Good morning and welcome to the Sunday Briefing. I’m back, and so are in-person events, so I’d like to invite you to join me at The Home Key on April 13 for VTJ Talks: Bootstrapping Startups & Secrets. We’re bringing together the CEOs of profitable bootstrapped businesses to talk founding stories, bootstrapping pros and cons, and scaling up strategies and secrets. I hope to see you there. » You can register here. Now, onto today’s newsletter. It’s 1,171 words, a 4-minute read.

Tech community rallies to help out laid off Thinkific employees

“I'm stunned by how close-knit the Canadian tech ecosystem is and how helpful and kind folks have been,” former ‘Thinker’ Sumeru Chatterjee, an immigrant who’s lived in India and the U.S., said online. “I worked in Silicon Valley for 6 years and have never experienced this.” » Get the full story.

Yvette Wu is on the other side of the coin

How does it feel to jump from a bank to a fintech company? “You can actually get shit done.” » Start reading.

Michelle Kwok sold a company in her early 20s. What comes next?

The co-founder of FLIK is now leading community growth at Scale. » Start reading.

Branson, Pink Floyd and Apollo 13: 10 books, movies and songs I love with Dave Dinesen

The CEO of CubicFarms gives his picks. » Start reading.

The B.C. startups who pitched at Y Combinator's Winter 2022 Demo Day

Say hello to Instant Domains, Trueplace and Spade. » Start reading.

4 tips for attracting and hiring women in tech

VanHack presents its key takeaways from Breaking the Bias: Hiring and Attracting Women in Tech. » Start reading.

Fireside Chat: Women in Engineering Leadership | April 5 @ 8am PDT

Tune into VanHack’s Virtual Fireside Chat for an engaging discussion amongst a brilliant panel of women in engineering leadership including: Katya Shteyn, Co-founder & CTO @ BioRender, Lisa House, Director of Engineering @ Skywatch and Ala Frome, Co-Founder & CTO @ HiMama. The conversation will cover:

• 📌 Strategies to diversify engineering

• 📌 Journeys in moving from IC to leadership

• 📌 Challenges in their current leadership roles

Save your spot.

*Partner Message

🤝 Funding and deals

• 🚨 LayerZero Labs raises $135M, valued at $1B. The blockchain technology business is Vancouver’s latest unicorn. » Get the full story.

• Victoria-based Cognito Health closes a $1.1M pre-seed round led by Garage Capital. Its high-profile investors include Shopify co-founder Scott Lake and Redbrick’s Tobyn Sowden. » Get the full story.

• ISED Canada announced a $92 million investment into Vancouver-based adMare to help translate health research into new therapies in Canada. » Continue.

• SFU received $11.8 million from Pacific Economic Development Canada for an Agtech Innovation Soundbox and a wearable technology lab. » Continue.

• Vancouver’s Evok Innovations announced the first close of its new USD $300 million cleantech fund. » Continue.

• Vancouver-based Zoomd acquired U.S.-based AI-firm Albert to kickstart M&A strategy. » Start reading.

• Lafarge received federal funding to accelerate cleantech innovation at its Richmond cement plant through Natural Resources Canada's Energy Innovation Program. » Continue.

• LOI Venture announced investments in Coco NFT, Reusables.com and Spontivly. » Continue.

• B.C. has committed $282 million to its CleanBC Industry Fund investment; however, the province still provides $1B in fossil fuel industry subsidies, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development. » Vancouver Island Free Daily.

Uber Canada and FLO join forces to accelerate EV adoption

Uber Canada is teaming up with FLO to increase EV adoption in Vancouver, Toront, and Montreal. Read more about the Uber and FLO partnership here.

*Partner Message

🗞️ In other news…

• Overstory Media Group is hiring a vice president of marketing. » Learn more.

• The Council of Canadian Innovators released a Talent & Skills Strategy that features 13 recommendations meant to address Canada’s skills and talent shortage, including items focused on talent generation, attraction and retention. » Toronto Star.

• Top crypto, blockchain and fintech companies—including Dapper Labs, Wealthsimple and WonderFi—have created the Canadian Web3 Council (CW3) to position Canada as a leader in Web3 technology. » BetaKit.

• “The demand for EVs is a lot higher than its respective supply, so the value of used EVs has gone up materially,” according to Autozen CEO Olivier Vincent. » Daily Hive.

• Metastage and Departure Lounge announced that it set up a volumetric capture studio in Vancouver to be available for virtual reality, gaming and metaverse developers to use. » VentureBeat.

• The province of B.C. has opened a BC Hydrogen Office meant to rapidly expand hydrogen deployment and to streamline projects from proposal to construction. » Continue.

• BBTV partnered with Ethereum-based ConsenSys to support BBTV's development of NFTs for content creators. » Continue.

• Well Health announced quarterly revenues of $115.7 million (up 573 percent), a record for the firm. » BetaKit.

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💡 Ideas and insights

• Roger Patterson, CEO of Later, writing in Inc: How to Un-Polarize Your Workplace by Creating Middle Ground

• Kris Constable, CEO of CoinOS, writing on Twitter: There are Canadian politicians entering the bitcoin and blockchain narrative, but none of them I've read yet understand the fundamentals

• Farshad Abasi, founder and chief security officer, Forward Security, shares 5 tips to protect your business from cyberattacks

• Michael Gilbert, CEO of Semios, writing in Newsweek: How To Build a Culture of Curious Coachability at Work

• Nerissa Allen, CEO of the Black Business Association of BC, joined Startup Canada podcast to discuss scaling black businesses. » Listen now.

• Future Capital founder Marlon Thompson sat down with the ONSIDE podcast to discuss economic inclusion and corporate social responsibility. » Listen.

• Catherine Ducharme, co-founder of Fluency Leadership, writing on her firm’s blog: Is it Safe to Speak Up? Five Ways Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety