Fantuan's story of 'mercy' to $90 million+

👋 Good morning, and welcome to (or welcome back to) VTJ’s Sunday Briefing: your weekly digest of the city’s innovation news, deals, insights, and more.

How do you go from repeatedly being told 'no' to raising over USD $90 million? Fantuan co-founder, Yaofei Feng, gets real about his journey as a young, immigrant entrepreneur with advice and tips for others building a niche product. Read on for the full story.

Btw, if you're building an AI app that’s ready to be shared with the community, don’t miss out on applying for the last few spots left to showcase at our upcoming AI demo night in partnership with AInBC.

Now onto today’s briefing. It’s 1,295 words: a four-min. read.

-Lisa

🗞️ FROM VTJ

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🤝 FUNDING & DEALS

• Danielle Brewin Graham, general partner of Phoenix Fire, the angel fund for Canadian female entrepreneurs that hosted a pitch day at INNOVATEwest, shared that insporos, which identifies and removes diseased and defective seeds to help growers conserve resources, won $25K. Also, aiphrodite.ai, which uses AI personas to show how audiences will respond to an ad, won $130K.

• Bocar Dia, partner at Forum Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, and community, is looking to invest in Pacific-Northwest founders building B2B SaaS and AI startups — offering $100K and admission into Forum’s pre-seed accelerator.

• Dominic Lau, partner at Ripple Ventures, another early-stage VC firm,

  is reminding underrepresented students, dropouts, or recent graduate founders building B2B software to apply to its fellowship for hands-on support and access to customers and operators — as well as a chance to secure $50K-$100K.

• Pioneera Ventures, a private equity firm, shared its process of what ‘profitable and near-profitable businesses in the software and industrial sectors’ can expect when seeking funding from them.

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🗞️ IN OTHER NEWS

• entrepreneurship@UBC, the venture incubator, announced the 17 startups ready to raise seed to series A rounds that will be pitching at its investor showcase.

• Autograph Analytics, the tech and data solutions company for the auto industry, made history as the first non-American company to win the Kain Automotive’s ‘Shark Tank’ contest.

• Visier, the HR analytics platform, announced the launch of its generative AI assistant, Vee, to instantly answer workforce-specific questions for HR leaders — securely and accurately.

• Jamie Shotton, chief scientist at Wayve, UK-based AV startup, visited UBC to share the company’s latest research breakthroughs on AI for autonomous driving.

💡 IDEAS & INSIGHTS

• Maria Pacella, general partner at Pender Ventures, a VC firm investing in B2B software and health tech startups, opened up about her journey into her career starting as a university student and what she’d invest $1 million in today.

• Geffrye Parsons, founder of the Inclusion Imperative, a DEI consultancy, highlighted takeaways from the inaugural LGBTQ+ startup founder community conference — which brought together over 100 stakeholders from multiple sectors and organizations.

• Nerissa Allen, president of the Black Business Association of BC, which focuses on connecting businesses and increasing market access, shared insight on how to achieve sustainability by monetizing your offerings while embedding social enterprise principles.

• Ryan Wong, CEO of Visier, wrote a Forbes column to share how leveraging people data is the most effective way for chief HR officers to step up and influence business outcomes amid growing pressure.

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