The long and winding road Clio took to Unicorn Country | The Morning Report

Plus 8 other headlines from the last 24 hours.

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Good Morning,

Here’s what you need to know today.

Our reporter James Matthews took a deep dive into Metro Vancouver’s latest unicorn, Clio.

The road to Unicorn Country is long and winding. There are jaw-dropping peaks and sweeping valleys. Sections where you could be in cruise control are paired with many white-knuckle S curves. For those that reach the destination, though, a moment of reflection and a reminder of where they’ve come is called for. For Clio, who sturpassed $2 billion in valuation early Tuesday morning, we thought it necessary to play back the dashcam footage from over a decade of growth.

Immersive Tech closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement financing worth $2.36 million.

  • Immersive operates the recently launched company "UNCONTAINED", the world's first COVID-safe free-roam AR/VR shipping container Location-Based Entertainment franchise.

Vancouver City council overwhelmingly voted to approve the Formula E three-day race event in the False Creek neighbourhood next summer.

The nine to one vote in favour — Mayor Kennedy Stewart was absent — now puts the ball firmly in ABB Formula E’s court, with the expectation the organization will enter into a contract with Montreal-based race promoter OSS Group and then include the Vancouver July date in its 2022 race season calendar, pending approval by the Federation International de l’Automobile (FIA).

TGS Esports Inc. (TGS), which manages Richmond’s The Gaming Studio, recently announced its acquiring esports tournament organizer Even Matchup Gaming Inc. (EMG).

  • EMG operates a variety of esports competitions, including Get On My Level (GOML), the largest fighting game tournament in Canada, Let’s Make Big Moves (Super Smash Bros.) and more.

Redbrick CEO Tobyn Sowden shares advice for attracting top talent in BC’s tech industry, now.

  • “In my experience, the type of employee who is looking to work at an Amazon or Microsoft is very different from the type of employee who wants to work at a startup. Although startups and scale-ups are competing within the same industry as these tech giants, they aren’t necessarily competing for the same talent pool,” he writes.

Local Earnings Reports (for people who pay attention to these things)

  • Mobile game group Leaf Mobile announced full-year 2020 financial results of $80.5M in 2020, a 116% increase over $37.2M recorded in 2019.

  • Martech company Wishpond announced record annual revenue of $7.8 million during fiscal 2020, compared to revenue of $6 million during fiscal 2019, an increase of 30%.

  • Nextech AR announced revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2021 of an estimated $7.5-$7.7 million, an increase of over 200% compared to the same period the previous year.

And yesterday, one of the most interesting things I saw in Vancouver tech was this post and video from Ilya Brotzky, CEO of Vanhack, a company that secures tech talent for companies, on his team hitting a major milestone.

Proud of Team VanHack for hitting 1,000 VanHackers Hired.

To celebrate we made this video recapping the journey.

Great work Andreza, Camila, Debra & Julia on it! And the rest of our incredible team for their work on changing 1,000+ lives.

Thank you to all the wonderful VanHackers and our incredible Hiring Partners.

Here's to 10,000 and beyond.

That’s it for today’s Morning Report.

For real-time updates and conversations, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Have a productive and fulfilling day. See you Sunday.

-William (@notionport)

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