There’s something to be said for sticking with a job. It certainly has worked out for Jim Breyer, who joined Accel Partners as a newly minted MBA graduate in 1987. It was a good call, Venture Capital Journal reports.
Businesses and governments everywhere are being forced to grapple with escalating, stealthy and increasingly destructive cyber-attacks. One Canadian startup believes it has a solution. This week, Cambridge, Ontario-based eSentire, which has developed an active threat detection platform popular with hedge funds, secured a $14 million Series C financing from a consortium of Canadian and U.S. venture capital firms and strategic investors to promote further growth and customer diversification.
Vancouver-based e-commerce provider Elastic Path Software has raised $5.35 million in a new financing round led by BDC Venture Capital IT Fund and joined by Yaletown Venture Partners and several angel investors. The new funds will help Elastic Path position its digital technology platform and scale its operations to anticipate a major market shift in the direction of experience-driven commerce.
Kitchener-Waterloo's Desire2Learn Inc said on Thursday it raised $85 million in venture capital funds, Canada's biggest such deal this year, as the fast-growing owner of educational software maker looks to ramp up its overseas expansion, Reuters reported. Investors in its latest financing round included Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Graham Holdings, Four Rivers Group and Aurion Capital. The deal follows an earlier $80 million round in 2012, co-led by New Enterprise Associates and OMERS Ventures, which both also contributed this time around.
There is a new Canadian technology investor in town. Gibraltar Ventures, a Toronto-based firm that is seeking to bring disruptive technology solutions to consumers and small to medium-sized businesses, this week completed the initial close of its first $50 million fund, Gibraltar Ventures Fund One LP. Backers of the fund included BDC Capital. Gibraltar has also made its first investment, leading the $5.2 million Series A financing of online tickets marketplace FanXchange.
Serial entrepreneurs have been growing their presence in Canadian innovation hubs since the tech boom of the 1990s. And several have been responsible for some of the hottest venture-backed startups to emerge of late, such as Waterloo's Auvik Networks. Repeat founders might also be having an important impact on the bottom lines of VCs. The portfolio evolution of Canadian venture capital firm Celtic House Venture Partners, a 20-year-old media communications technology investor, is illustrative of the trend.
UrgentRX Fast Powders has raised $17.5 million in a Series C growth capital financing round, according to Jordan Eisenberg, the company's founder and CEO.
D-Wave Systems Inc has raised an additional US$28.4 million in venture capital financing according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Burnaby, British Columbia-based company, which designs and manufactures quantum computing and superconducting electronics, secured the latest round from a mix of new and existing investors. Since its founding in 1999, D-Wave's Canadian and U.S. backers have included BDC Venture Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Goldman Sachs, GrowthWorks, Harris & Harris Group and Kensington Capital Partners. The company's prior round, totaling $30 million, closed in October 2012.
Spectrum Equity beat the target for its seventh fund by more than $150 million, according to an SEC filing.
Canada’s venture capital market had a pretty good year in 2013. Will the market show similar momentum in 2014? Things were looking hopeful in the first quarter, when both VC fund disbursements and deals showed year-over-year growth. In the second quarter, the auspices also appear to be favourable, primarily because of a relatively large crop of sizeable IT financing rounds.