Soundcloud, known as the "YouTube for audio" ranks 281st in Canada and 364th globally according to Alexa. Techcrunch reports they've acquired a new round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers at $50 million with a company valuation of $200 million.
Gigaom also reports that the mobile app that SoundCloud released has added another million people to the platform.
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With so many talented entrepreneurs and innovative startups right here in Canada, Techvibes deemed it a necessity to recognize, honour, and celebrate these people and their companies. Presented by KPMG, The First Annual Canadian Startup Awards will do that.
Techvibes received well over 1,000 nominations across the six categories via comment, email and tweet. So the finalists were determined by you, our readers. In the case of the overall startup category we weren't able to narrow if down to three finalists which demonstrates the high quality of the current crop of Canadian startups.
Voting is open until 11:59pm PST on Tuesday, January 17th and the winners will be announced on Friday, January 20th. One vote per person.
If Wind Mobile doesn't buy Mobilicity, the startup wireless carrier may just go public instead. The Globe and Mail yesterday reported that the discount carrier is planning to launch an initial public offering in the first quarter of 2012.
The IPO would aim to raise $100 million but would be delayed should the stock market remain in its currently volatile state. The share price would be positioned between $15 and $20. The company, legally known as DAVE Wireless (its founder and former CEO, since resigned, was Dave Dobbin), already has several investment banks in place for the launch, sources say.
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iNovia Capital announced this morning that it has raised $110 million for its third fund, iNovia Investment Fund III L.P. (“iNovia III”).
iNovia III’s investment focus is in information technology companies in North America. The initial investment size can be as low as only a few hundred thousand in seed stage companies with more mature investments as high as $10 million over the life of a given company.
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Earlier this month Vancouver's Xiimo was one of ten finalists at VentureBeat's CloudBeat Conference in San Francisco. Tagged as one of the most disruptive cloud based technology companies by a panel of cloud experts and venture capital teams, Xiimo beat out 100+ other software startups in the cloud space.
Xiimo makes smart tools for small businesses allowing them to publish local promotions, accept mobile payments, create loyalty programs and benefit from smart analytics. All from a single, easy-to-use dashboard.
Xiimo is currently in private alpha moving towards private beta in February and public beta by March 2012. They have also hinted at a major partnership announcement that could accelerate traction very soon.
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Today is the last day that TechCrunch is taking nominations for their 2011 Crunchies.
This year's Crunchies are the fifth annual competition and award ceremony recognizing and celebrating the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. The Crunchies is co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch. Best of all, the internet community is invited to choose who wins.
Thanks to Bob Chaworth-Musters of the Angel Forum, Vancouver-based angel investor Boris Wertz might have a shot to be recognized down south in the Angel of the Year Category.
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GameON: Finance is North America's top business forum for the interactive entertainment industry, connecting developers, innovators, investors and industry leaders. And it's returning to Toronto in January.
Delegates will gather for two days of keynotes, case-studies, lectures and panel discussions providing insight on topics like emerging opportunities in game project financing and deal-making across platforms.
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Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) is on the verge of being sold to Bell Media and Rogers Communications.
Major news outlets are reporting this evening that the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is close to selling off its 79.5% stake in MLSE to the two telecom giants.
While bitter rivals on the sports television scene (Bell owns TSN and Rogers operates Sportsnet), the proposed deal has the competitors partnering to own MLSE’s Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, and Toronto FC.
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When Bessemer Venture Partners recently published their map of major cloud players, I was surprised to see so many Canadian companies on there.
Shopify, TribeHR, Unbounce, Clio, Hootsuite, Radian6 and Freshbooks made the list and a few others (like Wave Accounting) probably should have been on there as well.
So why are Canadian companies so much better represented in SaaS than in consumer internet?
I see two main reasons:
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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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