The newest member of the three comma club
Meet the local tech platform that's helped Canadians donate more than $1 billion to charity. Welcome to the Weekly Briefing.
Good morning! It’s William. I’m back from Mexico. And after drinking ~70 margaritas, I’m reading for some … coffee. Will you join me for some this Tuesday? If you’re new to this, here’s a tip: Every Tuesday, the Vancouver tech community meets from 8am-10am at The Coffee Bar (10 Water St). See you there!
Now onto this newsletter, which you’re hopefully enjoying with your hot morning beverage of choice. It’s 1,109 words, a 4-minute read. Adiós!
-William, @notionport
Charitable Impact’s John Bromley on the ‘Yelp of charity’ and hitting $1 billion in donations
The platform for charitable giving is one of the only businesses of its type in the country. » Get the full story.
Pocketed wins $25K top prize at The Forum Pitch finale
The event coincided with The Forum's 20-year anniversary. » Start reading.
Later and Boston-based Mavrck have linked up
The combination of leading social platforms is funded with a USD $135M strategic investment by Summit Partners. » Get the full story.
Women in Engineering Leadership: Steps for building inclusive and gender-balanced work environments
Recently, Alana Frome, co-founder and CTO at HiMama, Lisa House, director of engineering at Skywatch, and Katya Shetyn, co-founder at BioRender, joined a VanHack event to speak about pathways into tech leadership, entrepreneurship and management. » Get their insights here.
3 tips for startups wanting to work with multinationals
We caught up with SAP’s Jean Michel Lauzon to learn how startup founders can cultivate meaningful relationships with multinational companies. » Start reading.
VanHack Virtual Hiring Event for Senior Developers | May 17-19 2022
📢 Calling all hiring managers and technical leads.
From May 17 - 19, join the ranks of 50+ innovative tech companies and connect with over 130 pre-vetted senior global tech talent with 7+ years of experience in Javascript, Java, RoR, PHP, .Net, or Mobile.
What companies can expect:
company pitches
network and speed interview senior developers
access to candidate lists
*Sponsored
🤝 Funding and deals
Vancouver-based cleantech companies CORE Energy Recovery Solutions Inc., Ionomr Innovations Inc. and Zen and the art of Clean Energy Solutions highlight the latest round of funding from the CleanBC Go Electric Advanced Research and Commercialization (ARC) program. » Continue.
The Black Business Association of BC and Jelly Academy have partnered to offer funding which will see 10 people take Jelly’s digital marketing program. » BCBusiness.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada announced a $2.6 million seed round into 26 Canadian startups—including five from B.C. » Continue.
From that quintet, Carbin Minerals Inc., was also one of two entrepreneurship@UBC ventures (alongside Takachar) awarded $1 million as winners of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition. » Continue.
Investment firm All Blue Capital has offered to buy Vancouver’s Zymeworks, a publicly-traded biotech company. » Geekwire.
Sports tech firm Spordle acquired B.C.’s HiSports Ventures Ltd., a league and tournament management platform. » Continue.
Responsive, a fintech company that leverages machine learning to help financial advisors to better serve and engage investors, announced a CAD $3.5 million Series A round led by Co-operators. » Continue.
🗞️ In other news…
The Formula E race and sustainability expo set for Canada Day weekend has been postponed to 2023. » CBC News.
Victory Square Technologies is partnering with Canadian-based VC fund The Holt Xchange to co-host a fintech pitch battle. » Continue.
Ghosts of the Machine, an immersive multimedia exhibit that opens soon at The Polygon Gallery, explores the relationships between humans, technology, and ecology. » Daily Hive.
Twitter argues it’s ‘not a publisher’ in response to B.C. billionaire Frank Giustra’s defamation case. » Business in Vancouver.
Fintech giant Square launched its loan offering in Canada, making the financing available to its Canadian merchants. » BetaKit.
Sparkgeo harnesses the power of geospatial data to help tech companies move forward. » BCBusiness.
Vancouver’s Moment Energy was noted by Google as a startup working to combat climate change. » Continue.
An Interview with Circular Rubber Technologies CEO Maartje van der Sande, winner of Angels for Climate Solutions. » Vancouver Economic Commission.
Creative Destruction Lab-Vancouver (CDL-Vancouver) launched CDL Compute, a new stream that will focus on scaling solutions for 5G and connectivity, edge, spatial compute, AV/VR and meta. » Continue.
Floorspace released the first instalment of its 2022 quarterly update on notable office leasing activity in Vancouver, which includes Microsoft, POF and Nexii. » Floorspace.
An in-depth interview with SoleSavy co-founder Dejan Pralica. » SneakerFreaker.
Vancouver’s tech sector is driving downtown revival, according to a Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association report. » Business in Vancouver.
Vancouver ranked ninth overall in Startup Genome’s first AgTech and New Food report. » BetaKit.
B.C.’s cleantech sector took the spotlight in the latest episode RBC’s The Disruptors podcast. » Listen now.
The Vancouver Film School was named the #1 game design school in Canada by The Princeton Review. » Continue.
Thinkific GM of media Cameron Uganec announced the edtech company’s new owned media platform, The Leap. » Continue.
Yuan Shi, a former Vancouver director for the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) has joined The51 as a principal for its Food and AgTech Fund. » BetaKit.
💡 Ideas and insights
A paper from SFU researchers on the importance of entrepreneurial capabilities in aiding scientists to respond rapidly to global crises was published in the esteemed science journal Nature: Rapid response through the entrepreneurial capabilities of academic scientists
Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific, writing in Forbes: Work Is Changing, Again. Here’s How To Thrive In The Skills Economy
Rhino Ventures writing on its site: The future of entrepreneur enablement is vertical
Annika Lewis, grants program lead at Gitcoin, writing on Twitter: The lack of structure & process in DAOs can be super disheartening
How will Elon Musk's Twitter purchase impact free speech on social media? B.C. expert weighs in. » CTV News.
Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific, writing in Entrepreneur: Work Is Changing, Again. Here’s How To Thrive In The Skills Economy
Raghwa Gopal, CEO of Innovate BC shared local tech stories that caught his eye in April 2022.
Igor Debatur, co-founder and CEO at Uploadcare, writing on the Nightsight, his personal blog: M&A cheatsheet for tech companies
Opinion: Above all else, virtual meetings should endure in the new normal. Switchboard’s Kathleen Reid pleads her case for the virtual meeting.
Samson Li, community manager at Launch Academy, writing on Mirror: I left child and youth care to go into tech startups. Here’s what I learned in my first 3 months.
Damir Hot, CEO of Canalyst, joined the CIBC Innovation Banking podcast to discuss a powerful mindset for business growth. » Listen now.