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Groupon acquires Vancouver tech company to add Scheduler to mix

In September Techvibes reported that Groupon had acquired a Vancouver company but at the time could not confirm details. Multiple independent sources had told us that a Groupon acquistion of a BC-based company was imminent.

Today Groupon confirmed it in a press release that announced the pilot launch of Groupon Scheduler, the latest addition to its suite of merchant productivity tools. Groupon Scheduler is an online appointment service giving merchants an easy way to manage their schedules and accept bookings directly from consumers.

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5 Tips on raising Angel Money

At last month's VEF event BC's 2011 Angel Investor of the Year Boris Wertz moderated a Angel Investing panel that included Initio Group's Mike Edwards and Eastside Games' Jason Bailey as well as Scenario Creation's Paul Antoniadis, and Seattle superangel Geoff Entress.

We've summed up Bailey's thoughts on angel investing and the story of Edwards climb to Superangel in less than 12 months but for those of you that couldn't attend the event I thought it would be worthwhile to get back to the basics.

During his panel introduction moderator Wertz shared his advice on how to raise angel money. While Wertz's climb to angel prominence in the Pacific Northwest hasn't been as accelerated as Edwards, Wertz's W Media Ventures has a four-year track record of investing in consumer Internet, SaaS and mobile entrepreneurs.

Here are Wertz's 5 tips on raising angel money.

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Facebook Looks to Maintain Presence in Location Services with Acquisition of Gowalla

According to CNN money, which cites "a source close to Gowalla," social network giant Facebook has acquired the location-services startup.

The report suggests that Gowalla's team will move to Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto as Mark Zuckerberg looks to boost his company's currently small presence in the location-services space. Instead of reviving Facebook Places, the social network aims to integrate Gowalla's technology with its new Timeline feature. It is unclear whether Gowalla in its current state will continue to exist or recieve future updates.

Gowalla was founded in 2009 by Josh Williams.

10 Business Building Tips from Radian6's $326 Million Sale to Salesforce

Radian6's Marcel Lebrun spoke this week at the the Canadian Innovation Exchange and offered some advice for Canadian entrepreneurs.

New Brunswick born Radian6, an industry-leading social media monitoring platform, was acquired by Salesforce for $326 Million earlier this year.

Radian6 secured angel funding in 2006 and brought their product to market by the end of 2007.

Lebrun would go on to say that Radian6 optimized for growth with funding, but never at the expense of profitability. It was also a company that never even saw the “great recession”, so any advice to stay lean expense-wise from investors in difficult times didn’t even apply to them.

Lebrun went on to offer the following 10 business building tips that he learned from Radian6's massive multi-million dollar exit:

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Unbounce uses AngelList to raise $850k from a diverse syndicate of investors

Vancouver's Unbounce announced this morning that they have raised an $850K round of financing by a syndicate of tech investors lead by Mark MacLeod & Montreal based Real Ventures.

Cash-flow positive Unbounce didn't require this capital to maintain our current activities. Instead they'll be able to invest in developing the capabilities and improvements that you've been asking for on a greatly accelerated schedule.

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Fixmo lands $23 Million from Kleiner Perkins, Paladin and Horizons

Wellington Financial's blog reported today that Toronto's Fixmo has landed a $23.4 Million investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Paladin (Washington), and Horizons (Hong Kong).

Local boy Rick Segal has drawn one of the big Kahunas of venture capital investing to his Fixmo startup, which was born in Toronto and now has a joint HQ in Virginia. Just two years old, Fixmo began as an idea that would see all of us buy a “Norton Tools” product for our BlackBerries. Who wants to send a “flamemail” without having the chance to reconsider it before pushing the launch button? That idea got some natural interest from large New York law firms, for example, but a partnership with some serious U.S. government agencies has turned the story into one of Mobile Risk Management; and with that, Fixmo appears to have a tiger by the tail.

Fixmo’s existing venture capital investors include Extreme Venture Partners, RHO Canada, iNovia, and Silicon Valley-based Panorama.

Congrats to Fixmo CEO Rick Segal on attracting an impressive and deep syndicate - 7 VCs in a Canadian deal is unheard of.

Canadian Venture Capitalists Are Feeling Optimistic

Canada's venture capital industry is feeling optimistic.

According to a survey of members of Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association, 80% of VCs believe that investment over the next 6 months will be the same as, or better than, the last 6 months. And the focus will be on new investments, 61% believe, not follow-on transactions.

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How to become a Superangel in less than 12 months

The Vancouver Enterprise Forum hosted their annual Angel Investing panel discussion earlier this week and it was a sold out affair.

BC's 2011 Angel Investor of the Year Boris Wertz moderated a panel that included Initio Group's Mike Edwards, Eastside Games' Jason Bailey, Scenario Creation's Paul Antoniadis, and veteran Seattle angel Geoff Entress.

While the entire event was informative for entrepreneurs looking to raise (and entertaining thanks to Jason Bailey's sound bites), Vancouver got to meet its newest superangel in Edwards.

Prior to co-founding Initio Group, Edwards co-founded AreaConnect, a localized search directory, which sold to Marchex in 2006 for 17x forward revenue. He also co-founded InternetStudios.com in 1999 and raised a total of $22 Million for it before the business died very quickly with Internet explosion of March 2001.

Moderator Boris Wertz on Mike Edwards: You guys just heard that he started in fall of 2010 and has invested in 35 companies. He's the fastest angel investor I've even seen and probably the one with the biggest cheque book. So if you want to focus your efforts tonight, it's Mike Edwards [audience laughs].

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GrowLab's Jason Bailey on Angel Investing

The Vancouver Enterprise Forum hosted their annual Angel Investing panel discussion last night and it was a sold out affair.

BC's 2011 Angel Investor of the Year Boris Wertz moderated a panel that included Initio Group's Mike Edwards, Eastside Games' Jason Bailey, Scenario Creation's Paul Antoniadis, and Seattle superangel Geoff Entress.

While the entire event was informative for wanna-be angels and entrepreneurs looking to raise, Jason Bailey delivered a constant stream of sound bites that had the audience giggling out loud.

Bailey founded SuperRewards and two years later sold it to AdKnowledge for rumoured $50 Million. He is currently CEO of East Side Games and a Founder & Partner of Vancouver startup accelerator GrowLab.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Vancouver's most honest angel investor who is known for his direct feedback.

On himself: I have a very limited vocabulary, I have very limited tech skills, I've never raised any money from a VC but I'm currently building my fifth business that generates more than $1 Million per quarter through nothing but balls and not knowing any better, not knowing that I couldn't.

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C100 sets sights on cleantech industry with over $7 billion dollars of capital available

The C100, an organization representing accomplished Canadian entrepreneurs, investors, and executives in the Silicon Valley for cross-border collaboration officially launched their newest initiative on Thursday for Cleantech, lead by Jonathan Quick who says that there’s over seven billion dollars in capital available for the industry.

The opportunity for Canada is to lead globally as many of the industries in cleantech don’t currently have "leadership", and thus haven't been able to create a “billion dollar” cleantech company, using the 95/5 model as most Canadian companies already do. That’s because Quick stresses that in cleantech companies must think of themselves as global, and there's no more of a multicultural place than Canada to make it all happen.

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