You should meet…

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Who Will Be Canada’s Hot Startups in 2012?

Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Mark Evans Tech written by Mark Evans of ME Consulting. Follow him on Twitter @markevans or MarkEvansTech.com. This post was originally published in January 3, 2012 on MarkEvansTech.com.

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The flurry of high-tech deals last year saw a bunch of promising startups snapped up – Zite, Rypple, PostRank, PushLife, Tungle and Five Mobile to name a few.

The encouraging part of the Canadian landscape is the growing number of high-quality startups being created and, thankfully, funded. It means that rather than having M&A activity “hollow” things out, there are more startups ready to step into the spotlight.

So, who are the Canadian startups that warrant our attention in 2012?

Who’s going to grow in a major way, attract a significant number of users and customers, launch exciting initiatives, or be acquired. Granted, it’s a subjective list but it is an interesting way to speculate on companies that will capture the spotlight this year. If you leave a comment, I’ll update the list.

To get the ball rolling, here are some of my choices for the “Hot Startup” list:

  • ScribbleLive, the world’s leading real-time content creation and publishing company whose clients include Reuters, AP and FA.
  • WineAlign, which cracked the 100,000 unique visitor mark for the first time in December
  • 500px, one of the leading places to display and share beautiful photography
  • Pressly, whose technology is helping publishers create mobile Web sites that embrace the “swipe and read” functionality of apps
  • QuickMobile, one of the leading event and conference mobile application developers
  • Atomic Reach, which makes it easier for brand to discover, publish and market content
  • Wave Accounting, which recently raised $5-million to drive growth of its free online accounting service
  • Keek, which offers a video-based social network
  • Fixmo, a mobile security company that recently raised $23-million
  • TribeHR, which develops human resources service for small and medium businesses
  • GoInstant, which is creating technology that lets people co-browse a Web site at the same time.

Note: ScribbleLive and Atomic Reach are digital marketing clients of my company, ME Consulting.
Editor’s note: This is a cross post from Mark Evans Tech written by Mark Evans of ME Consulting. Follow him on Twitter @markevans or MarkEvansTech.com. This post was originally published in January 3, 2012 on MarkEvansTech.com.

The Hot Sh!t List

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There is a lot of crazy young talent kicking around. We’ve seen that great talent that UW Velocity is producing with Ted Livingston(@ted_livingston) at Kik. There are the Christopher (@golda) and Michael (@michaelmontano) at BackType. There is the stupidly awesome team at Extreme Venture Partners (@avarma, @fnthawar, @sundeep).

I thought I’d throw together a quick list of designers, developers and entrepreneurs that are young, hot, kicking ass and taking names. There is an amazing amount of talent in Canada. And this is who I’m watching because they are hot sh!t.

  1. Dan McGrady (@dmix, LinkedIn), CareLogger
  2. Kaitlyn MacLachlan (LinkedIn), AskItOnline & Yellow Pages Group
  3. Casper Wong (@wongcasper, LinkedIn), CommunityLend
  4. Jennifer Fong-Adwent (@ednapiranha, LinkedIn), Rocketr
  5. Josh Davey (@joshdavey, LinkedIn), BurstN & Chango
  6. Alex Black (@waterlooalexjo, LinkedIn), SnapSort
  7. Cody Fauser (@codyfauser, LinkedIn), Shopify
  8. Vincent Cheung (@veenix, LinkedIn), ShapeCollage
  9. Wes Bos (@wesbos, LinkedIn), DealPage
  10. Michael Litt (@michaelrlitt, LinkedIn), Vidyard
  11. James Stewart (@JamesStewartUXD, LinkedIn), PostRank & TribeHR
  12. Julie Haché (@juliehache, LinkedIn), Shopify
  13. Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana (@dups, LinkedIn), EmpireAvenue
  14. Joseph Fung (@josephfung, LinkedIn), TribeHR
  15. Andrew Peek (@drupeek, LinkedIn), Rocketr
  16. Simon Law (@sfllaw, LinkedIn), TrustCentric
  17. Eric Diep (@ediep, LinkedIn), A Thinking Ape
  18. James Blair (@jamesblair, LinkedIn)
  19. Edward Ocampo-Gooding (@edwardog, LinkedIn), Shopify
  20. Satish Kanwar (@skanwar, LinkedIn), Jet Cooper
  21. Jesse Miller (@jesse_miller, LinkedIn), Attachments.me
  22. Josh Merchant (@joshmerchant, LinkedIn), Lymbix
  23. Boris Chan (@borisc, LinkedIn), XtremeLabs
  24. Tyler Galpin (@TylerGalpin, LinkedIn)

This list is incomplete

I am completely aware that this list is incomplete. But who are the tastemakers that are building the next generation of emerging technology companies that no one knows about in Canada. Help me find great talents that are under 40 (this is irrelevant, who are the entrepreneurs, designers and developers that are shaping things) and based in Canada.

Hot Sh!t List Nomination

Canada is full of hot sh!t developers, designers and entrepreneurs. And we're trying to build a list of them. Tell us who you think should be on the list?

  • In less than 140 characters tell us, why this person is hot sh!t. What have they done for us lately. What are the major discoveries to this person has to show, or what are the serious growth numbers.

Lunch with Howard Lindzon on Nov 4, 2010

Howard LindzonOur friend Howard Lindzon is back in Toronto on November 4, 2010. He’s having lunch with entrepreneurs.

Who: Howard Lindzon
When: November 4, 10:45am to 1:00pm
Where: POD 250 in the Podium Building, 350 Victoria St at Ryerson University

This is an open brown bag lunch. Come hang out with Howard.

Don’t know who Howard is? Seriously? He’s a rockstar. He’s crazy. And he’s an interesting guy as both an entrepreneur and as an investor. We had him at StartupEmpire back in 2008, he spoke at Mesh in 2009. He’s a native Torontonian who lives in San Diego. He’s just raised a $4MM C round for StockTwits.

He’s here looking to meet entrepreneurs. He’s going to share his experiences getting acquired by CBS, about raising money, and about building a compelling media outlet for investors (ps I love StockTwits it’s really a great example of what a modern Bloomberg looks like). The part that I love is that as Howard said “they can read about my successes, I’m going to talk about my failures”. This is awesome! I continually do a lot of things wrong, and I can’t wait to hear about the craziness of Howard’s mistakes. Because seriously his successes are awesome and that only means bigger fail and lessons learned.

Thanks to Karthik (@soravanahalli), SIFE, and William Mougayar (@wmougayar) at Eqentia for helping to make sure we take advantage of having world-class folks like Howard available.