National law firm Osler recently released its second-annual tech financings report, which combed through more than 300 technology-based venture capital equity financings to deliver a range of information and insight into Canada’s ecosystem.
According to the 2023 Deal Points Report, “Ontario and British Columbia have the highest concentration of companies raising a financing round,” it is noted, with BC representing 19% of all Canadian companies included in the report—up slightly from last year.
Osler’s Vancouver office reported on 62 BC deals from 2020 through 2022, a growth rate of 47% for the region, according to the report. Only Calgary saw higher growth for this metric.
In BC, the most-represented industry was information technology, followed by health and life sciences—and then fintech, an emerging industry for which Vancouver is becoming known. These positions held the same year-over-year.
The “High levels of venture activity in British Columbia during 2022” noted by Osler is backed up by data from the Canadian Venture Capital Market Overview – 2022 Year in Review.
“British Columbia received a 16% share of all VC dollars invested in 2022, with $1.6 billion invested across 106 deals,” the report states.
In 2023, BC’s tech sector has already witnessed several rounds of financing.
For example, Victoria’s Semaphore Solutions received a significant investment from Cypress Ridge Capital, a healthcare-focused growth equity firm, and Richmond-based delivery technology platform UniUni recently raised $20 million in Series B financing from Celtic House Venture Partners, Freshwave Capital, and others to power its logistics platform that leverages the gig economy to optimize what the industry refers to as “last-mile delivery.”
Below, Techcouver recounts five BC-based startups successfully fundraising in 2023.
Metriport
In 2022, software engineers Dima Goncharov and Colin Elsinga released Metriport: a personal data companion for discovering patterns in your life.
“Gone are the days where you track periods in one app, mood in another, and do daily journaling in another separate app,” Elsinga declared to Techcouver last February. “With Metriport, you can do it all in one app, and then find correlations between the things you’re tracking.”
The Vancouver-born startup—originally described as a “Swiss Army Knife of personal tracking”—joined YC’s S22 program.
It was an “opportunity to take our product to another level while learning and working with some of the brightest entrepreneurs in the world,” according to the company.
As a result Techcouver knew to put Metriport on its annual list of Homegrown B.C. Startups to Watch.
Metriport unveiled in January US$2.4 million from YC plus several other interested parties.
The raise came at a US$20 million valuation, according to the report.
Croptimistic
The Kelowna-based agriculture technology company secured in February $9.1 million in capital. The Series B round was led by Forage Capital Partners, which operates as Canada’s most experienced team of agriculture investors, having managed over $500 million in commitments to the industry over the last 18 years.
“This new funding has enabled us to keep growing and investing in our software … and expand our team in our new office based in Kelowna,” said Derek Massey, cofounder of Croptimistic. “By investing resources in our software we’ll be able to continue to scale and grow our company to meet the needs of our farmers and service providers.”
The company also acquired CropPro Consulting. Based in rural Saskatchewan, CroCrop is a farm agronomy consulting company.
Third, since starting operations in 2018, Croptimistic has shown average growth of 100% year-over-year, according to the Okanagan scale-up.
The BC agtech’s flagship product is SWAT MAPS, which creates maps encompassing Soil, Water and Topography—AKA “SWAT.”
Ariglad
Ariglad is named after the Danish word “arbejdsglade,” which means “happy at work.”
Happy at work is something we all aspire to be, though few often are.
In response to this gap, Sophie Wyne and fellow cofounder Ali Avci want to leverage technology to improve HR.
Artificial intelligence is key for HR to address problems before they get out of hand, according to the Vancouver company. Up to 80% of internal team time is spent on repetitive employee communication and complex processes, such as staffing requests or bonuses. Ariglad aims to reduce that by 50%.
“Intelligent HR is the new HR, and the right kind of HR,” the founders affirm. “Recruiting analytics is some of the most important data that can be gathered and utilized to make smarter decisions that save company time and resources.”
People analytics have never been more conveniently gathered and your team more empowered, according to Ariglad, whose platform boasts 1,000 integrations with business software including Slack and Gmail.
Launched in 2020, the startup this April landed a $1.3 million seed round. The company will use the funding to refine its product, improve market reach, and expand its team.
Bonsai Micro
A fabless semiconductor startup developing critical infrastructure technology for next-generation wireless networks (such as 5G) announced this month a round of seed funding.
The early financing round for Vancouver-based Bonsai Micro was led by Vanedge Capital with participation from BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund.
The capital will be applied toward commercializing the startup’s products, according to cofounder Bernard Guay.
Vanedge believes Bonsai’s technology has “the potential to revolutionize the wireless industry.”
Bonsai was founded in Vancouver by a team of semiconductor veterans with a track record of delivering innovative products at PMC-Sierra (now Microchip Technology), a BC-based success story in the semiconductor industry.
The team has developed a groundbreaking technology that will make the wireless devices of the future weigh less, last longer on a charge, and stream data faster than ever, according to a statement from Bonsai.
Bonsai combines “cutting-edge Radio Frequency, Mixed Signal, and Machine Learning design techniques” to deliver its signature disruptive performance and energy efficiency.
Dyne
A business-to-business startup that specializes in providing in-depth analytics to the restaurant industry secured an oversubscribed seed round of funding in March.
Dyne, a Vancouver software-as-a-service startup, saw capital hail from Weave VC, Sprout VC, Inverted Ventures, and angel investors.
In 2021, Dyne was developing its AI product. In 2022, the startup joined entrepreneurship@UBC’s HATCH Venture Builder. Later that year, the company pitched on-stage at Collision in Toronto.
Now Dyne plans to further develop its analytics platform, which helps restaurants analyze sales, inventory, and customer data while providing recommendations to help restaurants make better-informed decisions.
Dyne also intends to further research and develop machine learning models in order to provide precise revenue forecasting, pricing, and customer sentiment analysis.
In addition, the company has plans for geographical expansion.
According to Dyne, the oversubscribed seed round is a “testament to our growing reputation and the confidence that investors have in our vision and potential to help restaurants improve their operations and profitability.”
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