Late last year, Victoria clean-tech startup Audette raised a $1 million seed round led by Active Impact Investments with participation from Powerhouse Ventures, Panache Ventures, and Turnham Green Capital. Audette’s end-to-end platform captures data to identify and assess opportunities for low-carbon building improvements and helps building owners source financing and incentives that reduce the cost of […]
Latest Hootsuite Cut Reflects ‘Current Economic and Market Realities’
This week, Hootsuite let go of a few more staff. “Today, Hootsuite made the difficult decision to go through another round of layoffs, and unfortunately I was affected,” a former product manager for the Vancouver company revealed on LinkedIn earlier this week. A Hootsuite spokesperson informed Daily Hive that roughly 5% of staff were cut. […]
Innovation Booster Funds Vancouver Island Startup Tackling Climate Change Through Seaweed
The Canadian Food Innovation Network announced this morning that it is investing into six projects, including one from BC More than $500,000 in funding, issued through the organization’s Innovation Booster program, is targeted for “innovative solutions that have the potential to reduce emissions, increase domestic production, and establish Canada as a global leader in new […]
Vancouver a Top Five Startup Ecosystem for Blue Economy in North America
Startup Genome today released its first-ever report focused on global startup ecosystems in the blue economy. The report looks at the current state of startup activity and related investment in the blue economy, where rankings reflect which global ecosystems are driving innovation through startups and related activities. It aims to provide information for founders, investors, […]
SFU Hosting Vancouver Segment of Cyber Challenge Event This Week
CyberSci runs a series of regional cyber challenge events in major cities across Canada each year. Canadian universities and colleges send up to two teams of four students to the designated venue in their region. These student teams are then presented with a realistic corporate network that forces them to think like an attacker to penetrate the […]
Blossom Builds on Pre-Seed Funding to Blur Line Between Social, Financial Apps
Three months after closing a pre-seed investment round, Vancouver fintech startup Blossom publicly launched on the App Store in May. The social network for retail investors, the first of its kind available to Canadians, received its pre-seed investment round from Pareto Holdings, a venture fund co-founded by Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer. The BC fintech has since raised an additional $750,000, […]
Vancouver’s Addy Breaks Down Real Estate Crowdfunding for Canadians in Video Series
For decades, Canadian real estate proven itself to be a remarkable investment. However, it’s also been an increasingly difficult investment to get into. In recent years, technology-forward real estate startups like Addy Invest have launched to lower the barrier to access for everyday Canadians to grab their slice of the real estate pie—including me. Example: […]
4 BC Tech Startups Getting Serious This Year
Once a startup has blossomed through seed funding, it may seek additional capital to reach the next stage of scale and growth. This can be an exciting time for everyone involved: a startup hasn’t necessarily proven itself yet, but the potential and surrounding interest can generate some powerful energy—it’s also a phase where many startups […]
TELUS Acquires WillowTree, Solidifying US Tech Firm’s Foothold in Vancouver
Vancouver’s Telus International has acquired WillowTree, full-service digital product provider focused on end user experiences, such as native mobile applications and unified web interfaces. WillowTree—valued at $1.2 billion in the transaction—is a US company that had already expanded to Vancouver prior to Telus’ acquisition. The acquisition is anticipated to close in January 2023. “We are excited […]
How Surrey is Quietly Becoming Its Own Tech Hub in BC
In 2013, a collaboration between the City of Surrey, Simon Fraser University, and Fraser Health led to Innovation Boulevard. The initiative is aimed at fostering an environment of innovation and to add economic and social value for these organizations and the larger community. Since then, City Centre has taken a life of its own with private sector […]