Starting next week, I’ll be heading up to Canada as part of my quest to find the top entrepreneurs from around the world to launch their new technology at DEMO, the conference VentureBeat co-produces twice a year.

We’ve partnered up with Rogers Ventures, which will be making three stops with us around Canada during the next four weeks. First off, we will be in Vancouver this coming Thursday, June 23. If you’re in the area and would like to come present your company and receive feedback from the DEMO team as well as a few senior partners from Rogers, please fill out this form to apply. We’ll be selecting ten companies to come in throughout the day to meet at Bootup Labs (163 West Hastings, Suite 200, Vancouver).

Following the presentations, we’ll be hosting a party at Republic (958 Granville Street, Vancouver) for the entire Vancouver tech crowd. Join us along with local entrepreneurs and VCs, and a group of DEMO alumni and past attendees. Please register for this event here. The first 50 people through the door will get a drink on us.

Our next stop will be Toronto, the following week, on Tuesday, June 28. We’ll be having a similar day of presentations at the Rogers Ventures offices (350 Bloor Street East, Toronto), as well as another party for the Toronto tech scene at The Century Room (580 King West, Toronto). To apply for the day of presentations, please fill out this form, and to attend the evening party, you can register here.

Finally, on Friday, July 15, I’ll be speaking at Startup Festival in Montreal. While I’m in the area, I’ll be looking for more startups for DEMO, so if you are nearby and would like to present to myself, along with other members of the DEMO team and Rogers Ventures, we’ll be meeting at the Notman House (51 Sherbrooke West, Montreal). Apply by filling out this form.

Looking forward to seeing you in Canada soon!

Netflix on Thursday announced that its Canadian branch has reached one million members in just 10 months.

The company launched its $7.99/month streaming-only service in Canada in September 2010, and Canadians, with their decent broadband speeds and long winters, quickly snatched it up. The one millionth Canadian member, Amanda Bell James, from Flin Flon, Manitoba, will get a free lifetime streaming membership.

While the company has faced loud criticism in the U.S. over its decision to charge 60% more for DVD/streaming combo package, it has not had to deal with this in Canada where it only offers streaming movies and TV.

“Our focus remains on building up the breadth and range of movies and TV shows to watch instantly, as well as constantly improving the experience, and we look forward to welcoming many more new members,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, in a statement.

But Netflix will need to grow its streaming content selection if it wants to attract some of Canada’s more discerning users. Melissa Lukezic, a native of Kitchener, Ontario, said she has friends who use the service but she’s never been interested in Netflix solely because it lacks in content.

“One of the most frustrating things about the service is that it shows you movies and TV available in the U.S., but then it tells you its not available in Canada,” Lukezic told VentureBeat. “Also, one of my favorite shows, It’s Always in Sunny in Philadelphia, has never been available and that’s held me back.”

Netflix is looking outside of North America for growth opportunities as well. Back in early July, Netflix said it will expand to 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean later in 2011. The company is also reportedly planning to expand its streaming video offering to two European countries in the first quarter of 2012.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

A class action lawsuit was filed today against Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, after a massive, three-day service outage affected millions of its subscribers worldwide in October.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Quebec Superior Court by a Montreal law firm, “on behalf of individuals who have BlackBerry smartphones and who pay for a monthly data plan but were unable to access their email, BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM), and/or Internet for the period of October 11 to 14, 2011,” the court filing says.

“When RIM’s system went down — and the backup system failed to kick in — it caused a chain reaction that caused messages that saw a backlog of messages build up in other network centres around the world, which started a chain reaction, causing message delays around the world,” according today’s report in the The Financial Post.

The company has apologized repeatedly, and CEO Mike Lazaridis issued a mea culpa in a video (see below.) RIM also tried to make amends for the outage by offering $100 worth of free premium apps to affected users. Apparently, user are having none of it.

While iOS and Android devices are eating the BlackBerry’s lunch in business communications, RIM is still one of the top handset makers for enterprise communications, due to its emphasis on security. However, handsets from Apple and those running Android are starting to erode any market position that RIM may have.

via: BGR

[Gavel image via Andrey Eremin/Shuttershock]

Buyosphere is web celebrity Tara Hunt‘s greatest gamble,  and after some shaky months, it might be starting to pay off.

Following a successful rebranding effort, the team has just closed an oversubscribed seed round of funding — $325,000, to be exact.

The funding will be aimed squarely at new user acquisition as well as a couple key hires.

The round, which eschewed big-name Silicon Valley capital for firms and individuals based closer to Buyosphere’s Montreal headquarters, was led by Real Ventures, Canada’s largest seed venture fund.

Also participating were angel investors Jesse Kaplan of Seek Capital, John Granger of Grassfed Capital, David Chamandy of Machkor Holdings and Thomas Merlin.

Part of today’s news is Buyosphere’s pivot. Previously, the startup was focused on providing a shopping and fashion-focused community with links to purchase history but without invasive cookies.

The company’s pared-down mission is now providing a Q&A platform for shoppers. Hunt calls it “a Quora for shopping.”

“We’re demonstrating the power of peer to peer shopping search,” Hunt said in an email with VentureBeat. “Algorithms are a long way off from picking up nuances that a person can. And personal taste is full of nuance.”

Eventually, the Buyosphere team, which includes co-founders Cassandra Girard and Jerome Paradis, hopes to revolutionize online product search through a combination of social search and intelligent use of data.

“We invested in Buyosphere because they are tackling what is fast becoming a large problem in e-commerce,” said Real Ventures partner Mark MacLeod in a statement.

“Today’s online shopper is faced with almost limitless choices but severely limited time. Buyosphere offers customers a solution combining personalization, curation and social features to help connect consumers and brands.”

While the amounts might seem small to someone accustomed to the mega-rounds raised by San Francisco-based startups, Hunt says even a little money goes a long way in Montreal.

“There is considerable talent in the area and we are well-situated to retail and fashion hubs like New York,” she concluded. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Research in Motion has lost its home field advantage in Canada to Apple for the first time ever, another sign that RIM is almost hopelessly broken when it comes to smartphone innovation.

The long-time co-CEOs and co-founders of RIM, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, resigned from the company in January after 20 years and were replaced by COO Thorsten Heins. While trying to shake up things at RIM is a good move, Heins does not appear to be committed to a full-scale re-boot that the brand desperately needs. Thus far, Heins has said he would stick with RIM’s current strategy for the foreseeable future. But maybe losing its stronghold in Canada could be the splash of cold water Heins needs to see how poorly RIM is really doing.

Bloomberg reports that RIM, which is based in Ontario, shipped 2.08 million BlackBerrys last year in Canada, while Apple shipped 2.85 million units of its popular iPhone. In 2008, RIM was outselling Apple nearly five to one.

“For RIM, in its home market, to lose that No. 1 position to iPhone is strategically important,” Paul Taylor, asset manager at BMO Harris Private Banking in Toronto, told Bloomberg. “It does identify, even with a home-country bias, how consumers are responding to the greater functionality of the iPhone.”

VentureBeat Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall made the case at the time of Balsillie and Lazaridis’ resignations that the RIM mostly lost its way because Apple and Google offer superior software platforms. RIM showed off its first BlackBerry in 1999 and became known for its simple and useful wireless e-mail service. And with that emphasis, it has owned the corporate smartphone world for years. But now that business professionals want more powerful devices like the iPhone, iPad, and various Android phones, RIM can’t even hold the enterprise.

At least in Canada, RIM still has loyal supporters. Many of Canada’s banks and government agencies still issue BlackBerrys, including the Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, and Bank of Montreal. But that tide could shift: Toronto-Dominion Bank still issues BlackBerrys to staffers, but now has a policy to let employees use iPhone and Android devices for corporate purposes.

Heins has said the company will begin to take a greater global focus and told the New York Times in January, “In the rest of the world, BlackBerry is growing very fast.” But if the shifting winds in Canada are any indication, RIM may not want to bet it all on the “rest of the world” because it can’t even win the smartphone war at home.

Broken BlackBerry photo: miggslives/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

Hollywood North? L.A. with rain? The city that riots whenever its hockey team doesn’t win the Stanley Cup?

Americans might think of Vancouver in many ways — but typically not as a tech startup mecca.

And yet Summify, A Thinking Ape, OpenCal, TinySpeck, and PhoneGap are just a few of the city’s better-known startups of the past few years. Along with established-but-still-young companies such as Hootsuite, these startups have joined multinationals Electronic Arts, Sierra Wireless, Pixar, Sony, and Microsoft in the Vancouver area.

Just don’t ask the venture capitalists who take the 3-hour flight north from Silicon Valley. They have their own thoughts about Vancouver startups, but they’re not likely to reveal them to you. They’re too busy trying to snap up undervalued Canadian companies.

Debbie Landa remembers talking to VCs from Bessemer who were coming up to Vancouver a couple of years ago. She’s the chief executive of San Francisco-based Dealmaker Media and doyenne of the GrowLab accelerators as well as the Grow Conference, which is now an annual event in Vancouver (it kicks off today).

Source: John Koetsier

A view of Vancouver from the south, with BC Place and Rogers Arena in the foreground.

“They [the Bessemer VCs] were a little shocked to hear that they were not the first,” Landa told me. “But the first people to register for Grow were VCs from Accel and Battery, and they’re all at each other’s throats in competition.”

Slicing and dicing: big, up-and-comers, and investors

“I see the tech scene in Vancouver in three slices,” Olivier Vincent says.

Vincent’s an entrepreneur with several exits under his belt, including local-search company Canpages for $225 million. Vincent is working on a new startup, Hipparcos Technologies (presently in stealth mode).

“There are the big names, the up-and-coming startups, and the investment community,” Vincent said.

The big names are often regional offices for international technology-related companies: Microsoft, Sony, and Pixar fit into this category, as does Electronic Arts, which maintains a big presence in the Vancouver area. (Rumors have been swirling about Google opening a Vancouver office, but those remain just rumors, according to Leslie Church, a Google public relations representative.)

HootSuite is also becoming a big name, with ambitions to be a billion-dollar company in the social media management space.

Source: John Koetsier

Vancouver, Stanley Park, floatplane harbor

Smaller companies that have developed solid niches and funding include A Thinking Ape, a gaming company; and AirG, the mobile social network with upward of 50 million users, mostly on feature phones. Make5, Suite101, and PC HelpSoft are a few of the others gaining some traction.

Some of the companies of this scale have been acquired: OpenCal by Groupon, PhoneGap by Adobe, and MetroLyrics by CBS, highlighting that one of the challenges in Vancouver is the money side.

VCs flying up from the valley help provide liquidity, but local angels and VCs are in somewhat short supply, meaning that acquisition at fairly lower numbers early in company’s lifecycles is common.

VCs, angels, and Vancouver’s Dave McClure?

One of Vancouver’s most prominent startup investors is Boris Wertz. The other GrowLab founder (with Landa), Wertz is in some sense a Vancouver version of PayPal alumnus and 500 Startups founder Dave McClure. Except, of course, without McClure’s f-bombs and middle fingers.

Wertz has funded about 35 startups through first W Media Ventures and now Version One Ventures, which has raised a $15 million “micro-VC” fund to make $250,000 to $500,000 seed and Series One investments. Summify was one of his investments, and it was also a significant exit when Twitter bought the company for an undisclosed amount.

Source: John Koetsier

Downtown Vancouver

But he doesn’t have enough local competition — as he himself said in an interview with Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper: “I’d say 90 percent of consumer Internet projects in Vancouver come through me. I wish it weren’t that way. It’s not healthy.”

Healthy or not, Wertz is seeing a lot of new potential in Vancouver, and that is something he likes.

“Some of the hottest new startups I see in Vancouver right now are Indochino, A Thinking Ape, and Unbounce,” Wertz said when we chatted last week.

But competition is coming, both from the Bessemers and Accels. And from the real Dave McClure.

McClure is in Vancouver for the Grow conference. It’s not going to be his first visit, says Landa, and he has not been idle.

“Dave McClure has been doing a ton of investing,” Landa said.

No, it’s not Silicon Valley north

It is, of course, de rigeur to compare every new tech hotbed with Silicon Valley. And the reality is that the best of them fail the test.

The valley has everything, as Robert Scoble told me a month ago:

Source: John Koetsier

Digital Orca and cruise ship looking north from Vancouver.

“First of all is money,” Scoble said. “You can’t get funded to do risky weird shit in very many places. Secondly, it’s PR: Most of it is here. Third, it’s talent: The guy who built a 20,000 node server farm for eBay, he lives here. You can’t get that anywhere else.”

Fourth and finally, Scoble said, it’s the culture.

“Just on Sunday walking on the beach I ran into the guy who runs the welding team at Tesla … he lives here, not anywhere else. It happens every single day, and you just don’t have this anywhere else.”

Vancouver’s not there yet, especially on the money and PR side.

But it is a thriving and innovative technology hotbed and, to this point at least, a source of good deals for cheap acquisitions.

And someday, if Wertz’ vision comes to fruition, it could be much more than that.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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After a successful U.S. launch, streaming music service Spotify is now turning its attention to Canada.

Spotify’s recently published annual accounts reveal plans to expand further into the North American continent via the Canadian market, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The annual accounts also mention that Spotify plans to launch its service into Asian and South American markets in the future.

The Stockholm, Sweden-based company’s ultra-popular music service, which allows users to share their playlists with others and discover new music, first gained popularity across Europe before coming to the U.S. last year. More recently, the company launched the service into Australia and New Zealand.

That said, the expansion into Canada is the next logical step for Spotify. The market is very similar to the U.S., which should make marketing and content licensing deals easier to identify. And if Netflix is any indication, Spotify will experience successful growth in under a year.

The service currently has 4 million paying subscribers and over 15 million total active monthly users, according to information the company shared back in July.

Spotify has raised around $188 million in funding, and is reportedly seeking a massive new round that could boost the startup’s valuation upwards of $3.5 billion.

Photo via CBC News

Stripe expanded its payment processing platform into Canada today, so Canadian businesses, mounties, and hockey players can integrate the technology into their websites. If they aren’t too busy drinking maple syrup, that is.

But seriously, developers use Stripe to enable transactions online. The platform powers commerce for thousands of companies that want to accept payments online, like Foursquare, MoMA, and Shopify.

Stripe handles card storage information, subscriptions, and interactions with bank accounts. Rather than building their own platforms, developers can use Stripe’s API and begin doing business.

While payments can be paid out to anywhere in the world, the crossing of the border into Canada means that our Northern brethren can now accept payments as well. The service is the same, and the company views it as the first step in their international expansion.

In her blog post about the news, employee Sheena Pakanati wrote about how going abroad fits into Stripe’s overall mission.

“In many ways, launching in Canada is a big step for us—going from ’1′ to ’2′ is often harder than going from ’2′ to ‘n’—but it’s only a small piece of what we have in mind,” she said. “We grew up in countries from Honduras to Kenya, and a large part of why we’re so eager to build Stripe is to help those outside the U.S. to participate as first-class citizens in the Internet economy.”

The company added $20 million to its bank in July and is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s roster of investors involves some of the biggest names in the venture capital world: Sequoia, Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, Elon Musk, General Catalyst, and Redpoint.

Stripe is in San Francisco, and it tells those who are interested to watch for updates.

Where in the world will this company go next? Like searching for Waldo, just keep an eye out for stripes.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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My Dad does not like to shop. Twice a year, he visits a personal shopper at a department store to round out his closet and will not enter a clothing store for the next six months unless under duress. He is not alone, which is why a number of online clothing services for men have cropped up over the past year or so.

Frank & Oak, which designs, manufactures, and distributes its line of men’s shirts and accessories, has raised $5 million to dress guys like my Dad, who would rather be kayaking.

Once granted free membership, men answer a series of questions about their style preferences. They can then shop through Frank & Oak’s inventory and receive personalized recommendations. Each month, they receive a feed with new collection items and curated suggestions of what to buy.

The founders know that some male shoppers find all the choice overwhelming and just want someone to pick for them. At the same time, they won’t wear things that don’t feel right. My father is not about to wear a pair of black skinny jeans just because they show up on his doorstep.

“Our mission is to make shopping incredibly easy for men,” said CEO Ethan Song. “Going into stores and being faced with endless options is not just inconvenient, it’s confusing. At Frank & Oak, we don’t overwhelm you with endless options; we show you a handful of carefully selected styles that we know you’re going to like.”

Every month, the team presents a new collection to its members. It has direct contact with its consumers and can alter its shopping experience accordingly. This structure also cuts out the middlemen, making the clothing affordable without sacrificing quality. Items average at $50.

Frank & Oak launched in February 2012 and currently has 35 employees based in Montreal Canada. This first round of investment was led by Lightbank, with participation from BDMI and Rho Canada Ventures. It will go toward expanding the range of clothing and products offered, as well as producing more clothing to widen the membership capacity.

An array of other services out there seek to make men’s shopping as painless as possible. Trunkclub offers a personal stylist service that sources high-end clothing especially for the user. It can be pricey and does not manufacture its own line. OutfitEZ is a monthly subscription service that sends precurated boxes based on a selected profile, such as ‘Tomorrow’s Boss’ which is described as “Business Casual with confidence” or ‘Rugged Urban.’ Bombfell sends one item every month, at a regular price of $69.

Frank & Oak is part of a shift toward vertically integrated e-commerce companies that can react quickly to what their customers want. Although I am not sure how they would respond to my Dad’s love of souvenir sweatshirts.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In a major turn-around, Android smartphones now account for a majority of mobile web traffic in the U.S and Canada, with close to a 51 percent share. That’s a massive change from May of this very year, when Apple owned 72 percent of smartphone traffic, compared to only 26 percent for all Android phones.

The results are according to a new study by ad network Chitika.

Apple accounts for 46 percent of all mobile phone traffic in the U.S and Canada, and bitter rival Samsung’s phones add up to 17 percent. Just one month after its introduction, the iPhone 5 accounts for three percent of North American mobile web traffic single, er, phonedly, compared to the Galaxy S III’s 2 percent. (The iPhone 5 surpassed the Galaxy S III in just three weeks, as we reported last week.)

The more interesting information is in the platform numbers, however.

BlackBerry is still holding on to 2 percent of web traffic with its fingernails, and Windows Phone is a tiny little thin slice — but probably poised for growth — at just 1 percent. But getting the Android numbers out requires a bit of digging.

The 43 percent slice in the chart includes all of Apple’s other phones: the 4, 4S, iPhone 3s, and all the way back to the very first iPhone, released in 2007. (Amazingly, some of them are still in use.)

The 15 percent Samsung chunk includes all of its smartphones, which are almost all Android-based.

So the really interesting part of the graph is the big 37 percent terra incognita slice labeled “Other Smartphone.”

When I asked one of Chitika’s data engineers, Andrew Waber, about that group of phones, he ran some additional numbers, slicing the data in a different way.

It turns out that non-Samsung Android is 34 percent of North American mobile web traffic.

And since Windows Phone is only 1 percent total of the market and Samsung sells almost exclusively Android-based smartphones in the U.S., an overwhelming majority of its 15 percent in the graph can be added to the 34 percent.

Which means that 34 percent non-Samsung Android, plus 15 percent non-Galaxy-S III Samsung, plus 2percent Galaxy S III, adds up to 51 percent … giving Android a total share of 51 percent. Or, if not exactly 51, some number between 50 and 51.

In other words, a majority for Android.

I talked to Waber about my mathematical assumptions. He verified that I’m not inventing the numbers, but he did caution that the numbers do fluctuate.

“What we’ve seen is it’s near even, but sometimes swing just lightly in majority of Android or iPhone. But this is not inconsistent with what we’re seeing too.”

In other words, we are right at the tipping point between majority iPhone and majority Android web traffic. That’s big news, and while it was likely to come for some time given the fact that Android out-sells iOS, it’s a milestone event.

The question now becomes: How high will it go?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Payments processing startup Square has now brought its service to Canada, its first step outside of the U.S.

Square has been focused on the U.S. market since its launch in 2009, and now more than 2 million people and businesses accept credit cards with Square’s dongle for smartphones and tablets. Square claims it now processes more than $8 billion in transactions on an annualized basis.

“We are focused on making commerce easy for everyone,” said Alyssa Cutright, Square’s VP of international, in a canned statement. “Square builds free tools for local businesses of all sizes and types to thrive. We’re thrilled to introduce Canadian businesses and their customers to the most seamless and enjoyable way to do business.”

San Francisco-based Square has raised more than $341 million in funding to date. Investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management, CrunchFund, and Starbucks.

MONTREAL — I’m in Montreal, Quebec, for FounderFuel’s demo day today. Quebec is known as la belle province in Canada, and investors as well as founders are hoping to see both beautiful pitches and beautiful startups today.

FounderFuel is one of the premier accelerators in Canada — the biggest, according to Ian Jeffrey, who is the accelerator’s general manager. (If that name rings a bell, that’s because he was one of the founders of Radar, the very cool photo-sharing startup that was Instagram before there was an Instagram.) Graduates that you might recognize include Oomf, an app engagement platform, and LiveRides, a Canada-focused ride-sharing app … sort of like AirBnB for road trips.

Here’s the list of startups that are demoing today — let me know in the comments if there’s any that you’re particularly interested in learning more about.

InfoActive – Give life to data

InfoActive makes it easy to turn dynamic data into interactive graphics.

InfoActive is a platform that helps web publishers bring dynamic data to life. We make it easy to turn live data into interactive graphics that look great on any device.

CEO Trina Chiasson

International Gaming League – Elevate Your Game

International Gaming League is the amateur destination for competitive gaming.

International Gaming League delivers professionally-inspired gaming experiences to Amateur competitive gamers. With accessible video game competitions, quality broadcast experiences and a statistics context for improving your game, IGL answers the demand for a growing eSport audience.

CEO Eyal Toledano

Fastgrab – Food pickup perfected

The Fastgrab app and POS is powering the next evolution in food pickup.

Fastgrab is the easiest way to pickup your meal. Order from local restaurants, pay from your phone. It’s ready when you arrive at no additional charge. Fastgrab connects restaurants and their customers through its proprietary two-way communication platform. It also allows restaurants to better know their customers and reward them with instant cash rebates.

CEO Richard Btaiche

VentureBeat story: Fastgrab: quick service food ordering app plans to compete with GrubHub and OpenTable … by not

LISTN – Socially driven music

#LISTN is an iPhone app that lets people share and connect through music.

#LISTN is an iPhone app that lets people share and connect through music. By enabling users to explore other people’s music libraries from around the world, Listn acts as the social front end to services like YouTube, Spotify and Rdio.

CEO Mike Schmidt

MyCustomizer – Empowering the Customization Revolution

MyCustomizer empowers brands and their retailers to offer unique customization experiences with a ready-to-use SaaS platform.

Mainstream goods have become so commoditized that they have lost their appeal. To build strong customer engagement around brands and products, MyCustomizer empowers businesses to offer unique customization experiences with a ready-to-use SaaS platform. Selling custom products is now faster, more efficient and scalable.

CEO Christian Painchaud

Openera – Automated Filing for Everyone

Openera automatically organizes email and cloud files to meet corporate compliance requirements and allow the right people to find files fast.

Openera is a SaaS compliance gateway that applies corporate policies to files flowing through connected email and cloud accounts. The file analytics dashboard allows companies to find, analyze and auto-file important documents, and the mobile app lets users find and share files from anywhere. Companies comply with regulations and people find files.

VentureBeat story: Openera launches “Passbook” for files: find any files in email, Box, Google Drive, Evernote and more in 2 clicks

CEO Peter Lalonde

reelyActive – Log in to life

reelyActive connects THINGS to the cloud

We live amongst hundreds of billions of uniquely identifiable THINGS that make up our world. reelyActive is a cost-effective, plug-and-play infrastructure that connects THINGS to the cloud via the spaces in which we live.  Just as smart devices are propelling the current wave of innovation, Internet-connected THINGS will propel the next.

CEO Jeffrey Dungen

VentureBeat story: ReelyActive wants to create the Internet of Things for the little guy

Urbita – I love this place!

Urbita is a community that lets people share the love and passion they have for places that matter to them.

Urbita is the place where people can share the love and passion they feel for their cities while inspiring others. Everyone can create city boards to showcase the things they love and that make a city special to them.

CEO Pablo Kleinman

photo credit: Oliver Lavery via photopin cc

MONTREAL — Everything comes down to this.

Every waking moment of the last three months. All the hopes and dreams of the last few years of your life. And all the thousands of hours you and your team have put into your business idea, your site, your app, your revenue plan. All the hopes and expectations of friends and family, whose lives you’ve essentially dropped out of for the past 90 days.

Five minutes.

The next five minutes will determine whether you’ve got a shot at funding — a shot at continued life. You’ve only received $25,000 or so from your accelerator, which has kept you in ramen and Chef Boyardee for three months, but not much else. You need a seed stage investment … $250K, $500K, maybe as much as a million. If you’re incredibly lucky (and smart and hardworking and well-advised and, yes, lucky), you might get as much as $2 to $3 million.

You’re probably not lucky.

I spent most of yesterday watching FounderFuel’s class of fall 2012 prepare for graduation. FounderFuel is an accelerator in Montréal , Québec that takes small teams with an idea and turns them into a (hopefully) viable startup. It’s the biggest in Canada, and its Demo Day is possibly the biggest in the world in terms of attendance. Last night, 800 people from the technology community gathered to hear the startups’ pitches — a huge crowd for a Demo Day.

Of course, only about 150 of them really matter, tonight. They’re the investors, wealthy angels, fund managers, semi-retired titans of local industry. They have the ability to make your dreams come true — at least for another six months of startup runway. And they have the ability to grind your soul into the grime on the floor with a smile and an it’s-not-you-it’s-us rejection: You’re just not what they’re looking for, they’re investing in a different space, they’re early stage but not that early stage, they don’t get your vertical, you’re interesting but not quite ready …

Here’s the story, in pictures:

Monument National

Demo Day is being held in the Monument National — pronounced en francais, na-shi-uh-naal — a venerable old thousand-seat theater in downtown Montreal. Aged but graceful, it’s an imposing location for most of the 20-something founders and teams.

The Green Room

Most of the late morning and afternoon is spent in the Green Room, which has not a trace of green in it. It’s the preparation room, where founders and teams get ready, press interview said founders, distracting them from their task at hand, and, in the showers and restrooms built into the back for generations of actors and performers, get a moment of privacy to think, rehearse, and get their game face on.

Backstage

Everyone gets two or three rehearsals of their presentation, live in front of the empty theater. First, however, there’s one last moment to tighten up a phrase, remember a key point, and get nervous about a stage this large.

This is Jeffery Dungen of ReelyActive, a hardware-plus-cloud RFID play, taking one more moment to get it right.

Rehearsal

The CEOs have been working on their pitches for a few weeks, but for most, it’s only really come together in the last few days. Now they get a chance to run through the pitch live, with their slides, on-stage. For some, it’s a painful process, with starts and stops as advisors and the mentors coach from the cheap seats.

The key pitch coach is John Stokes, a partner in Real Ventures, which backs FounderFuel, and he’s pleasantly merciless as nervous founders mess up slides, phrases. “Take it from the top” is heard several times, as is “you’ve got it wrong,” and “you’ve got it wrong again.” Some presenters, flustered, take it off-stage to go through their pitches one more time, in blissful privacy.

This is Christian Painchaud, who’s pitching a product customization engine. His team will be on-stage with him, so they sit off to the side.

One hour to go

It’s an hour before the doors are opened. Some founders are running through just one more rehearsal. Others peak out at the big empty room, perhaps wondering what it will be like to have 800 people staring at you while you’re trying desperately not to screw up the biggest moment of your young business life.

This is not a test

The doors open and 800 or so people start pouring in. They’re loud and fully audible from the green room, where founders are still making last-minute tweaks to their presentations. The arrival of the crowd increases the pressure: This is going to happen soon.

Opening the balcony

Downstairs is nearly full, so organizers open the balcony. I talk to some of the crowd, most of whom are in technology. Two of them are accountants from BDO, which has been helping the startups with incorporation, filings, and tax planning.

“They have no money,” one of them tells me, “but they still have to file. And they literally have no clue how to do it.”

No money means that helping startups is not a profitable venture for BDO, but they do it for future business development potential, if one or more of the startups gets big, and to be a good member of the tech community … giving something back.

And it begins

Loud music pumps up the crowd and then Ian Jeffery, the general manager of FounderFuel, jumps up on stage joking about his “lumberjack shirt.” Ian is a veteran of the Valley, having been one of the founders of Radar, which was Instagram but two years too soon.

It’s not a tech event if no one swears on stage

Sponsors get their moment in the spotlight. This is Paul Ford of SoftLayer, which is (believe it or not) an entirely bootstrapped data center, which is currently the largest non-public hosting and cloud provider in the world, with 120,000 servers across the globe.

He uses the F-word, everyone laughs, and we’re ready to go. Later he says that since notorious on-stage swearer Dave McClure wasn’t there to totally shake up the room, he figured he’d pull a Dave.

The founders come out and the real show begins

The founders come out. They’re prepped, they’re ready, they’re funky, they’re on … and they are a thousand times better than rehearsals. Everything comes off without a hitch — to the untrained eye that has not seen their slide decks — and each pitch seems better than good.

This is Trina Chiasson of InfoActive, which helps web publishers create live, interactive infographics. I didn’t totally buy her pitch when we chatted earlier in the day, but in the audience, with her visuals, and a calm, cool delivery, I’m buying it now. I mean, even Einstein buys it.

The International Gaming League assaults us

Eyal Toledano of the IGL assaults the audience with a booming heart-pumping video intro showing competitive gamers virtually killing and massacring each other in front of enthusiastic crowds. Then he pitches with intensity, throwing words like UFC fighters throw fists.

The astonishing part is that it works.

The big numbers come out

It wouldn’t be a Demo Day without big numbers. Most are cautious, but some throw out large numbers ending in billions or millions. Those who do, however, usually have the ability to back them up.

Like Peter Lalonde, of Openera, an automated filing system that helps companies be regulations-compliant without relying on the unreliable (that would be me and you). Lalonde later becomes the idol of every startup present when he signs a term sheet with an investor at the bar in the after-party.

Now that’s killing it.

The founder who screwed up most in practice … nails it

Mike Schmidt of LISTN, a sort of social meta-network for music lovers, had the most problems in practice, getting multiple calls from the peanut gallery to start over, rewind, add, edit, and otherwise be different.

In the actual event, he stumbles over maybe one word, nailing everything else. It’s a clutch performance.

And then it’s over (except for the most important part)

All the founders get up on stage. The audience roars. The founders celebrate. The pitch is over.

Then everyone leaves for the open-bar party downstairs, but the investors and founders head to the VIP room. The founders, moments after nailing their pitches, realize their real work has just begun. Now is the most important part: closing the deal.

VIP room

Everyone who could possibly beg, borrow, or steal a VIP pass heads into the VIP room. The beer and wine are free, founders seek investors, and investors — most of whom have had prior contact with the companies they’re interested in — wonder if they really want to throw a half mill at this 23-year-old kid in a hoodie.

Some do.

In fact, Openera walks away with a beer-stained term sheet signed on the open bar as co-founders high-five each other when they think the investors aren’t looking. The company is the star of a stacked class, with half or more of their $750,000 seed round already committed. In fact they’ve been quietly blowing my mind: the round was $500,000 when I talked to CEO Peter Lalonde on Monday, $600,000 when we chatted again on Thursday afternoon, and $750,000 when his pitch went live Thursday night.

I guess you have to get while the getting is good.

Midnight dinner with the whole cohort

After the VIPs dissipate in varying degrees of dissipation, all the founders and teams and mentors, with a few sponsors, members of previous FounderFuel cohorts, and one sucker-for-punishment member of the press go out for post-pitch dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.

We start getting food at our table at 10:43 p.m., with the main course arriving considerably later. But I’m surprised — and somewhat guilty — to learn when I’m leaving well after midnight that other tables are just getting their mains. Several bottles of wine adorn each table, and by the end of the night, parts of the floor as well.

The speeches begin

Ian Jeffery gets up to say a few words, and he’s cheerfully booed, inappropriately laughed at, and generally enjoyed. Each class in an accelerator is like a family, a FounderFuel alumnus sitting next to me explains, and this one is starting to realize that after tonight, everything is going to be different.

John Stokes gets up too, talks about shedding a tear while watching the pitches, and says a sort of farewell.

Then the real party starts

The after-party is at a club in old Montreal, and some of the founders start dribbling out to attend it. Having had enough noise and excitement — not to mention beer and wine — for the day, and wanting to let them have some time just with their temporary startup families for one last time, I decide that discretion is the better part of valor and head back to my hotel room.

Demo Day is over. Tomorrow the real work of building a startup begins again, and FounderFuel starts looking for the next group of smart young entrepreneurs.

Image credits: John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Despite a spiffy design and some powerful hardware, we were disappointed that Google’s Nexus 4 smartphone didn’t include LTE 4G support. But with a simple software tweak, it looks like Canadian Nexus 4 users can enable nascent LTE capabilities.

Videos of the Nexus 4 running on Canadian carriers’ LTE networks appeared on the XDA Developers forum yesterday. Even better, turning on the Nexus 4′s LTE capabilities doesn’t take a major hack — you simply need to access the phone’s test menu by dialing *#*#4636#* and change the “Preferred Network Type” option to LTE.

How is this possible? It looks like LG, which built the Nexus 4, used a Qualcomm chipset that has support for LTE band 4, a spectrum range that Canadian carriers Rogers and Telus support. An LG spokesperson recently told TechRadar that it used the same chipset found in the LTE-equipped Optimus G, but noted that the phone couldn’t support LTE entirely without additional amplifiers and filters.

We’ve asked Google for comment on this hidden LTE functionality and will update when we hear back.

Unfortunately for Nexus 4 owners in the rest of the world, LTE band 4 (which covers AWS 1700 and 2100MHz spectrum) isn’t widely supported outside of Canada. Verizon’s LTE network and the majority of AT&T’s use entirely different spectrum bands. AT&T uses AWS spectrum for some of its LTE network, but it’s not easy to find.

The LTE hack makes the Nexus 4 an even better phone for T-Mobile subscribers, since Band 4 LTE is what that carrier will eventually rely on. For now, T-Mobile customers will be using the carrier’s HSPA+ network. But once T-Mobile starts rolling out LTE, the Nexus 4 should be able to speed up nicely.

For now, this LTE hack is exactly that. There’s nothing preventing Google from releasing an update that disables the feature. And there’s no telling what enabling LTE will do to your battery life, or if it will cause your Nexus 4 to overheat.

Via Engadget

Kixeye has invaded Canada. And it has hired a former Zynga developer to lead the charge.

The San Francisco maker of social games for hardcore gamers — known best for its kick-ass recruiting video and hardcore social games like Battle Pirates –is opening an office in Victoria, British Columbia. It has also hired a former Zynga developer Clayton Stark as the general manager for Kixeye Canada. That’s not going to help relations with Zynga, which sued Kixeye and former employee Alan Patmore for trade secret theft after he joined Kixeye.

Kixeye says it is generating record revenue month over month, every month, and it expects to reach “nine digits in revenue” by year end. The new game studio is the third office for Kixeye, in addition to its expansion in Brisbane, Australia.

“Our search for top talent is not limited by international boundaries,” said Kixeye chief executive Will Harbin (pictured). “Victoria is a hotbed of technical talent, and Clayton and his team have aggressive goals to expand Kixeye Canada.”

Stark will lead the efforts set up the studio in his hometown of Victoria. He has more than two decades of experience. He served as chief operating officer at Mercurial Communications, which helped to develop and restart the 8.0 browser for Netscape, and was the chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Flock, which created “the social browser.” Flock was acquired by Zynga in 2010, and Stark worked at Zynga as director of development.

“Victoria is exploding with engineering talent and is one of the largest tech hubs outside of Silicon Valley, especially for game companies,” said Stark.  “It’s also consistently ranked among the most beautiful cities in the world, and we’re setting up Kixeye Canada right along the inner harbor at Bastion Square. For developers, it doesn’t get any better than working on projects they’re super passionate about, and having an incredible amount of fun while doing it.”

Founded in 2007, Kixeye has more than 300 employees. Meanwhile, Kixeye has hired a general manager from Kabam. Justin Lambros has signed aboard as a Kixeye employee, according to his LinkedIn profile.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

One of the best times to launch a fitness app is right after the holidays. In the aftermath of cookie exchanges, egg nog by the fire, Christmas feasts, and the constant snacking on festive treats such as chocolate-dipped caramel-popcorn-nut balls (that really happened), people are eager, nay desperate, for exercise.

Today, a startup from the snowy climes of Waterloo, Ontario has launched a personalized fitness app called PumpUp. Gluttons seeking redemption, or anyone looking for a work out, enter information about their goals, current fitness level, and preferred equipment and activities. The app then generates a custom plan with instructions, animated exercises, target rep and weight assignments, and break times. The workout adapts to the user every session, keeping goals purposeful yet realistic.

The app store is full of personal training programs like Fitness Buddy, iFitness Pro, iPersonal Trainer that make customized fitness regimens accessible and affordable. PumpUp is currently available in the AppStore, and the Android version is coming soon. It emerged out of VeloCity Garage, The University of Waterloo’s startup incubator that also bred Y Combinator startups BufferBox (just acquired by Google) and Pair. The founding team has a combination of technical, business, and fitness expertise, as well as a mascot named PumpUp Pat.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Doug Renert is a co-founding partner of Silicon Valley’s Tandem Capital.

Canada has many reasons to be proud.

For starters, the country has mostly dodged the economic crisis that continues to rattle the rest of North America. Canadian businesses enjoy lower corporate tax rates, plus plenty of government subsidy programs. Not to mention the fact that the populace enjoys universal healthcare coverage and the ability to travel without being labeled “loud Americans.”

However, when it comes to mobile apps, Canadians may not be so lucky.

The nation’s app store can be likened to the state of Nevada in 1951, when nuclear weapons testing sprouted a continuous stream of mushroom clouds throughout the flatland.

Canada’s role as the “guinea pig for mobile apps” was first brought to my attention when Peter Relan, CEO of Crowdstar, told me they always launched their apps in Canada first to work out the kinks and bugs before releasing in the U.S. and elsewhere. This approach makes perfect sense since Canadians resemble their southern neighbors so closely, though on average the “Canucks” may like beer and hockey a lot more and guns and frozen yogurt much less.

Doug Renert

With 10 percent of America’s population, Canada provides a risk-free test market.  Competitors and the media likely won’t get wind of failed launches or top performers in the mobile app stores of the Great (but relatively quiet) White North. And developers and marketers can tune apps to their hearts’ content until everything is primed for a successful launch in the “Promised Land” of red, white and blue.

This was the case for Bash Gaming (formerly BitRhymes), one of our portfolio companies that soft-launched its hit mobile social casino game Bingo Bash in the Canadian Apple App Store before hitting the U.S. They launched the game on each platform within Canada first, and only after several weeks of optimization for that market did they launch in the U.S. — where it eventually became a No. 1 grossing game.

That being said, this same strategy backfired on the Android side.

Bingo Bash had become such a hit on iOS that when the studio launched its Android version just a couple of months ago, word spread like wildfire. American Android users quickly caught wind of the leaked Canadian version — and cried foul! So Bash Gaming immediately made the Android launch effective worldwide.

Larger companies have been pursuing this tactic, as well. Nintendo recently launched its new Wii Mini on December 7 – for Canadians only. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before all this activity results in a rash of protests across Canada; a generation of activists shined a spotlight on Nevada decades ago and successfully won a ban on nuclear testing. Who will be the crusaders when it comes to Canada’s role as the world’s mobile guinea pig?

Or perhaps Canadians are darn proud of their role in the mobile app ecosystem as they involuntarily test-drive their way through buggy, early versions of every app imaginable. I, for one, am envious of this not-so-glorified breed of users who get first dibs on the fun games and cool apps that go on to become the top hits in the rest of the world.

Doug Renert is a co-founding partner of Tandem Capital, Silicon Valley’s first and largest mobile accelerator fund, currently at $32M. Tandem backs 12 early stage mobile startups each year with its brand of “muscle capital,” a powerful combination of funding and hands-on support. Some of Tandem’s biggest successes include PlayHaven and Bash Gaming, formerly known as BitRhymes. Prior to Tandem, Doug built businesses as an operating executive at Oracle and as CEO of telecommunications startup Tello.

photo credit: BFLV via photopin cc

Online retail giant Amazon is introducing its popular Prime membership program to Canadian consumers, it announced today — but it’s without numerous perks that make this service so appealing.

The move means that Canadian customers that purchase the $79 (CAD) annual subscription will have access to “free” two-day shipping on thousands of items sold by Amazon or through one of its fulfillment merchants. Prime membership also offers a one-day shipping rate of $3.99 and a standard shipping fee for all packages shipped to rural areas.

But unlike U.S. members, Canadian members won’t have access to some of the other perks that go along with the Prime service. That means no access to the library of free streaming movies on Prime Instant Video, and no access to the Kindle library lending program.

I’d imagine this has something to do with the separate licensing deals Amazon would need to cut with media companies to offer a Canadian Prime Video service. Also, it’s likely that Amazon wants to master its streaming video service domestically before it decides to expand into new markets.

Still, the product shipping discounts offered by Prime membership is still enough to carry the service on its own in Canada.

360 Incentives founder Jason Atkins is changing the world one incentive program at a time. Today, this “small-town startup” from Whitby, Ontario received $7.65 million in growth incentives of its own.

360 Incentives provides a software-as-a-service platform that large businesses can use to create, measure, and manage marketing and sales initiatives such as promotions, sales “spiffs”, rebates, and loyalty rewards. From the dashboard, users are able to automate certain activities, stay on top of their programs, and react to events in real time.

“From inception our vision has been to change the face of the promotions and incentives space,” said Atkins in a statement. “In today’s competitive landscape, manufacturers need to move faster than their competitors, and we allow them to engage and systematically improve their channel promotions. It is not just about incentives; it is about engagement – the tools and education they need to provide their channel with has never been more important than right now.”

According to a lengthy story on 360 Incentives’ site, Atkins experienced a family tragedy which taught him that he wanted to build his business close to home to be closer to his family, because “happiness heals.” After successfully exiting a previous company, he decided to start a new company less than a kilometer from his house, guided by the principles of an “unbelievable” experience for clients and employees, and to make a difference in the world.

He began interviewing marketing and retail professionals, writing code, and building his team with members from his local community, some known as “happiness builders.” In the past two years, 360 Incentives has grown by over 450% and has 67 employees. It also added 75 global brands, including GE, Whirlpool, Samsung, LG, Electrolux, Frigidaire, Bosch, and Unilock, to its list of clients.

Another piece of Atkins’ shared wisdom is “raising funds is like getting married.” Now, the time is ripe, and 360 Incentives is hitched to OMERS Ventures, the venture arm of a large Canadian pension fund, along with Klass Capital and Round 13 Capital. With this investment, 360 Incentives will “accelerate its envelopment of leading edge channel engagement and incentives management technologies” and continue to hold events involving caffeine, Oreos, and sombreros. Read the press release.

I read the announcement today that Canada has just launched a startup visa program. By doing so, they are saying to the world, “Welcome, immigrant entrepreneurs — please come start your business in Canada.”

It’s brilliant, well executed, and modeled after the startup visa movement that a number of us have been trying to get started in the U.S. since 2009.

I continue to be really discouraged by the U.S. government activity around the startup visa movement, and more specifically around immigration reform as it applies to entrepreneurs. After trying for the past three years to get something passed, nothing has happened beyond administrative changes to the existing laws.

While in some cases this has improved the interpretation of the rules, we are still totally missing the boat here in the States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) continue to implement the rules inconsistently, resulting in regular outrageous situations including tossing entrepreneurs with existing valid visas in jail when they enter the U.S. and banning other entrepreneurs from coming into the country as a result of misinterpretation by CBP of how things should work.

I hear at least one horrifying story a week, try to help when I can, but mostly am just embarrassed and ashamed of our U.S. policies around this.

While Canada is plowing forward, making it easy for immigrant entrepreneurs to move to Canada and start companies, the U.S. efforts are now entirely focused on “comprehensive immigration reform.” The first bills for this are supposed to start appearing in a few months, and I expect we’ll see similar dynamics that we saw around Obamacare: Endless political machinations, an ever expanding set of bills that cover all kinds of things in addition to immigration reform, and a complex set of tradeoffs with unintended consequences that no one can understand.

On top of this, I’ve heard from a number of political insider friends that “the vote math doesn’t work.” I’ve learned this means it is an incredible uphill battle to get anything passed, and the compromise that is going to happen to get certain people in Congress to support the bills means that the “tradeoffs and compromises” (which the more cynical among us — including me — means “the political bribes they need to agree to vote a certain way”) are going to be extensive.

In the mean time, Canada is shouting from the rooftops about the benefits of the startup visa program.

• The startup visa program will enable immigrant entrepreneurs to launch innovative companies that will create jobs in Canada, and eventually, compete globally.
• The program will provide entrepreneurs with valuable assistance in navigating the Canadian business environment which can sometimes prove challenging for newcomers.
• The program will provide private sector firms with access to a broader range of entrepreneurs, including the best and the brightest minds from around the world.

Since I believe entrepreneurs should be able to start their companies anywhere in the world they’d like, I applaud the Canadian government for taking action here. And I encourage any immigrant entrepreneur considering moving to the U.S. to also consider moving to Canada given this new program.

To our friends in Washington, DC: Pay attention. We continue to be less competitive because of our intransigence around immigration, especially with regard to being entrepreneurs. Canada is showing real leadership. Why not just emulate them?

Brad Feld is a managing director at Foundry Group; this post originally appeared on his blog. Feld lives in Boulder, Colo. and invests in software and Internet companies around the United States. In his spare time, he runs marathons and reads a lot.