Startup M&A – Raincity Studios acquires Bryght

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Bryght, a Drupal managed hosting startup based in Vancouver, BC has been acquired by long time partner RainCity Studios, who have developed sites such as Ozzy.com and Ask a Ninja.

While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and I am not sure the number would be huge, this feels primarily like a smart consolidation of two very complimentary businesses. Servicing the same niche doesn’t necessarily mean two businesses should merge, but in this case the two organizations have been working together on so many projects, for so long, I have a feeling that this will be a chance to consolidate their efforts and cut some of the fat by re-directing effort.

Many of the Bryght and RainCity Studios employees and partners are also responsible for the Northern Voice conference, which has been a huge hit for years.

The new company is underway opening a new office in Shanghai, China, and my bet is that the renewed energy from this merger will result in a lot of cool projects in the near future. Kris Krug will be the President of the new organization with Robert Scales as CEO and running the European and Asian side of the company.

I should also disclose: I have been a happy client of both of these companies in the past.

Update: More straight from the source here.
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mesheast.com – East Coast Startup Blog

picture-2.pngMeshEast is the latest entrant on to the Canadian Startup blog scene. I was excited to get an email from Lisa Rousseau, who is also working on her own startup, to see that the east coast would finally have a local startup blog. Lisa is going to have some work to do in finding and profiling those elusive east-coast startups, but my guess is that she will find more than enough to get started in her home province of New Brunswick.

So please, head over to MeshEast and subscribe. We have been covering some of the bigger happenings on the east coast, but there are always a lot of things we just can’t cover. We are working on our own profile of what is going on in Atlantic Canada, and so far I have been excited about what I have seen.

We have been trying to do as much as we can to encourage local blogs that will cover smaller regions in more detail. Montreal is the luckiest with MontrealTechWatch, which is run by Heri (who might be the hardest working blogger in Canada these days), and Ottawa has StartupOttawa, which is really starting to pick up steam. There are some gaps to fill, so if you are passionate about startups then it is time to get off your butt and step up to the place. I can think of dozens of local blogs I would love to see: Waterloo, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, and the Prairies all come to mind as the biggest gaps out there.

So get started, and get in touch. We want to help!

groovle.com – Customized Google Search Pages

picture-2-21-01-42.pngYou may have heard before: Google pays big money to people who send searchers their way. In the case of Mozilla, the search bar in the top right-hand corner of their webbrowser makes them something on the order of $40million a year. That’s a lot of money for searches. I don’t even want to know how much Apple makes off the Google search they have embedded in Safari.

Goovle, a Oakville, Ontario startup, is trying to take advantage of Google’s generous kickbacks with their custom search tool.

Groovle allows you to create a customized search page of your own, which most users would typically set as their homepage. Groovle’s unique feature is the huge library of images you can access to create your own page. You can also upload your own images.

trans.pngThe comments on their September review on Techcrunch predicted that Groovle would be shut down quickly. It is now the middle of November and they are still around. While I share some of the concerns of those commentors – it is not clear whether groovle actually has any rights to use these images – that doesn’t seem to be stopping them.

As of October 2007 they were clocking 250,000 visitors a month, but it is unclear how they have been doing since (compete.com is suggesting a 70%+ drop in traffic but I don’t trust compete all that much).

Groovle is a great example of a simple service with a potentially large audience that just takes a little elbow grease. All the components are there, Google is providing search and a kickback to sites who send searches their way, and there is (apparently) a wealth of art and images out there that you can make available to users.

Groovle is self funded by its founders, Ryan Fitzgibbon, Jacob Fuller and Nico Angka, and they are not currently seeking investment, but are perusing partnerships.

Contact Jacob Fuller
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