The Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, today announced that the Government of Canada is providing $450 million to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) in support of small and medium-sized enterprises and innovative firms.
The funding will include $100 million to establish the Operating Line of Credit Guarantee and $350 million over three years to help drive venture capital investment in promising Canadian technology businesses.
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The $350 million in funding for BDC's venture capital activities will allow it to make additional direct investments of $260 million over three years in Canadian businesses already in the BDC portfolio, as well as investments in new seed technology companies and later-stage technology companies. It will also allow BDC to commit $90 million over three years to private, independent Canadian venture capital funds. This funding is in addition to the $75 million in venture capital funds allocated in the Government of Canada's Budget 2008, which is being used to support the creation of a privately run venture capital fund.
Today is the last day to apply for ExtremeU - a 12 week summer start-up program based in Toronto starting on June 22nd. It is backed by Extreme Venture Partners (investor in popular local start-ups such as BumpTop and Kontagent) and headed by Farhan Thawar, who was previously Chief Software Architect at I Love Rewards and prior to that was the Head of Search and MSN Platform for Microsoft Canada.
ExtremeU is looking for around 4 teams to fund this summer, with preferably 2-3 founders in each (with atleast one founder being technically oriented). Folks who have done interesting things in the past would probably have a better chance of getting accepted in the program, which is bound to be fairly competitive, given what it offers to entrepreneurs:
Basic seed funding (US$5000 per founder in return for 10% equity in the venture).
Office space / shared resources for product development (servers, etc). ExtremeVP's thriving product development subsidiary, XtremeLabs, is co-located there as well - and given that Farhan is also the VP Engineering there - the opportunity to benefit from that experience would be incredible for teams in the program.
Mentorship and access to industry connections throughout the summer.
By the end of the summer, teams are expected to demo their product at Toronto's DemoCamp and/or possibly to a set of investors as well for further funding (including Extreme Venture Partners).
The application form is straightforward and if you know what you are doing, shouldn't take long to fill out. Apply here. Some selected teams would be called for interviews and the ones accepted would be announced shortly thereafter as well. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the summer from the first such program of its kind in Canada!
Big news day today from Apple, where they announced the new iPhone3G S and also reduced the price of the iPhone 3G 8GB to $99. From the press release:
Apple® today introduced the new iPhone™ 3G S, the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including improved speed and performance—up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G—with longer battery life, a high-quality 3 megapixel autofocus camera, easy to use video recording and hands free voice control. iPhone 3G S includes the new iPhone OS 3.0, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system with over 100 new features such as Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS*, Spotlight Search, landscape keyboard and more.
Rogers announced the availability and pricing for the new iPhones in Canada from June 19th as well. This is what I received:
Hi Varun,
I'm sure you've been following the news about the new iPhone 3G S today and I wanted to confirm that Rogers Wireless and Fido will have the newest iPhones available to our customers.
Starting June 19, Rogers and Fido pricing for the iPhone will be as follows, on a three-year voice and data plan:
iPhone 3G – Price drop to C$99
iPhone 3GS 16 GB - C$199
iPhone 3GS 32 GB - C$299
There will also be a ‘no-term’ price for the new devices at launch.
Starting tomorrow and for a limited time, we’re also excited to reintroduce the 6 GB/ $30 monthly data plan for iPhone users. Other Rogers and Fido data plans will remain the same, including the only national standalone data plan at C$25 per month for 500 MB...
Time to give in to the temptation ? And if you already did previously, time to do it all over again ? :)
Microsoft's newest iteration of Live Search, earlier codenamed Kumo, finally launched this week under the "Bing" brand. Check it out at www.bing.com (or Canadian version at www.bing.ca). Almost every other week, another "Google-killer" search engine launches and as fast as that fades away quitely as well. Remember Powerset, Cuil, WolframAlpha, and of course the erstwhile Live Search ? Well, search engines come and go, and none have really been a worthy challenger to Google yet.
I think that might change with Bing. It is not exactly revolutionary. Infact, from how the search results are presented, to the overall UI, to the results themselves - it is very similar to Google. Note this: Bing has a feature parity with Google.
Here's where it gets interesting. Bing goes beyond that parity with Google in various little, quirky ways which makes searching on Bing a lot more pleasant experience for the end-user. The feature that I love the most is the quick preview of the search result's webpage which shows up with just a hover on the link, giving you enough information whether to click on it or not. I found myself saving on a lot of clicks when I used Bing, compared to Google, and that combined with the search result parity, is a good enough reason for me to use Bing a lot more compared to Google now. This is not easy folks. I've been a dedicated Google user for the past 7-8 yrs now, and am a skeptic first when it comes to new web applications. But there is definitely something interesting about Bing. Check out the official demo by Microsoft:
Another useful feature is the display of a new image on its home page, typically of a place, and you can hover on the image to learn more about that location. Pretty cool! Bing also shows related category search options for all search results - which are useful because oftentimes when searching we don't know what we don't know - so it is useful to come across pre-determined search options on what we might want to search for.
However, I am not sold on it completely yet. I tried a few searches where its search results better reflected more recent webpages than Google, but in others it was lacking - so there is no definite answer there. For example, try searching for "Extreme University" in both - Google shows you the relevant link right away, while it seems Bing hasn't gotten around to indexing that page as yet (ExtremeU is a Toronto-based startup program which launched just a couple of days ago).
For mainstream users, Bing has a pull in several different niches. Try searching for celebrities (eg Jennifer Aniston) and you get the recent buzz about them or try entering flight codes, and you'll get the flight status back. Enter "weather" and it will show you the weather for your city directly, whereas Google will show you the same only if you enter "weather" plus the name of your city.
I think the search engine which better integrates more real-time results, especially from services like Twitter, will really take the cake here. Last word on search, for the time being, has not been written yet. Bing version 1.0 does have a slight edge over the current Google in my opinion - remains to be seen how Google will respond. What do you think ? Any interesting searches which you tried on Bing vs Google ? Are you switching yet ?
PS: Microsoft Canada's Search Lead, Stacey Jarvis, is on Twitter @StaceyJarvis. The Bing team is also on it and responding actively to user feedback over @bing.
Here's a great news for entrepreneurs in Canada and especially Toronto: Extreme Venture Partners, a Toronto-based venture capital firm has just announced a technology start-up summer program, Extreme University, which would be based in Toronto and headed by Farhan Thawar. Extreme Venture Partners has been an investor in popular local start-ups like BumpTop and Kontagent in the past, and this is definitely an incredible opportunity for budding local entrepreneurs to take their idea to the next stage. David Crow wrote a great post a while ago on the need for such a program in Toronto and while such programs have been incredibly popular in the US (YCombinator and TechStars, among others), there have been virtually none in Canada so far (with the exception of Bootup Labs in Vancouver to some extent). Well, here it is, and kudos to ExtremeVP for initiating it. More details:
What: A summer technology start-up program that focuses on industry networking, technology mentoring and above all delivering a product to potential follow-on funders after only 12 weeks.
Who: We are looking for four smart and fast moving teams to participate. Typically all members of the two-three person team will be deep technically, but at least one of the founders should have a technical background.
How: After you apply and are accepted you will:
Get $5,000 (US) per founder in exchange for a 10% ownership stake in your company
Move your team to our shared ExtremeU office space at Yonge & King (downtown Toronto)
Have weekly mentoring sessions by industry experts in technology, funding, legal, PR, marketing and HR
Meet a who's who of experts at our weekly socials and have an opportunity to practice your pitch and demo your in-progress prototype
Have access to local shared resources to accelerate product development (mentors, servers)
When: Applications are due by Friday June 12th, 2009. The program starts Monday June 22nd, 2009 to Friday September 4th, 2009 at the ExtremeU offices in Toronto at Yonge and King. The final demo day will be Tuesday September 15th, 2009 at Demo camp.
Apply at this link here. For any questions, get in touch with Farhan at farhan AT extremevp.com. I'm looking to interview him shortly to get some more perspective on Extreme University. Stay tuned!
Toronto DemoCamp20 held on May 25th at the Imperial Pub was a smashing success with several great presentations by local start-ups. I managed to capture a few of them on video (note: Sorry for the poor video quality at times! Shot with a Flip mino HD). This last video of the series shows Ilya Grigorik of AideRSS talking about some new features of their PostRank platform. At the 10 mt mark is when Ali Asaria of Well.ca can be seen delivering his very memorable (and extremely funny!) presentation on 'How to get press for your start-up'. Check it out:
Toronto DemoCamp20 held on May 25th at the Imperial Pub was a smashing success with several great presentations by local start-ups. I managed to capture a few of them on video. This video shows David Priemer and Daniel Debow of Rypple demonstrating their product live and taking various questions from the audience afterwords:
Toronto DemoCamp20 held on May 25th at the Imperial Pub was a smashing success with several great presentations by local start-ups. I managed to capture a few of them on video (note: sorry for the poor video quality!). This video shows Martin Dufort of Montreal-based WhereCloud demo-ing their new Twitter client for the iPhone called 'Reportage':
Toronto DemoCamp20 held on May 25th at the Imperial Pub was a smashing success with several great presentations by local start-ups. I managed to capture a few of them on video (note: sorry for the poor video quality!). This video shows Mike McDerment of FreshBooks talking about some new features of the FreshBooks platform:
I recently came across a new Toronto-based web start-up called Jobtac.com and subsequently met the founders and saw their product demo and came away being really impressed with the team and with what they had built. Jobtac seeks to dramatically improve the online job application process for both job seekers and employers alike, and offers a very impressive line-up of web-based products as part of their solution.
Their core product enables job seekers to brand themselves online through a profile page which includes their resume, video, references and even a portfolio (here is an example), which can then be provided to employers and marketed on social websites like Facebook and Twitter. Satraj Bambra, Jobtac's CEO, mentioned to me that:
In these tough economic times, it is more important than ever for job applicants to differentiate themselves in the market and Jobtac seeks to provide them with the tools to do that.
Check out this short (and brilliantly done!) video which explains Jobtac Profiles:
Jobtac also provides a comprehensive web-based applicant tracking system for employers which can help them to better manage their full application cycle - from posting jobs, to receiving applications to even communicating with applicants, all within the Jobtac system. Check it out here: http://www.jobtac.com/employers.php/. In addition, Jobtac also offers a widget called "iApply" which employers can embed anywhere (eg, in blog posts) and applicants can then apply through a single-click application process.
Jobtac has just launched, and has an enthusiastic team, a great product and a wide range of partnerships with various employers already lined-up - this is one start-up to watch out from Toronto. Check it out at http://www.jobtac.com and feel free to get in touch with Satraj (Jobtac's CEO) at satraj.bambra AT jobtac.com with any feedback you might have.
Microsoft's newest iteration of Live Search, earlier codenamed Kumo, finally launched this week under the "Bing" brand. Check it out at 