In the past few weeks, two Vancouver startups got a boost with rounds of funding. Here’s the latest on who raised how much, and from whom.
Hack Capital raises $750,000
Vancouver-based Hack Capital has raised a $750,000 seed round from a group of investors as it looks to expand its service across the world.
Hack Capital is working to help companies scale through several planned business automation solutions. The company is using the funding towards growing the team behind its CTO.ai solution, which monitors issue balance, helps teams understand how quickly the team is shipping value to production, and measure velocity by metrics like repo, date, milestone, bug, and people.
“We are using these funds to grow our CTO.ai team across Canada and continue to execute on a mission to build the worlds most trusted platform for software companies to hire, train, retain and motivate software engineers to do the best work of their lives,” Kyle Campbell, CEO of Hack Capital, wrote in a blog post. Campbell is also a founder of Retsly, which was acquired by Zillow in 2014.
The company’s investors include:
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Geoff Entress (Pioneer Square Labs), David Tedman (Invoke Media), Kevin Hobbs (Van Bex Ventures), Jonathan Bixby (Stanley Park Ventures), Brent Holliday (Garibaldi Capital), Mike Edwards (Initio Group), Chris Bissonnette (Pallasite Ventures), Conconi Growth Partners, David Hamilton, Chris Neumann (Datahero / 500 Startups), Colin Harris (PMC-Sierra), Alex Norman (TechTO / Angel List Canada), Barney Pell (Moon Express), Dave Johnson (Phone Gap / Adobe) & Patrick Lor (Panache VC).
“I invested for several reasons,” said Norman. “The founders are successful serial entrepreneurs. They are tackling a large problem: there is 4x more engineering jobs than engineers, and their solution, CTO.ai, is creating efficiencies to help bridge this gap and already has several great companies using it.”
In the future, the company plans to launch verticals like CHRO.ai for HR, CRO.ai for measuring impact and plot trajectory, and CCO.ai to streamline the administration process.
GoFetch has raises $3.4 million for dogwalking app
Vancouver-based GoFetch has raised $3.4 million.
The company, which allows dog owners to connect with people to care for their dogs, raised the funding from an undisclosed group of investors. “We look forward to enhancing our product and core service offerings for our customers and the dogs they love,” said Willson Cross, the company’s CEO.
As dog-walking app Wag just raised $300 million from the SoftBank Vision fund and Seattle-based dogwalking app Rover raised $65 million last yer, Willson said that he anticipates more interest and investment in the space.
“From a competitive standpoint, we love the competition as it helps build awareness of the superior experience pet owners can receive through technology enabled platforms…this only makes going to new markets more efficient,” Cross said.
In May 2017, the company raised a $1.4 million seed round and launched in Toronto.
While GoFetch connects dog owners with sitters, it said that its dog-walking service is its fastest-growing vertical. The company currently has over 35 employees.