Anyone want to buy a Canadian start-up? You better act fast because they’re selling like hotcakes!

The latest deal is CNN’s purchase of Vancouver-based Zite, which offers a popular tablet application to read content.

Zite was in the midst of raising venture capital that apparently valued the eight-person company at $200-million so it will be interesting to see if CNN had to cough up some serious coin. (Note: AllThingsD reports CNN paid $20-million to $25-million.)

Zite’s acquisition comes on the heels of a flurry of other deals this year. The list includes:

- Five Mobile (Zynga)
- BackType (Twitter)
- PostRank (Google)
- Tungle (RIM)
- PushLife (Google)
- Radian6 (Salesforce.com)
- Tiny Hippos (RIM)

While it’s a little disappointing to see fast-growing start-ups get snapped up, the upside is that success will hopefully provide entrepreneurs and investors with a stronger appetite to start and support more start-ups. Who knows, maybe Canada’s cautious, reluctant, recalcitrant venture capitalists will be emboldened enough to get in the game rather than watching from the sidelines.

As I have mentioned on this blog and my Globe & Mail column, I believe this is the most exciting time for Canadian start-ups in the 15 years that I have been involved as a reporter, start-up founder/employee and consultant. By much-needed emergence of buyers for Canadian start-ups just makes the landscape even that much more exciting.

More: TechVibes has a running list of Canadian start-ups that have been acquired.