Here’s the startup news making headlines today on other Web sites and blogs. Britain launches a startup loan program, Notesolution helps students, and pondering Canada’s venture capital landscape.
UK startup loans
Despite being under the microscope over his government’s ties to RupertMurdoch’s phone hacking scribes, British Prime Minister David Cameronfound time to launch a loan program for startups today. Brits aged 18to 24 can apply for loans of $4,000 each from the $131-million program.Cameron hopes to create 30,000 new businesses over the next threeyears. The loans will have to be repaid within five years at aninterest level of inflation rate plus three per cent.
By Terry Brodie in the Globe and Mail
Notesolution’s noteworthy success
Toronto startup Notesolution is profiled by TechVibes today in aQ&A with CEO Jack Tai, who tells the site he wants to maintainits freemium content model for as long as possible. The startup, partof the 2012 FounderFuel cohort, has raised about $400,000 of its$600,000 financing goal already. Notesolution is an online portal forstudents to share course content. It has 40,000 registered users andcontains almost 75,000 course study documents so far.
When VC deals go south first
These are good times for the Canadian venture capital industry, withbig amounts being raised and disbursed recently. So what’s the snag?Well, as Mark MacLeod notes, there are more and more U.S. VCs comingnorth to ink deals with promising Canadian startups before CanadianVCs can get to them. “With the borders coming down it represents a realrisk to Canadian investors,” he explains. He then lists some tips forCanada’s investors and startups to consider in order to stem this tideof earlystage crossborder deal flow.