StartupNorth

Category: Quebec

  • DFAIT Technology Growth Initiative Business Bootcamps

    Departement of Foreign Affairs and International TradeDFAIT is sponsoring the Technology Growth Initiative (TGI) Business Bootcamps Spring 2011 to help Canadian companies go-to-market in specific US markets (Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, San Diego, San Francisco/Silicon Valley and others). The program provides startups with access to webinars, a one day bootcamp session and direct connections with VCs and local entrepreneurs to share experiences and find funding.

    The one day bootcamps are being help in April and May 2011 from Halifax to London. The bootcamps are interesting, they provide entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch and get feedback from trusted experts (yeah right I think I served as an “expert” in 2009 ;-). But it is a great opportunity to get a different set of eyes on your pitch. And it plays to the old adage, “how do you know when an entrepreneur is dead? he stops pitching”.

    Registration for One Day Business Bootcamp

    • Halifax: April 27th, 2011 – Cleantech and ICT
    • Quebec City: April 28th, 2011 – ICT
    • London: April 29th, 2011 – Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
    • Toronto: May 2nd, 2011 – Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences
    • Ottawa: May 3rd, 2011 – Cleantech, ICT, Life Sciences

    There is also the upcoming April 6th, 2011 11:30EST seminar with Mike Grandinetti (he’s also a TechStars mentor) focusing on “Lean and Mean Startups”.

    April 6th: 11:30 EST (Upcoming Webinar – Soon)

    1. Lean and Mean Start-ups – Presented by: Mike Grandinetti, Managing Director, Southboro Capital, Boston.
    2. So you think you are ready? – 10 things you need to know before presentation day – A candid talk on presentations gone horribly wrong and how you avoid that – Presented by: Coby Schneider – Miller Thomson & Others.

    These are great opportunities to learn about expanding into specific US markets. The DFAIT team brings key players to local markets and makes it easy to establish relationships that allow companies to grow. There are lots of opportunity to criticize some of the efforts, but the team at DFAIT have run this program for the past few years with varied success. It’s worth the time of startups actively looking to expand their customer base (this means that you’re beyond seed stage, you probably have customers, you have a product, you’re looking for a scalable business model) to explore how DFAIT can help.

    The event is co-hosted by our sponsors and friends at KPMG are corporate partners helping DFAIT and startups. There are a lot of cross-border issues concerning corporate structure, financing, taxation and other where KPMG can leverage their experience to help early and growth stage companies.

  • Rewardli in first 500 Startups accelerator class

    The first cohort to join 500 Startups accelerator has just been announced. Included is a Canadian team led by George Favvas who is working on a project called Rewardli. Not many details on the startup yet, but the focus is “helping small business owners leverage their social graph in interesting ways.”

    George had this to say: “We are incredibly excited to be a part of the first batch of startups to go through the program. Dave McClure is obviously a very visible leader but there is an entire team behind him, not to mention a network of over 100 mentors who actively help and hold office hours in the accelerator. Unlike YCombinator, all 500 Startups accelerator companies share physical office space in Mountain View, which I think is a good idea as you can sense the energy just by walking into the room. There are events, talks, and workshops which often focus on the core themes of design, data and distribution. At the end of the program, we expect to have iterated enough to have a minimum viable product that addresses a real pain point, and raise a round of follow on financing.”

    Update: Real Ventures is participating in the seed round as well.

  • Chango closes a $4.5m Round B

    Chango has announced today that they have closed a $4.5 million B round that includes their existing investors as well as lead participation from Rho Ventures (Canada) and iNovia. Roger Chabra lead the deal for Rho and this represents his first placement since joining Rho Ventures last year.

    Christopher Dingle has also joined Chango from his role as EIR at iNovia (although he seems to have joined in October, so I am just catching up it seems). Notably absent from this round as well as the Series A is MantellaVP, who seem to be participating in the form of sweat equity but not in the form of capital placements as Duncan Hill is actively operating on the management team. Perhaps I am unclear as to Mantella’s model, I thought they were operating as a traditional fund but perhaps their model is changing. That could make sense as both Duncan Hill and Robin Axon have a lot to contribute in terms of operating capability.

    Chango is an AdWords style platform for display (banner) advertising which is focused on low-latency ad targeting and serving across networks. As inventory has become realtime they are able to distribute highly targeted ads across that inventory. This sort of targeting was not possible in past models and Chango seems to be utilizing capital to stay ahead of the curve as more players enter the space. Chango also has the unique ability to automatically generate the banner ads being served.

    The most important aspect of this deal is that Canadian capital is being put to work to power a high-potential company that otherwise likely would have closed a US focused deal. This type of growth capital was much less active just up until recently and it represents the critical role that iNovia, Rho and others are going to play in the Canadian landscape in the coming 5 years. The health of these funds is critical to our ability to create value based in Canada that can attach US and international markets with a comparable amount of resources. Albert Lai famously made a splash about the lack of growth capital in Canada in 2008 and it is my hope that the situation is now changing.

  • Real Ventures closes

    Real VenturesThis is great news for Canada, well at least Quebec until additional funds close. Real Ventures has launched today. With both JS Cournoyer and Mark MacLeod writing about the close of approximately $40MM of money that must be invested in Quebec. They are actively looking for seed investments in Quebec software, SaaS and Internet deals.

    “We are seed investors in software startups based primarily in Quebec, though we will do deals in other markets. We like to be 1st money in and like to lead. We can do seed rounds in the six figures to get a product in market and can participate in series A follow ons for those companies that are hitting the gas pedal.” – Mark MacLeod

    The great part about Real Ventures is the pedigree. The team is: John Stokes, JS Cournoyer, Mark MacLeod and Austin Hill. These are world class investors, entrepreneurs, executives and people who have had a hand in shaping policy, companies and entrepreneurs over the past few years.

    “For those of you who don’t know, Montreal Startup is a $5M seed fund that was founded by John Stokes, Daniel Drouet, Alan MacIntosh, Austin Hill, and yours truly. Mark MacLeod has since joined the team for Real Ventures. We invested in 15 web, mobile and software companies between February 2008 and March 2010, including Beyond The Rack, Status.net, Whatsnexx, Vanilla Forums,Recoset, mConcierge, Oneeko and SocialGrapes. For the majority of our investments, we were the first money in, acting as the lead investor. We hold board seats in most companies.” – JS Cournoyer

    Real Ventures is the real deal. Any entrepreneur in Quebec looking to raise a seed round should be talking to Real Ventures.

    Congratulations guys, here’s to closing some money that can be deployed in Ontario.

  • Year One Labs launches

    Year One LabsIn case you missed it on TechCrunch, Year One Labs launched today.  Year One Labs is a startup incubator/accelerator in Montreal with a great team: 

    This a team that is deeply steeped in the Montreal software/internet/infrastructure startup scene. They have a combination of deep technical chops plus the necessary hands-on operations with early stage companies looking for a scalable business model with customers.

    If this isn’t enough they’ve surrounded themselves with great advisors including Dan “I’m Everywhere Man” Martell, Rails core team member and Shopify founder Tobias Lütke and others.

    The Year One Labs Program

    It’s an interesting program that provides:

    • $50k, issued in tranches based on milestones
    • Four partners who will work alongside you and your team
    • An international network of mentors
    • Direct access to Angel investors and VCs, both 1-on-1 and during our Demo Day events
    • Free rent, Internet, coffee etc. in the Year One Labs space

    In exchange for “a minority stake in your startup, typically between 10-20% under standard Series Seed terms”.

  • NextMontreal.com launches – "news and opinion on technology and startups"

    NextMontreal.com is going live today. It is the result of a push by Ben Yoskovitz to create a new source of information for the Montreal community after MontrealTechWatch went dormant over a year ago.

    Why now?
    When first thinking about this project, Ben wrote:

    When the site was active it provided a great deal of exposure to Montreal, and helped build a stronger community. There’s a lot going on in Montreal for tech startups and entrepreneurs, but without adequate reporting, too much of it doesn’t get the attention deserved.

    At that time, MontrealTechWatch had been more or less dead for over a year and the tech community was very quickly gathering momentum again.

    What about MontrealTechWatch?
    In the time since Ben began working on NextMontreal.com, Heri started blogging regularly on MontrealTechWatch again. I advocated for the community to restart MontrealTechWatch, so I was glad to see that. The existence of two community sites in Montreal will cause some confusion, but I think it is fine. Both sites compliment eachother, have very different operating models, and will most likely each find specific audiences within the Montreal tech and startup community.

    The role of community sites
    There is a broader discussion that we need to have about the role of community blogs in Canada’s tech hubs. We need blogs which aggregate people, ideas and events in order to showcase the activity in places like Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Quebec City and Atlantic Canada. There are cool things happening in all of these places, you just have to scratch the surface to see what is going on.

    Running a community site is hard though, and it takes dedication. NextMontreal will be testing a new model, which will hopefully bring scale to this concept and a broader set of voices to the community.

    No matter what, Montreal should count itself lucky to have so many people who are so passionate about making the startup community in the city thrive. Most do it for little or no direct reward, and those are exactly the people you want behind the wheel.

  • My favourite flavour Vanilla Forums

    Vanilla Forums 2

    Congratulations to the team at Vanilla Forums. In the past year they’ve attended TechStars in Boulder, moved to Montreal, and released version 2 of Vanilla Forums. What is Vanilla?

    “Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, theme-able, pluggable community forum.

    Over 350,000 sites use Vanilla Forums to manage feedback, spark discussion, and make customers smile.”

    There are competitors ranging from bbPress, phpBB, and punBB (like others we’re torn between bbPress and Vanilla – the proxyConnect plugin allows us to integrate Vanilla with WordPress). But Vanilla is a leading solution offering a great user experience, simple customization and hosting with a large user community. Plus they’re funded by our friends at Montreal Startup which makes them an easy choice.

  • Quebec City based Poly9 group acquired by Apple

    Techcrunch is reporting that Quebec City based Poly9 group has been acquired by apple. Details are thin and it looks like the team has gone dormant.

    It will be interesting to find out exactly what has transacted in this case. Just last night I was telling David that Quebec City is consistently underrated for startup potential in Canada.

    We have been tracking Poly9 since they added themselves to the startupindex.

    Poly9 is a technology studio in Quebec City specializing in 2D & 3D web mapping, and interactive media.

    Since 2005, we have designed and developed some of the most exciting and popular web mapping applications for major clients. We are also behind highly visible Google Gadgets, running on iGoogle and the Google Gadget Ads platforms. Take a look for yourself at the Our work page.

    Our company’s flagship product, Poly9 FreeEarth, is the first geographic 3D globe that works in all browsers, and does not require any download or installation.

  • Beyond the Rack raises $12million

    MontrealStartup is reporting that their portfolio company, Beyond the Rack, has secured a new round of financing with BDC Venture Capital and Highland Capital Partners.

    I have been watching Beyond the Rack since Montreal Startup’s initial investment, but I had no idea they were getting so much traction. The company is just under two years old and is led by Yona Shtern, who was an employee at My Virtual Model, one of the bubble-era startups that swept through Montreal. More recently Yona was the Chief Marketing Officer at Ice.com.

    The Montreal Startup team recently secured the first commitments for Founder Fuel, which will be a larger sister-fund to Montreal Startup. Their early stage investment in Beyond the Rack will hopefully make it easier to secure the remaining commitments for the new fund, and this puts the team squarely in the top-tier of early and seed stage investors in Canada along with Extreme Ventures and Scott Pelton at Growthworks.

    This also represents one of the most significant follow-on rounds for a Canadian micro-fund. The fact that BDC Venture Capital was able to participate and keep some of that action in-country is nice.

  • StartupDrinks – YYZ, YUL, YYT, YQM, YYC, YHZ, YFC, YSJ

    StartupDrinks LogoFriendly neighbourhood reminder that tomorrow, June 30, 2010, is StartupDrinks (well tonight in Saskatoon & Regina). On June 30, 2010 you can join entrepretreneurs in:

    Jevon is going to be hanging out in Halifax. Ray is going to be in Montreal. Jonas, Bryan and I are planning on being at Grace O’Malleys (aka Granuaile), 14 Duncan St, Toronto, ON.

    It’s a great opportunity to get out of the office. To be social. To connect with others that are struggling building companies like you. What will we be talking about? We’ll be talking about “How to grow your traffic from 1k to 35k on $0” and other things. What do you want to talk about?

    Here’s