The Vancouver startup pacing after the $30B global sneaker market | The Morning Report

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Good Morning,

Here’s what you need to know today.

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Just two months after raising a $2.5 million seed round, Vancouver sneaker community startup SoleSavy raised $15.5 million in Series A funding from a slate of investors including Shopify's president, Dapper Labs' CEO and Diplo.

Sneaker culture has grown dramatically in recent years and is expected to reach $30 billion by 2030. This growth has been matched by an increase in bots, fraud, market manipulation and unfair practices that have negatively impacted consumers. With this funding, SoleSavy hopes to invest in and harness technology to improve the sneaker market experience for consumers. ➝ Get the full story.

Vancouver’s Semios, a growing agtech company, announced today the acquisition of Wenatchee, Washington-based Centricity, a company specializing in data collection for agriculture.

On June 8, Vancouver Tech Journal reported that Semios’ acquisition of Altrac—a Californian agriculture automation platform—was part of a larger plan. We were told then that the company had more deals on the horizon. Centricity is the next to come into view. ➝ Get the full story.

Published on Sunday: The past year has demonstrated the importance of technology and innovation to countless industries, ranging from healthcare to education to fitness.

But accelerating digital transformation brings new challenges to light, as it increases cyber risk and vulnerability in businesses of every size in every sector.

To explore and discuss these issues, the Vancouver Entrepreneurs’ Forum is hosting “The OMFG Report” & What Software Developers Need to Know. It’s VEF’s final event of the season, taking place this afternoon, Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 3:45pm.

In advance, Vancouver Tech Journal spoke with a number of cybersecurity experts about their thoughts on the biggest cybersecurity threats and trends for 2021. “Businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on software we expect to be engineered like bridges, but are more often than not hacked together like my childhood treehouse,” warned one expert. ➝ Read more of what they had to say.

To celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, the Vancouver Economic Commission showcased 10 organizations committed to regenerating Indigenous prosperity and facilitating economic reconciliation through investment, education, and relationship-building.

Dapper Labs has hired Dave Feldman as vice president of marketing, poaching him from the NFL where he served as vice president of social media marketing.

The company also hired Tristan Rattink as the new general manager of its non-fungible token (NFT) platform, NBA Top Shot, a new role, according to a company spokesperson.

That’s it for today’s Morning Report.

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Have a productive and fulfilling day. See you on Sunday.

-William (@notionport)