The SaaS Weekly is a weekly newsletter covering major SaaS news from Canada and around the globe.
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theScore to be acquired by Penn National Gaming for $2 billion USD (BETAKIT)
The news follows theScore’s March initial public offering on the Nasdaq, through which it raised $186 million USD.
How tech can promote a collaborative, patient-centric approach in healthcare
Every product depends on customer data in order to deliver value. However, getting this data into a validated format (let alone migrating it) is a huge pain. As enticing as it sounds to sit in Excel for hours cleaning spreadsheets, Flatfile is the solution.
Flatfile’s platform intuitively makes sense of the jumbled data your users import, validating it into the format you rely on. No CSV templates. No services teams hired to migrate data. Flatfile comes complete with an intuitive UI experience, enabling even non-technical customers to confidently import their data, correctly, every time.
Ready to get your customers to value faster?
Dataiku gets $400M at a $4.6B valuation, led by Tiger Global (TECHCRUNCH)
Data science platform Dataiku announced that it has raised a $400 million Series E, bringing its valuation to $4.6 billion.
Yaletown Partners raises $130 million in first close of Innovation Growth Fund II (BETAKIT)
IGF II follows Yaletown’s first Innovation Growth Fund, which closed in 2018.
Leaked document says Google fired dozens of employees for data misuse (VICE)
Some allegations potentially center around accessing Google user or employee data.
Hootsuite nabs conversational AI startup Heyday in $60 million deal to further social commerce push (BETAKIT)
Heyday is Hootsuite’s second acquisition this year, following the purchase of automated messaging platform Sparkcentral.
Facebook’s broken vows (THE NEW YORKER)
How the company’s pledge to bring the world together wound up pulling us apart.
Blizzard turned game developers into rock stars. Misbehavior followed (BNN BLOOMBERG)
Six women said they reported incidents to Blizzard’s HR department and saw no results. Their stories provide insight into how the corporate culture developed into a legal liability.
Canada lays out major plans to target illegal content on Facebook, YouTube, Pornhub and other platforms (TORONTO STAR)
The Liberal government has proposed a vast new system that would be tailored to ensure illegal content, such as child pornography and hate-speech, doesn’t end up on everyday internet platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Pornhub and Twitter.
WorkJam secures $35 million to fuel growth of frontline worker platform (BETAKIT)
The minority investment comes just over a year after WorkJam raised a $70.6 million CAD Series C round led by Inovia.
Apple’s iPhones will include new tools to flag child sexual abuse (NEW YORK TIMES)
The changes, for later this year, raised concerns that the company is installing surveillance technology that governments could exploit.
Deloitte Canada acquires Clockwork to strengthen SAP consultancy business (BETAKIT)
The Clockwork deal is Deloitte Canada’s third acquisition in recent months. The company’s acquisition of Toronto-based application development and data engineering consultancy TWG occurred in February, which BetaKit was first to report.
Apax to combine three social impact software companies in deal valued at $2B (TECHCRUNCH)
Private equity firm Apax Funds announced that it is combining three social impact firms to create a platform of sorts in a deal valued at $2 billion.
Mako Fintech secures $2 million CAD to meet “absolute tsunami of client demand” for wealth management automation (BETAKIT)
Prior to launching Mako, founder and president Raphael Bouskila founded and led another Montréal-based FinTech startup, CoPower, which offered a platform for impact investors and was acquired by Toronto’s Vancity Community Investment Bank in 2019.
How social media became a deadly trap for a minority group in Pakistan (REST OF WORLD)
If you’re one of four million Ahmadis in Pakistan, posting on Facebook can mean exposing yourself to danger.
With a new name and product, Wisedocs targets US expansion (BETAKIT)
The company’s refined software offering focuses on unstructured medical data contained in health documents like PDFs, JPEG images, and faxes.
How Uber plans to rebound from massive Q2 losses stemming from driver incentives (TECHCRUNCH)
Uber’s second-quarter earnings revealed greater than expected losses, in large part due to the company’s massive $250 million stimulus package launched in April to incentivize drivers back onto the app after a pandemic-induced shortage.
