A View on View :: More Love for Canadian Start-Ups

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More Love for Canadian Start-Ups

by Mark Evans on Wed 12 Apr 2006 07:47 AM EDT | Permanent Link

There is little high-tech venture capital in Canada.
Sure, there are venture capital firms but they mostly act like merchant banks - cautiously and conservatively investing in companies with customers, revenue and a track record. When it comes to start-ups, Canadian VCs have no appetite for risk. This is somewhat self-defeating because if there is no money for start-ups, it is difficult for them to grow into large companies with customers, revenue and track records. There is a chance - albeit quite small - that Canada's sad financing landscape is changing after Garage Technology Ventures Canada raised C$50-million to invest in early-stage companies. Now, $50-million is not a lot of cash but it's a start in the right direction. So how does Garage Canada define early-stage? Well, it's apparently willing to invest in companies that do not have a commercial product but have customers interested in making purchases. For a Canadian VC, this is a huge leap of faith - imagine, investing in a company without a product available! For those wondering about the link between Garage Canada and Palo Alto-based Garage Technology Ventures, the Canadian firm has a license to use the GTV's secret investment sauce and the brand. Garage Canada also plans to invest as much as 25% of its capital in the GTV's deals.
Addendum: GTV managing director Guy Kawasaki has a post about his first 100 days of blogging. The only quibble I have with his list (the man loves lists!) is his aspiration to have a top-10 Technorati ranking. It's fine to have ambitions but blogging should be more about the insight you offer than your popularity.

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Re: More Love for Canadian Start-Ups

by Jeremy on Wed 12 Apr 2006 08:24 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Huh. Wonder if they'll be at the Canadian Venture Forum. Not that I'm asking for any particular reason (*cough*), heh.

Re: More Love for Canadian Start-Ups

by Steve on Thu 28 Jun 2007 06:34 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Blogging should be a way to advertise for your company in a non aggressive way, so that the reader should not feel compelled by anything to appreciate or dislike you anymore than he should. As for the sum, $50 million does seem a lot to me, it if were the working capital of the company.

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>