StartupNorth

Category: Startups

  • When a Massive Opportunity Knocks!

    Editors Note: This is a guest post by Chris Arsenault (LinkedIn, @chrisarsenault) a tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Chris is the Co-Chair of the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), a board member at the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA), a Supporter of the C100, among other things. Follow Chris at chrisarsenault.wordpress.com or on Twitter @chrisarsenault.

    CC-BY-20 Some rights reserved by antmoose
    Attribution Some rights reserved by antmoose

    The last few weeks have certainly proven to be extremely promising for Canadian Tech Entrepreneurs. Almost $80M of equity financing has recently been secured from some of the top investors in the world to help build our next generation of massive tech companies. It’s even more exciting when you realize that these funds are going to three especially young, dynamic and opportunistic companies, all of which are in our backyard!

    Beyond the Rack

    Beyond the RackYona Shtern, Robert Gold and the team over at Montreal-based Beyond the Rack (“BTR”) lead the way with a whooping $37M financing round that should propel the company to new heights yet unseen on the Canadian eCommerce front. BTR has quickly established itself as an eCommerce leader by showing the market that Canadian companies really do know what a “hockey stick” revenue growth chart looks like. The teams’ ability to build such a big company in such a short time frame has earned them our utmost respect. We initially met the team and reviewed their business plan in late 2008; by 2011, they were already ranked as one of the fastest-growing online retailers in the entire world. Yona was also wise in choosing his investors, be it industry specific angels or great VCs such as Panorama Capital, iNovia Capital, Rho Canada, Tandem Expansion, BDC Venture Capital, Highland Capital Partners, EDC and Montreal Start Up. If you aren’t a Beyond the Rack member, don’t wait – register now, and you’ll be impressed!

    Shopify

    Shopify - LogoJust down the road from Montreal is another world class eCommerce team. Ottawa-based Shopify recently closed a $15M second round of financing. Tobias Lutke, Cody Fauser, Daniel Weinand & Harley Finkelstein have developed an industry leading eCommerce platform that is already being used by thousands of leading online retailers around the world. The team, their vision and commitment to execution all combine to make Shopify one of Canada’s tech leaders in an extremely high growth global market. Unfortunately, we missed the boat on the opportunity to work with them, but our friends over at Bessemer Ventures, Firstmark Capital, Felicis Ventures and Georgian Partners were more than happy to come aboard. I’m expecting to see Shopify rise above the tide over the coming years and establish itself as a global leader in its space.

    Fixmo

    FixmoThe most recent team to announce a substantial equity-financing round is Toronto-based Fixmo. Led by its founders Rick Segal, Shyam Sheth and Joyce Janczyn, Fixmo just announced a $23M round. This investment round included both existing investors (iNovia Capital, Panorama Capital, Rho Canada and Extreme Venture Partners) and an impressive syndicate of new lead investors: Silicon Valley-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Washington-based Paladin Capital Group and Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures. While the company’s core vision has not changed over the last two years, the product development road map has evolved at a rapid pace. Within an extremely short time frame, Fixmo launched a series of Government and Enterprise products, acquired two companies (Conceivium Business Solutions and Chocolate Chunk Apps), established a series of key partnerships and practically jumped ahead of every other Mobile Risk Management solution provider in the market. Obviously, the founders didn’t do it alone, but the sheer fact that Rick was successful in attracting some of the best talent out there (Bruce Gilley, Jonas Gyllensvaan, Tyler Lessard, Lee Cocking, John Yuen and others) speaks to the long term execution ability and potential of Fixmo.

    Ambition coupled with Execution

    The average tech financing round in Canada is under $4M. Therefore, the aforementioned three companies basically raised as much cash as 20 average Canadian tech startups combined. Obviously, I get nervous when I see a company (portfolio or not) raise such a large chunk of cash. Why? It’s not because I like the small size of the average Canadian financing rounds. Rather, it’s because I think that too much money for a young business can be as bad as or worse than not having enough. $15M-$40M rounds for Canadian tech companies are amongst the largest we have seen this side of the border in over 10 years. That being said, I do also think that Canadian Tech Entrepreneurs are now entering a phase of Ambition coupled with Execution. We have lived through too many years of “lack of ambition”, quickly followed by “lack of execution”, not to mention the much lamented “lack of capital”. However, we are now seeing deals done where massive amounts of ambition and execution converge, and capital is becoming available to build large tech companies right here in our own backyard. With more companies able to raise the amount of funding they truly need to generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, not only we will stop selling our companies short, they won’t need to move down south. Hopefully other investors will note the phenomenon, and future startups won’t have as much trouble raising the capital both from Canada and into Canada. And that’s good for all of us.

    At iNovia, when a massive opportunity knocks, we answer! I’m expecting to be sharing a lot more stories about successful Canadian entrepreneurs, and how they’ve built hugely successful companies here as they compete globally for resources, capital and market share. There isn’t much stopping the entrepreneurs driving Canada’s next generation of large tech companies, and for the likes of Beyond the Rack, Shopify, Fixmo and many others, this is just the beginning.

    Congratulations to all the teams mentioned in taking important steps on their paths to success!

    Below some article worth reading with regards the above companies:

    Editors Note: This is a guest post by Chris Arsenault (LinkedIn, @chrisarsenault) a tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Chris is the Co-Chair of the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), a board member at the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA), a Supporter of the C100, among other things. Follow Chris at chrisarsenault.wordpress.com or on Twitter @chrisarsenault.

  • High Tech Holidays and HoHoTO

    I can’t believe it was back in 2008 that #HoHoTO started. For the past 3 years instead of a Holiday DemoCamp or Festive Founders & Funders, we’ve sponsored and attended HoHoTO. (We’ve even helped document the shenanigans). So why the fuss about a holiday party?

    Toronto’s High Tech Holiday Party – #HoHoTO

    “Fortune favors the connected entrepreneur.” @jcal7 #trueuniversity via @hnshah

    We talk a lot about what is going on in Silicon Valley and how to make Toronto better. We can look to Helsinki, Israel, New York, Boston, Austin, and other places. But we have a strong emerging high tech culture in Toronto (and across Canada, just check out the efforts in Montreal and Vancouver). There is a strong vibrant community in Toronto that actively seeks each other out. Maybe because it’s cold and we like to snuggle, maybe because in dark of winter it’s best not to drink alone. But there are entrepreneurs that are trying to do it in Toronto and they like to get together.

    CC BY-NC-SA Some rights reserved by smack416
    AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by smack416 (check out the Flickr Pool for #hohoto)

    We have a great community that knows how to have a great time. And with HoHoTO the great time also supports a great cause.

    What is HoHoTO?

    Daily Bread Food BankWe often joke about startups being “ramen profitable”, but for many this is not a choice. We are working with HoHoTO and the Daily Bread Food Bank we hope to improve Toronto. HoHoTO is a Holiday party to raise sorely-needed funds for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank. It brings together the hyper-connected tech, marketing, PR, social media and startup communities  to raise attention and support around a core idea:

    “People in our town are hungry – damnit – and we can make a difference.”

    Here is the call to all Toronto startups, you should attend HoHoTO and support the Daily Bread Food Bank. It’s a great way to initial meet and connect with other readers of StartupNorth and give back to those less fortunate in Toronto.

    It’s easy to sponsor, it’s easy to attend, it’s easy to donate.

    Get Tickets Now!

    PS this is a call out of our friends to match or beat our sponsorship/donation:

    We’re hoping to see everyone on December 15.

     

     

  • Startup Life: Trough of Sorrow or Crest of Success?

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Kimchi Ho (LinkedIn, @kymchiho). Kim is an architect by training and has been working to build community spaces in the physical and virtual worlds. Kim’s post, “The Startup Girlfriend” was featured in Forbes Startup Life series. This post was originally published on Kim’s blog on November 16, 2011 and is republished with her permission. 

    Entering Startup

    Ilya Zhitomirskiy, a cofounder of Diaspora, passed away earlier this week due to unknown reasons, however it is suspected that it was related to his depression and the pressures associated with startup life. Startup culture is as much a lifestyle as it is a very small community. It is not a 9-5 job with the ability to turn yourself into “off” mode. Do people actually get that? Startup mode is always on. It’s fuelled primarily by passion and for those of us who find ourselves working on things we are passionate about, time is not a factor.

    But as this taboo topic poses, where is the fine line between madness and sanity? Is the line so far away that it’s a dot?

    Fill in the ______

    I have the fortune to be surrounded by some good friends who share a love for startup culture. It’s not always pretty, like anything worth pursuing there are troughs of sorrow and crests of success. How do you put one foot in front of the other on those days? In startup culture, it’s a fairly intimate circle of people working on manifesting an idea, these people become your family, it’s a package deal (the good, bad, and the ugly). However, the ability to stay grounded and balanced, while pursuing such unveiled ideas can seem daunting and doubtful while also being awesome and fulfilling. All off these feelings are usually experienced many times a day in startup life. It is only human to have ideas reinforced by others, we are social creatures. However, ironically, the actual work itself is often a solo unsocial pursuit, you just have to get the work done to contribute to the bigger picture. For those hours spent hustling, coding, communicating, leading, experimenting, call it whatever you want, a bit of debt is incurred, maybe in the form of physical (you’re not exercising as much, you’re not eating as much, you don’t care as much) or mental, as in the case of Diaspora’s Co-Founder. Maintaining the optimistic front in light of setbacks and financial stress is not always easy. There is under-rated stressed from publicly press-released information about your start up and there is under-rated stress from the day to day that startup life demands. So how do entrepreneurs win? How do you put one foot in front of the other? Clearly there is a trend, Zhitomirskiy isn’t the first.

    Ramen Noodles aka Top Ramen

    Take preventative measures. When I socialize with friends who are startup doers, they literally live and breath their business. Can I blame them? Not really, it’s what they love to do. However, we make a point to try to do non-startup-esque things to get away from work, if only for a bit. We go rock climbing. We eat good food, away from our offices. We dance like crazy, also away from our offices. All these things can be great breaths of fresh air and are under-rated solutions that contribute to a healthier state of mind. I’m a firm believe in allotting time to do things that are not related to your start up directly, because the time spent doing those things is actually propelling the productivity and success of the time you do spend working on your startup. All of these ideas are summed up nicely in this Hacker News discussion which was initiated by this key topic: Dealing with Post Startup Depression. I think we can all empathize, startup or not.

    Transparent Toaster

    Be transparent. There are great listeners who are accountable confidants. It is worth engaging in these conversations. Don’t try to be a hero by holding down the fort. Know when to speak up, it doesn’t have to be closed doors. You know who you trust, speak to those people. Accountability & mentorships go along way. I’ve had some of the best insights when I can get past this threshold and voice my concern for something. We often think we’re the only ones struggling with these internal ideas, but if you speak up, chances are someone else can relate and has some insight. The act of sharing and engaging in someway is the premise of most startup ideas…why not use that same mantra to tackle those problems on a personal level as well?

    There needs to be outlets, let’s un-taboo this.

    Thoughts?

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Kimchi Ho (LinkedIn, @kymchiho). Kim is an architect by training and has been working to build community spaces in the physical and virtual worlds. Kim’s post, “The Startup Girlfriend” was featured in Forbes Startup Life series. This post was originally published onKim’s blog on November 16, 2011 and is republished with her permission. 

  • Startup Down Under

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Alyssa Richard (@AlyssaJRichard), Founder of RateHub, a Canadian mortgage rate comparison engine. While StartupNorth is focused on Canadian startups, with Winter on the horizon we thought some readers would enjoy hearing that our cousins in the Southern Hemisphere are building a thriving tech ecosystem.

    The garage enjoys a special place in the mythology of tech entrepreneurs. It’s where Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and many other aspiring techies launched their first ventures. Whether it’s your garage, living room, or home office, I’m sure you founders out there will agree that startups are usually launched close to home. It’s where we’re most comfortable, have built strong connections, and, yes, it’s a way to reduce pressure on already burdened finances. Bolder souls might opt to move closer to cash and talent pools, such as Silicon Valley, and some even make the journey overseas to be closer to manufacturing. But with cold days and dark mornings closing in, I’m tempted to consider one final factor: climate.

    The inspiration for this post comes from a recent trip to Australia, where I judged Univation 2011, a business competition for students and alumni of universities in Western Australia. The total prize pool was over $200,000 AUD. During my stay, I had the opportunity to meet many talented entrepreneurs in both Sydney and Perth. Suffice to say I fell as much in love with the startup scene as I did the beautiful beaches.

    Here are some of the startups I met:

    Shoes of Prey is a website that allows users to design their very own custom women’s shoes. From booties to stilettos, satin to sparkles, users can release their inner fashionista and wear the results within just a few short weeks.

    Unique Aussie Benefit: Close to Manufacturing
    Shoes of Prey’s proximity to China allows this largely Sydney-based business to travel from its headquarters to its manufacturing plants in 8 hours or less. No need for a 24 hour flight. Since both countries are located in the eastern hemisphere, there is only a 2 hour time change which makes communication and working together incredibly simple.

    Unique Technology: 3D model shoe design
    Bringing the customizable fashion trend (think TailorYou.com) to the shoe industry was no small “feet”. While the manufacturing industry has been set up to handle customizable items like shirts and suits, shoes presented a new challenge as a less experienced vertical. The young company has also overcome a major technological hurdle: the site was originally launched with a 2D shoe model, but found that customers were having trouble picturing the beauty of these $280 shoes in full. This week they’ve launched their new and vastly improved 3D shoe model after 6+ months of hard work.

    Funding Stage: Bootstrapped and raising
    Shoes of Prey has been bootstrapped to date with a $300,000 investment from its three co-founders but the company is currently in the process of raising $2M. With their impressive mix of technological and manufacturing expertise and 5,000 pairs of shoes sold, I don’t imagine they’ll have much trouble.

    Fusion Books is an online yearbook system that makes building school yearbooks easy. Bootstrapped by co-founders Melanie Perkins (23) and Cliff Obrechet (25), Fusion Books now services hundreds of schools throughout Australia and will be licensing their yearbook system internationally in the coming months.

    Unique Aussie Benefit: Underserved local market
    While the yearbook industry has some major players in the North American market, such as Jostens, Melanie and Cliff are on their way to a significant share of the Australian market through superior technology and an incredible team on the ground taking the Aussie market by storm.

    Unique Technology: Accessibility and ease of use
    Melanie and Cliff launched Fusion Books because too many schools and businesses were wasting hours with complicated technology like Adobe Indesign and Photoshop. Worst of all these programs could only be accessed on one computer, allowing limited opportunities for collaboration. While their technology, designed by Melanie at the age of 19, is as easy as pie to use, don’t underestimate the coding. For example, editors can set up basic profile questions that students answer through an e-mailed URL, and crowd-sourced content is uploaded and formatted automatically for all students.

    Funding Stage: Bootstrapped, cash flow positive
    In a world where venture-funded startups attract a lot of attention, I was very impressed with this dynamic duo who have built and own 100% of a profitable business.

    Posse is a social platform that leverages a brand’s most dedicated customers to help spread the word online. A brand’s customers, or “fans,” are given exclusive product/service offerings that they can share with friends to receive prizes in the form of cash and products. Posse captures the viral aspect of sharing deals online but allows brands to control the deal.

    Unique Technology: QR codes track offline activity
    It’s easy to see how a platform could be set-up for customers and fans to redeem pre-purchased vouchers, but Posse takes this one step further. Fans of a brand can share exclusive deals with their friends, through a voucher containing a unique QR code. When the friend goes to redeem the product, say a haircut, the business scans the QR code, collects payment and enters in the gross sales associated with the service. The original brand fan can now be awarded for their friend’s sale through a combination of deals and points. Essentially Posse has created a trackable affiliate program where companies/brands are in the driver’s seat.

    Funding Stage: Seed, en route to Series A
    With two rounds of funding under their belt, the company has built a platform, acquired users to test and refine the service, and will eventually raise additional funding. With this company’s unique spin on the group deals space, it’s no surprise angels have gotten so excited.

    As the winter chill sets in, just remember you have options. With all the activity in Australia, I highly recommend exploring startup life down under, where technology and business have a home by the beach.

    Top left: Beach in Margaret River with fellow judges including Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures

    Top right: Kitesurfing with Dan Larsen of Qualcomm

    Bottom left: Meeting with co-founders of Shoes of Prey in their Sydney office

    Bottom right: With the winners of the Mobile App contest, the brilliant minds behind Big Help Mob

  • CIX TOP 20

    This morning Rick Nathan, Robert Montgomery, and Chris Arsenault announced the 20 Canadian technology companies that have been selected to present at this year’s CIX conference. Many you’ve heard of, a few are well on their way, all definitely worth connecting with December 1.

    • Massive Damage – Founded by veteran app developers Ken Seto and Garry Seto, Massive Damage is building next generation location based massively multiplayer games for mobile devices.
    • Arcestra – Arcestra is a new cloud-based technology and business platform that streamlines commercial real estate transactions unlocking tremendous value for tenants, landlords, brokers, designers and suppliers in the multi-billion dollar commercial real estate market.
    • Vanilla Forums – Vanilla is open source community forum software that powers discussions on over 500,000 sites around the world.
    • Woozworld – Founded in 2010, Woozworld created and operates Woozworld.com, a Web 2.0 innovative social virtual world, specifically designed to answer the needs and expectations of tweens.
    • Wattpad – On Wattpad users discover a new form of entertainment where you can interact and share stories across text, video, images and through conversations with other readers and writers.
    • Infersystems – Infersystems has developed a proprietary, automatic predictive analytics engine based on non parametric statistics. The Infer RTB Optimizer enables marketers to effectively and efficiently optimize display media campaigns at the impression level in order to maximize CPA, CPC and/or profit.
    • Recoset – Recoset is a predictive analytics company that allows marketers to bring 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data together in real time and use economic models to make purchase decisions across multiple digital marketing channels.
    • ClearRisk – ClearRisk helps the insurance market by giving them a way to win in the mid market by providing the needed risk management solutions to medium sized companies.
    • Achievers – Achievers is an employee recognition solution that helps companies recognize brilliant performance and empowers employees to choose their own rewards.
    • Bitheads – An award-winning product development company that is creating a unique cloud-based solution for a large and emerging entertainment market.
    • Shoplogix – Shoplogix envisions a manufacturing industry where every manufacturer has access to the right information to make the right decisions.
    • True Voice – True Voice Technologies caters to organizations that recognize the importance of live conversation and how it can play a pivotal role in their business.
    • Polar Mobile – Polar Mobile provides media companies globally an industry-leading Platform that makes it fast and easy to launch branded mobile Apps across every smartphone.
    • Wave Accounting – Wave Accounting is the fastest-growing online accounting tool for small businesses around the world. Wave is 100% free, offers complete accounting made ridiculously easy, and is designed for the real-world needs of small business owners.
    • Nexalogy Environics – Nexalogy Environics is a leading Canadian provider of social media/ research technology and consulting services. Nexalogy takes the guesswork out of social data analytics.
    • Quickmobile – QuickMobile is a software development company that builds interactive, engaging mobile applications and mobile websites for audiences at conferences, trade shows, film festivals and other events.
    • Responsetek – ResponseTek helps organizations see the link between poor customer service delivery and retention and growth problems.
    • Nexj Systems – NexJ Systems (TSX: NXJ) is a leading provider of enterprise private cloud software, delivering customer relationship management solutions to the financial services, insurance, and healthcare industries.
    • TribeHR – TribeHR provides a Software as a Service human resources management tool for small and medium businesses to reduce the time, cost and aggravation resulting from managing human resources on a tight budget.
    • Evoco – Evoco is an enterprise class, software-as-a-service provider that integrates real estate management, project data management, and facilities management solutions for multi-location real estate owners.

  • The Untold Story of Kobo

    So I read most of the news this morning around Kobo and the links being passed around. Generally I was miffed. When folks in the startup scene complain about media doing a lame job covering entrepreneurial stories, this is a great example. The story being published in the media is “Indigo sells Kobo”, “Indigo builds Kobo”, etc, etc. All Indigo, all the time. Probably due to PR agencies spinning the story that way, and also due to lazy business journalism. Well, having chatted with a bunch of folks involved with Kobo, I have a different take on the Kobo story:

    Mike Serbinis

    If you are in the startup scene in Toronto and you have not heard of Mike Serbinis – shame on you. He is another example of an amazing entrepreneur in the community who has been wildly successful. The first company he started, DocSpace, was an internet leader in security. He founded it in 1997, and went on to sell it to CriticalPath in 1999, for whom he was CTO and EVP marketing for some time. Throw in a master’s in engineering, a few patents, and you can see why folks were pretty excited about his return to Canada, joining Indigo in 2006.

    The Indigo/Shortcovers/Kobo story is as such. In 2007, 2008 Serbinis starts lobbying Indigo about the coming sea of change called “ebooks”.

    In April of 2008, Shortcovers is created within Indigo. Shortcovers is an online ebook store and mobile app meant to work across the plethora of new smarter devices – Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, etc. Access to books on any device.

    This date is important, April 2008. If you think this is just another dumb Canadian “me-too” play, you should look up the launch date of the Kindle. The Kindle launched in November of 2007. And Amazon blew the Kindle launch, and had no stock available until April of 2008. Every attempt before April of 2008 at ebook readers and online ebook stores had been nothing short of disasters, ripe with lost capital. Let me double down on this point:

    ebook Sales 2007-2010

    In 2007 and early 2008 it was NOT obvious that ebooks would be a big factor, and that Indigo should meaningfully go after the ebook space.

    So Mike Serbinis, within Indigo, stared at this in 2007/2008 and said “Indigo should enter the ebook space”. Wow – those are some big brass entrepreneurial balls.

    So they create Shortcovers. Shortcovers name was from their original “gimmick” in that they let folks buy books a chapter at a time. Shortcovers was a pure ebook store & software client. No hardware. They were originally intending to put their ebook app on as many devices as possible. No hardware. So somewhere in 2009, things change.

    Kobo is Created

    Serbinis then goes on to do the unthinkable. At some point in 2009, he see’s the only way for Shortcovers to get critical mass adoption is to launch its own hardware. Whattt????

    Shortcovers is a software company. Serbinis is a software exec – CIO & EVP Online at Indigo. Indigo is a brick and mortar retailer. They have ZERO hardware background. That’s a big-ass, high-risk pivot folks!!

    So he goes off with his “lets build a device” vision and convinces Indigo to spin them off into their own business, but also gets Indigo to cough up another $5mm as part of a $16mm round where he gets Borders, RedGroup & one of the most famous Asian investment firms around – Cheung Kong Holding.

    In early-mid 2009, it probably looked like launching a new ebook reader was a good idea. By the end of 2009 though, everybody and their sister was launching a new ebook reader. Check out this article:
    http://www.zdnet.com/photos/ces-2010-top-10-new-e-book-readers/382181. Everybody I know who went to that CES said “maannnn, so many ebook readers”.

    I remember talking to Dan Leibu, CTO of Kobo, who in early 2010 was nervous as hell about launching their own device. He said something to the effect of “if we had known so many ebook readers were going to launch, we probably wouldn’t have launched our own”.

    Kobo launched in July 2010, well after many of the above devices were in market. How did they do? The rumour on the street is that Kobo cracked $100mm in sales in its first 12 months. $100mm in revenue in its FIRST YEAR!!! They only raised $16mm in their A round and built a $100mm revenue company in 12 months. That is simply unbelievable. How about you other startups, have you done 10X your initial investment in revenue yet?

    And how did the rest of the industry do? Anybody know where the Skiff Reader, the Plastic Logic Queue, the Alex Reader, and so on and so forth ended up? Probably not with $100mm in sales and a $315mm acquisition.

    And that my friends is why I’m miffed at the coverage on Kobo. This is a wild and crazy story entrepreneurial story full of big risky moves. Its a story of an entrepreneur doing things that only great entrepreneurs can do – even making elephants dance. And its a rare story in Canada, and as such a story that deserves proper coverage.

  • FounderFuel cohort explodes onto the scene

    Disclosure: I am a mentor at FounderFuel, and I traveled  to Montreal in August 2011 to see most of these companies during the mentor matching. I’ve also mentored Willet as part of my role as Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EiR) at Velocity (@UWVelocity) in Waterloo. 

    CC-BY-NC-SA Some rights reserved by Stuck in Customs
    AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by Stuck in Customs

    I am/was impressed with the teams accepted into the 12 week FounderFuel program. Today is #FFDemoDay where after the past 12 weeks the companies get a chance to show the world what they’ve been working on. I love the art of the demo, it is so different than the pitch. I met all of the companies in August 2011 at the Mentor Matching Day, unfortunately I wasn’t able to travel to Montreal to see the demos today. It looks like the team at Founder Fuel is continuing Montreal Startup Up’s great track record of identifying and growing very early stage ventures.

    I’m apparently having a bromance for the Real Ventures team.  John Stokes (@iamjohnstokes), JS Cournoyer (@jscournoyer), Mark MacLeod (@startupcfo), Allan MacIntosh and Ian Jeffrey (@ianjeffrey) are putting together programs and the funding to support a strong early stage technology ecosystem in Montreal. Keep up the phenomenal work guys.

    The 2011 FounderFuel Cohort includes:

    • Playerize
      Playerize grows social and mobile games by providing player installs from diverse channels at huge scale.
    • OOHLALA
      A mobile platform that helps students take control of their college life by powering the events, conversations and deals on campus.
    • Willet
      Willet is the missing step from social browsing into shopping, and converts the mindsets of people without intent to buy into paying customers.
    • Vuru
      Vuru takes complex financial statements and distills them down into clear, transparent reports that show investors the fundamentals that matter.
    • Seevibes
      The TV Ratings For Social Media Audience – measures engaged audience to provide relevant data that media and advertising industry need.
    • BlameStella
      Is your Internet contrivance up to snuff? Find out with BlameStella, the future of Web Monitoring .
    • PlayerTakesAll
      A viral campaign & referral management platform that enables advertisers to extend the reach of their marketing efforts by 50%.
    • Wavo
      wavo.me is the easiest way to collect, manage and play the music and videos being shared on your social networks.
    • Editola
      Editola uses the community to build the most accurate view of every news story. The best articles, videos and opinions, all in one place.

    Apply for FounderFuel 2012

    The spring 2012 FounderFuel session is scheduled to start on February 20th 2012, and applicants may apply directly online at founderfuel.com until January 7th 2012. An early review of candidates will begin on December 12th 2011.

    FounderFuel DemoDay #FFDemoDay by deniszgonjanin
    Photo by deniszgonjanin

  • Everyday be hustlin’

    CC-BY-NC-ND Some rights reserved by concheven
    AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by concheven

    AdParlorCongratulations to Hussein, Kristaps and their team at adParlor.

    In case you missed it, Toronto-based adParlor has been acquired by AdKnowledge. adParlor is the second Canadian acquisition for AdKnowledge, who acquired Vancouver’s Super Rewards in July of 2009 for a reported $50 Million.

    They managed to build one of “the largest [Facebook] Ads API vendor” and do it here in Toronto.

    “We’ve established an office over here where we now have 11 employees, and we’re all based and comfortable in Toronto. We do have our business development manager in San Francisco way more than he’s here in Toronto.” – Hussein Fazal (LinkedIn, @hussein_fazal) on Mixergy

    Even more impressive is that they built a site, that manages over one billion impressions a day, without raising outside capital. This is freaking impressive. I’m sure there was likely a combination of SR&ED credits, IRAP money, and others. Every entrepreneur should take note: A billion daily impressions without venture funding. Go read or watch Hussein’s interview on Mixergy, he talks about the 2 pivots for the company, the hard decisions, staying in Toronto. He doesn’t talk about all of the successes like the MaRS AlwaysOn trip, the CIX Top 20, but their relentless hustle and drive built a great business with massive traction.

    “no one has hustled harder, stayed humbler, and executed better than him.” – Anonymous VC Comment about Hussein & adParlor

    Thanks for building a fantastic example for Canadian entrepreneurs.

  • Wave Accounting acquires Small Payroll

    Emboldened with financing from OMERS Ventures and Charles River Ventures, Wave Accounting is consolidating their position as a leading provider of SaaS business applications, expanding from accounting into payroll with the acquisition of Small Payroll.

    “Our intention is to do for small business payroll what we did for small business accounting. Namely, we’re taking something complicated, confusing and expensive for the small business owner, and making it ridiculously easy and affordable.”

    Small Payroll was launched in 2009 by Sean Walberg, an application developer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He discovered a need for a straightforward, affordable payroll tool when he was faced with deductions for a caregiver he hired for his children. “I had worked at a big payroll company, so I understood what needed to be done. Even so, I found it to be a pain to use the government’s online calculators and then keep track of things on spreadsheets. And the payroll companies are too expensive, especially for the little guys.”

    Wave Payroll handles all the aspects of payroll that most small business owners will need, including:

    • direct deposit to employees’ bank accounts
    • calculations of wages and overtime
    • withholding deductions; and monthly remitting to the government
    • income tax forms (including the Canadian T4) and Records of Employment

    All the features will be included in a simple pricing model, for a flat rate of a few dollars per employee per pay run. Wave Accounting and Wave Payroll will operate as complementary but separate applications. Wave Accounting will remain 100% free. Wave Payroll is now in private beta.

    For an invitation to the public beta, sign up at: WavePayroll.com

  • Startup Weekend Toronto & GEW

    Startup Weekend Toronto is coming back for it’s third event in just over year. The city is making a name for itself amongst the global Startup Weekend community, having held some of the highest quality events, including last June’s which turned out to be the largest North American event held to date.

    The city has lots of great events but that’s not what gets me excited. It’s the quality, innovation and momentum that Toronto’s entrepreneurs have that is inspiring. Personally, I never had any interest in running events but I liked the idea of Startup Weekend and was inspired by Startup Weekend’s CEO, Marc Nager and his the team… at least enough to agree to run a single event. Once you’ve been involved in one, it’s hard not to keep it going. The energy, enthusiasm and drive of everyone who’s attended the last two Startup Weekend Toronto events is infectious.

    Last June’s event was a raging success with over half the teams still taking their projects forward and gaining some real traction 6 months later. Vizualize.me is the perfect story of the possibility of a single weekend. A brand new idea gets pitched for the first time. A group of strangers come together as a new team. In under 54hrs, the team iterates, refines, pounds the pavement for customer feedback, signs up over 10,000 registered emails and puts an awesome final presentation together to take first prize. What’s more impressive is what comes next! The Vizualize.me team decided to commit full-time and see where they can take this. As of today, they have over 300,000 registered users, have been covered in Mashable, Fast Company, TechCrunch to name a few, and have gone through a full private and now public beta program. Eugene Woo is actively speaking to investors as they run this startup out of the Ryerson Digital Media Zone.

    November’s Startup Weekend will officially close Global Entrepreneurship Week Canada (GEW) and will be part of the Global Startup Battle with over 65 Startup Weekend events happening around the world during GEW. The winning team from each city event will compete against all 65 cities with a chance to win a trip to DEMO in Singapore. Toronto is going to impress the global startup community once again with a world class event. Check out the event details from the site and by following the action on twitter using #swtoronto .

    There are still a few tickets left and StartupNorth readers can have them at a discount. See you there!