Feature
Numbers Still Don’t Add Up for Women in Tech
In tech, men dominate from cubicle to boardroom to podium despite findings from multiple studies showing better financial performance among more gender-balanced companies. If any industry should respond to studies like these, it’s the data-driven tech sector. But the shift is still not happening enough.
June 1, 2016Tech Sector Leaders on Funding Challenges Facing Canadian Startups
Startup founders need to think about funding options at all stages of growth. What kind of funding is available – or not – at which stages? We talked to investors and founders about the challenges attracting startup investment, cultural fit, and how some have negotiated funding issues. While everyone we spoke to said there are challenges getting funding, there’s little consensus on where exactly those holes are – or how they should be filled.
May 27, 2016Why Canada’s Tech Scene is Worth Getting Excited About
It’s often overlooked that one of the most esteemed innovators of the 21st century, Elon Musk - the mind behind PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla - is a Canadian citizen and attended Queen’s University in Kingston before ultimately moving to the U.S. Vancouverite Stewart Butterfield created the original photo-sharing site Flickr in the mid 2000s and went on to build the office social platform Slack, now headquartered in San Francisco and valued around $4 billion.
May 10, 2016Startup Simulations: The Future of VC Funding
Recent advances in gaming and AI are adding another layer of complexity to an already competitive landscape in the form of “startup simulations.” As finance becomes more data-driven, simulations – which have been long been leveraged for gaming – serve a new purpose: determining whether or not a startup gets funded.
May 4, 2016Cockroaches Rise, Unicorns Fall as Venture Capital Plays Moneyball
Now that sobriety has set in, the tech world sees in hindsight how a nearly indestructible creature, able to live on dust, would be more attractive to investors than something that doesn’t exist – like profits among some the most well-known tech plays of the past few years. Think Pinterest, Yelp, etc.
May 3, 2016When did the Cockroach Crawl into Tech Sector Parlance?
The earliest published reference we could find was from Dave McClure, founding partner at venture fund and seed accelerator 500 Startups in a Wired UK article from 2013. In the piece, McClure calls out entrepreneurs for “trying to build audiences without knowing how to monetise them."
May 2, 2016Toronto is a Cockroach Nest
Toronto distinguishes itself as Canada’s financial center, the fourth-largest metropolis in North America, and its namesake university ranks in the world’s top-20. Toronto is also one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, a metric that McKinsey & Co. says supports corporate success. So where are the Toronto-bred unicorns?
May 1, 2016Startups Eat Into The $4.7 Trillion Financial Services Industry
If Goldman Sachs is correct, fintech – which generally refers to "point solutions" created by startups to make payments, loans, and other financial transactions easier than what's offered by incumbent banks – could displace $4.7 trillion in revenue for financial services firms.
April 20, 2016Halliburton Chooses IBM Cloud to Help Cut Oilfield Development Costs
Record low oil prices, caused by strong output among oil producing nations amid weaker global demand, have put pressure on producers of the fossil fuel to lower extraction costs.
April 20, 2016Canada’s Big Banks Turn to Hackers for Innovation
According to MaRS, the Toronto-based non-profit that commercializes home-grown tech, Canada’s financial center and largest city is ranked ninth globally for fintech innovation. Global investments in the fintech sector jumped to nearly $7 billion in 2014, making it a key area for any city aiming to stand out as a tech ecosystem.
March 31, 2016Jeopardy-Winning Supercomputer Could Be Toronto Raptors’ MVP
Big data and artificial intelligence have become game-changers for major league sports — an industry that drives more than $10 billion in economic value — by giving managers increasingly effective tools to bring their teams into the finals.
March 31, 2016Shopify Takes Vacant BlackBerry Throne—And What’s Next for Ontario
After the implosion of Nortel and the missteps of Blackberry, Canada wasn’t exactly a symbol of tech success. Ottawa-based Shopify’s IPO offered a chance to restore some faith in the country’s innovation capability. A free-fall in the price of oil, which was about wipe out tens of thousands of jobs in the energy sector, raised the stakes even higher.
March 31, 2016We’re Calling It: Startups Have Ended the Industrial Era
The world’s economic map is being redrawn. Industries dominant since the 19th century with support from government institutions and political alliances are now a drag on the global economy. Meanwhile, tech startups — disregarded by many of the bureaucracies and political offices that perpetuated the old industrial order — are creating growth.
March 31, 2016