Nibletz Staff
There’s a little known secret about our friends to the north.
Canada is quickly becoming a startup powerhouse.
In 2013, the top 10 largest VC rounds added up to over $500 million. Canadian investors definitely participated in most of the biggest rounds, but investors from the States are getting in on the action, too.
In fact, US-based investors dominated the two biggest rounds. Hootsuite’s Series B ($165 million) attracted Accel Partners and Insight Venture Partners. Shopify’s Series C ($100 million) brought in Bessemer Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Insight Venture Partners. Messaging app Kik also brought in big name investors for its $19.5 million Series B: Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, RRE Ventures.
What’s also interesting is that benchmark that some of these rounds brought the companies to.
That Series B for Hootsuite was larger than all funding into the social media monitoring vertical between the second quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013. And Shopify’s Series C made it one of those mythical unicorns: the $1 billion company. Other startups in that club? Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, and Box, just to name a few.
Like a lot of places outside Silicon Valley, Canada doesn’t have one industry it’s pushing in. The startups with the most financing ranged from ecommerce platforms to me
ssaging apps to biofuel companies. With such a wide area to cover, there’s obviously lots of room for different technologies and industries in Canada. What’s impressive is how much money overall the different verticals are raising.
So, what’s going on in the frozen north? We’ve talked about some exciting new startups based up there, too. But, when we think Canada, we don’t often think “startups.”
Is 2014 the year that changes? Check out the chart from CB Insights below and tell us what you think.
