in Canada, News, Startups, Week in Review

June 2012 in Review

Market Analysis & Industry News

“2.3 billion people are now globally connected by the Internet. There are 1.1 billion mobile 3G subscribers. Almost 30 percent of all US adults now own a tablet. Mobile is cited as source of 8% of all e-commerce.” from Forbes citing Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends

A must read post by Rick Segal on the Secret VC Handbook. If you are considering raising institutional money, you should read Rick Segal’s (@ricksegal) The Secret VC Handbook:

“The debate between building native applications vs. mobile web sites has raged.” from Adam Nash’s (@adamnash) User Acquisition: Mobile applications and the Mobile Web

“Global population 7 billion. Mobile phone subscriptions 6 billion. Internet users 2.3 billion.” from The App Generation

What are the typical top sources of customers for early-stage SaaS companies?

Company Announcements

Mike Beltzner joined Wattpad as Head of Product.

Extreme Startups Demo Day featured keynotes from 500 Startups Paul Singh (@paulsingh) and Mayfield Fund’s Tim Chang (@timechange), with launch of Shoplocket, Granify, Gijit, and SimplyUs and Verelo.

Plug and Play Tech Center announces cohort of Canadian startups for StartupCamp that includes Pinerly and Willet.

Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone announced four new tech startups moving in including: Komodo OpenLab, YC grad KytePhone, Electric Courage and Virtual Next.

Financings

Company Description Amount Investors
Wattpad Wattpad is the world’s largest online community of readers and writers. $17.3MM Khosla Ventures, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Union Square Ventures, Golden Venture Partners
Lightspeed LightSpeed’s technology provides retailers with powerful tools that reinvent the shopping experience using Mac computers, iPads, and iPhones for retail management tools $30MM Accel Partners
BuildDirect BuildDirect is North America’s largest online destination for heavy weight building materials $16MM OMERS Ventures
Blacksquare BlackSquare is a leading market innovation for direct to consumer wine ecommerce globally. Seed Undisclosed
CommunityLend $3MM non-brokered private placement from a single investor
Novidev Santé Active Novidev Santé Active is a Québec agri-food business that has developed Vegetal IntelligenceTM, a unique process that preserves all the fruit’s natural bioactive compounds, and will be marketing its first ’super fruit juices’ under the Anti+ brand. $1.3MM 15 private Anges Québec investors including Charles Boulanger and Desjardins Innovatech