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Hundreds of applicants competed for spots
The Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) has announced this year’s Top 20 list of Canada's most innovative Canadian technology companies, which have been selected to present at an event on Dec. 1, at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.
The CIX Top 20 is split into two groups of 10: Information and communications technologies (ICT), and digital media.
Hundreds of applications were received from across the country, and the finalists hail from the Toronto area, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, St. John's and Waterloo. The selection committee was made up of experts from corporations, as well as entrepreneurs and investors. The companies were judged on a number of key factors, including the product or service offering, the depth of management, market opportunity and business model.
The Dec. 1 event gives each business the opportunity to showcase their innovative concepts to a CIX audience of Canadian and international venture capital firms and corporate investors. A winner from each of the two categories will be chosen through a "virtual stock exchange," where event attendees buy, sell and trade virtual shares.
Here are the finalists:
Digital media:
- Massive Damage, Toronto
- Arcestra, Toronto
- Wattpad, Toronto
- Recoset, Montreal
- Achievers, Toronto
- Vanilla Forums, Montreal
- Woozworld Inc, Montreal
- Infersystems, Toronto
- ClearRisk, St. John’s
- bitHeads Inc., Ottawa
ICT:
- Shoplogix, Mississauga
- TribeHR, Waterloo
- Wave Accounting, Toronto
- Evoco Inc., Calgary
- QuickMobile, Vancouver
- Nexalogy Environics, Montreal
- ResponseTek Networks, Vancouver
- NexJ Systems, Toronto
- True Voice Technologies, Burlington
- Polar Mobile, Toronto
Scribble raises $4-million in financing
Toronto-based Scribble Technologies Inc., which publishes and delivers content in real-time online, has raised $4 million in Series A funding lead by Summerhill Venture Partners. The company says in a press release that it will use the proceeds to "strengthen its market position and aggressively expand its sales, marketing and software development activities." The ScribbleLive platform allows media companies and other big organizations, including The Globe and Mail, The New York Daily News, CBS Sports and Sky News, deliver timely and engaging content. "Today’s funding news marks the first major investment in live blogging, which validates the demand consumers have for real-time content as global events unfold,” CEO Michael De Monte says. Rogers Ventures, the venture-capital arm of Rogers Communications, also participated in the financing. Its mandate is to invest in companies with a focus on mobile finance, machine-to-machine, cloud computing, and mobile advertising technologies.
Khosla on failure breeding success
Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and of Khosla Ventures, addressed a room of entrepreneurs in a rare appearance this week at the Nasscom Product Forum in Bangalore. In the past decade, he pointed out, one of the few conferences at which he chose to be a speaker in Silicon Valley was FailCon. Such is his conviction, reads a story in Forbes India, about failures being intrinsic to entrepreneurial successes. “My willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed,” he said, kick-starting the two-day conclave. And if anyone thought that was punditry, coming from a highly successful venture capitalist, he reminded people that he didn’t start out as a VC, but as an entrepreneur, and that even as a VC he’s failed more often than many others. “You only lose one-times your money if you fail, but if you succeed, you can make 100 times. That’s the beauty of product companies." He also pointed out that government and multinationals "are largely irrelevant in the business of innovation.”
EVENTS AND KEY DATES
Angel investor comes to Calgary
