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Angel Investor Martin Soltys Wants to Inject $50,000,000 into Canada's Media Industries

Martin Soltys is the CEO of Transmedia Entertainment Partner, an offshore investment fund that he wants to use to invest in Canadian film, gaming, music, television, and digital media projects.

At Game On: Finance, Soltys said he had been approached about a few interesting places he could put his money while at the conference but believes Canadians have a lot to give and he wants to invest back in his own country as he's tired of seeing no return on the money he spends. Soltys was certainly surprised how many companies were already in the Canadian gaming industry but enthusiastically said that maybe Canada could rise from 3rd worldwide to become no. 2 and eventually no. 1 in the worldwide scope of things. 

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Everyone's talking about Summify but can it tame the Twitter fire hose?

Since Techvibes starting covering Canadian technology and startup news five years ago there has never been an acquisition that has got as much attention as Vancouver's Summify. It seems every online news property has reported on Twitter's most recent acquisition and the post-mortem coverage continues.

Across the board, everyone seems to believe that the bright minds behind Summify will help Twitter solve the noise problem that has made it unusable for many. Your feed is a fire hose of chatter and critical links you would be interested in are all too often buried within seconds.

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Lean & Accelerators among panel topics at 15th Canadian Financing Forum

The 15th Canadian Finacing Forum is fast approaching and takes place in Vancouver on February 2nd and 3rd at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.

The Financing Forum facilitates relationship building between entrepreneurs and leading venture capital and corporate investors, paving the way for company financings that ultimately sustain economic growth through new business creation and development.

This year's panel sessions have been finalized and they look great. Check them out after the jump.

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Perspectives from Leaders in Canada's Thriving Social and Mobile Gaming Industry

The Canadian gaming sector has risen to become one of the strongest in the world and leaders like Albert Lai of Big Viking Games and Alex Sakiz of Gamerizon are examples of how multi-million dollar gaming dreams can become reality in Canada.

A lot of credit for the suddenly thriving Canadian gaming sector compared to a few years ago goes to the extremely generous tax credit programs that attract world-class talent to the country to help out the existing 432 or so companies in the space which Lai says is enough to pay 5000 employees.

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Vancouver's Summify acquired by Twitter

Vancouver's Summify announced this morning on their blog that they have been acquired by Twitter.

Congrats to Romanian co-founders Mircea Pașoi and Cristian Strat (pictured below). Terms of the transaction are not known at this time.

Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most time efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scale. Since Twitter shared this vision with us, joining the company made perfect sense.

But don't worry Summify fans, the current product won't be shelved anytime soon although they have disabled new account registration and will be removing a number of key features.

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Recon Instruments raises $10 Million from Vanedge Capital

Vancouver's Recon Instruments announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round from a group led by the venture capital firm Vanedge Capital with participation from Kopin Corporation. The funds will be used for further commercializing its proprietary technology.

Strategic partner Kopin produces lightweight, power-efficient, ultra-small liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) that are revolutionizing the way people around the world see, hear and communicate.

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Introducing the New Generation of Mega-Millionaire Tech Entrepreneurs [INFOGRAPHIC]

What does the new generation of tech entrepreneurs need to start their companies? Not much - a computer, some software, internet access, spare time... oh, and rare talent combined with a brilliant idea, of course.

The new generation of highly successful entrepreneurs is worth studying - and as H&R Block decided, worth publishing an infographic about. With multi-billionaire Facebook founder and 2010 Time Person of the Year Mark Zuckerberg at the head of the table, we look at him and a slew of other success stories.

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Calling all Canadian Startups - Apply to Under the Radar

This past November at the 18th Under the Radar conference five startups represented Canada and one took home an award.

Toronto's Rypple and Wave Accounting, Waterloo's TribeHR and Vidyard, and Halifax's GoInstant were among 29 startups pitching at the two-day innovation showcase and business development conference. TribeHR picked up the Judge's Choice award in the Talent 2.0 category.

Now's your chance to get some exposure in the Californian sun as event organizers are calling for companies to present at the 19th Under the Radar conference in Mountain View on April 25-26th.

The deadline to apply is January 20th and this time around they're interested in your company if it falls into one of these categories - Platforms, Big Data, Developer Tools, Analytics/BI, Mobile, Enabling Tools, Infrastructure, Automation, and Performance Management.

Not sure if you're up for it? Check out these event stats:

  • 66% of presenting companies have raised over $2.4 Billion in funding.

Enough said.

Can lightning strike twice for Bluestone.vc and Tyler Nelson?

Can lightning strike twice for Bluestone.vc and Tyler Nelson? The Vancouver-based venture capital firm announced yesterday a new investment in Vancouver's MoneyBar Rewards and has recruited Nelson to join the company as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

In 2009, the venture firm brought Nelson into marketing firm Silverback Media, which was re-branded as Adenyo and sold to Motricity for $100 Million earlier this year.

Nelson brings over 20 years of experience building, scaling and globalizing successful technology companies. Prior to Adenyo, Tyler held senior executive positions at leading Canadian technology companies including Research In Motion, Bridgewater Systems and QNX Software Systems.

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