StartupNorth

Category: Venture Capital

  • AideRSS announces funding

    aider.pngI just got word from the guys at AideRSS to let me know that they have closed their first round of funding. AideRSS has grown from 2 guys with an idea to 8 employees now, and the hiring is still going on. I first profiled the Waterloo, Ont. company in July of last year when things were just getting off the ground, so I am really excited to get word that they now have some money to really build on their momentum.

    When I spoke with them earlier in the week, Kevin and Ilya said that this will give them 1 year of operating time in order to experiment with some of the nuances of their business plan, and to focus on building the product. They also indicated that they are in the final stages of putting together some partnerships which are worth waiting to hear about.

    The round, the size of which is undisclosed as of now, was lead by Tech Capital Partners in Waterloo along with a group angel investors. AideRSS is also working with the University of Waterloo on a few research projects that will help enhance their filtering engine and will bring improvements to their end-user tools. Taking advantage of a local resource like the university a smart move, especially in a place with a great university like UOW.

    AideRSS is now a significant player in a healthy industry. Feedburner.com was acquired by Google for $100million last year and AideRSS continues to offer a completely unique and useful service. Another big difference since last July is that PostRank, the secret sauce that gives a score based on external links and social uses of the RSS content, is now Patent Pending.

  • vencorps.com – Crowd Sourced VC gets cooking

    vencorp.pngI dropped Sean Wise an email today about Vencorps.com and he said that they would be making some announcements at the end of this month, but it appears that David Crow has beat me to the punch on writing about it.

    VenCorps is a collaboration that includes the software and experience of Cambrian house, but with a focus on providing capital and guidance to entrepreneurs. Cambrian house has been successful using their model, which is crowd-sourced software, and there would absolutely be no better partner out there for building something like this, so that is certainly a good start.

    The model basically involves your idea being vetted by the public for an initial vote, and it then moves on to a sort of due-diligence process and a more formal vote, where an “elite group” will do the decision making. It’ll take a few viewings to decipher their flash animation, but give it whirl.

    VenCorps is a venture capital seed fund leveraging the wisdom and the participation of an elite crowd to build better start-ups. VenCorps enables entrepreneurs and angel investors to act collaboratively using collective knowledge, networks, and experiences.

    Does this make sense for startups? Will it get enough attention? Is this a revolution in how companies are funded? I am going to sit tight and wait to see this thing in the wild before I make my own judgments about it.

    What about you?

    • Would you share your idea with the world in the hopes of getting access to a group of angels?
    • Do you see this as potentially different from current angel groups or VCs?
    • Will this method be better at picking winners?

    Best of luck to Sean and the rest of the team, we will cover this as much as we can as it comes to life. This is innovative and risky – the sort of thing that nobody has tried yet. For that reason alone, I am cheering it on. Somebody has to get out there and give it a shot.

  • Extreme Ventures – Early Stage Venture Capital

    amarsun.jpgWe promised you a surprise at StartupCamp Toronto, and we did our best to deliver. At the end of the night, we asked Sundeep and Amar from Extreme Venture Partners to come up, tell us about themselves, and take some questions from the room. Extreme VP is a new venture fund based in Toronto, and this was their coming out so to speak.

    Jumping in to the startup scene here and telling everyone you are a couple of freshly minted VCs can’t be easy to do. I was excited to introduce the guys because I am one of many who believe that venture capital has to change in Canada. I don’t pretend to have all the answers about where venture capital is going or where it should be going, but if a new venture fund is going to try and do things differently, I am on their side.

    When I first got an email from Sundeep and Amar I was intrigued, excited and a little pessimistic. My guess is that those are the exact same feelings that most people in the room had at StartupCamp. The fact is that a large number of startups in Canada are going to need some sort of capital, whether it is early stage, acceleration capital or expansion capital later on. As Albert Lai said when he kicked off with his keynote: finding early stage and acceleration capital in Canada can be painful, if not impossible.

    Amar (on the left in the above photo) is an engineering grad from Waterloo who has spent the last 5 years working as a VC here in Toronto. He has worked on something in the area of 40 transactions in that time, and has learned a lot about “traditional” VC it seems. Sundeep has some notches on his belt, having founded and sold a few successful startups over the last few years while living in San Francisco.

    Sundeep and Amar have not raised a huge fund by any stretch. At $10 million, they aren’t taking a management fee out of the fund, nor can they afford to throw money at unrealistic startups. What they plan to do is invest early in good ideas and provide up to $1 million in funding over the life of a company.

    There are a few things that I think sets Extreme VP apart from other Canadian VCs: They can do deals as small as $25,000, they try to complete a deal within 1 month if it is a ‘yes’, they are probably more tuned in to what is going on right now with web startups than most other VCs, and they have a good set of connections that they can use to help the companies that they fund.

    One thing that has impressed me so far is that they are also accessible. Even before they officially ‘launched’ their fund, I saw them out at democamps, pub nights, and breakfasts where I could not find another VC if I tried. To me, that says something. The other thing is that these guys are actually doing some deals. In a short period of time they have funded something in the range of 3 startups and I believe they have more that are looking good.

    What do I hope Sundeep and Amar accomplish? Disruption. I hope they are a wake up call to many of the VCs in Canada who have taken their deal flow for granted. By being accessible at the grassroots level, Extreme VP will see valuable deals before they land on the desks of the more established VCs. Some of them may have to hit the ground and start looking for good deals before they get picked up by the new guys in town.

    Contact: Sundeep & Amar, Extreme Venture Partners