Throw in one of their applications as a recent addition to Canadian startup Hootsuite’s ever-growing lineup of impressive apps and the future looks bright for Nexalogy.

But CEO Claude G. Théoret emphasizes that the social data analytics company can never afford to sit back and relax in the oft-changing nature of social media and web trends.

“Tinkering is always non-stop, that’s my philosophy,” said Théoret. “And you always have to make it better: it’s always continual improvement.”

Nevertheless, this Montreal start-up has a lot to be confident about- from being the only business named in the CIX Top 20 without having Series A funding (let alone the $2 million that nearly every other company already had) to gaining $600,000 in angel investment to going revenue-positive this past summer.

And they haven’t even finished developing their professional tool.

So what is it that Nexalogy is doing that investors and contest judges have been so impressed about?

They solve the problem of social data overload by calculating the interest graphs from any social feed. Primarily twitter, but also including blogs and facebook.

“Nexalogy Environics is on the cusp of what we call social data analytics and predictive analysis,” said Théoret.

The amount of data that we’re seeing is doubling every 1.5 years, and in the past five years we’ve seen 10 times more data, he explained. So companies can use the startup to analyze the interest graph of any social media tool, including hashtags.

In fact, this past spring and summer the company analyzed hashtags of the student demonstrations in Montreal, the NHL playoffs and the provincial elections.

Nexalogy focused on revenue very early on and were able to gain angel investment in 2010 via Environics, a Toronto company. Although Théoret and partner/CFO Eric Steedman had been working on the idea since 2008 the company was born in 2010.

They’re currently on track to gain nearly $400,000 for their new tool, which will be launched in mid-2013.

Théoret walks the fine line of a CEO with a confident but realistic mindset. He thinks with the right funding they can be a $100 million company in three years. Outside factors could intervene though.

“You never know,” he said. “A recession could hit us again and there’s a lot of very aggressive US competition.”

The right funding could be found using a tool like Fundica’s free online funding database. “I think it’s a great idea,” said Théoret.

His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to concentrate on revenues and build a solid business foundation first. Don’t give up too much equity in your first rounds.

As for the short-term future the company is transitioning the organization from a product-focused and R&D focused organization to a sales organization. Based on their success so far, Nexalogy looks ready to deliver on any goal.

Try it out at www.fundica.com or call us at 1-855-386-3422 (FUNDICA) if you would like to learn more.

Sans vous connecter en tant qu'entrepreneur ou fournisseur de financement, vous pouvez rechercher les programmes disponibles dans le système. Après avoir entré les mots-clés liés à la recherche, un top cinq de publications est affiché. Vous avez la possibilité de cliquer sur chacun d'entre eux afin d'en voir la description complète. Par la suite, connectez-vous pour avoir accès à tous les programmes correspondant à vos critères de financement. 

Venez essayer notre nouvel outil de recherche au www.fundica.com ou appelez au 1(855) 386-3422 pour plus d'information.

“Our findings indicate that hundreds of millions in revenue are flowing to entrepreneurs and businesses engaged in the development of apps by a diversity of enterprises across the country,” said economist Sharif Faisal.

During 2012 smartphone users in Canada will exceed 13 million compared to 9.1 million in 2011, representing a significant jump.  

“Obviously that’s a fantastic number. It is surprising,” said Doepker. “Mobile developers are hard to come by and considering how long the mobile landscape has been around (which is not very long), to have a stat like that is quite impressive.”

“The more the smartphone users, the bigger the app economy becomes. Apps are, without doubt, a significant contributor to the digital economy in Canada,” said Faisal.

“The biggest challenge for SMEs is to showcase credibility with banks to access funding,” read the report. “They typically have small or no assets to pledge as collateral and thus are less likely to receive loans.”

“In my world ideas are worth about ten cents and the rest is execution, talent and effort,” he said. “Every idea is not a great idea and if you’re if your looking at investing your $150,000 or $200,000, and you know seven or eight out of 10 startups fail, how inclined are you to throw in your life savings?”

In the 39-page report the ICTC explores:

• The economics of app creation: The costs associated with developing apps, funding mechanisms of app enterprises, opportunities and challenges to funding app initiatives;
  
  
• The total expenditure on apps and related products and services by Canadians;
  
  
• The various avenues of revenue generation and the total revenue generated by the Canadian app-makers;
  
  
• The growth potential of the app economy and estimated job creation in this segment as a result of companies and developers looking to build new apps for the growing number and variety of devices coming to market;
  
  
• Various technical and non-technical occupations engaged in app creation as well as their composition and direct employment in the app economy; and
  
  
• Consideration of the potential policy measures that may be beneficial to increasing the contribution made by apps developers to innovation and productivity in Canada.
  
  
  by Joseph Czikk
  jczikk@fundica.com

Below are the most important aspects of the budget for businesses in Quebec.

Taxation of refundable tax credits

For businesses, refundable tax credit amounts from the list below that are received after November 20th 2012 will now be considered income and taxed accordingly. Prior to the budget, they were not taxed provincially. Included in this list is the refundable credit for scientific research and experimental development, and:

• The refundable tax credit for university research and research carried on by a public research centre or consortium.
• The refundable tax credit for fees and dues paid by a research consortium.
• The refundable tax credit for private partnership pre-competitive research.
• The refundable credit for on-the-job training periods.
• The refundable credit for design.
• The refundable credit for the construction or conversion of vessels.

Refundable tax credit for Biopharmaceutical R&D

Large biopharmaceutical corporations and SMEs with expenditures over $3 million and that were previously claiming the lower 17,5% tax credit will now be entitled to a 27.5% tax credit over the next five years. Eligibility must be obtained on an annual basis.

New Tax Holiday for Large Investment Projects

The previous tax holiday for large investment projects has been scrapped in favor of a new program called the “THI”. In this new program certain corporations and partnerships that begin to carry out a large investment project (over $300 million) in Québec after November 20, 2012 may, under certain conditions, obtain a ten year tax holiday. This tax holiday is applicable to large investment projects in the manufacturing (including the mineral and wood processing), data processing and storage, wholesale trade or warehousing sectors.

Tax Credit for M & P Equipment

A qualified corporation that acquires a qualified property may receive a tax credit for investments relating to manufacturing and processing equipment. The tax credit applies to certain property acquired before January 1, 2016 whereas for other qualified property the acquisition has to occur before January 1, 2018.  The base rate of the credit is 5%, but for certain businesses operating in more rural areas of Quebec the credit can be increased to 40%.

Other interesting business related announcements included  the establishment of the Banque de développement économique du Québec (BDEQ)  to improve guidance and support to companies wishing to grow and invest in all regions of Quebec and a commitment to the venture capital industry and green technologies. More details are expected on these commitments.

Venture capital fundraising slowed down significantly during the July - September period, with $42 million in new commitments being raised. Last year at this time the numbers added up to $365 million in new capital.

Despite this there was optimism in the $1.5 billion in capital raised as of September 30^th. It meant that 2012 has already surpassed total fund raising activity in 2011.

“I think the VC investment data highlights an important inflection point in the market, and while it might be disappointing to some to see flat year-over-year venture capital investment levels, a deeper dive into the data highlights the investment activities of funds that have closed in past 12 months, and this bodes well for the balance of the year”, said Peter van der Velden, President of the CVCA. “At the same time the data reveals that funding and investment levels in VC sector continue to materially lag the US.”

Real Ventures’ Gabriel Sundaram furthered this point. Despite Canada’s seemingly perpetual second-place finish to that of the US in terms of venture capital, some Canadian startups are starting to benefit from the greenback.

“I think there’s a lot of room for growth in Canada, so it is possible that we see several years in a row of decent growth because relative to the US market, Canada is still in its early stages,” said the investment analyst. “But we’re also seeing an increase in the number of US investors that are coming across to Canada and investing.”

An example of that is Frank & Oak, who first received investment from Real Ventures and Anges Quebec, and recently benefitted from US investors. In mid October it was announced that they had received a further $5 million from Lightbank, a VC firm from Chicago started by Groupon Inc. co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, Rho Canada Ventures and Real Ventures.

“US investors are recognizing that there’s good opportunity there,” said Sundaram.

The CVCA quarterly report and recent US investment brings forth another discussion on whether Canadian startups should be looking for domestic investors or foreign investors, namely those south of the border.

While one Toronto CEO infamously remarked that “money is green”, Sundaram thinks that a hybrid investment might be better than blindly agreeing to a turn sheet from any investor.

There are different advantages to working with both Canadian and American investors. There’s more money in the US, especially in the valley, but Canadian investors will likely understand the needs of the company in detail.

“The good companies are not necessarily taking money for money’s sake only, they’re also trying to bring on good partners,” said Sundaram. “Bringing on a partner who understands your specific needs a lot of times is more important than money alone.”

The province recently announced in the budget a 10-year corporate tax holiday on companies that invest more than $300-million in new data-centre or other large investment projects. Big data infrastructure often requires big investments. 

In a recent interview, Industrial Policy Minister Élaine Zakaïb mentioned that the province is open to lowering hydroelectricity rates for certain companies. A committee comprised of Premier Pauline Marois, Hydro-Quebec chief Thierry Vandal and Natural Resources Minister Martine Ouellet will examine potential rate cuts on a case-by-case basis. “We have the knowledge, climate, hydroelectricity and there is a huge demand for the infrastructure needed in cloud computing,” said Industrial Policy Minister Élaine Zakaïb in a recent interview. 

This is not the first time that the province has made it an attractive place for companies in chosen strategic areas to do business. Sixteen years ago the province successfully did the same thing for the video gaming and multimedia industry.

Montreal has attracted industry giants like Ubisoft Entertainment SA, THQ Inc., Funcom NV and Square Enix Holdings Co. Ubisoft pioneered the province’s gaming renaissance in 1997 by moving to Montreal. Now they employ more than 2,000 people in the company’s largest studio. In total, the entire Quebec sector employs over 8,000 employees with 50 companies publishing video games and 30 others creating supporting accessories. 

It is the province’s hope that they can replicate the effect on the video gaming industry on the big data industry. 

If you are looking for equity funding for your company, try our funding search tool.

The twenty-five entrepreneurs chosen to present their projects were certainly not disappointed with the outstanding group of funders who were sitting on the panel and listening to their pitches. These included Mitac’s Jesse Vincent-Herscovici, Anges Québec’s Caroline Pelletier, Real Venture’s John Stokes, BDC Venture Capital’s Steven Abrams, Maude Théroux-Séguin from the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF), Robert Déziel from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Philippe Chrun from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) as well as Raha Pooyania from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).

Of course, the real excitement began with the entrepreneur presentations as everyone was eager to get a first look at the new and innovative products and services that would be pitched. Even if you missed yesterday’s launch of the 2013 Funding Roadshow, we will not keep you in suspense—here are some of the highlights from the day’s presenters.

Presenter ReturnMoi™ is one of North America’s largest lost & found companies that helps return lost items to their rightful owners. ReturnMoi recovery tags help identify and protect all types of portable items ranging from cell phones to laptops, keys to luggage and even pets, such as cats and dogs. Finders are motivated to return lost items because ReturnMoi’s system is simple, convenient, confidential and rewarding. ReturnMoi boasts an incredible return rate of over 80% of all lost tagged items with 48 hours.

Another standout presenter was Trudat, a web-based platform provider for data sharing and visual analytics that is easy to use and prioritizes collaboration across a range of domains and analytic expertise. Trudat’s objective is to increase productivity and insights by turning a tedious and challenging process into an engaging and visually appealing one. It was designed to help organizations turn data into insights and unlock data and analytic expertise within organizations and beyond. It connects people around the data so that they can get to work on solutions faster. User interface design is prioritized so that all levels of users can discover relevant data, ask and answer analytical questions, and share findings with the wider community.

Groom Global presented an innovative service business to the panel — a service that is designed to increase the efficiency of hiring personnel from outside the country. The company has developed a unique algorithm that matches visa-status with job qualifications, thereby helping employers to find and hire foreign workers more quickly and more easily.

Much more is to come as the 2013 Funding Roadshow moves on to Ottawa. The Ottawa event takes place on May 16^th and there are still a few openings for entrepreneurs who would like to pitch for funding. After Ottawa, the remaining events will be held in Toronto (May 17^th), Vancouver (May 24^th), Calgary (May 29^th), and Edmonton (May 30^th). Although the Toronto event is sold out, both funders and entrepreneurs still have a chance to join the show in Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton.

In each city, the main events with business pitches from entrepreneurs begin at 9:00 AM and continue until 5:00 PM, but not to be missed is the networking opportunity that has been organized for participants from generally 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM at a local pub. 

They combined the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade (MDEIE), the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Tourism into the Ministry of Finance and Economy.

Importantly for startups, such important funding programs formerly under the MDEIE, like Research and Innovation programs, are now under the responsibility of the new Ministry of Higher Education and Science & Technology Research.

Apparently several more major changes are on the way within large organizations that could affect programs available to assist Quebec businesses. 

"These new Growing Forward 2 programs will build on the success of existing programs to provide more streamlined support to the sector to help it remain a world leader in agricultural innovation and trade," said Gerry Ritz, Minister of Agriculture. "We are making sure farmers and the entire sector have the tools and resources they need to stay ahead of the ever-changing demands of consumers."

By April 1, 2013 three new funding programs will come into effect.

The AgriInnovation Program will provide investments to help the sector develop and commercialize new products and technologies. It is designed to accelerate innovation by supporting research and development. 

They will be providing assistance through non-repayable support or access to research scientists and experts for knowledge transfer. Two types of non-repayable contributions will be available:

The AgriInnovation program will also assist in commercializing products, technologies, processes or services. This will also be done through non-repayable contributions. 

The AgriMarketing Program will ensure that improved assurance systems meet consumer and market demands while promoting Canadian products to world markets. In doing this it will invest in projects that differentiate and promote Canadian products and projects that can create a competitive advantage through credible health claims (including food safety and traceability systems).  

Finally the AgriCompetitiveness Program will make investments in order to help the sector adapt to international and domestic markets. They intend on improving the sector’s ability to respond to market trends and improving entrepreneurial capacity. 

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is also assisting farmers in gaining information about the funding programs and ensuring applications are complete. The AgriInnovation program will be accepting applications immediately while the AgriMarketing and the AgriCompetitiveness programs will begin accepting applications in early January. 

They will also continue to offer business risk management programs in order to continue to help farmers withstand market volatility and disasters.

BizSpark offers startups up to 8 MSDN Ultimate subscriptions for their developers, which includes Visual Studio, Expression Studio, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Phone tools, SQL Server and more. As part of the program, startups also will get Windows Azure benefits, $6,500 a year in fact, to get your business up in the cloud! Evernote, RDIO & Careerify have already started reaping the rewards of BizSpark to build their products.

So how does BizSpark work? Startups from around the world can visit bizspark.com and submit an application describing the technology they are building. If you meet the eligibility requirements stated above and get approved, you can start taking advantage of your BizSpark benefits and develop incredible software. The program runs for three years and does not cost startups anything and there is no contract involved either. When a startup graduates from the program, they can keep all the software they and get a significant discount on updates and continued support. 

In addition, BizSpark members receive other great benefits including access to a huge community of peers spanning 100 countries, connections to investors and mentors and partner offers including free analytics and other apps. Members also receive a developer store account for the Windows & Windows Phone stores. Microsoft wants startups building great apps and the BizSpark program puts you in the ideal environment to achieve create amazing software and achieve your goals. Apply today and get coding while saving money.

To learn more about BizSpark, get help on accessing your benefits including videos & example usage check out the Canadian BizSpark page on WootStudio.

“There’s a challenge in getting a taxi when and where you need one and an issue of the quality of the ride you’re getting,” said the former corporate IT management worker.

A free mobile app, FastCab instantly connects a passenger to the nearest cab, wherever they are.

A two-way rating system allows both passengers and drivers alike to rate each other based on safety, theoretically enabling the highest rated customers to be rewarded by gaining a taxi the quickest. Meanwhile the highest rated drivers are rewarded with more business.

There is also the other side of their service addressing why there is not enough drivers when and where you need them. FastCab has increased safety for the drivers through customer accounts and the rating system, as well as the additional motivation of allowing customers to offer cash incentives for quicker pickup. Doepker sees it as a win - win combination for the driver and customer.

“It’s to address both concerns and to include some motivation for drivers as well as for the customers who are obviously the driving-force behind this service,” said Doepker.

Despite the fact that FastCab has had to grapple through a seemingly endless industry rulebook that differs by region (every municipality enforces it’s own delivery bylaws) Doepker emphasizes that the industry needs this.

“We’ve been received extremely well by consumers and passengers,” he said. “This is a service that people want- there’s no reason to not use the technology in our pockets and in our hands for improvement.”

Nevertheless, because they are a new technology in an industry that still relies on two-way radios in certain areas, they’ve encountered resistance.

“Overall the industry is in a very defensive stance because this is a very disruptive and industry-changing technology,” said Doepker. 

But even as change comes slow to this industry, drivers are beginning to warm up to the huge potential that FastCab’s service represents. It generates more fares and allows drivers and passengers to see who is waiting around the corner.

Along with three other co-founders Doepker has been working on the project for a year.

They also worked for five months before this, researching to create a monetized model that would not contravene the bylaws that exist in the cab industry. They work alongside existing infrastructure, gradually changing their scope while leveraging benefits to drivers and passengers.

In Calgary’s supportive and still-growing entrepreneurial community FastCab bootstrapped their entire first year, choosing to make friends first before going after funding.

“We’ve spent time really getting involved with the community,” said Doepker. “People are more willing to lend money to someone they know rather than someone they don’t know.”

It hasn’t been easy for the company though. Problems like US brain drain affect them just as much as anyone else when seeking out new team members. The mutually exclusive problem of fluctuating drivers and customers also hurts. With fewer customers comes less drivers, and vice-versa.

The immediate future looks positive though as they will be releasing their android app soon.

While they heard about the Fundica Startup Contest through a Startup Calgary tweet, they are very much in support of what Fundica offers SMEs.

“I think it’s a fantastic site; it’s a great opportunity for start ups to look at what funding options are available to them all in one site,” he said. 

Last week a government-sponsored aerospace review was released, compiled by former Conservative cabinet minister David Emerson. The federal government launched the review in February 2010.

The review criticizes the Canadian government for allowing a highly respected aerospace economy to flounder with a lack of clear priorities, uneven performance and unpredictable funding. 

In the two-volume report Emerson says that Canada has every reason to be proud of itself as a global aerospace power. The countries’ efforts “have made us more innovative, more prosperous, and safer.”

But he insisted we cannot rest on past successes and called for a “reset” of the program.

“We need to redouble our efforts to develop the aerospace technologies of the future and secure our place in global markets and supply chains.” 

The report called for better support of projects and collaborative research, increased bilateral cooperation agreements with the US, Europe and emerging powers like China and India, to establish 10-year, 5-year and annual priorities, and to create conditions conducive to the expansion of space-related commercial activity.  

Part of the problem is that the government announced it would reduce the budget of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) from $424 million to $363 million by spring 2013. That number could even eventually fall to $300 million, although this could change if the government approves new space projects. 

The report recommended that predictable funding for the CSA should be stabilized for at least a decade. This could inject life into struggling R&D firms currently operating in Canada. 

The trickle down effect has seen two of Canada’s prominent aerospace R&D firms being forced to lay off employees.

MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) in British Columbia has laid off more than 100 employees while Ontario’s COM DEV has cut 31 employees. 

David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen wrote about a brain-drain effect that has resulted from this.

COM DEV’s CEO Mike Pley told the Citizen that Canada needs a long-term space strategy so companies are knowledgeable about potential projects and can effectively plan and invest. 

Moreover a long-term plan like this would erode the current uncertainty about potential jobs in the Canadian aerospace ecosystem, said Mike Kirby, an Ottawa-based space industry consultant. 

While the review has been widely portrayed in a negative light by media outlets, there is optimism. The fact that the federal government tabled the report indicates a willingness to improve.  

The Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) released a statement indicating that they too are ready to do their part and that they welcomed the findings of the report.  

Part of the motivation for the report has been the nation’s poor track record in initiatives over the past five years. 

Previously the Department of National Defense had warned that satellites had to be put in place by 2015 or Canada would not have any space-based surveillance. The Radarsat Constellation Mission was subsequently announced in 2005.

However, the project has been delayed by at least two years while the estimated costs have increased from $600 million to at least $855 million. 

Speaking with the National Post, MDA’s executive VP Dave Caddey may have summed it up the best. “It’s not an easy time to be in the space business,” he said. “It’s challenging.”

Once installed on your website, this funding identification tool provides a more engaging and personalized experience for your visitors. The widget will turn your website into a comprehensive funding reference site with over 2500 funding programs and automatically keep your website up-to-date for free. It enables you to offer your visitors a free but extremely valuable service, giving them an additional reason to return to your site on a regular basis, and setting the foundation for them to use your chargeable services as well.

Although implementation of the widget on most websites is simple and can be done in minutes, site owners who would prefer to have someone else do the coding can get all the support they need from Publikit for a very modest fee.

In addition to their technical know-how, Publikit, founded by Montreal-based entrepreneurs Josh and Noah Redler, has some very interesting products. They offer custom web packages at a fixed rate that enable entrepreneurs to get set up online quickly with a web presence they can continue to build on. They also have an ecommerce package designed for growing businesses that are seeking to sell their products and services directly through their website.

Check out our Find-Funding-Widget on sites such as Launch Lab and Mon Projet d’Affaires. If you have any comments or suggestions, we will be glad to hear them. Just send us an email or give us a call at 1-855-386-3422.

A national, grassroots, entrepreneur-led, non-profit organization, Startup Canada is contributing to the success of entrepreneurs across Canada by providing them with much needed guidance and education. Likewise, it is helping academic, industry, and government leaders to understand how they can improve their support for Canadian entrepreneurs, and are educating the media and the Canadian public about the vital role that entrepreneurs play in creating a more sustainable and prosperous Canada.

Underlining the importance of promoting and assisting in the creation of a strong entrepreneurial culture and a national network of startup communities, Victoria Lennox, CEO of Startup Canada, recently referred to the Harper government’s acknowledgement that entrepreneurs and the businesses they create are the backbone of the Canadian economy, employing nearly half of the Canadian working population.

Without doubt, this entrepreneurial strength has contributed to Canada’s relative economic stability since the 2008 recession, but more has to be done as we continue to lag behind many other nations in terms of productivity, one of the most important drivers of prosperity. Interestingly, in a recent document produced by Deloitte entitled “The Future of Productivity – An Eight-step Game Plan for Canada”, three of the eight proposed actions were directly focused on entrepreneurship and innovation.

What exactly is Startup Canada’s “Startup Canada Communities” project that launches on May 2^nd, and what can you expect from the event? The project has been developed to help communities become startup laboratories that create innovative new businesses and employ people by balancing the needs of entrepreneurs, investors, universities, mentors, service providers, government and communities themselves. To achieve this goal, Startup Canada is building a national network of startup communities where entrepreneurs can access events, support, space, mentors, funding and much more.

The May 2^nd launch kicks off at 1:00 PM EST with Kelly McGregor hosting the #startupchats Panel on Twitter under the theme: “Re-Inventing Canada—The Case for Startup Communities.” At 3:00 PM, Ken Bautista, founder of Startup Edmonton, will share his journey and lessons in building a startup community from the ground up, and at 4:00 PM, Startup Canada’s co-founder and CEO, Victoria Lennox, will explain what the Startup Canada Communities project is and how it works as a tool that can contribute to the success of your startup.

The feature event begins at 6:00 PM, and you are invited to join Startup Canada’s Pilot Communities and a Special All-Star Panel for a live Google Hangout streamed event exploring global trends, best practices, and insights into the global startup movement. For all the details and the opportunity to register now, please visit the Startup Canada Communities launch webpage.

Help spread the word with these social media graphics and stay tuned for news and updates! See you online on May 2nd!

The conference is being held in Ottawa from April 9th to 10th and  will feature a number of prominent players in the innovation scene, with six keynote speakers including Tom Jenkins (Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer, OpenText™ Corporation), Dr. Darrell Bricker (Chief Executive Officer, Ipsos Global Public Affairs) and Jayson Myers (President & CEO, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters). Four panels, featuring distinguished panelists such as Ted Hewitt (Executive Vice-President, SSHRC) Charles Lax (Managing Partner, GrandBanks Capital, Boston) and Lanis Anthony (CEO, CCINC Group of Companies), will each address unique perspectives within the innovation community.

To learn more or to register, please visit http://www.researchmoneyinc.com. Questions? Contact Rebecca Melville at rebecca@impactg.com or 416.481.7070 ext 33.

Toutes personnes intéressées aux domaines de l’acquisition, de la vente, des finances et du refinancement sont chaleureusement invitées à participer. Pour le moment, près de 300 participants sont attendus.

Parmi les conférenciers invités se trouvent M. François Armand, Vice-Président régional aux Services financiers commerciaux (Québec Est) chez RBC et M. Christian Kokorian, Vice-Président et Chef d’équipe, Revenu fixe et devises (Québec et Maritimes) chez RBC. Quatre ateliers seront également offerts par des experts du milieu et aborderont divers sujets, tels que les implications fiscales des  réacquisitions et reprises d'entreprises, la réussite des entreprises en forte croissance et le financement des transactions fusions et acquisitions. La journée se terminera par un cocktail afin de permettre aux participants de réseauter.

Cet évènement est une opportunité pour les gens d’affaires québécois d’acquérir de nouvelles connaissances et d’établir de nombreux contacts dans le milieu. Il s’agira vraisemblablement d’une journée bien chargée, mais qui rapporte, pour les participants!http://ffpmedrummondville.com/

L’inscription à ce forum est possible en ligne.

After identifying an appropriate funding program/product, an entrepreneur should validate the funding program/product. The validation step requires ensuring the funding program/product is still right for the entrepreneur by examining complex, very specific, or evolving aspects not covered in the identification step. If the identification process is well carried out and effectively screens out inappropriate funding programs/products, the validation step should be considerably simplified. However, the validation process should still logically be carried out before the more time consuming steps of application and verification. 

The validation process should ideally be carried out by an expert that is knowledgeable in the programs/products identified. This is an important step, but like funding identification, should not be a costly or lengthy part of the process.

Application

After a funding program/product has been identified and validated, an application must be sent to the funding provider. Generally, the application step needs to be completed before the related expenditures are funded; but in certain instances, most notably with certain tax credits, it may be undertaken following the expenditures. The application process can be as simple as a one page application form, but could also require much more detailed information, such as: financial forecasts, full business plan, technical reports, or other documents. Many applications are very specific in what they are looking for, but there may or may not be well defined documents related to the application process to assist the entrepreneur.
In certain cases the application process is relatively straight forward and does not require any specific expertise, but in other cases (often applications for more significant amounts) the application process can be quite demanding and require specialized expertise and experience.

Verification

Prior to acceptance of the funding program/product by the funding source, the application must be verified by an authority. This may involve an in-depth review or audit process, or may simply be a simple acceptance or refusal. The best way for an entrepreneur to ensure verification for the funding product/process is to ensure that the funding identification, validation, and application were well done.  This should naturally lead to approval in the verification step.

Ideally, the verification process is carried out by the same team that worked on the application process. In certain cases, additional specialized expertize needs to be bought in, but this is often more costly at this stage of the process.

The costs associated with each funding step will be examined in an upcoming second post.

If you are looking for equity funding for your company, try our funding search tool.

The term “equity” is thrown around a lot and beyond its general connotation to what is “just” or “right”; its meaning can vary depending on context.

For example, Webster’s dictionary provides the following distinctions:

Definition c is most appropriate for the financial world, where equity generally refers to ownership in an asset minus any debts. Thus equipment, land or a building are considered equity if they can be sold for profit. If they are used to generate income they might also be referred to as “capital”. On the other hand, if the asset in question is a company, the terms “stock”, “private/public equity”, “stockholders equity” can be used.

Additional uses of the word equity

The term equity release is used by insurance companies and refers to the process of turning a property into a long term loan, either by releasing a lump sum or by putting that money on reserve and turning it into a steady stream of income. The concept very much resembles “equity loans” or “mortgage loans” but with the addition of age restrictions and without monthly payments.

Our definition

On our website, we used the term equity to refer to any type of funding aside from loans, loan guarantees, grants and tax credits that require profit sharing or the attribution of shares. This includes complex derivatives, hedge funds, royalty programs, and other instruments.

Students supporting youth at risk is the motivating force behind the yearly 5 Days for The Homeless campaign. It was founded as a local initiative by University of Alberta School of Business students, and after running very successfully for a number of years on the Edmonton campus at the University of Alberta, it was taken national in 2008. To date, the campaign has raised over $985,000 for charitable organizations across the country and has spread its message from coast to coast.

The Montreal event will begin on Wednesday, March 13th at 8 PM, on the corner of de Maisonneuve and Mackay streets. Not only will 5 Days for the Homeless give Montrealers the opportunity to support a worthy cause with their donations, but also to develop a better understanding of what it is really like to have to live on the street—they will be able to follow the lead of a committed group of people who will live on the sidewalk for five days and nights to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.

This year, Josh is reaching out to members of the tech community, asking them to contribute to the success of the campaign by supporting his Coding from the Curb initiative on Wednesday night.  Josh will be there with his laptop, working through the night, and it would be amazing to have a bunch of people working with him on their own projects from the site.  This would contribute to the visibility of the event, create more buzz, and garner much needed financial support from the participants themselves, from their friends, neighbours, and colleagues, and from passers-by.

Even if you cannot stay the night, come for a while, encourage those who are staying, and drop some change to support the campaign 5 Days for the Homeless or simply follow the #codingfromthecurb campaign on Twitter.

. By seeking to award contracts for qualified innovations to Canadian businesses, the CICP can be of high value to a home-grown start-up struggling to find buyers. 

• Testing and providing feedback to these entrepreneurs on the performance of their goods or services.    

• Providing innovators with the opportunity to enter the marketplace with a successful application of their new goods and services.    

• Providing information on how to do business with the Government of Canada.

• The maximum funding available is $500,000.00   
• Any organization, university, private company, not-for-profit organization or individual can submit a proposal   
• Each bid will receive a 'technical score' and those with the highest scores will receive priority funding. Bidders will receive their scores        
• The program isn't only for small and medium-sized businesses - all suppliers are treated fairly and equally   
• A bidder can submit more than one application, but only one innovation per application   
• Travel and living costs for training and support at the testing department site during the testing period can be included in the financial proposal costs.

A few weeks ago, we blogged about a CVCA report that stated after two quarters of 2012, VC investment had risen three times as much from the previous year- or 344 per cent. Yes, the staggering number amounted to $683 million after (only) quarter two, pushing this year’s total up to $1.2 billion. Last year’s total at the same time was just $460 million.

It turns out that Quebec funding represented 52 per cent of that $1.2 billion number.

Like the original report, the good news comes with bad news. The level of investments actually shrank by 25 per cent. In total just 49 firms obtained funding, 23% less than in the second quarter of 2011.

CIX 2012

 

For those interested in collaborative approaches in technological innovation, November 27^th is a date not to be missed. The Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) will take place at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Several keynote speakers will address topics and trends during the exchange that was sold-out last year.

 

Two programs associated with this convention should be of interest to young entrepreneurs and start-ups.

 

The CIX Top 20 is designed to showcase Canada’s hottest innovative companies working in digital media and information and communication technology.

 

An expert panel will select 20 companies to be showcased at the CIX, which means the chance to connect with potential partners and investors while gaining broad media and industry recognition. Other rewards include a web marketing kit and more.

 

Any Canadian company in digital media or information and communication technology earning under $10 million can apply before the deadline of October 12^th.

 

There is also a development opportunity through both the CIX and the Canadian government, connecting start-ups with Silicon Valley.

 

The Consulate-operated Canadian Technology Accelerator will provide Canadian companies with the opportunity to work rent-free for three months in a fully serviced development space at either RocketSpace in San Francisco or the Plug and Play Tech Center (PnP) in Sunnyvale, CA – located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Successful companies will work alongside over 250 tech start-ups from over 20 countries.

 

All applicants who submit their profiles to the CIX Top 20 will be considered for this program. This also means that only companies developing digital media or information and communication technology are eligible.

 

Last year Montreal start-up Nexalogy placed fifth and won one of the spots for a stint in Silicon Valley. The company’s next-generation software filters through social media content to identify and analyze what’s important to the user’s preferences.

The vetting that the CIX provided to Nexalogy was the most important thing they took from it, according to Claude Theoret. To have an organization like the CIX objectively vote on his idea and throw their support into what they thought was interesting and unique was key for the CEO.

 

“Secondly, we’ve literally gotten cold calls from US VCs as a consequence of CIX.” Said Theoret.

 

For young entrepreneurs and start-ups looking to make their profile with the CIX, Theoret stressed putting a lot of time into it and treating it as something that can be the next step in your business.

 

“I wholeheartedly recommend the process for everyone,” said Theoret. “Getting up there and pitching in front of a room full of people and only having 5 minutes to refine your message is very good. All the form involved in being able to apply, to go down there, to meet people, to be able to get on stage and everything you do will be useful whether you win or not.”

by Joseph Czikk
jczikk@fundica.com

The company delivers solutions to assist the group buying industry through a centralized, easy-to-use marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. Once on the platform users create a group and seek more members through social media. Groups specify products and services they wish to buy and the site has a list of potential merchants who can compete against each other to provide groups with the best price.

“We’re going back to the real concept of buying in a group instead of just offering a deal,” said Chateauvert. “The idea is to connect the buyers and the sellers locally and to offer a chance for the seller to gain new customers that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”

Coming from an engineering and project management background Chateauvert saw limitations in the current group buying industry.

Flash sales (limited time discounts on a product or service) have dominated the market with sites like TeamBuy and Groupon. On these sites, a deal becomes active as soon as it goes live. Here the concept of authentic group buying (where users leverage discounts through increased numbers) is not completely present.

“Rarely will you see a minimum number of buyers: merchants can make offers but maybe five people will buy it,” said Chateauvert. “So the idea of true group buying has been left behind.”

Save In Team is differentiating itself through reverse auctioning, meaning the cost goes down as time goes on. Whereas most popular group buying sites offer temporary deals through a traditional auction format, reverse auction is where a single buyer offers a contract out for bidding and multiple sellers are then able to offer bids on the contract. Sellers compete against each other to provide the best price.

“It will be much more interesting for the sellers because they’ll be offering a price based on their costs but they’ll be competing against other local sellers,” said Chateauvert. “They’ll be in the same industry with more or less the same costs so it’s going to be a fair competition.”

They have been working on the platform since October 2011 and are planning for a late January 2013 launch. The company has been self-funded thus far and is actively seeking funding by way of Fundica’s free online matching tool.

“We discovered Fundica which is a really nice website to give you easy access to tools that can help in the startup phase,” said Chateauvert. “We use the tool to see what programs we can apply for – it’s really easy access to that type of information.”

The team is also looking for potential mentors. They have started the process of seeking out those who can challenge their business models and point them in the right direction.

They have ambitious plans and are passionate about providing a better solution to group buying. Now these ambitious plans must come to fruition and Save In Team is setting targets for the new year.

“The platform is going well,” said Chateauvert. “We would like to hit 10,000 users in three months after the site goes live and to watch that number grow.”

Luc Chateauvert is Founder and President at Save In Team. You can contact him at Luc@DealLife.com.

For more information on Montreal Consulting or their management consulting services, you can contact them at 514-658-0938 or email contact@montrealconsulting.com.

1. Only Take on Commercially Attractive Projects
2. Retain Good Time and Expense Records
3. Undertake Systematic Development
4. Understand the Process and Requirements for Each Funding Type
5. Carefully Analyze Loans, Equity, and Other Funding Options
6. Be Careful About Chasing Small Sources of Funding
7. File Tax Credits Early
8. Surround Yourself with the Right People to Seek Funding
9. Focus on the Areas that You Are Best at
10. Make Sure to Maximize your Grants, Tax Credits, and Other Funding

Brahm Elkin recently spoke with the Fundica Blog to discuss the importance of the event. 

“It’s a great opportunity for someone who wants to buy, sell or finance a business or meet other intermediaries in the world of mid-size deals,” said the head of the Montreal M&A Club

While most M&A Club meetings in Quebec are only open to members, the Financing Forum is a great way for anyone in the community to get involved. 

It’s actually the third Financing Forum, but Elkin prefers to think of it as the first of its kind.

The first two Financing Forums were ten to twelve companies doing powerpoint presentations to 100 potential investors, trying to raise money or facilitating the sale of their businesses. There were keynote speakers with a question and answer period as well as breakfast and lunch.

This time the big event is happening at the newly renovated Omni Hotel in downtown Montreal. Thinking of the new Financial Forum as version 2.0, Elkin is excited for what’s in store. 

For starters, all participating companies are treated more on an equal playing field. It’s a completely wide-open space in an “enormous ballroom.”

“Everybody’s on the floor and everyone has a six foot table,” said Elkin. “It’s an open kind of salon or show where everyone can see each other and walk around and network with each other very easily.”

A ticket to attend goes for $125, but in terms of value Elkin feels it is a good deal. Included is access to all activities and all workshops from 9 am to 7 pm, free parking, a program book and a networking room served with free refreshments all day. 

The mission of the Financial Forum is to “provide a marketplace where buyers, sellers and service providers will meet to network their $1 million - $30 million transactions.”

The event’s biggest attraction may be its keynote speaker, Tony Loffreda, Head of the National Client Group for Quebec as well as Commercial Banking head and Regional Vice-President for the Western Quebec Region.

The event should appeal to many types. Whether people are looking to acquire a business to increase sales, make an acquisition or a “bolt on”, or looking to raise money, companies at the forum are there to help them satisfy that request. 

“There’s money there, there’s funding, intermediaries, brokers, bankers and all these people that are involved in that world of M&A and finance,” said Elkin.

To register, visit the M&A Club website. 

The improvement in start-up activity tells a different story than in 2008 when the recession forced many Canadians into involuntary self-employment. Now more Canadians are choosing self-employment as a career.

As several media outlets reported this week, in June a record number of over 500,000 Canadians said they had started their own business in the past two years.

Today, self-employed persons make up about 15% of Canada’s labour force. For start-ups British Columbia leads the way, with 3.7 per cent of the working population being part of a start-up. Alberta and Saskatchewan follow close behind at second and third, respectively.

“Alberta is second, largely due to the positive spinoffs from the energy sector and the business service sector,” said Tal.

Several factors seem to be driving this general trend of increased participation in self-employment among Canadians. These include an aging population, new Internet innovations which have sped up processes, outsourcing by corporations to small firms and continued influx of immigrants.

“I would say these trends are irreversible,” said Tal. “The trend suggests the growth in self-employment will be faster in the next decade than any other decade.”

The trend seems to be favouring older Canadians, those over 50 years who make up 30 per cent of Canada’s new start-ups over the last two years. This is typically due to more work experience, more contacts, and an important one, more money to spend. This demographic is moving out of their career field and increasingly branching off on their own.

“The affordability and availability of technology enables older Canadians to provide services from home. They are also able to use their well-developed skills and take advantage of their wide business networks and connections more effectively,” said Tal.

But Tal mentioned that a new generation of young Canadians might accelerate this trend. They are cynical of corporate culture, pessimistic of pensions and generally more self-reliant.

Overall the self-employed group are more highly educated than the rest of the public, are generally male (about 70 per cent) and a majority will fail within five years. But women entrepreneurs tend to last longer than their male counterparts.

Furthermore immigrants make up 20 per cent of the self-employed in Canada, more than double the number in the 1980s.

The educational services, health-care, trade and science & technology sectors are growing the fastest. Health care is generating both employment, which rose five times faster than the average of all other sectors since 2007, and self-employment. 

The government of Nova Scotia announced earlier this month that a yet to be named venture capital (VC) investment initiative will inject $32.5 million into SMEs based in Atlantic Canada. 

Fundica recently spoke with Dr. Jacquelyn Thayer-Scott, interim CEO of Innovacorp, the Halifax-based crown corporation who is heading up the new fund.

She says that part of the motivation for the new initiative is that there is typically no series-B capital in the region. Given the limitations of Atlantic Canada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and their funding options, the new fund is a much-needed boost.

“You get to the point where we’ve invested $2 million in a business, and we’re at the end of the trail,” said the former Cape Breton University president. “Many companies, particularly in the ICT sector, really need to have more money, more quickly, to fully develop.”

The new fund will be allocated to high-growth potential businesses practicing in cleantech, life sciences, information technology and other sectors. With the aim to bridge the gap between series A and series B funding, it is hoped that the fund will commence on January 1^st.

Navigating potential VC funding for the Maritime Provinces has been a key issue in improving the nation’s economy. In an earlier blog we mentioned that after the first half of the fiscal year VC investment in Canada had dropped by 3%. The picture was even more gloomy three months before, when VC funding for Atlantic Canada gained just six per cent of total investment with $15 million distributed among 11 companies.

“Too many emerging Atlantic Canadian companies haven’t had access to the funds they need to grow and become more competitive,” said Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter.

Innovacorp, whose slogan reads, “we get invested”, recently named the manager for the new fund in Patrick Keefe. The company makes early-stage investments in local knowledge-based companies in order to accelerate commercialization and increase competitiveness. 

Needless to say, Thayer-Scott believes that things are set to improve for the historically fund-aversive region. In fact, this past year’s Innovation Week in Halifax (which consists of a development and mentor camp) had twice the registration than any other year, with about 40 outside VC’s in attendance. This coming after past years when some invitees would comment, “where is Halifax?”

On a more general level she explains that for the Maritime Provinces and Canada to excel, there needs to be investment in businesses offering a highly differentiated and unique product. Mid-sized firms that are increasingly being bought-out in the global market are those who have no competing Canadian capital to buy them.

“We too often compare ourselves to the really big international players, and we’re never going to be able to compete with them,” she said. “But we can very much compete in those areas where we can determine a ‘unique competitive advantage’, and that’s one of the roles of an organization like Innovacorp.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, left, is greeted by CAW President Ken Lewenza, right, and Oakville MP Terence Young at the Ford plant in Oakville Ont., where Harper announced the renewal of the automotive Innovation Fund Friday. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)

Stakeholders in the Canadian auto industry started the new year with some good news when Prime Minister Harper announced on January 4^th the renewal of the Automotive Innovation Fund. The fund was established in 2008 to stimulate research and innovation in Canada’s automotive industry as an incentive for automakers to keep their Canadian plants open and protect jobs here. The renewal of the fund will make an additional $250 million available over the next five years.

The three weeks that have gone by since the announcement was made have provided the opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of the fund and whether it represents the best use of our taxpayer dollars. The government promotes the fund as an investment, and claims that the return on taxpayer dollars put into the fund has been six times the amount originally invested.  According to the government’s calculation, its original outlay stimulated approximately C$1.6 billion in auto industry projects and created half a million spin-off jobs.  

Facing stiff competition from the United States and countries such as China and India, the government is convinced that the only way to strengthen and maintain the auto industry in Canada is by providing support with real money and demonstrating its willingness to be a partner.  This stance was shared by Ken Lewenza, head of the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW), and Chris Taylor, president of CAW Local 200. Lewenza stressed the importance of the government playing an investor role in the auto industry, already the case with General Motors since 2009 when the Canadian government made a huge investment in the car business by bailing out the recession-battered GM making it a part owner of the automaker.

On the other hand, James Cowan, writing in Canadian Business Magazine on January 21^st, affirms that the fund is a “colossal waste of money” and that “the taxpayer-funded Automotive Innovation Fund produces few jobs and actually stifles innovation.” Cowan feels that the government is spending our money in the wrong place, and as a result, the fund’s objective of promoting innovation and creating new jobs has failed. He supports his claims with numbers—five assembly plants in Canada closed since 2001, more than 170,000 automotive jobs disappeared in the past five years, and the few new jobs created at an inflated cost.  He also refers to a German study showing that although government funding did result in corporations spending more on research and development, it did so with diminishing returns.

Enjoy reading all the details in these articles which argue the two points of view—CBCnews/Canada, and Canadian Business Magazine.

Looking for funding? Try our Funding Search Tool.

• Love Money is a term used to describe seed money or capital that is provided by family members or friends. Often, investment decisions are a sign of confidence in the entrepreneur rather than the result of a formal risk assessment.
  
  
• Angel Investors are wealthy individuals who invest in small businesses or start-ups with the expectation of obtaining a return on their investment. They can act as silent partners but will often take an active role in the business.
  
  
• Venture Capital consists of generally larger investments by organized investing organizations for companies with high growth potential. 
  
  
• Strategic or Financial Investors consists of companies or organizations that invest in a company for very specific strategic reasons (i.e. investments in a competitor, client or supplier) or financial (i.e. company turnaround, certain tax situation or other specific situation). 
• 
  
• Public Offering is the process of raising money through the public markets. The first time a company undertakes this process is called the Initial Public Offering or IPO.
  
  
• Factoring is a way for a company to sell its accounts receivable to a financial institution. In return, the financial institution can advance a percentage of the receivables, while it keeps the remainder on reserve. The main advantage of factoring is quick access to cash although the fees can be quite high depending on the quality of the receivables.
  
  
• There are also a number of other non-debt investment mechanisms available including royalty payments, options, and other derivative products. Look for them in the “equity” section of your search results.

According to the BCIC website, the program’s allows entrepreneurs to “attend local, national and international conferences, tradeshows and events that will directly benefit the company’s growth, success and operation in BC.”

Once approved, up to 75% of eligible expenses will be provided by Access BC including travel, accommodation, meals and event registration. Up to $500 is provided for events in BC, while up to $500 per day for a maximum of $1500 is provided for events outside of BC, including in the US.

Eligible events may include seminars, workshops, programs or conferences and must provide the entrepreneur with valuable learning and networking opportunities. The events must occur before March 15^th 2013 and eligible expenses must be submitted for payment no later than March 22^nd 2013.

The program targets all regions of the province and only entrepreneurs actively engaged with BCIC partners may apply. This can include the BCIC Acceleration Network (Venture Acceleration Program and BCIC Mentor Program), BCIC’s entrepreneurship@ programs and competitors in the BCIC - New Ventures Competition.

BC entrepreneurs should also visit our recent overview of the University of British Columbia’s Small Business Accelerator (UBC- SBA) for more helpful resources on various funding programs available to the province.  

Tournée à Expocité, au même endroit que l’émission Les chefs!, la série « Dans l’œil du Dragon » comprendra cinq investisseurs et jury qui accepteront d’investir pas moins d’un million de dollars dans les projets qui leur seront dévoilés. Ces « Dragons » de la version québécoise seront quatre hommes et une femme et reconnus dans le monde des affaires québécois; Normand Legault, ancien président du Grand Prix du Canada; Gaétan Frigon, ancien président de la SAQ et de Loto-Québec; François Lambert, cofondateur d'Aheeva qui est spécialisée dans les logiciels pour centre d’appels; Dany Vachon, musicien et entrepreneur; Danièle Henkel, reconnue dans le domaine de l'esthétique et de la santé.

«C'est la première fois qu'on va voir le Québec Inc. à l'oeuvre et en direct. Les gens vont voir des négociations de gré à gré qui se déroulent pour vrai. Ce n'est pas de l'argent de Monopoly», précise Paul Houde. Houde aura le rôle d’intermédiaire; il présentera les candidats et facilitera les échanges entre le jury et ces derniers.

« Dans l’œil du Dragon » est à la recherche de candidats qui font preuve de créativité, innovation et d’efficacité. Les entrepreneurs retenus devront avoir un potentiel d’avenir commercial intéressant, une bonne présentation, ainsi qu’une maîtrise de leur proposition d’affaire.

Les candidatures seront acceptées jusqu’au 31 janvier 2012, avant minuit. Le règlement de l'appel de candidatures et le formulaire d'inscription sont disponibles sur le site web de Radio-Canada à l'adresse suivante : radio-canada.ca/emissions/dans_l_oeil_du_dragon/2011-2012/participez.asp.

Invest Crowdfund Québec’s efforts are focused on achieving three main objectives—obtaining government approval for equity crowdfunding, creating greater awareness of and support for this new funding model among entrepreneurs and start-ups, and educating the general public and generating enthusiasm for equity crowdfunding as a means for creating new jobs, businesses, and wealth.

Although crowdfunding has been creating a lot of buzz in Canada recently, most of the “crowd” in crowdfunding is largely unaware of what is involved. The idea behind equity crowdfunding is to sell small amounts of equity or investment to many individual (the crowd) and usually non-traditional investors. The crowdfunding model requires the participation of three parties—the person or organization that proposes  an idea or project and requires funding, the many people (the crowd) who are willing to invest funds in support of the project, and the organization (the platform provider) that serves as an intermediary between the project initiator and the crowd.

In this model, the soliciting of funds and investors would be carried out on the Internet, something that is currently illegal in Quebec or Canada. For this reason, one of ICC’s immediate goals is to obtain government approval. Evidently, one of the major considerations is how to protect ordinary citizens, who in most cases are not sophisticated investors, from losing their investment either through fraud or as a result of not fully understanding the risks involved. Likewise to be defined is the status of the intermediary organizations or platform providers and the services they will provide.

Equity crowdfunding will not only benefit many Quebec SMEs and start-ups with access to previously unavailable funds, but also let Quebeckers who do not have large sums to invest feel the excitement and satisfaction of sharing in the province’s economic growth. Likewise, citizens who own a small share of a local business will be more aware of what Quebec businesses are up to and have an added incentive to “buy Quebec”.

Co-Chair, Invest Crowdfund Québec Diana Yazidjian

To achieve these objectives, Invest Crowdfund Québec regularly participates in public speaking engagements, content generation, all-around networking, think tanks, and professional activities. To this end, Ms. Yazidjian, who has over 15 years of experience in the technology community as a project director, consultant, and speaker, spoke at the first Crowdfund Night Conference held in Montreal in November, 2012, and took the opportunity to elaborate on the many benefits equity crowdfunding offers. She was also pleased to see the growing awareness of this model and answer the many well-focused questions of attendees.

Also in March, Ms. Yazidjian attended the Quebec Securities Commission (AMF) Public Consultation on Equity Crowdfunding. The representatives from many law firms and crowdfunding portals as well as investors and other business stakeholders who were present were encouraged by the AMF’s statements expressing their interest in closely following the changes that are taking place in the United States with the JOBS act. Likewise, modifications affecting the existing OM exemption were seen as an indication that the AMF is headed in the right direction with regards to future modifications that could allow equity crowdfunding.

Important issues that were raised during the session included notion of risk, trust the crowd, a higher investment cap than in the US, protection of investors through social networks, transparency in shareholder agreements, and the status of equity crowdfunding portals. For more details on these and other related crowdfunding news, please visit the following sites:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government are following through with their 2012 Economic Action Plan, providing $400 million in venture capital (VC) funding.

"Our Government understands that Canada's long-term economic competitiveness in the emerging knowledge economy needs to be driven by globally competitive, high-growth businesses that innovate and create high-quality jobs," said Prime Minister Harper. "We will provide the resources needed to put Canada's venture capital industry on the path to sustainability and ensure Canada's high-potential firms have the resources they need to succeed."

The deal includes a comprehensive action plan that will see $400 million in funding for early stage startups to be deployed over the next seven to 10 years. This will be broken down as follows:

The news conference was held in Montreal and several Canadian VCs were quick to publish their thoughts. 

Chris Arsenault of iNovia Capital pointed out that because of the positive track record of a number of venture capital fund managers, some of the funding will be deployed quickly. A portion of this funding will likely reach some of Canada’s most promising entrepreneurs later this year.

“I applaud this initiative in great part because the federal Government acted quickly and decided to be a true catalyst to the venture capital industry,” wrote Arsenault. “It means more local capital to better support the most innovative and promising opportunities across the country. It means giving emerging tech category leaders the resources to grow well beyond $100M in revenue while growing and remaining in our own backyard.”

Other prominent players in the Canadian ecosystem were quick to dispel the notion that public investment into the private sector is a bad thing. 

Entrepreneur, columnist and blogger Mark Evans agreed that “anything that can jump-start the startup ecosystem is a positive development...as much as everyone likes the idea of Canada transforming itself into a New Economy player, startup entrepreneurs are still struggling for financial support to turn ideas into companies into well-paying jobs. While there are many good things happening, more can be done to support startups across the country.”

Fundica is excited about the new initiative and is looking forward to playing its part in promoting the Canadian funding environment through our free online funding funding tool.

“In South Korea it’s a professional sport,” says CEO Eyal Toledano. “Over there you can say ‘shoutcaster’ and they know what it means. People here say ‘gaming league’ and they have no idea what I’m talking about.”

Changing awareness about professional and amateur gaming has been a painstaking process for IGL, but things are changing.

After pitching their idea to a sold-out crowd at FounderFuel’s Demoday they were gaining online traction by the next day. People we’re finally tweeting about the amateur destination for competitive gaming.

“For the first time last week we actually saw a huge understanding of what we’re doing,” said Toledano. “It was a huge validation point for us.”

Among an established market place for competitive gaming, the kind where the best, most “hardcore” gamers compete against each other for money, IGL is targeting the other audience.

That would be the audience that isn’t quite professional, but still wants to “game it”. As they said in their DemoDay pitch, “100 per cent of pro gaming spectators are gamers themselves”.

They’ve created an online league for anyone to play against other competitors of similar skill. It’s not for money or prizes, but it’s an organized experience for the mainstream audience. Included is in-game commentary and statistics, pre-game and post-game analysis and a host of other incentives that will make it a strong gaming community.

“We’re coming out with a mainstream and North American-friendly package that people can actually understand,” said Toledano.

Prior to joining FounderFuel’s third cohort of startups, IGL essentially started out as “two 18 year olds in our basement putting together a crappy website and calling it a gaming league.”

That didn’t last long though as Toledano gained extensive experience in the gaming industry, both as an observer and an employee. He spent a few years in sales at Planbox while co-founder Darryl Allen spent five years at Research in Motion (RIM).

The team entered FounderFuel with an idea that they weren’t going to stray from. They needed guidance from proven mentors, connections and external validation.

“The mentorship from the FounderFuel family helped us truly understand our business,” said Toledano. “We just came and hoped that those guys would be helpful in understanding out business and as it turns out it was the best decision we made.”

As the guys moved through the program they validated their vision and strengthened their concept.

They also set new goals for the future, and big ones at that. Within six months they want to fully release their product. To do it they’re seeking $400,000.

Michel Murdock of Ubisoft warns that monetizing their product should be IGL’s first priority, and will likely be it’s toughest.

Would gamers pay a monthly fee, or would IGL sell data to big gaming companies?

Part of the solution is making their approach even more focused- but once they accomplish this, the sky seems the limit.

 “The product they have is very different and they’re touching a field other startups haven’t gone after,” said the Executive VP of Ubisoft’s Hybrid Technologies division. “But in terms of potential members, it’s really big. There’s great potential.”

They want to bring their product to the mainstream audience and part of the solution involves debunking prevailing myths and criticisms about the gamer in North America.

Primarily that the gamer is the “fat slob in his parent’s basement who plays World of Warcraft 17 hours a day,” said Toledano.

“Today we’re actually putting together something that can help us break those dogmas and say, no, gamers are regular people too,” he said. “It’s an activity much like chess and it’s becoming more accessible.”

For future or current entrepreneurs trying to make the next stride in their business Toledano stresses continual effort. While there were many times he wanted to give up he stresses that people need to do whatever needs to be done.

“If you have a great idea and you think that you can build a sustainable business that can grow quickly and answer a really big demand then do it,” he said. “If it means stopping school then gauge all of your options, but at the end of the day if you have a passion for entrepreneurship then you’re on the right track.” 

The Department of Finance and the Canada Revenue Agency are jointly holding consultations to study the impact that contingency fees charged by third-party tax preparers may have on the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive program.

• Why firms hire third-party tax preparers on a contingency-fee basis;

• Why these tax preparers charge contingency fees;

• The prevalence of this practice;

• The amounts charged; and

• The impacts of this practice on the effectiveness of the SR&ED tax incentive program.

• Marketing efforts by third-party tax preparers can generate more widespread knowledge of the SR&ED program.

• Tax preparers may undertake claims for businesses that do not have the internal expertise or resources to prepare an SR&ED claim and that would not have done so otherwise.

The new $3 million fund is made up of contributions from Investment Québec as well as several community partners in the southeast Quebec region. It will target companies in the manufacturing, wholesale distribution and tourism sectors. Together the individual partners raised $1 million while Investment Québec doubled that number.

“The ARDECQ worked hard for the region to develop a support fund. Now CLD [Local Development Centre] territory has an additional tool to promote the emergence of projects and create jobs,” said Martin Smith, President of the ARDECQ. “By investing in equity or quasi-equity in companies this fund meets a real need in the community.”

According to Jean-Guy Paré, the President on the fund, it will invest between $25,000 and $250,000 in each qualified company. Those companies have between five and seven years to repay the balance. 

“The board of directors for the fund is made up of representatives of each financial partner,” said Paré. “We have to analyze the funding requests and ensure that the projects are viable.”

Three manufacturing companies in the region have already benefitted from the fund for a total of $700,000. Service de Transformation Bécancour received $250,000, Inpak Vehicles received $250,000 and Écofib received $200,000.

For the head of Inpak the new fund represents a tangible solution that was virtually nonexistent before.

“Especially for early-stage startups there is not a lot of venture capital in Québec,” said André Nadeau. “The investment we obtained completed our financing round and it’s a sign of confidence for the industry.”

The three main municipalities that make up the Centre-du-Québec are Drummondville, Victoriaville and Bécancour. Calling the Centre-du-Québec the “envy of the rest of Québec,” Yves-Francois Blanchet, MNA for the Johnson riding of the Centre-du-Quebec region, was more than pleased with the fund announcement.

“Through Investment Québec, the Québec government is demonstrating its commitment to stimulate the economy with this new fund,” said Blanchet. “It also shows the economic boom of the Centre-du-Québec.”

Looking for startup funding? Look no further than Fundica

Startup entrepreneurs from Ontario and Quebec have a new friend in their corner when it comes to the fight for funding.

Fundica, what was originally a consulting service, has released database software compiling grants, tax credits, loans, loans guarantees, and equity funding from Canada’s two most populous provinces. As well, Fundica gives results based on company size, needs and sector.

Fundica isn’t just valuable for companies seeking investment; investors and grant providers can add their funding source to the Fundica database for free, and update details as necessary. Private organizations and governments of all sizes are able to add themselves to Fundica. In addition to matching recipient companies to these funding sources, Funica helps build visibility for organizations offering funds.

At $495 for six months, the premium subscription to Fundica includes database access, plus an hour of consulting and free updates to the database. A free subscription is available, but this just allows viewing of the existence or non-existence of funding programs plus a few additional details.

FounderFuel is an intensive 12-week mentor-driven startup accelerator program based in Montreal focused on web, mobile and SaaS. The program helps startups increase traction, secure partnerships, and get to revenue faster, all in effort to help them raise follow-on funding, and features two cohorts a year (20 teams) and a network of 100+ mentors. Demo Day marks the graduation for the teams when they pitch their respective products to a room full of investors.

The eight teams of the latest FounderFuel cohort are InfoActive, International Gaming League, FastGrab, LISTN, My Customizer, Openera, reelyActive, and Urbita.

Jeffrey recently spoke to Fundica about what the program is about, what is does for the startups and what’s changed since the accelerator nurtured its first cohort of businesses.

Getting in to the program is extremely hard for many startups and this year’s cohort was decided after “several hundred” different startups applied to be in the program. Montreal startup Wavo.Me spent considerable time working on their project before they pitched it to FounderFuel. 

“We had a goal to get into FounderFuel and we worked our butts off getting a prototype together,” said co-founder Conor Clarke “We ended up getting into the first cohort of FounderFuel which helped us accelerate our business.”

Eventually Wavo.Me were able to get in contact with enough mentors and investors via the program that they gained a seed-round last January.

To date, 60% of FounderFuel companies have raised follow-on funding within a few months of graduation for a combined total of over $6.5M.

The first month of FounderFuel is spent analyzing the company and helping it align in the direction of opportunities while the final month is focused on fund-raising. This includes what kind of round the companies are going to raise, how they are going to attract investors and what they’re going to do with the money. 

According to Jeffrey though the program itself is not the same as the first time they accepted a cohort.

“Every program from the outside may be perceived as the same program but from the inside we’ve changed things dramatically,” he said. “We understand what needs to happen when, we’re much better at selecting teams [we know what teams need to succeed in this program] and we also know the importance of Demo Day.”

Christian Painchaud also knows about the important of Demo Day. The co-founder of My Customizer said that the event is like a stamp of approval after three grueling months of iterating their product. 

“To fuel and sustain our growth we need investment and that’s what demo day represents: the starting blocks for that new phase,” said Painchaud. 

While Finance Minister Nicholas Marceau claims that a new budget is needed to balance the books in 2013-2014, several pundits see the move as an obvious one in self-preservation.

But what does this mean for Quebec businesses, specifically startups that rely on government grants and R&D tax credits?

One Montreal CEO doesn’t see much optimism in the potential cuts that could come in two weeks.

“My only expectation would be cuts and no new programs,” said Jeffrey Dungen of reelyActive. “We'll see on November 20th what moves the PQ think they need to do to win the next election which is coming sooner than later."

Since the Liberals are currently between leaders, and not in a position to force an election, it makes sense for the PQ to release the budget now. 

“Waiting until the spring of 2013 would only delay the identification and execution of actions needed to get Quebec back on the road to a balanced budget next year,” said Marceau.

The party has made it clear that they intend to weaken budgets for some areas.

“In spite of the difficult situation we face, I must reiterate the commitment of the government to re-establish a balanced budget next year,” Marceau continued. “Delaying this deadline would have major consequences on the finances and economy of Quebec.”

New Quebec premier Pauline Marois echoed these sentiments last week during her inaugural address to the Quebec National Assembly. “We will protect the interests of Quebecers by assuming our responsibilities and attaining a balanced budget.”

Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) leader Francois Legault has indicated that he would vote against a new budget put forth by the PQ, leaving the Liberals in a prime position.

The last time there was a fall budget was in November 2001, when Pauline Marois was finance minister.

The subject comes just days removed from the recent US presidential election. With President Barack Obama elected to a second term, media outlets have already speculated about what this will mean for entrepreneurs and government funding.

Specifically Obama has hailed entrepreneurs and technologists as living “the promise of America,” praising them for helping lead the country out of recession. Craigslist’s Craig Newmark and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman publicly support him. He also signed the JOBS Act and the America Invents Act, both intended to help entrepreneurs, into law.

If you are looking for funding, do not forget to check-up on government grants, loan guarantees and tax credits. The application process for these types of funds, while also time-consuming, is shorter; you won’t lose equity in your company; and best of all nothing prevents you from leveraging multiple types of funding.

Now after several months of touring across the nation and speaking with community members Startup Canada has unveiled their plan.

In six news conferences last week the grassroots initiative explained how they would proceed after listening to what the entrepreneurial community had to say. 

“What we found is a really fragmented ecosystem with different levels of support,” said Lennox. “I think we need to even the playing field and provide a unifying voice for entrepreneurs.”

Startup Canada said they are well positioned to focus on connecting and supporting the development of startup communities, promoting a strong entrepreneurial culture and providing entrepreneurs with a platform. 

Moreover they will lend a voice to help create the conditions for entrepreneurial success in Canada.

They will do this through three main initiatives: Startup Canada Connect, Startup Canada Community and Startup Canada Campaign. To fund these initiatives they plan on gaining sponsorship money and crowd-funding help.

“Connect” will be a social online meeting place for entrepreneurs to link with support, resources, opportunities, associations, communities, events, mentors, learning and inspiration.

Beginning in ten pilot communities, “Community” will develop a national network “led by entrepreneurs to form a collaborative social network.” Entrepreneurs will be able to plug into the network and access local events, mentors and support.

Finally “Campaign” will seek to use mainstream media and social media to “become Canada’s entrepreneurship exchange, celebrating and telling the stories of entrepreneurs to increase awareness.”

Noah Redler, Chair of Startup Canada Quebec, said that what Startup Canada heard most often while on tour was that entrepreneurs are looking for more access to reliable information, they are looking for new and creative ways to access funding, and furthermore the creation of more opportunities (or support for the opportunities that already exist). 

“Beyond that entrepreneurs are really just looking for a community to feel that they’re more a part of something instead of someone that’s trying to do something on their own,” he said. 

When it comes to the Montreal community Redler emphasized inter-industrial collaboration, or having different industries talking about problems they are facing individually.

“I think Montreal is doing a lot of things that it needs to be doing to build a stronger community,” said Redler. “But what we’re talking about is solutions, being more efficient, being leaner, tougher and thinking about different ways where we can get better results.”

Among other important issues that the initiative learned while on tour was that all change begins with the individual. Canada needs to re-discover its entrepreneurial roots and embrace entrepreneurship as central to its national culture. 

“The national tour was an important first step to meet people, hear what they have to say and engage them in a personal way,” said Redler.

Creating bigger and better businesses is another key component of their strategy. Startup Canada wants the nation to cultivate a large crop of early-stage startups to produce major high-growth companies with a more ambitious global reach. The idea is that these companies can become anchors in their communities. 

Finally, the plans emphasized creating a unified, collaborative network (going along with the Connect, Community and Campaign initiatives). Startup Canada wants to fuel Canadian entrepreneurship from the bottom up by supporting the development of vibrant entrepreneurial communities. Entrepreneurs will lead these communities as the basis of a national entrepreneurship network.

When talking about the movement’s potential Redler says “limitations are for those that don't continue to dream big, and that doesn't sound like an entrepreneur to me.”

Par contre, des changements se font sentir. Selon des études récentes et des commentaires du gouvernement Conservateur, nous verrons quelques modifications au début de la prochaine année fiscale.

1. Les consultants pourront se voir rémunérés à l'heure, au lieu d'un pourcentage du financement obtenu.
2. Seul la rémunération pourra être une dépense déductible, le matériel et le capital n'en feront plus partie.
3. Les pourcentages de crédits d'impôts changeront - surtout pour les PME.
4. De nouveaux programmes de financement apparaîtront, par exemple, plus de subventions.

Il ne reste plus qu'à attendre début avril afin de valider ces spéculations.

Pour plus d'information, visitez www.fundica.com ou contactez 1-855-386-3422

However, it now appears that  major changes are coming following several recent studies and related comments by the  Conservative government. The budget that is due in the next 60 days will likely have some or all of the following changes:

1. Limiting of eligible expenditures to solely labor (employee and subcontractor expenditures);

2. Reduction in the tax credit rate for SMEs;

3. Limiting of the billing methods by consultants to non-contingency methods; and

4. Addition of new strategic direct funding programs (i.e. grants).

For more information, visit www.fundica.com or call 1-855-386-3422

                Funding is a necessary component of any successful company but as an entrepreneur you should also try to surround yourself with knowledgeable people with whom to discuss your ideas. This is particularly important when starting up for the first time since more seasoned entrepreneurs will help you learn from their experience and steer clear from beginner mistakes.

                 Unfortunately for entrepreneurial newcomers, finding the right mentor can be difficult and starting up can seem impossible.  Incubators and accelerators are there to help break down this entry barrier and provide aspiring entrepreneurs with the opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals as well as veteran entrepreneurs that will help guide your endeavors.

                  Canada has an incredible amount of incubators to serve the start-up community: some of which have government backing, while others are privately run; some provide funding, while others provide only office space.

Here is an exhaustive list of establishments with incubator-like services in Canada:

Alberta         

Advanced Technology Centre - Edmonton          

Food processing Development Centre - Leduc  

Agrivalue Processing Business Incubator - Leduc               

Innovate Calgary - Calgary          

Duncan McNeil Centre for Innovation - Edmonton          

Foothills Business Incubator - Okotoks  

Northern Alberta Business Incubator - St-Albert               

NRC Nation Institute for nanotechnology - Edmonton   

Research Transition Facility Calgary - Calgary       

TEC Center - Edmonton

British-Colombia

Accelerate Okanagan - Kelowna               

Okanagan Research & Innovation Centre (ORIC) - Penticton         

SFU Venture Labs Student Business Incubator - Surrey 

Business Development Centre (SFU) - Vancouver           

Centre for Growth (BCTIA) - Vancouver               

Entrepreneurship@UBC  - Vancouver   

GrowLab - Vancouver   

Institute B - Vancouver

NRC Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation - Vancouver          

The Network Hub - Vancouver 

TIMES Ventures Innovation Incubator - Vancouver         

NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics - Victoria             

Entrepreneurship@UVIC  - Victoria        

University of Victoria Innovation & Development Corporation - Victoria            

Vancouver Island Technology Park - Victoria       

Wavefront - Vancouver               

Discovery Parks Generator Program - Vancouver             

Manitoba

Biomedical Commercialization Canada Inc. (BCC) - Winnipeg       

CDEM - Winnipeg            

Eureka Project - Winnipeg

Genesys Venture Inc. - Winnipeg            

NRC Institute for biodiagnostics - Winnipeg        

Smart Virtual Incubation Winnipeg - Winnipeg   

New-Brunswick

NRC Institute for Information Technology – Fredericton

Newfoundland & Labrador

Genesis Centre - St-Johns           

NRC Institute for Ocean Technology  - St-Johns 

Nova-Scotia

Innovacorp Tech Innovation Centre - Dartmouth             

Innovacorp Enterprise Centre - Halifax  

NRC Institute for Marine Biology - Halifax            

Ingeonuity - Annapolis Centre of Technology - Middleton            

AgriTech Park - Truro     

Ontario

Springboard Innovation Centre - Barrie 

EASTCAT - Brockville      

DreamBuilderStudios - Cornwall               

Haliburton Creative Business Incubator - Haliburton       

Hamilton Incubator of Technology - Hamilton    

The Cossart Exchange - Hamilton             

The McMaster Biosciences Incubation Centre - Hamilton             

Lawson Health Research Institute - London        

London Biotechnology Commercialization Centre - London

Communications Research Innovation Centre - Ottawa 

Mercury Grove - Ottawa             

NRC Institute for Information Technology - Ottawa

NRC Institute for Microstructural Sciences  - Ottawa       

NRC Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences - Ottawa   

NRCan Innovation Acceleration Centre - Ottawa              

OCRI Entrepreneurship Centre - Ottawa              

The Code Factory - Ottawa         

IDEAHUB - Port Hope    

Sarnia-Lambton Business Development Centre - Sarnia

Sault Ste Marie Innovation Centre  - Sault Ste Marie

nGEN - St. Catharines    

Innovation Centre for Entrepreneurs - St. Thomas          

Northern Ontario Centre for Advanced Technology - Sudbury             

Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre - Thunder Bay              

The Venture Centre - Timmins  

BioDiscovery Centre  - Toronto 

Centre for Social Innovation – Toronto

Digital Media Zone - Toronto     

Incubes - Toronto           

MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund - Toronto   

Mobile Experience Innovation Centre - Toronto               

Toronto Business Development Centre - Toronto            

Toronto Fashion Incubator - Toronto     

Toronto Food Business Incubator - Toronto        

Extreme University - Toronto    

Accelerator Centre - Waterloo  

Communitech Venture Services Program - Waterloo      

Velocity - Waterloo        

Prince-Edward-Island

LaunchPad Incubator - Atlantic Technology Centre - Charlottetown         

NRC Institute for Nutrisciences and Health - Charlottetown        

Québec

NRC Industrial Materials Institute - Boucherville               

Technoparc Bromont - Bromont                         

Drummondville Economic Development Authority - Drummondville       

Centre de développement d'entreprises technologiques  - Gatineau     

NRC Languages Technology Research Centre – Gatineau

Centre Québecois d'Innovation en Biotechnologie - Laval            

Ag-Bio Centre - Lévis     

TransBIOtec / reseau Transtech - Lévis  

Incubateur industriel de la MRC de Maskinongé - Louiseville      

FounderFuel - Montreal              

Year one Labs - Montreal            

Flow Ventures - Montreal           

Bolidea - Montreal         

Centech -Montréal        

Centre d'entreprises et d'innovation de Montreal - Montréal    

Incubateur J. -Armand-Bombardier - Montréal 

Inno-Centre -Montréal

NRC Biotechnology Research Institute - Montréal            

TandemLaunch Technologies Inc. - Montréal     

TechBA  - Montreal

L'incubateur bioalimentaire de La Pocatière - Pocatière 

Entrepreneuriat Laval Inc - Québec         

National Optics Institute - Québec          

Agribionet - Saint-Hyacinthe      

Centre de productique intégrée du Québec - Sherbrooke           

Sherbrooke Biotechnology Development Centre - Sherbrooke

Saskatchewan

Springboard West Innovations - Regina

NRC Plant Biology Institute - Saskatoon

Saskatchewan Ideas Inc.- Saskatoon      

Women Entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan inc. - Saskatoon            

Outside of Canada but exclusively for Canadians

Plug And Play Startup Camp - Sunnyvale, California

                For more information on the services Fundica has to offer entrepreneurs, advisors and funding providers, visit our FAQ.  

Our team of experts, including Fundica founder Mike Lee, will be talking to eWeek participants about a host of subjects during the workshop. These include: Government programs for experimental development in Quebec, R&D tax credits, funding and best practices and strategic planning for tech businesses, and more. 

“We are excited in being able show entrepreneurs effective tools that will accelerate their funding process and ultimately give them a better chance of succeeding as entrepreneurs,” said Lee.

Several kiosks at eWeek will act as interactive booths to inform participants on the various entrepreneurship support organizations and resources available for help launching a business or social enterprise. Meanwhile the lunchtime workshop series will present topics related to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial values, from creativity and innovation to risk-taking and failure. Participants have the opportunity to meet other interesting entrepreneurs and learn about their entrepreneurial adventures.

Other events at eWeek include panel discussions on hot-topic subjects, keynote speakers preceding each night’s event and the OneRedPaperclip event Contest with notable Montreal entrepreneur Kyle McDonald. Dawson’s Den, Dawson College’s version of CBC’s Dragon’s Den where students will pitch ideas to a panel of experts will also be going on. Montreal NewTech will also host an event where four start-ups will present their ideas followed by a question and answer period. Finally, Speed Date an Entrepreneur is a mentoring and networking event where students will have 45 seconds to sell their idea for prizes. 

The week is all about “creativity, innovation, resources and networking...the early stages of starting a new enterprise whether a social project or in business.” 

Speaking about the collaboration between Fundica and Dawson College, Lee said “It is important that business and post-secondary institutions work together to help develop young entrepreneurs in Quebec.”

You can out this YouTube video here that details eWeek in one minute. 

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has improved the review process for Notices of Objection related to Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit eligibility claims.

The main improvements are:

On Thursday, federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney revealed that the new Startup Visa program will begin accepting applications on April 1^st , 2013. It will fast track the immigration process for high-potential entrepreneurs and teams.

Before startups may apply for the immediate permanent resident status visa, they must be sponsored by one of the three funding options. They will need a funding commitment of at least $75,000 from a designated angel network, at least $200,000 from a designated VC fund or be admitted into a Canadian accelerator program. VC funds that manage $40 million or more in assets will be qualify automatically, while VC funds that manage less will go through a review process.

Following an October announcement that outlined the intention of the program the announcement comes in an effort to make Canada a hub of innovation for startups. “Our new Startup Visa will help make Canada the destination of choice for the world’s best and brightest to launch their companies,” said Kenney.

Initially, Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) will be active partners. These two organizations, as well as the Canadian Association of Business Incubation (CABI), will recommend the program to appropriate members.

Boris Wertz of Vancouver-based Version One Ventures helped form the new and improved visa after rallying for its creation over two years ago. He claims foreign startups possessed ideas, endorsements and the funding but faced red tape coming into Canada in the past. “This program is sure to raise Canada’s profile within the global technology community, sending a signal to the best and brightest that we’re open for business,” said Wertz. “In addition, Startup Visa will create good Canadian jobs.”

Chris Arsenault of Montreal-based iNovia Capital lauded the Canadian government for taking the initiative to the next step. “They decided to first survey the community and then closely collaborate with the private sector instead of trying to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “The Startup Visa Canada pilot program leverages the country’s deepest expertise, knowledge and experience in backing entrepreneurs through investment and ecosystem building.”

Meanwhile David Crow of Waterloo-based accelerator Startup North commented that Canada’s multicultural status makes it a great place for this initiative. “It is the creative tension between differing viewpoints that makes Canada an amazing place,” said Crow. “The implementation of Startup Visa makes Canada an even more attractive place to recruit foreign born scientists, engineers and now entrepreneurs. I love it!”

The US is moving towards allowing individuals to not only make donations and pre-purchased things from companies, but also allowing individuals to invest in companies through crowdfunding sites. It is hard to say where this will go and Canada is certainly conservatively behind the States, but maybe one day “going public” like Facebook did today may be simply putting up a video and some text on a crowdfunding site and allowing the public to invest.

The paper indicates that provinces have long-term challenges for public finances, which poorly reflects their current level of debt and the interest rate they must be willing to borrow.

Unless a key number of policies and criteria are changed, most provinces could be headed towards unsustainable finances in the medium and long term. This could translate to eventual provincial bailouts being funded by the federal government.

Underlying this all is the fact that long-term bond rates paid by the provinces do not reflect their underlying creditworthiness, “possibly because financial markets assume Ottawa would come to the rescue with a bailout in the event of any provincial default.”

Among the top provinces that could potentially pose a systemic risk to public finances in Canada are Ontario and Alberta. Joffe calculated the default probabilities based on the annual likelihood of provinces’ reaching the critical fiscal threshold of an interest to revenue ratio of 25%.

Ontario has the highest risk of default at the 10, 15 and 20 year terms due to a high level of public debt and chronic deficits (such as 2012-2013’s $14.4 billion). Throw in political instability, recently highlighted by Dalton McGuinty’s resignation, and it doesn’t look good for Ontario.

Meanwhile Alberta is looking at a bleak future due to an aging population and high deficits expected to persist. A significant portion of its revenue also comes from resource taxes, vulnerable to energy price volatility.

Quebec meanwhile has the lowest risk of default to all its creditors at just 8.1% at the 20-year level and 28.2% at the 30-year level. In comparison, Alberta has failure rates at 42.4% and 84.1% respectively.

Writing for La Press, Rudy Le Cours noted that the long-term future looks brighter for Quebec because Joffe excluded a $57.3 million debt for Hydro-Quebec.

"The company has always been profitable and provides an essential service,” said Joffe. “It is therefore very unlikely that its obligations fall on the shoulders of the taxpayers of the province."

Shedding light on the hypothetical nature of the report, Don Drummond explained that while nothing is certain, provincial government should consider the future.

“There is nothing inevitable about the rather mechanical spending projections contained in the report. But they do dramatically illustrate future dangers,” said Drummond. “Ultimately Governments will need to figure out how to do everything, especially health care, more efficiently so they don’t risk bankruptcy and don’t raise taxes unacceptably.”

A certain mantra guides Urban Seedling cofounder Tereska Gesing in her entrepreneurial endeavors.

“Someone told me that as long as you’re making people happy, you’ll be successful,” said one of three partners at the urban gardening start-up. “And I think we’re making people happy.”

Indeed the Fundica/ Startup Canada Startup Contest finalists are making headways in a relatively untapped market. They started with just 15 clients. This year they’re aiming for 600.

“People want, need and deserve to have more control over their food and have a greater connection with the earth,” said Gesing. “But because we’re in the city and we’re busy, there are perceived obstacles to vegetable gardening.”

And thus the product that Urban Seedling offers to clients. They come into your home in the city and build a raised-bed vegetable garden with high quality soil and compost. They plant their heirloom variety seedlings three times a year to ensure a maximum harvest and they close up the garden at the end of the year.

They also offer a strong support system, complete with a weekly newsletter with recipes and tips.

If clients aren't satisfied, Gesing assured that their services come with a 100 per cent money-back guarantee.

Part of their her team’s motivation (which includes her husband Shawn Manning and another partner Bryce Nagels) is providing customers with fresh and nutritional alternatives to mass-produced vegetables.

Rather than eating produce that can ripen in the dark or easily be picked and transported, Urban Seedling provides a different choice. 

“I think that people are starting to understand that the current model of food production is broken and they’re looking for an answer,” she said.

Next year their goal is to reach more clients. The company is also planning to move to a “real” location (they currently work from home) and to develop a hydroponic tower for clients to grow vegetables in their kitchens.

Which also means they will be looking for further funding.

The company likes to “apply for everything” to get their name out there and have benefitted from a Canadian Small Business Financing (CSBF) loan of $45,000. Next year with their client load expected to rise they’ll be looking for an additional $150,000- $200,000 in grants, loans or other funding options.

Urban Seedling has used Fundica frequently for assistance in locating potential funds and recommends the free online database to entrepreneurs.  

Gesing mentioned that as an entrepreneur and a parent she simply doesn’t have the time to search for appropriate funding options.

“Without Fundica we wouldn’t have access to that money at all because we don’t have the time resources to go look for it,” said Gesing. “If they can help out entrepreneurs access the money that is actually there, it’s a huge, huge service.”

She also raves about a Montreal community that seems to be receptive to small businesses, both on a support level and a willingness among its people to try new things.

“It’s been amazing,” she said. “There’s so much support here for small businesses and most of that support comes from the consumer.”

Following the success of the Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) pilot program in 2011-2012, CANARIE has decided to offer up to four cores of their cloud-based computing and storage service free of charge for up to a year to eligible small and medium sized businesses. Additional cores are also offered for $100/year. Comparatively, a similar cloud service from Rackspace or Amazon’s AWS would cost a minimum of $2100 USD.

Given the inherent risk that companies face when transitioning to new technologies, Fundica commends CANARIE for providing an environment in which high-tech entrepreneurs can gain a competitive edge by developing their new products on a highly scalable infrastructure, at a fraction of the cost of doing so using commercial cloud services.

Applicants must be legally recognized Canadian entities with a project that can leverage the scalable nature of cloud infrastructures within the identified time frame. Following completion of the one year project, participants will have to transition to a commercial alternative.

The government of P.E.I. has announced the launch of the Workforce Development Fund. In a government press release, Allen Roach, Minister of Innovation and Advanced Learning, states that the new fund will support private sector growth across Prince Edward Island, helping local businesses to provide skill development and training opportunities to their employees.

After announcing the new fund, Minister Roach added, “A highly skilled workforce enables local businesses to expand their operating capabilities, creating new hiring opportunities and accelerating economic growth for our province.”

Although funded by Skills PEI, the program is partnered by both Skills PEI and Innovation PEI. In order to qualify for funding under this program, businesses, industry associations, and sector councils that operate in PEI must propose activities that support the objectives of the fund as well as have defined start and finish dates. 

The Workforce Development Fund has three components:

• Workforce Learning: skills assessments for employees, skill gap analysis for industry and/or program development material


• Workforce Innovation: training costs, certification process costs and/or a portion of employee wages while participating in training


• Workforce Exposure: participant allowances/wages and/or a portion of related costs

Interested parties may obtain additional information or an application form by visiting www.skillspei.com or by calling 1-800-893-6602.

Introduction

It takes money to make money. Entrepreneurs know this better than anyone, which is why they’re always looking for funders who can help them achieve their business goals. But realistically, how much funding is out there for them?

According to our estimates, Canadian companies alone have access to more than 2,500 funding programs and products, representing at least $24 billion in corporate funding from public and private sources. These figures include a full range of funding opportunities, such as grants, tax credits, loans, loan guarantees, and equity funding programs.

Although we can’t currently estimate the total amount of funding available to American companies, the U.S. market is, of course, ten times larger than its Canadian counterpart, suggesting that funding opportunities could also be greater by an order of magnitude.

So there is funding available. The real challenge for entrepreneurs is finding and identifying the right opportunities without neglecting their core business. What they need is an effective process—supported by time-saving tools and experienced advisors.

This white paper presents a four-step action plan for busy, cash-strapped entrepreneurs who want to find and secure corporate funding in the most efficient way possible.

“An entrepreneur without funding is a musician without an instrument.”

– Robert Rice Jr.
    Serial Entrepreneur

 

There’s no such thing as “free” money. As with any other business activity, the effort required to find and secure corporate funding inevitably incurs cost.

Consequently, entrepreneurs should always view their funding options through a cost-benefit lens. Some funding opportunities are simply not worth applying for because the internal and external costs outweigh the benefits.

Labor usually accounts for the lion’s share of internal costs. This is how much the company pays employees to find and secure funding opportunities, and then perform ongoing administrative (reporting) tasks required by the funder. External costs can be a mixture of consulting fees, application fees, and interest charges (on loans).

Entrepreneurs who stay focused on the bottom line throughout the funding process are more likely to make good decisions and achieve a reasonable rate of return on the time and money they invest.

Startup Canada and Fundica are therefore hosting a twitter live chat on September 19^th at 1 PM Eastern Time to answer your burning questions on how to find, apply for and obtain funding in Canada.

You can follow @startup_canada or @fundica to stay informed about the event, or join the conversation by posting your questions using the #startupChat hashtag.

See you on Twitter!

The deadline for applying to various funding programs through the Canadian Media Fund (CMF) is fast approaching. Specifically a closing deadline of October 2nd is looming for production in their aboriginal program and their experimental stream funding.

• Canadian digital cultural content is created and consumed, and leading-edge content and applications are created and integrated into the mainstream.

• Projects funded in the Experimental Stream are being developed for commercial potential or public use.

• Projects funded in the Experimental Stream are subject to uptake by the Canadian media industry or Canadians.

• Projects funded in the Experimental Stream are targeted to Canadian and international marketplaces.

• Projects funded in the Experimental Stream contribute to the creation of jobs.

The Virtual Incubator was created as a way to “enable capacity building and tailored guidance for entrepreneurs with innovative pre-commercial clean technologies.” The SDTC website explains that an entrepreneur may have a high potential idea; but the technology, business plan, partners or funding could all be in different stages. This is done to support a pre-commercial demonstration project and ultimately the commercialization of the technology.  It also seeks to help applicants with their business plans and project plans for the Statement of Interest and Proposal submissions.

The SDTC offers the SD Tech Fund and NextGen Biofuels Fund. Eligible applicants must be Canadian for-profit or not-for-profit companies with a pre-commercial innovative clean technology solution, and must have the intention of commercializing their technology through a Canadian supply chain. 

The $590 million SD Tech Fund is aimed at supporting the late-stage development and pre-commercial demonstration of clean technology solutions: products and processes that contribute to clean air, clean water and clean land, that address climate change and improve the productivity and the global competitiveness of the Canadian industry. SDTC does not require any repayments of the financial contributions it provides to funded projects through the SD Tech Fund.

The $500 million NextGen BioFuels Fund is aimed at supporting the establishment of unique commercial scale demonstration facilities for the production of renewable fuels and co-products. However, the Virtual Incubator is not intended to help applicants of this STDC program.

More details on the SD Tech Fund and NextGen BioFuels Fund can be found on the Fundica website.

Arguably the greatest and most successful tech startup to come out of Canada, Hootsuite grew massively and expanded over the past year, gaining $20 million in investment through OMERS Ventures. 

For startups seeking funding, a bigger success story cannot be found anywhere else. Before OMERS there was a $1.95 million Series A round via Hearst Interactive Media, Blumberg Capital, Geoff Entress and Social Concepts. Then came another $3 million in late 2011 from Hearst, Entress, Blumberg Capital and Millennium Technology Ventures.  

Holmes started his first business at 16, selling paintball equipment online. At 23 he started a pizza shop before founding Invoke Media three years later. 

Success evidently came from humble beginnings, as he spent the majority of his childhood without electricity.

“I won a computer in school one year and my dad hooked it up to our car battery, allowing me to spend hours each night playing around on it.” He said. 

Launched in 2008 via Invoke Media, Hootsuite boasts over five million users today. It has sent over a billion messages, has seen its enterprise team members grow by 4706% and its pro team members by 450%. They’re used by 79 of the world’s Fortune 100 companies and are on track for 250 employees by the end of 2012.

HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. They’ve partnered with all the social media giants, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.

Here’s the full interview Fundica had with Holmes:

Fundica: Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Ryan Holmes: I grew up in the Okanagan region of British Columbia and actually spent much of my childhood living without electricity. I won a computer in school one year and my dad hooked it up to our car battery, allowing me to spend hours each night playing around on it. 

I had a passion for computers and entrepreneurship from an early age and started my first company, selling paintball equipment online, at age 16. When I was 23 I started a pizza restaurant that I owned and operated for two years before moving to Vancouver and getting a job at a dot-com company. After four months the business folded and I took the time to teach myself CSS and HTML. 

Then, when I was 26, I founded a company called Invoke. Originally operating out of my apartment, Invoke built websites for clients mostly located in Vancouver. We launched a CMS product on August 1, 2003 and ended up creating a popular piece of software used to run contests online. Companies started to want social media backing for their contests. It was when providing this that we recognized the need for a social media management tool as staff would always be logging in and logging out of client accounts. From here, HootSuite was born.

Fundica: Did you ever pivot your focus during development?

R.H: We never shifted from our central idea, which was to create a dashboard where all social media platforms could be accessed and updated from one space. But as with any product, our approach to this changed and evolved.

Fundica: How did you go about finding funding? 

R.H: HootSuite started off as an internal bootstrapped project within my internet company Invoke Media. At that time we simply allocated 7 of our 20 person staff and the necessary resources to build the social media management tool. But when we saw how quickly it blew up we knew we needed to give it more attention and its own funding.

At the beginning it was essentially self-funded. The original group of three employees working on HootSuite was also funding it and at that time we weren’t making a profit, it was a zero-revenue venture. But we continued to build and grow and two months after we incorporated, in December of 2009, we got our first major series of funding totalling $1.95 million from Hearst Interactive Media and Blumberg Capital, and angel investors Geoff Entress and Social Concepts. This was followed, in September of 2011, by a $3 million investment by Hearst Interactive Media and Blumberg Capital, angel investor Geoff Entress, and new investor Millennium Technology Ventures.

More recently, in March of 2012, we received a $20 million secondary transaction from OMERS Ventures. This investment allowed some of the original investors and original employees to take a step back and relax knowing they didn’t have to have all their eggs in one basket.

Fundica: What has been your best moment with Hootsuite so far?

R.H: I’m not sure if there’s one moment that sticks out in my mind as the best. Every year we go to SXSW and it’s always an amazing experience for us. In our space you meet people from all over the world every day who love what we do and the brand we created.

A huge moment was when we hit our first 1 million users on November 20, 2010. The growth never stopped and it wasn’t too long before we had another million, but hitting that million mark for the first time was really gratifying. It was a seven-figure symbol of all the hard work we had put in. Today, over five million users have HootSuite accounts.

Fundica: What are some major obstacles you’ve had to overcome?

R.H: Our product depends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social media sources allowing us a certain degree of access to their API, among other things. Now we’ve built a strong relationship with these companies and I’m not concerned about losing that access, but in the beginning this was always at the back of our mind.

Aside from that, most of the obstacles we faced were obstacles any company faces when they grow exponentially in a short period of time. We tried to scale staff at the same pace as our user growth which, over the last two years, has meant a lot of new faces nearly every week - averaging 6 hires each Monday. Trying to coordinate and manage each department during this growth has been a challenge but one I think we’ve overcome with fantastic results.

Fundica: What can Canada do to nurture future Hootsuites?

R.H: Canada is not yet seen as a good environment for tech startups, or any startups for that matter, to find investment and support. So many Canadian entrepreneurs sell their companies too early on instead of continuing to build them locally, which is terrible.

We need to create a culture of investment within Canada so that companies are inclined to remain here and build, which in turn would create local jobs and foster local talent who may in turn continue the cycle of investment and advisement. Canada has it’s fair share of successful entrepreneurs, and these are the people that should be leading the pack and helping the young startups. We need to keep our talent here.

It is no secret to entrepreneurs, startups and other companies that Fundica’s free online finding funding tool can be of invaluable assistance. For those looking to gain funding outside of the family and friends realm, Fundica’s tool has been recommended by successful businesses in Canada. 

Prior to gaining $1.8 million in funding through government grants and investment, Brayton Energy used Fundica’s services, consulting with founder Mike Lee about all their options.

“Anyone looking for a one-stop shop will find everything they need at Fundica and they will probably find more than they need,” said Eric Delisle, financial manager at Brayton. “It’s a great site with all the basic information any entrepreneur or company could dream of finding.”

Brayton Energy is a Gatineau-based research and development (R & D) firm that specializes in heat exchangers. Although they originally started with just one employee- president Antoin Corbeil- the clean tech company has grown to 24 employees since being founded in 2008.

Their engineers have extensive experience with innovative designs for many small and large-scale energy projects, spanning hybrid gas-turbine vehicles, renewable energy systems next generation nuclear and more. Brayton’s engineering team members have studied, published and worked extensively to help companies gain a competitive advantage through our expertise in: novel heat exchangers, gas turbines, utility-scale solar power plants, innovative coating technologies, and mechanical systems.

After consulting with Fundica Brayton successfully applied for and gained government funding, including a small business loan in 2010 from the National Research Council of Canada for $30,000. Then in October 2012 Brayton received $400,000 from Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, which allowed the engineering firm to acquire state-of-the-art equipment and launch production of a new product developed through its R-D activities. Along with funds from Investment Quebec and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), as well as $600,000 of their own investment, the total amount needed for the project amounts to over $1.8 million.

“If we didn’t have the support of R & D tax credits, if we didn’t have support of the BDC, if we didn’t have the support of Investment Quebec, we would not be where we are today,” said Delisle. “Mike showed us towards Fundica and told us what it could do, and being curious and looking for financing we went there and we found everything with all the details for the various programs.”

Brayton is using the funding design and manufacture heat exchangers adapted to the needs of its clients in the energy and transportation sectors. Over the next few years, Brayton Energy Canada Inc. expects this project to result in the creation of some 20 jobs and that 90% of its output will be exported.

Fundica was proud to have played a role in enabling a high-potential and fast-growing Canadian company like Brayton to access the funding they needed.

 

This was the loud and clear message in a Toronto Star guest blog by Start-up Canada co-founder Victoria Lennox. Startup Canada is currently touring through Canada, talking to community groups and crowd sourcing its mandate.

“The loudest message coming out of the tour to date, from thousands of entrepreneurs, is that the enterprise support system ecosystem needs to get its act together, collaborate, and provide a more seamless process for helping entrepreneurs,” wrote Lennox.

She further commented that the support landscape is highly fragmented in terms of region, sector, industry and generation.

Entrepreneurs continue to be unaware of available help. Budgets to “get the word out” remain low or nonexistent. The result is learning sessions going to waste, often having just 25 per cent attendance.

“Organizations need to come together, align, distinguish their mandates and coordinate their offerings to add greater value to entrepreneurs in their communities,” said Lennox.

Startup Canada has been touring the country since March, completing the nation’s first national entrepreneurship tour and campaign, engaging 25,000 Canadians and 250 partner organizations across the country.

Fundica recently teamed up with Startup Canada for the Startup Contest. The initiative was part of our efforts to encourage entrepreneurship in Canada by providing aspiring entrepreneurs with office space in downtown Montreal as well as Startup business kits and Startup Canada merchandise.

Canadian startup Ratehub.ca was selected as the winner of the Startup Contest and is now taking advantage of their new office space in downtown Montreal.

They weren’t done there though. Startup Canada is also launching their initiative with a national project to mentor over 10,000 enterprising Canadian’s during Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 12^th to 18^th.

“We’re issuing this challenge to the nation’s entrepreneur and enterprise support communities in the hopes it will spark long-term mentorship programs at local levels," said Lennox. "Mentorship’s transfer of knowledge and ideas is valuable for everyone involved and contributes to the success of future startups.

But, as Communications Manager Samantha Garner will tell you, such is the changing nature of entrepreneurship.

“It’s just been fun to see how the business has evolved,” said Garner. “When we started we were doing traditional classroom based training and then we went on to the web based video learning and now we’re developing educational apps for high school and post secondary, which is not something we planned on doing three years ago.”

The way GoForth has evolved mirrors that of the world in which it seeks to give its customers training in.

The business world cannot be predicted easily, and so GoForth wants to “improve the odds of successful entrepreneurship through effective, relevant and timely education and ongoing support during venture start-up and growth stages.”

Dr. Leslie Roberts founded the firm in 2009 as a way to deliver comprehensive small business education.

Prior to this, Roberts had founded a research firm named Mercatus Research, served as a management consultant, and received her PhD in entrepreneurship - the first person in Canada to do so. She continues to lecture at Mount Royal University's Bissett School of Business and the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business. She has spent 14 years instructing and mentoring students on entrepreneurship, marketing and marketing research. Roberts has even published scholarly research as recently as the fall of 2010 when an article appeared in the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (JSBE).

The company transitioned its focus from in-class learning to web-based modules to more effectively train their often busy, on-the-go clientele. The firm is now developing educational apps for high school students.

“We’re really excited about those because they’re actually ‘gamified’ and that’s something people have been saying they want,” said Garner.

A key to constructing these apps has been to ensure that they are “pedagogically sound”. They have to follow a curriculum, be testable and viable as content and not just fluff or filler for the game.

But what can GoForth offer in services for an already cash-strapped startup? After all, as Garner admits herself, the odds are stacked against most small businesses from the start.

The content it offers is extremely comprehensive - something GoForth prides itself on. One of the main priorities in delivering this content is making sure small business owners are prepared for almost everything.

“We really stress being prepared 100% before you open your doors,” said Garner. “We encourage business plans, marketing plans or any planning tool you can use before you start selling your first product,” said Garner.

The cost of a typical course at GoForth is $295, and this includes 10 modules of 30 lessons, running at 20 minutes each. All told it is over 10 hours of content. Garner says that they based their price on customer feedback and what they were willing to pay.

“It’s an investment in the business and I think people understand that,” she said.

Moving forward one area of focus is reaching for customers in remote locations. For now it is business as usual though.

“We just want to keep doing what we’re doing, listen to what people are telling us and give people what they want,” said Garner.

Now, prospective entrepreneurs must be identified by established Canadian VC's as quality candidates to create start-up firms in Canada. Kenney says it should make the immigration system more responsive to Canada's economic needs.

The venture funds would be necessary to invest in the start-ups.

“The start-up visa is an initiative that the government of Canada is exploring to assist in transforming our immigration system into a fast, fair and flexible system that will meet the needs of our economy and help grow our country,” said Alexis Pavlich, Kenney’s press secretary.

Following selection of the favoured individuals or start-ups, it would be up to the government to help clear them for immigration into Canada.

One motivation for the program is trying to attract would-be landed immigrants south of the border who haven't been able to attain citizenship.

“This program will link brilliant, job-creating, immigrant entrepreneurs with Canadian investors. We want the world’s best and brightest to come to Canada - to start businesses and to create jobs in Canada,” said Pavlich.

The government will set aside 2,750 visas a year for start-up entrepreneurs and their families. Vancouver-based Version One Ventures was one of the VC's the government consulted in creating the new visa.

“There are never enough brains in a country,” said Boris Wertz, founder of Version One Ventures. “Every country is going to compete for the best brains in the world.”

Wertz mentioned a Canadian case of brain drain in which a pair of Romanian entrepreneurs could only get six-month visas, forcing them to return to Canada repeatedly. They would later leave for Silicon Valley.

“We lost them, and part of the reason was always they never had the security that they could really stay in the country (and) focus on building the product,” Wertz said.

But will the new visa really meet its objectives?

Pelham Moore of Montreal-based start-up Playnaissance said even in Silicon Valley, VC's only find a “miniscule number” of potential start-ups on deals presented to them.

He also cited concerns about funding and support for these start-ups following initial stages of the program.

“If you’ve got this big deal and if you’ve got to start from scratch, unless you’ve got enough of an infrastructure beyond the business side, it’s a tall wall to climb,” said Moore. “In principle its good because Canada would need that ‘new blood’ coming in, if you will, but the logistics seem very tough to accomplish.”

The Venezuelan-born entrepreneur, via New York, further wonders if existing businesses would get access to this same pool of talent from outside Canada.

“Start-ups with their own concepts is one thing, but you’ve got start-ups here that find it difficult to find talent,” he said. “So if they broaden the program perhaps it would make sense.”

Meanwhile, Canadian argibusiness received a substantial boost last Friday when Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial government agreed on a five-year deal to provide over $3 billion to the agricultural sector. The Growing Forward 2 agreement will provide money to support strategic initiatives and innovation, market development and a 50 per cent increase in cost-sharing initiatives.

The new, five-year agreement will be implemented by April 1, 2013.

Quebec City will be getting a technology accelerator in early winter. It comes as part of the strategy of economic development in Québec unveiled last December by Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume.

 Following in the footsteps of California, Boston and Montreal, the Quebec City district of Saint-Roch will soon house a foundation for future assistance in getting start-ups and small businesses off of the ground.

"The idea is to rapidly and inexpensively test the viability of a product to determine its commercial potential," said Gérald St-Aubin, a vice president at Desjardins Venture Capital.

The Quebec Technology Fund is raising at least $25 million to be contributed through Desjardins-Innovatech and other private partners. Each year, the accelerator will seek out twenty businesses to support in the IT and communication, industrial technologies and life sciences sectors. The money allocated to each recipient will range from $20,000 to $50,000.

St. Aubin mentioned that the eventual goal will be to bring these businesses closer and to become more attractive to angel investors and VC's. 

Moreover, the best projects could receive seed funding in a subsequent round to carry out the next step of the proof of concept.

Accelerator technology's main purpose is to provide support services to high level start-ups from a network of trained volunteer mentors of successful entrepreneurs and seasoned CEO's, according to Sébastien Tanguay, director of technological entrepreneurship in Québec International.

However this accelerator isn't solely tied to Quebec City businesses. While most of it's clients will come from the capital it is important to note that innovative companies outside the area can take advantage of its services as well. Tanguay mentioned that Montreal's FounderFuel claims half of its business from outside the metropolis.

More than $80 million is available to create and support the development of the best technology companies in Quebec City and Eastern Quebec.

Throw in another $100 million from private partners and the total looks more like $180 million, an opportunistic and attractive amount for Quebec businesses.

Meanwhile, with optimism abound in the province of Quebec it came as no surprise this past week when Les Affaires reported that Montreal was one of the most optimistic start-up cities. An Entrepreneurs Organization survey conducted in June indicated that in Montreal 87 per cent of business owners have increased their profits. The global average was scored at 60 per cent. Although it wasn't all rosy for Montreal, the report also indicated that access to capital remains a greater challenge for businesses in Montreal.   

Le Parti Québécois (PQ) a publié le tant attendu budget le 20 novembre dernier. Plusieurs rumeurs avaient vu le jour quant à la manière avec laquelle ils allaient plafonner les dépenses et maintenir leur objectif d’un déficit budgétaire de 1,5 milliard de dollars tel que prévu en mars 2012.

Voici les aspects les plus importants du budget pour les entreprises du Québec.

Imposition des crédits d'impôt remboursables

Pour les entreprises, les montants des crédits d'impôt remboursables énumérés dans la liste ci-dessous ayant été reçus après le 20 novembre seront maintenant inclus dans le revenu et imposés. Les sept crédits doivent maintenant être inclus dans le calcul du revenu annuel. Sont inclus dans cette liste le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour la recherche scientifique et le développement expérimental et :

• le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour la recherche universitaire et  pour la recherche effectuée par un centre de recherche public ou un consortium de recherche;
• le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour cotisations et droits versés à un consortium de recherche;
• le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour la recherche précompétitive en partenariat privé;
• le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour stage en milieu de travail;
• le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour le design;
• le crédit d'impôt remboursable pour la construction ou la transformation de navires.

Crédit d'impôt remboursable pour la R&D dans le secteur biopharmaceutique

Les petites, moyennes et grandes entreprises biopharmaceutiques dont les dépenses se situent au-dessus de 3 millions $ qui réclamaient par le passé un crédit d’impôt de 17,5 % pourront maintenant bénéficier d’un crédit de 27,5 %, et ce, pour les cinq prochaines années. L’admissibilité doit être obtenue sur une base annuelle.

Nouveau congé fiscal pour les grands projets d'investissement

Le programme précédent a été remplacé par un nouveau programme, le C21. Dans ce nouveau programme, certaines entreprises et partenariats qui commencent à effectuer un grand projet d'investissement (au-dessus de 300 millions $) au Québec après le 20 novembre, 2012 peuvent, sous certaines conditions, obtenir un congé fiscal de dix ans. Ce congé fiscal est applicable aux grands projets d'investissement dans les secteurs manufacturier (y compris le traitement du minerai et du bois), du traitement et de l’hébergement de données, du commerce de gros ou du stockage.

Crédit d'impôt pour le matériel de fabrication et de transformation

Une entreprise admissible qui acquiert un bien admissible peut bénéficier d'un crédit d'impôt pour investissements relatif au matériel de fabrication et de transformation. Le crédit d'impôt s'appliquait à certains biens acquis avant le 1er janvier 2016 alors que pour d’autres biens admissibles, l'acquisition devait avoir lieu avant le 1er janvier 2018. Le taux de base du crédit est de 5 %, mais pour certaines entreprises opérant dans les zones plus rurales du Québec, le crédit peut être augmenté à 40 %.

D’autres annonces intéressantes en lien avec le milieu des affaires incluent notamment la création de la Banque de développement économique du Québec (BDEQ) pour améliorer l'orientation et le soutien aux entreprises désireuses de se développer et d'investir dans toutes les régions du Québec ainsi que des engagements envers l'industrie du capital de risque et des technologies vertes. Plus de détails sont attendus sur ces engagements.

 “It was really though to pick a winner,” said Mike Lee, Founder at Fundica. “The applicant list was very strong with dozens of business with great potential. I wish we had more space to provide across the country.”

Ratehub.ca recently expanded operations to Montreal to take advantage of Canada’s francophone market. Among other great perks as contest winners, the mortgage rate comparing web tool now has access to prime downtown Montreal office space for a three-month period.

Idriss Bouhmouch, Business Development Manager in Quebec for the company, recently spoke to Fundica about their product going forward and how it is solving a problem in the marketplace.

“The fact is buying a house is probably going to be the largest purchase in your entire life, unless your going to buy a helicopter,” said Bouhmouch. “Where we come in, is we allow people to save on their mortgage.”

The company started two years ago in Toronto when founder Alyssa Richard created an effective web-based mortgage rate calculator. Seeking to penetrate the francophone Canadian market a year later, the company brought on Bouhmouch who had recently graduated from the Queens University School of Business.

Soon after networking and building partnerships in the Montreal area, the company developed a web integration tool allowing their comparison widget to appear on different sites.

Two of these sites include Kijiji.ca and LesPAC.com, the widely used Quebec classifieds site that now provides Ratehub.ca’s mortgage calculator.

It is clear that Bouhmouch is confident in Ratehub.ca’s product. He explains how a few key variables hold 95% of businesses back when they try to use their own rate calculator.

First, when calculating the value of the house, Ratehub.ca actually uses the property values. Second, they base their interest rates on daily updates based on the market, not just the industry standard. Users can also play around with a host of other modifications like land transfer tax, cash needed scenarios, monthly expenses and interest rate risk.

“What that means for me in business development is that in 95% of websites could improve their user experience by putting our calculator on their sites,” said Bouhmouch.

Prior to officially launching their French website, Bouhmouch admitted it was hard to pitch a yet to be finished product to potential clients, but over the past year that has changed.

Along with their Fundica Startup Contest win and their recent partnership with LesPAC, they have been favourably received throughout the Montreal community since expanding to Quebec.

With the new office space, their next plans involve building up a strong Quebec team that currently consists of one person: Bouhmouch.

In selecting the winner of the contest the Fundica team had a difficult time deciding among the many deserving pitches from short-listers. They were:

• Merchlar, an award winning company in the Augmented Reality (AR) industry. They create products and services for leading Canadian brands Ubisoft, Bell, Sidlee and more.
  
  
• HOVR, a web application that uses image recognition technology to make clickable images for product search.
  
  
• FastCab, a web application instantly connecting passengers to the nearest taxi’s that also uses a two-way rating system.
  
  
• ONP-M Labs, a company committed to offering the most convenient, adaptable and secure orthesis and prosthetics to the medical market.
  
  
• Inkoso, a crowdsourcing and crowdfunding platform for social entrepreneurship projects.
  
  
• Strategize Financial Modelling, a financial management company that delivers fully customized, audit-friendly best practice financial modeling, reporting, and analysis solutions.
  
  
• Urban Seedling, a Montreal-based organic vegetable-growing service that creates, maintains and manages gardening solutions in urban or space-limited settings.
  
  

is one such federal initiative aimed at making it easier for small businesses to secure loans from financial institutions by sharing the risk with lenders. As start-ups often have trouble gaining venture capital or lack the assets for a traditional business loan, the CSBFP can offer both an attractive and viable alternative.

• to help new businesses get started  and established firms make improvements and expand
• to improve access to loans that would not otherwise be available to small businesses
• to stimulate economic growth and create jobs for Canadians

Had the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) gained power, it would be a different story.

“The CAQ are good for big business. Since they champion small government, they'd cut all kinds of programs, possibly including SR&ED,” said the co-founder of Montreal start-up reelyActive. “Quebec would likely lose its 'startup paradise' status”.

Both former Premier Jean Charest and CAQ leader Francois Legault had announced in mid-August as part of their platform policies that high schools should have entrepreneurial classes. Charest had said that his party would make an entrepreneurial class over the last two years of high school to "stimulate the entrepreneurial future of Quebec". It is unknown whether the PQ will develop similar plans.

After the last couple of weeks though, the 'big business' leaders voiced their opinion on Quebec's future business environment.

Before the election Quebec's business leaders were calling on the PQ to review election promises they say “risk slowing investment and the province's competitiveness”. The Conseil du Patronat du Québec was adamant that a PQ minority government would not be able to fulfill the lofty pre-election platform promises it had made in a cash-strapped Quebec. They also claimed that companies are holding off investment in the province in the midst of uncertain political change.

“The business community is worried,” said President Yves-Thomas Dorval. “We need to have winning conditions for the economy”. He also mentioned that the PQ “will have to make difficult choices” given the debt they are taking on while focusing on “providing the best conditions possible to invest in Quebec”.

However, Dorval speculated that the PQ's minority status would hamper any major changes.

Most concerning for Quebec business communities may be proposals to tax the rich and mining industry. Other worries include changes to Bill 101, where tougher French language provisions and increased costs for small businesses could come into play. Still others include business regulations and public finances.

The Quebec Mining Industry had their say recently, as the chairman of the Association minière du Québec said that some PQ proposals were “high risk” during unfavourable times for metal prices.

Montreal Gazette columnist Peter Hadekel warned that while Bill 101 worries may be put on the back-burner while the PQ holds a small plurality of seats, there is cause for concern for the current less-than-stellar economy.

“The risk is that the new government sticks to its spending promises and the fiscal picture worsens,” writes Hadekel. “The key thing to watch is the target for a balanced budget in 2013-14.” Balanced books were of prime importance for outgoing Liberal finance Minister Raymond Bachand, who had spent a lot of time focused on eliminating the deficit and reassuring financial markets.

Marois’ new approach to foreign business takeovers was already put on display this past week when she commented that her party would prevent such sales from happening. As a result, a $1.8 Billion takeover of Quebec's Rona by US company Lowe's Cos Inc. may be in turmoil.

by Joseph Czikk 
jczikk@fundica.com

For companies looking to access an ever-growing talent pool in Montreal or young entrepreneurs looking to be connected with finance and guidance, two local programs should be looked into. Mitacs-Accelerate InDev and Prêt-à-Entreprendre are two funding programs located in Montreal that provide either a direct grant or an unsecured loan.

 The Mitacs Indev program is part of the Accelerate internship program that connects companies with over 50 research-based universities through graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The research network is both federally and provincially funded.

Student are able to kick-start their careers by applying their specialized expertise to business research challenges while companies are able to take advantage of an accessible talent pool.

The Indev portion is specifically designed for development-focused projects. They are not designed for research projects, but rather for collaborative projects that advance or significantly improve new products, processes, materials, systems or services.

Each four month InDev internship project receives $11,000 in direct funding ($7500 from the partner organization and $3500 from Mitacs).

Internships are open to all disciplines and all industry sectors including manufacturing, technical innovation, business processes, IT, social sciences, design, and more. Interns spend half of their time at the company and the other half at their university.

There are no application deadlines and no competition in a traditional sense: applications are assessed based on their merit.

Interns do not have to be Canadian citizens but they do have to be a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow at a Canadian university. Partner organizations should be Canadian for-profit companies, or a Canadian branch of a foreign-owned for-profit company. Non-for-profits, funding agencies, university-based research centres and foreign companies are excluded.

Prêt-à-Entreprendre is a province-wide program that provides dual support for Quebec entrepreneurs. The program seeks to build on the growth and survival of young companies while providing mentorship and technical support.

It’s a unique program based on the fact that entrepreneurs are taught by volunteer mentors from the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship and a network of experts from the Federation des Chambres de Commerce du Quebec (FCCQ).

When the program was officially announced back in June, former finance minister Sam Hamad emphasized its potential for Quebec’s future economy.

“To stimulate entrepreneurship is to highlight the talent of Quebec,” said Hamad. “With the recent Quebec entrepreneurship strategy, we support those who have the desire to create a business, to develop and to prosper.”

Successful applicants of this program can receive an unsecured loan without interest or collateral for up to $30,000 (representing up to 20 per cent of the share capital required for the project).

The program budget is approximately $ 7 million and is funded by three partners of the project, the Quebec government ($4 million), the Fund ($1 million) and Desjardins ($2 million).

There is no interest on the loan until maturity and it is repayable within five years. This will help stimulate regional economies and young entrepreneurship, according to Marie-Claude Boisvert.

“Funding for this unique program is planned over five years, but its impact will be felt over a much longer period,” said the Chief Operating Officer of Desjardins Venture Capital. “The support will be offered to entrepreneurs and contribute effectively to the economic development of the regions of Quebec.”

After submissions are complete, a regional committee composed of professionals and mentors will evaluate and select the best projects.  

Borrowers must reside in Quebec, be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, work full time in the company specified and have a business of less than five years old.