No shortage of startup news to choose from today:
A knight at the table
A knight, a cabinet minister and a serial entrepreneur will be amongthe speakers at the nationallaunch event for Startup Canada on May2. The event, just announced today,will take place at the University of Ottawa. Oh, and the three we’rereferring to are Sir Terry Matthews (venture capitalist, the 63rdrichest person born in the UK, and current resident of Kanata, Ont.),the Hon. John Baird (foreign affairs minister) and Adam Chowaniec(Tundra Semiconductor, Bel-Air Networks and others).
Absolutely fabulous
The startup scene is well represented in Profit magazine’sissue celebrating Canada’s30 most fabulous entrepreneurs (their wording, not ours).Among the young, ambitious and successful Canadians making the list: Kunal Gupta(Polar Mobile), Victoria Lennox(Startup Canada), and Debbie Landa(GrowLab, Dealmaker Media).
Acclerator for minorities
Canada’s first technology accelerator targeted to women and visibleminorities has opened in Toronto. Driven Accelerator Group will putstartups through a 12-week program modeled after the NewME acceleratorin the U.S., Techvibes reports. The Torontoprogram is accepting applications now.
Startup bubble?
In his latest blog posting, Mark Evans poses thequestion: are Canada’s startups missing out on the acquisition frenzysouth of the border a la Instagram’s instantquasi-billionaires, or isthe U.S. startup scenefloating on an unrealistic bubble that’s eventually goingto burst? He posits that whichever of those two camps you’re in,everyone has to agree that Canada’s startup ecosystem is still sorelylacking in capital.