Engagio Raises $540K From Group Including Fred Wilson

By Mark Evans in Startups 1 Comment

Sometimes, startups percolate over a long period of time. Sometimes, they emerge in a creative burst.

Case in point is Engagio, a service that helps people manage conversation happening on various social networks and comment services. Engagio addresses the problem of digital fragmentation in which activity is happening on various platforms – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Google+, et al.

For many people, keeping up with these conversations means visiting the different services, which can be time-consuming.

This is where Engagio comes into play with a GMail-like interface that aggregates this activity. It provides users with an inbox, as well as ways to discover more about the people engaging with you to drive more and better connections.

Engagio was created after William Mougayar bounced the idea off Fred Wilson, a partner with Union Square Ventures and a popular blogger. Wilson loved the idea, encouraged Mougayar to do it, and eight weeks later Engagio was launched.

$540K Seed Round Raised

Today, Engagio’s whirlwind journey took another big step forward with the close of a $540,000 seed round. The investors include Wilson, Rho Canada, Real Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Michael Yavonditte, Paul Martino and Extreme Ventures. Mougayar said the original financing goal was $300,000 but there was so much interest, the size of the deal climbed.

For Mougayar, an enthusiastic blog commenter, the inspiration for Engagio materialized to solve a problem he faced on a regular basis.

“You can’t form relationships over commenting,” he said. “There was nothing to systemize it, visualize it and see it. I put two and two together and said we need software to manage all those interactions and conversations on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. If you don’t have one place, you have to go all of the different places or depend on email notifications, which are hit and miss.”

As important, he said, is Engagio’s ability to identify the people with which you are interact. Engagio captures these people and puts them into a contact folder that becomes a relationship manager.

The seed round, he said, will be used hire more people and ramp up faster. A big chunk of the money will be spend to hire more people (development, marketing, UI and UX) and scale the infrastructure.

While Mougayar isn’t ready to talk about Engagio’s business model, he said it will depend on Engagio have lots of users. This will provide the company will options that will be revenue generation “clear, feasible and achievable”.

 

Snapshot of a VC Deal: Media Armor

By Mark Evans in Startups No Comments Tags: , , ,

Who: Media Armor, which “empowers organizations to invest in mobile display advertising with the same confidence as online”

How much: $1.5-million from a group led by Geoff Judge of iNovia Capital and Ian Sigalow of Greycroft Partners. Other investors include Neu Venture Capital’s Jerry Neumann, Brian Cohen, Chairman of New York Angels, John Taysom, Laconia Ventures’ Jeffrey Silverman, Philip Grieshaber, Principal Scientist at Adobe, Mocospace CEO Justin Siegel, and Steve Tinlin.

The Quote: “Through our display, we enable Brands and Retailers to acquire new customers, keep existing ones loyal, and remarket to past site visitors.  All programs are run with a traditional test-and-control, isolating the view-based incremental-impact of our media.”

2011: Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty for Canadian VC?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment

First, the good news about Canada’s venture capital landscape. In 2011, investment activity climbed to the highest level in four years ($1.5-billion), a 34% increase from 2010, although it is still significantly below the record activity ($2.1-billion) reached in 2007.

The bad news is there’s still not enough supply to meet rising demand, plagued by “continued weakness” when it comes to fund-raising.

The good news-bad news scenario was spelled out in the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s annual report. For those of us in the glass half-full camp, the increase in investment and the number of deal is cause for optimism.

As well, 2011 saw a spike in M&A activity with 34 deals, including two each by Google, Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.com. And there was a flurry of incubators and accelerators established, including Extreme Startups last week.

Before anyone gets carried away, Canada’s venture capital landscape is a long, long way from being solid, let alone robust. There’s still not enough venture capital for seed, series A or major rounds. And don’t expect U.S. investors to pick up the slack.

In a press release, CVCA president Gregory Smith said there is concern about whether enough fund-raising can be dong to support the demand for investments. This situation was illustrated by the fact new commitments to Canadian VCs were flat last year at $1-billion.

“Canada has a historic opportunity to become an innovation leader,” Smith said, adding that “in order to act decisively on this opportunity, we must first overcome challenges to supplying VC funds that, in turn, supply entrepreneurs.”

So what’s the solution? How can Canada’s venture capital community do a better job of supporting the startup community? There is not easy answer to a problem that has been around a long time and doesn’t look to be changing any time soon. It’s not going to be an easy fix from government or U.S. investors or institutional investors waking up to the idea of venture capital investing.

Perhaps the answer to the problem is this: success. If more startups and mature high-tech companies are acquired, that could (emphasis on “could”) encourage investors (angels, VCs and institutional) to get more involved. Success has a strange way of helping people to see the light or new opportunities that they otherwise would have dismissed or not seriously considered.

That said, success is a double-edged sword. Without enough financial support, it is hard for startups to have enough powder to become acquisition targets. If they’re not interesting targets, there’s no acquisitions and, likely, less interest from investors.

So which side of the fence do you sit on? Are you bull or a bear about Canada’s VC landscape?

 

 

I’ve Signed Up for Your Startup, Now What?

By Mark Evans in Startups 4 Comments Tags: , , ,

For startups, attracting someone’s attention, getting them to check out their product and, finally, having them sign up can be a long but satisfying journey.

New users are celebrated because it illustrates a product has appeal, fills a need and, in some way, provides value. It explains why user growth is a key metric in determining a startup’s success.

But what happens after someone signs up for a service?

In many respects, the marketing shouldn’t stop. Instead, it has to keep going to make sure new users are embraced and convinced they have made the right decision. As well, a startup must make sure a new user is given reasons to stick around. In other words, if you invite someone into your house, you should be a good host.

So how do startups keep the loving going post-sign up?

It starts with something simple – a welcome email that thanks someone for climbing on the bandwagon, and provides them with a few ways to check out the different features. A month later, another email should be sent to ask how someone is using the service, and whether they have feedback or questions.

For new users, support is also key. This makes it important to have easy-to-find feedback widgets (I’m a particular fan of GrooveHQ and Olark), a user-friendly FAQ, mini-videos to highlight features, and responsive customer service. A good newsletter can also be a tool to maintain a regular relationship (avoiding the out of sight, out of mind syndrome) and provide useful information.

It takes a lot of work to attract new users, which makes it so important to show the love people who come on board. In other words, don’t take them for granted.

The Week in Startup Land (Edition #3)

By Mark Evans in Startups 1 Comment Tags: , ,

Welcome to edition #3 of my weekly look at what’s happening within the Canadian startup landscape, as well as interesting blog posts about startups.

I’ve got blog re-design in the works so considering turning this into a weekly newsletter. If you have thoughts or feedback, let me know. If you want me to add items to the round-up, leave a comment or send me an email.

- How Does a Startup Grow: a story by the Financial Post’s Quentin Casey putting the spotlight on six “Canadians with influence” within the high-tech sector:

- Uniiverse launches its “collaborative living” service: The Montreal/Toronto-based company attracted an extensive review by TechCrunch’s Rip Empson. Look for a story next week on Uniiverse in my Globe & Mail “Start” column.

- WattPad, which attracted $3.5-million in venture capital last September, reported that users spent more than a billion minutes on the social reading service in January.

- There are a growing number of startup accelerators emerging in Canada. Canadian Private Equity puts the spotlight on four: GrowLab, Extreme Startups, FounderFuel and Launch36.

- Shopcastr, which makes it easy for retailers to create an online store and for consumers to discover them, launched earlier this week. I’ve been working with them for several months, which included the decision to pivot after their original idea failed to gain much traction. Here’s my blog post, as well as a story by Mike Connell in the Toronto Standard.

- Just F*%king Sell: A passionate blog post by Graphic.ly CEO Micah Baldwin in which he contends the most important metric for a startup is “building something worth selling, and selling something worth building”.

- A couple of my other blog post this week included a look at the startup roadkill that’s will no doubt materialize, and a look at how generous startups should be with stock options given the many people Facebook turned into millionaires.

- In my Globe & Mail “Start” column, I took a look at Montreal-based Buyosphere, which offers a Q&A service for shoppers.

Inside a Startup Pivot: Shopcastr

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Startups No Comments Tags: , , , ,

If you’re looking for the definition of a pivot, you probably couldn’t find a better example than Shopcastr. (Note: Shopcastr is a client).

The original idea was Hipsell, which had huge ambitions to change the online classifieds marketplace by letting people cross-post listings on Craigslist and Kijiji in a way that leveraged mobile and social media. After some trial and error, founders Matt O’Leary and Aron Jones realized the concept wasn’t going to work.

Rather than pack up, they decided to take the insight they had learned about local commerce to come up with another approach. In testing a new idea, they did something Eric Ries (aka The Lean Startup) would have loved: they conducted in-market research by visiting dozens of retailers to get feedback on whether the new idea had any legs.

Armed with real-world intelligence, Hipsell was rebranded as Shopcastr, which lets retailers quickly and easily create online stores to feature their products. Consumers can browse Shopcastr to discover new stores and products.

While Hipsell was a sexy idea, it was challenged by a lot of moving parts and entrenched behaviour. On the other hand, Shopcastr is one of those ideas that makes sense. It lets local retailers establish an online presence that can complement their Website or be their Website. And it plays right into the shop local movement by providing consumers with a user-friendly way to discover what’s around the corner or across town.

To get a better idea of Shopcastr, which is part of the Mantella Venture Partners portfolio, I fired off a few questions to Matt O’Leary:

1. What is Shopcastr and when did the idea come from?

Shopcastr is a simple and beautiful way for retailers to show off their best products and let’s consumers window shop their favourite stores from a phone, tablet or computer.

Shopcastr was a pivot from Hipsell, a real-time mobile marketplace. Hipsell set out to disrupt online classifieds giants like Craigslist and Kijiji by building a real-time, mobile, social, location-based web and mobile app that solved a ton of problems in the space. Hipsell had some unique ideas on how to solve the chicken and egg problem a new marketplace faces. One of the ideas was to use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to cross-post all Hipsell ads to Craigslist and Kijiji. Kijiji quickly shut us down, and then we decided go back to the drawing board and do some customer interviews on a fresh idea with a slight resemblance to Hipsell.

2. Who’s the target audience for Shopcastr?

Independent local retailers with one to four locations is our primary target on the retailer side. We don’t target big box and like shops with unique products. On the consumer side, our target is shoppers primarily from the age of 20-40. 65% female, 35% male.

3. What’s been the reception so far? Who’s signing up for the service?

We’ve had a great reception from retailers. We’re signing up over 20 a week, and now have over 250 shops and 2500 products. Our top 20 retailers post an average of eight products a week. Our early adopters range from amazing furniture stores like Design Republic to bike shops like Duke’s Cycle.

We only started our consumers acquisition methods last week. We debuted at Sprout Up putting on a four-minute presentation in front of 500+ people. In our 90 day beta period, most of our consumer traffic was coming from our retailers existing networks (Facebook and Twitter).

4. What’s the growth strategy? Are you focused on Toronto for now or plan to expand to other cities?

We’re still focused on Toronto as we build our playbook for a multiple city rollout. We’re planning to expand into multiple cities throughout North America in 2012 and beyond. Stay tuned for an announcement within the next few months. In the meantime, you can request a city on our main page.

5. What’s the business model?

Our business model is simple, we plan to charge retailers a monthly subscription fee starting as low as $9/month. We will also have an interesting paid advertising/positioning model that we’ll be experimenting with in the coming weeks. We plan to have an API and have a few other tricks up our sleeve. SaaS with a little bit of Class if you will.

More: The Toronto Standard ran a good feature on Shopcastr earlier this week.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »