easy.

    Even if they don’t go that route, I think there will be a suprising amount of people who would like a really, really, simple way of sending ground mail, without having to get up from their office chair.

    We will follow up with Easypost later on and see how things are coming along.

    Contact Andrew Kinnear.

  • clearRoot.com – Florist Solutions

    clearRoot is a Toronto based startup that is building a back-end system for flower shops that allows thousands of independent stores to place orders with each-other as easily as it is for them to fill an order themselves.

    clearRoot manages all of the complexities associated with a large Business-to-Business network, and they provide very user friendly front-end software to the flower shops who participate. ClearRoot first started to take shape in May of 2004, but has been growing quickly since April 2006. With over 100 paying customers already (and that’s BEFORE they have even released the software), clearRoot is clearly making sense to their customers.

    The clearRoot business model is based on a pay-per-use fee on each order sent through the system. This is similar to Interac, and if it is priced right, this will drive a lot of growth for clearRoot. Because clearRoot was born out of a team with experience running an independent flower shop, as well as their current ethos of building their software and network directly with customers, they have a great chance of building the next big disruptive B2B platform.

    Until now, clearRoot has been doing a lot of direct selling of their network, but they have also been growing organically in their vertical. Later on, they are planning to do joint-promotion with other complimentary services in the florist industry.

    While growth has been strong, the market for something like clearRoot is also growing and my guess is that is why they are currently looking to raise financing.

    clearRoot is currently run by Jeff Richman and their team is built of people experienced with the florist industry, or developers who are working on building their platform out.

    Contact Jeff Richman

  • 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