I was speaking at an international conference on angel capital recently, and the panelists listed off the number of companies they or their angel groups were in.

OK, my zombie friends, we have work to do (if you are not sure whether you are a zombie startup or not, see last month’s post for a list of symptoms). First repeat after me: "It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to fail." Failure is just part of the game.

Remember that for startups, it’s never actual failure. It’s just that your hypothesis was invalidated. Take it as a very useful learning experience.

But.

For startup entrepreneurs, there’s a certain sweat-inducing knot in the stomach reserved solely for those moments when familiar, local or competing startups excitedly announce outlandish figures of XY million dollars in new funding to an apparent throng of eager media.

Being on the outside looking in is incredibly difficult and the questions of how and why it wasn’t said entrepreneurs’ own business which was now able to start ordering the games room equipment and drinks machines, might circle indefinitely without ever finding resolution.

OMsignal, developers of bio-sensing clothing, has raised $1 million in venture capital from Real Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and David Cohen of TechStars.

Stealth startup Breather today raised $1.5 million. The seed round was led by Montreal-based Real Ventures, with participation from Gary Vaynerchuk, Mike Walsh, and others.

Waterloo-based Rebellion Media has acquired Crucial Interactive. This marks Rebellion's 12th acquisition in the past year.

Vancouver-based ActiveState has acquired Appsecute, which was founded by Mark Cox in New Zealand. The company's three employees will join ActiveState but remain working in New Zealand.

Canada is steadily establishing itself as a world-class startup ecosystem. Vancouver, Toronto, and Waterloo each rank among the world's 20 best startup hubs.