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Salesforce completes acquisition of Slack (BETAKIT)
Vancouver-founded Slack has officially been acquired by Salesforce, nearly eight months after Salesforce announced plans to acquire the app for $27.7 billion USD.
Zoom buys cloud call center firm Five9 for $14.7 billion (TECHCRUNCH)
Zoom is taking advantage of the impressive rise in its stock price in the past year to make its first major acquisition.
Properly closes $44 million CAD Series B from key strategics, US investors to tackle Canadian real estate market (BETAKIT)
“Properly will become synonymous with home buying in Canada, much like Zillow is synonymous with home discovery in the US.”
MongoDB to the left, Redis to the right: Is Couchbase stuck in the middle? (PROTOCOL)
The company has to prove it can beat larger rivals like MongoDB, as well as fast-growing competitors like Redis Labs, not to mention the big cloud companies.
Oxio secures $25 million CAD to accelerate Canadian expansion (BETAKIT)
The company uses its proprietary software platform and physical networks like Videotron and Rogers to provide users with internet connectivity.
California sues Activision Blizzard over a culture of ‘constant sexual harassment’ (THE VERGE)
In the hours since the suit was revealed, numerous women have already stepped forward to corroborate the allegations.
Technical debt: the other innovator’s dilemma (BETAKIT)
Microsoft Canada CSO Kevin Magee argues startup founders need to prioritize security, privacy, and compliance from the start, lest they come back to haunt them.
Fraud on the Farm: How a baby-faced CEO turned a Farmville clone into a massive Ponzi scheme (REST OF WORLD)
Farm Bank let players make money, while supporting real farms. Then the CEO vanished with $80 million.
Brokrete secures $2.7 million CAD, launches e-commerce platform for construction suppliers (BETAKIT)
The all-equity round, which Brokrete referred to as oversubscribed, was led by European VC firm Xploration Capital and supported by new strategic investors and key employees.
Byju’s acquires reading platform Epic for $500 million in US expansion push (TECHCRUNCH)
The deal involves both cash and stock, and Epic founders Kevin Donahue and Suren Markosian will continue to run the business, they said in an interview with TechCrunch.
What to do when over 300,000 people count on your old code for their pension (BETAKIT)
BetaKit spoke with the Jonah Group about completing a massive digital transformation project for a major Canadian pension plan during a global pandemic.
The inevitable weaponization of app data is here (VICE)
A Substack publication used location data from Grindr to out a priest without their consent.
Great Hill Partners acquires majority stake in Auvik Networks for $312 million CAD (BETAKIT)
Prior to securing the $312 million from Great Hill, Auvik had raised just over $50 million CAD total, with backing from Rho Canada Ventures, Celtic House Venture Partners, and BDC Capital, among others.