Montreal's Get Me Listed announced on Friday that they have successfully secured their seed financing round with hometown Real Ventures leading the way.
Other angel investors participating in the round include Beyond the Rack founders Yona Shtern and Robert Gold, and Sterost Holdings.
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Vancouver's Recon Instruments has been named a 2012 Edison Award Winner for MOD Live, the world’s first and only Heads-up Display (HUD) for alpine goggles. Recon won the Bronze Award in the Photography/Imaging category. Named after Thomas Edison, an Edison Award is one of the highest accolades a company can receive in the name of innovation and business.
In January Recon Instruments raised a $10 million Series A round from a group led by the venture capital firm Vanedge Capital with participation from Kopin Corporation.
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Toronto-based Bee Media has acquired Adcentrcity for an undisclosed sum. Bee Media, previously a personal shopper and location-based deals companny, will leverage its acquistion of Adcentricity, a location-based digital media firm, to complete somewhat of a pivot: the company is "in the process of expanding into an exciting, leading-edge, location-based digital media company that delivers targeted advertising and offers a fully integrated platform and ad network."
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As an investor in several Canadian startups, the key to securing financing is about putting the puzzle pieces together for the investment partner. It’s true that Canadian investors are generally more conservative than technology investment firms in Silicon Valley or New York, and that early stage financing may seem limited in relation to our stateside counterparts, but that doesn’t mean Canadian investors don’t exist.
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Late last month, Vancouver's HootSuite closed a financing round with OMERS Ventures, who bought a $20 million ownership stake in Vancouver-based HootSuite via a secondary purchase from the company’s existing shareholders.
The financing pegged HootSuite's valuation at over $200 million. But more important, it helped CEO Ryan Holmes and his co-founders and early investors "de-risk" and refocus on their plans to build HootSuite into a billion dollar company.
Looks like the team isn't sitting on their recent windfall. Rather, they're putting their hard-earned money back to work in the Pacific Northwest ecosystem.
read moreBDC Venture Capital announced today that it will issue up to $6 million in convertible notes over two years to graduates of Montreal's FounderFuel.
Some 40 young enterprises from all over the country in the web, mobile, software as a service (SaaS), and gaming fields, will each be eligible for a $150,000 BDC convertible note upon their successful completion of FounderFuel's 12-week, mentor-driven business "boot camp".
The investment is part of BDC Venture Capital's larger commitment towards accelerators across the country. Vancouver's GrowLab and Toronto's Extreme Startups has also announced that a $150K BDC convertible note in follow-on funding will be available to successful graduates of their programs.
Japan's GREE announced today that it has made a minority investment in Vancouver game developer IUGO Mobile Entertainment.
GREE’s investment in IUGO is the latest step in GREE’s global expansion plans.
GREE acquired plug and play mobile social platform OpenFeintin April 2011 for $104 million, growing their network to over 190 million players and over 7,500 game applications.
read more11:30am EST Update: News Release - Minister Kenney launches consultations for a new “start-up visa” for immigrant entrepreneurs
According to an advisory issued by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's office yesterday, the Canadian government is expected to announce in Toronto today the next step in launching a Startup Visa program.
While the details are still vague, Kenney and Dragon’s Den TV star Kevin O’Leary are apparently scheduled to make an announcement today regarding a new system aimed at identifying and speeding the path for "high value innovators."
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Hyperdrive is Communitech's new $30 million technology startup incubator based in Ontario. When it was first announced a week ago, Communitech didn't reveal any of the funders. Today, they have.
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We've been following Pebble closely since it launched a seemingly normal Kickstarter campaign one week ago. But after reaching its original goal of $100,000 in just two hours, we knew this was going to be a legendary run.
Pebble, a smartwatch co-created by the Canadian entrepreneur who founded Waterloo-born Allerta (also the maker of inPulse, a BlackBerry watch), has seen its crowdfunding campaign soar off the charts. After hitting $1 million in a day, it hit $2 million in two days. Then $3 million, at which point we wondered - is crowdfunding the new venture capitalism?
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