Thanks for coming out!



Thanks to everyone who came out last night to celebrate a year of StartupNorth. Putting names to faces is always nice. We got to meet some new startups, some VCs were working the room and the Imperial worked its usual charm.

Tripharbor.com – community, cruising and a real business!

Here is an industry that you don’t see a lot of startups jumping in to. There is something about starting a travel website that scares people off. It is a huge industry, and one where customers actually spend a lot of money and the commissions, especially on something like cruises, can be massive. So, I was excited when I first started hearing rumblings about what Stuart was up to.

Enter TripHarbour, a startup led by former Chief Marketing Officer of Expedia.com and Founder of Expedia Canada, Stuart MacDonald. TripHarbour went live this morning and is probably one of the most polished launches I have seen in the last year.

Stuart and the team didn’t go in to “beta”, instead they tested the site internally as much as they could and only launched when they had a site that was shipshape. This approach makes a lot of sense when your target market is the general public (not early adopters) and if they encounter a single error or get confused even once, they may never come back.

The thing that sets TripHarbour apart from other travel sites is that it is focused exclusively on cruising. There are surprisingly few decent cruising websites and none that combine community features and cruise buying all in one. Segmenting the travel market is bound to pay off, cruising is a $21 billion dollar market, that’s enough treasure for any sailor.

Congrats to the entire TripHarbour team. Now the real hard work starts: Getting people to the site. Luckily Stuart has some experience with that, and I am going to watch closely and learn as much as I can as they get TripHarbour out there.

Contact Stuart MacDonald

indochino.com takes new round of financing from Burda Digital

Shanghai (by way of Victoria) based startup, Indochino.com, who we first profiled in September, and who I finally got around to ordering from a few weeks ago, has announced that they have taken a new round of financing from Burda Digital Ventures, a German Venture Capital group who have been very active in Western Canada, getting a lot of deals that Canadian VCs are missing including TeamPages, Suite101.com and Nexopia

Indochino.com is a unique online retailer that specializes in custom-tailored suits, shirts and other apparel based on measurements done by the customer. I ordered a jacket and shirt from them a few weeks ago and I think I got a taste of both ends of the spectrum of ordering online.

The shirt came and right out of the package it was hands down the nicest shirt I have ever bought. The fit was perfect and it looked and felt great. The jacket looked great as well, but a few of the measurements are off. So I printed off their claim form and will take the jacket to a tailor tomorrow. For the price however, the jacket is great.

This round of financing is focused on building the operations back-end as well as scaling up to meet growing demand.

This is a long way from where they were when I first profiled them just 8 months ago and things are looking up. I am looking forward to seeing what they do in the next 8 months with new financing and some more experience behind them.